Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) is issuing a sharp rebuke of President Trump’s flurry of executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) since his inauguration.
Speaking at the National Cathedral’s Holy Eucharist and Annual HBCU Welcome Sunday, Warnock said many of the president’s orders are a “wholesale unabashed assault” on DEI.
“Don’t tell me you reject DEI when you live in a White House built by Black hands,” said Warnock, a Baptist preacher. “The White House is a DEI house built by slaves who worked without the benefit of compensation.”
Just days after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to end “illegal preferences and discrimination” in government and help find ways to “encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.”
Multiple federal agencies are purging their staffs of DEI-related positions, and major companies including McDonald’s, Target, Walmart, Amazon and Tractor Supply have all ended or rolled back their DEI programs, many made in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
Trump and his supporters have falsely claimed DEI policies and programs discriminate against white candidates.
“Diversity is sometimes offensive. It makes you uncomfortable because when you are accustomed to privilege diversity might feel like oppression,” Warnock said.
The Georgia senator also addressed the president’s allegations that DEI was to blame for the deadly airplane crashes that happened just weeks into his second term.
“While dozens of bodies were still beneath the chilly waters of the Potomac, he was busy playing a sad and awful game,” Warnock said on Sunday.
He pointed out that aviation is considered one of the least diverse industries in America.
“I know a God who creates talent and genius and brilliance all over the town on all sides of the track in every area code in every Zip code,” Warnock concluded. “It takes all of us to fly and if we won’t rely on all of us we’ll find that we’re stuck on the ground. I don’t know about you but I want to fly higher. I want all that God has imagined for America.”
He also took time to praise Bishop Mariann Budde, whose inauguration sermon at the National Cathedral last month drew the president’s ire and pushback from multiple Republicans.
Budde had implored Trump to have “mercy” for those who were scared for his second term, including members of the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants and people of color.
“The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart,” Trump said on social media after the service.
“She and her church owe the public an apology!” he added.
Warnock commended Budde for her “powerful and prophetic voice” that “speaks truth to power and addresses the fear and the anxiety that so many are feeling right now.”
“In the midst of the dark clouds, she had the courage to stand in the best of our tradition and speak the truth, and I submit to you that she need not apologize to anybody,” Warnock said to applause.
“When the prophet speaks the prophet doesn’t apologize. Those who hear are called to repent.”
