Gill: ‘Intellectually Incoherent’ Democrats Defending DEI Are on the ‘Wrong Side,’ Again

Congressional Republicans are still fighting against illegal diversity, equity, and inclusion policies entrenched in American education institutions.

At a congressional hearing on Tuesday titled “Combating DEI in American Institutions,” Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, analyzed how DEI is illegal and ineffective.

After the hearing, he told the Daily Signal that the “intellectually incoherent [Democrats]” were defending DEI policies that “harm all Americans.”

Gill, chairman of the Oversight Committee’s Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses, said that Democrats are “on the wrong side of a popular issue.”

“I think that we really exposed the fact that DEI is institutionalized racism against disfavored minority groups that the left, for whatever reason, opposes,” Gill said after the hearing concluded.

“I thought that most of the Democrats were intellectually incoherent, whether they knew it or not, and I think that we [Republicans] came out strong,” he added.

“What they wanted to do is to try and deflect from the fact that Republicans are simply making the case that racial quotas, or racialized hiring practices, or racialized college admissions, are wrong, which is a basic principle that the majority of Americans agree with.

The chairman welcomed The Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez, a contributor to the Daily Signal, to testify as a witness alongside Inez Feltscher Stepman, a senior policy and legal analyst at Independent Women. They were joined by Dr. Michael Shires, vice chair of education opportunity at America First Policy Institute.

Gonzalez has written extensively on identity politics and critical theory at The Heritage Foundation.

“DEI now functions as a broad institutional framework that shapes how government, education, and some segments of civil society define fairness, evaluate outcomes, and interpret inequality,” Gonzalez said before the committee. “What was once presented as a set of training programs has evolved into a governing ideology embedded across multiple sectors of American life.”

Gonzalez claimed that DEI is a “destructive, racist approach that makes us poorer, meaner and detached from actual reality.”

“The writings, teachings, and trainings of DEI seek to erode support for the American system of individual rights, free-market economics, and parental control of children’s moral upbringing, as well as America’s culture and history,” he continued.

President Donald Trump and Republicans watched the prior administration promote DEI for four years. In 2025, during his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order terminating “illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the federal government, under whatever name they appear.”

Gonzalez said he supports the president’s decision.

“The Trump administration’s executive orders represented a necessary corrective, reasserting the principle of equal treatment under the law and beginning the process of dismantling race-, sex-, and other identity-based preferences embedded within federal structures,” he said.

Gill told the Daily Signal that there will be a similar hearing on higher education next week, and he predicted it will be “enlightening.”