As the Trump administration and Republicans across the country push to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies across the board, the executive director of a top consumer advocacy group spoke to Fox News Digital about what companies and institutions are doing to skirt those efforts.

‘Over the last few months, we’ve sort of seen a phase shift in the ways that they’re trying to keep this DEI grift going,’ Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild told Fox News Digital about companies, organizations, hospitals and other entities that are attempting to rebrand DEI and environmental, social and governance in the Trump era. 

‘At first, they just pushed back on, tried to defend DEI itself, but when that became so obvious that what DEI really was was anti-White, anti-Asian, sometimes anti-Jewish discrimination in hiring and promotion, they abandoned that,’ Hild said. ‘Now what they’re trying to do is simply change the terminology that has become so toxic to their brand. So we’re seeing a lot of companies move from having departments of DEI, for example, to ‘departments of belonging’ or ‘departments of inclusivity.’’

Several major companies have publicly distanced themselves from DEI in recent months as the new administration signs executive orders eliminating the practice while making the argument that meritocracy should be the focus. 

However, FOX Business exclusively reported in April on Consumers’ Research warning that some businesses appear to be rebranding the same efforts rather than eliminating them. 

‘It is the exact same toxic nonsense under a new wrapper, and they’re just hoping to extend the grift because a lot of these people, I would say most of the people working in DEI are useless,’ Hild told Fox News Digital. 

‘They are mediocrities who have managed to get very high-level positions that they’re not qualified for by running this DEI grift, and they’re desperate,’ he continued. ‘They can’t just move into running logistics for Amazon because that takes actual competence and intelligence and if you’re in a DEI department, you probably don’t have either of those things. So they are desperate to keep this grift going so they can justify their own existence. So they’re changing it into a new wrapper.’

Hild, who spoke to Fox News Digital at the State Financial Officers Foundation conference in Orlando, Florida, also explained some of the other issues Consumers’ Research is focused on going forward, including fighting ‘woke’ hospitals in three different areas.

‘One is net zero pledges and activities that raise costs for consumers, patients having to pay more because these hospitals are investing millions, sometimes tens of millions of dollars, into green boondoggle projects that have nothing to do with the treatment of patients and the improvement of their health, but they do raise prices,’ Hild said.

Secondly, Hild said that his group is concerned about DEI quotas at hospitals.

Hild explained that the third and ‘worst’ issue is transgender surgeries and procedures being forced onto children.

‘Pushing of radical left transgender ideology onto kids, and not just pushing it ideologically and rhetorically, but pushing it physically, and what I mean by that is the injection of damaging, lifelong damaging hormones into children to, quote, unquote, change their sex, which is impossible, and even worse, the actual surgical application, removal and mutilation of their genitals, which is a grotesque violation of the Hippocratic Oath,’ Hild said.

Consumers’ Research has been actively involved in launching advertising campaigns against hospitals across the United States, including a recent campaign against Henry Ford Health in Michigan, calling out what it says are situations where hospitals are putting ‘politics over patients.’

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Institute of Peace, writing in a ruling that the removal of its board members and the takeover of its headquarters by members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are actions that are ‘null and void.’ 

The response this week from U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell comes after the Institute filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in March calling for ‘the immediate intervention of this Court to stop Defendants from completing the unlawful dismantling of the Institute and irreparably impairing Plaintiffs’ ability to perform their vital peace promotion and conflict resolution work as tasked by Congress.’ 

‘The Administration removed the Institute’s leadership, including plaintiff Board members and its president in contravention of statutory limitations, and had personnel from a newly created federal office, called the Department of Government Efficiency, forcibly take over the Institute’s headquarters on March 17,’ Howell wrote in her ruling. ‘With a newly installed USIP president, the Administration then handed off USIP’s property for no consideration and abruptly terminated nearly all of its staff and activities around the world.’

‘Congress’s restrictions on the President’s removal power of USIP Board members are squarely constitutional, and the President and his Administration’s acts to the contrary are unlawful and ultra vires. The actions that have occurred since then – at the direction of the President to reduce USIP to its ‘statutory minimums’ – including the removal of USIP’s president, his replacement by officials affiliated with DOGE, the termination of nearly all of USIP’s staff, and the transfer of USIP property to the General Services Administration, were thus effectuated by illegitimately-installed leaders who lacked legal authority to take these actions, which must therefore be declared null and void,’ she added. 

The Institute of Peace is an independent, national institution funded by Congress that was established in 1984 under the Reagan administration to promote peace and diplomacy on the international stage.  

‘Congress has endorsed USIP’s important work by continuing to fund the Institute through appropriations bills signed by seven different Presidents from both major political parties, including the current President during his first term in office,’ Howell said in the ruling.  

‘In a drastic and abrupt change of course, within the first month of his second term, President Trump unilaterally decided that USIP is ‘unnecessary,’ issuing Executive Order 14217 to this effect, and then his Administration rushed through actions, including removal of Board members, to reach the professed goal of reducing all of USIP’s operations and personnel to the bare minimum to perform only mandated statutory tasks, while ignoring the broader statutory goals set out for this organization to fulfill,’ she also said. 

Ultimately, Howell concluded, the Trump administration’s actions ‘represented a gross usurpation of power and a way of conducting government affairs that unnecessarily traumatized the committed leadership and employees of USIP, who deserved better.’

The White House did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

In March, it said the Trump administration gutted the Institute of Peace of ‘rogue bureaucrats’ who held a tense standoff with a DOGE team that required police intervention. 

‘Rogue bureaucrats will not be allowed to hold agencies hostage,’ White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said at the time. ‘The Trump administration will enforce the president’s executive authority and ensure his agencies remain accountable to the American people.’ 

The administration now has 30 days to file an appeal to the ruling.

‘The United States Institute of Peace has existed for 40 years on a $50 million annual budget, but failed to deliver peace,’ Kelly told the Associated Press. ‘President Trump is right to reduce failed, useless entities like USIP to their statutory minimum, and this rogue judge’s attempt to impede on the separation of powers will not be the last say on the matter.’ 

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton contributed to this report.