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These days, real news, can be difficult to decipher when the internet is ruled by hyperbolic headlines and misleading social media posts but this not a troll job. Donald Trump and his administration are really doing this and it is really infuriating.

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According to NPR, a public memo that was recently distributed by the General Services Administration (GSA) shows the rippling effects that Trump’s executive order to end diversity, equity, and inclusion at the federal level is having on long-held American beliefs. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued Executive Order No. 11246, which provided protections against racial discrimination under federal employment and also extended these protections to private sector businesses that take on government contracts. The new GSA memo clearly outlines which Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) clauses are to be removed from all federal contract language, including clause 52.222-21, which is labeled “Prohibition of Segregated Facilities” and reads as follows:

The Contractor agrees that it does not and will not maintain or provide for its employees any segregated facilities at any of its establishments and that it does not and will not permit its employees to perform their services at any location under its control where segregated facilities are maintained.

Those “segregated facilities” are work areas, restaurants, drinking fountains, transportation, housing, and other communal spaces. 52.222-21 maintains that none of these places can be divided based on “race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin.”

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Trump’s Executive Order nos. 14173 and 14168 demand that this integral part of ensuring that federal employees’ civil rights aren’t being violated is no longer part of the contractor’s requirement. Now, this does not mean that all businesses, federally contracted or otherwise, do not have to abide by The Civil Rights Act of 1964 but the fact that Trump is going out of his way to have it removed is telling.

A constitutional law professor at New York University, Melissa Murray, calls the move “symbolic” but acknowledges that the symbolism doesn’t lack meaning, saying,”The fact that they are now excluding those provisions from the requirements for federal contractors, I think, speaks volumes.”

It speaks very loudly, and you don’t need to be a dog to hear what’s being said.

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