Trump's Repeal of LBJ's Affirmative Action Order

Showing 5 Executive Order 11246 videos from Charlie Kirk's video collection.

Executive Order 11246, the 1965 mandate Lyndon B. Johnson signed requiring racial preferences in federal hiring and contracting, became one of Charlie Kirk's most celebrated Trump administration policy reversals, one he called the bravest presidential action in half a century precisely because it had gone untouched through both Reagan and Bush administrations. Kirk framed the order's repeal as restoring merit-based hiring as the operative federal standard, arguing it would force major federal contractors including Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Google to eliminate affirmative action programs or risk losing government business. He tested the underlying merit-versus-diversity argument directly in a debate with commentator SimpleBlackTheory over blind hiring, in which Kirk argued that removing race, age, and gender from hiring decisions represented the clearest practical expression of meritocracy, while his opponent contended that factors like workplace safety and equitable access justified considering those characteristics deliberately. The debate extended into specific industry examples, including United Airlines pilot training programs, Google's hiring committees, and the history of racial desegregation in professional sports, with both participants disputing whether historical exclusion justified continued race-conscious remedies or whether the order's repeal simply corrected a decades-old deviation from colorblind law. Kirk treated the repeal as part of a broader set of early administration actions he celebrated together, including Ross Ulbricht's pardon and new immigration enforcement authority for ICE.