The Trump administration has reportedly destroyed 18 workplace safety publications as part of a broader attack on diversity initiatives, a development that is largely in line with recommendations made by the sprawling and unpopular presidential transition plan known as Project 2025.
According to Popular Information, 17 of the destroyed workplace guidelines — issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — appeared to have nothing to do with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs and instead seem to have been selected because “they include a DEIA-related keyword used in a completely different context.” OSHA is part of the Labor Department and is tasked with making sure U.S. workers “have safe and healthful working conditions free from unlawful retaliation,” according to its official website.
The Trump administration has been targeting diversity programs across the federal government, in some instances using the existence of DEI efforts as a justification for essentially shuttering entire agencies, as in the case of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The administration’s anti-DEI approach mirrors recommendations made in Project 2025’s nearly 900-page policy book, Mandate for Leadership, which called for the elimination of federal DEI programs and for the Department of Justice to investigate private sector programs that promote diversity.
In addition to its direct attacks on DEI, Project 2025 — organized by The Heritage Foundation in collaboration with more than 100 partner groups — proposed drastic rollbacks of labor laws, including dismantling overtime regulations and creating exemptions to the National Labor Relations Act, which protects workers’ rights to collectively bargain and to form a union.
Although the Trump administration’s memo calling for the 18 safety guidelines to be “disposed of or recycled” appears to be a hamfisted and failed attempt to root out DEI programs, it nevertheless fits in with Mandate’s broader approach to dismantling worker protections.
For example, Mandate recommends carve outs to OSHA’s workplace safety regulations, calling on Congress and the Department of Labor to “exempt small business, first-time, non-willful violators from fines issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.”
Mandate further argues that “national employment laws,” like the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, “set out one-size-fits-all ‘floors’ regulating the employment relationship,” and that the protections the law provides could instead be “treated as negotiable defaults rather than non-negotiable floors.” If enacted, this recommendation could allow employers to use safety measures as leverage in contract negotiations, thus increasing the already stark asymmetry in power between workers and bosses. And U.S. workplaces are already deadly; according to the AFL-CIO, in 2022: “344 workers died each day from hazardous working conditions,” and “5,486 workers were killed on the job in the United States.”
The final chapter in Mandate calls on the president to order Cabinet secretaries to “rein in agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which the Biden Administration weaponized to attempt to force COVID-19 vaccine mandates on 84 million Americans through their workplaces.”
That demand built on previous work from The Heritage Foundation, which sued the Biden administration over its Covid-19 workplace vaccine mandate. After the Supreme Court blocked the mandate, Heritage President Kevin Roberts celebrated the decision on former Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow’s radio show. Sekulow is also chief counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, whose advocacy arm is a partner in Project 2025.
“When it comes to putting government back in the box, it is a series of battles,” Roberts said. “We have won one battle, but we have not won the political and policy war.”