2025 in review: Businesses walked a fine line on DEI as the government ramped up threats on corporate initiatives

This past year was the year of the sequel—and we’re not just talking about the hotly anticipated Wicked: For Good. The anti-DEI wave in 2024 was followed by another in 2025, one that brought with it government directives that resulted in some employers backing off from decades of their DEI programming.

Despite this, most companies still believe DEI initiatives are important, and practitioners are hopeful the work will continue in 2026.

Threats from the Trump administration. Some of President Trump’s first actions back in office were directed at corporate DEI practices. Throughout 2025, he used verbal threats, executive orders, and government agencies to go after companies that deploy DEI, even putting pressure on employee resource groups, HR Brew reported.

“Either DEI will end on its own or we will kill it,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general at the DOJ, said earlier this year during a hearing targeting companies that were rebranding their DEI departments.

Some lawmakers, including Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, pointed out that companies with DEI policies and practices are not violating the law.

“Just the vague threat of an executive order tossing around the term ‘illegal DEI’ is making a lot of companies scared to continue with it,” David Glasgow a lawyer, and executive director at New York University’s Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, told HR Brew.

Different methods. The first half of the year was marked by DEI rollbacks from companies like Target, Verizon, and IBM that issued statements about their pivots. Consumers loudly rallied and organized a boycott after Target announced major changes to its DEI policies in January. The retailer’s foot traffic and stock price also waned, Retail Brew reported, though there’s no definitive evidence that this was due to its DEI reversal.

Other companies, like Wells Fargo and Johnson & Johnson, backed off quietly, HR Brew reported. Wells Fargo not only removed from its website much of its DEI messaging, but HR Brew discovered that the company also deleted decades of information outlining how the company advanced diversity and inclusion.

Most companies, like Kohls and Constellation Brands, simply rebranded their DEI efforts, while Home Depot and UnitedHealth Group went further, erasing public references to diversity and inclusion, HR Brew reported.

Employers weren’t the only ones publicly rebranding DEI initiatives in 2025. Some practitioners changed their job titles and struggled to find work, as DEI job postings fell below 2019 levels after peaking in 2022, according to Bloomberg.

Standing firm. While many companies practically tripped over each other running away from DEI-related messaging, others, like Apple and Costco, stood firm.

“We owe our success to the more than 300,000 employees who serve our members every day. It is important that they all feel included and appreciated and that they transmit these values to our customers,” Tony James, chairman of the board at Costco, HR Brew reported in January.

Major companies within the cosmetics industry, including Sephora, e.l.f. Beauty, Lush, and Ulta, have also appeared unswayed by the threats to “kill” so-called “illegal DEI.”

“Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is infinite,” e.l.f. Beauty’s public DEI policy reads. (Its commitment was, however, called into question over the summer, when it partnered with controversial comedian Matt Rife.) “We’re very proud to stand for positivity, inclusivity, and we think it’s part of our success recipe,” Scott Milsten, CPO at e.l.f. Beauty, told HR Brew.

Looking ahead. The politicization of DEI has seemingly led to slightly less support for related initiatives in the US, but most Americans still want employers to promote DEI, according to a survey from Bentley University and Gallup. Additionally, most companies still have DEI, and many companies admit they’re simply rebranding their DEI efforts, a practice also known as “diversity hushing.”

“They’re [companies] not being as public about their efforts, but a lot of those organizations that do really care about the work,” Rosa Nuñez told HR Brew in September. “They’re doing it in-house in a way that is not distracting.”

Kristen Kavanaugh, Tesla’s former head of inclusion, told HR Brew in May that business leaders should speak up in defense of DEI so the work can continue. “We need to see those big acts of courage from folks who have a lot to lose, and we watch and see that they don’t lose everything.”