DEI
2024 March
2024-03-27 After the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, fake videos and conspiracies spread online, blaming explosives, DEI, or Israel. According to some reports, the posts allegedly came from verified right-wing accounts on X.
https://www.npr.org/2024/03/27/1241001030/-baltimore-bridge-collapse-conspiracy-theories
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/francis-scott-key-bridge-collapse-conspiracy-theories-online-rcna145105
https://www.axios.com/2024/03/26/francis-scott-key-bridge-collapse-reasons-conspiracy
2024-03-28 Phil Lyman blamed the Baltimore bridge crash on DEI and targeted Karenthia A. Barber in a repost from the Young Conservatives Federation, “This is what happens when you have Governors who prioritize diversity over the wellbeing and security of citizens”.
https://x.com/phil_lyman/status/1772647920124211378
2024 July
2024-07-19 After the CrowdStrike outage, Elon Musk posted, “Not very “bright” right now, is it?” alongside a reposted Bright Network DEI banner, suggesting the outage was due to DEI. America First Legal filed a civil rights complaint on CrowdStrike for discriminating against white males. Steve Guest posted “Equity is nobody in the world being able to get on an airplane simultaneously. Thanks CrowdStrike”.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1814252636855500948
https://x.com/SteveGuest/status/1814282729317421310
2025 January
2025-01-30 Trump blamed DEI, Biden, and Pete Buttigieg for the Potomac plane crash and signed an executive order ending federal DEI hiring practices.
2025 February
2025-02-04 In response to the Potomac crash Senator Roger Marshall said, “Well, I think diversity issues did contribute to this accident, and what we know for sure is that under Joe Biden that they lowered the standards for people getting into air traffic control. And with that, the number of near misses increased 70% a year”. The Senator went on to say, “What I think you’re gonna find out is there were a lot of qualified white men that they were not hiring because they were holding spots for DEI hires”.