US regulators to investigate Disney diversity efforts

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will investigate diversity efforts at the Walt Disney Company, the head of the US agency said on Friday.

Disney and its subsidiary ABC are being targeted as part of the Trump administration's efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs at government agencies and private companies, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a letter to the entertainment giant.

US President Donald Trump picked Carr to head the FCC.

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"I am concerned that ABC and its parent company have been and may still be promoting invidious forms of DEI in a manner that does not comply with FCC regulations," Carr wrote in the letter, a copy of which he shared on X, formerly Twitter.

Disney made a priority of promoting race and gender diversity across its operations in recent years, and "apparently did so in a manner that infected many aspects of your company's decisions," Carr wrote in a letter addressed to chief executive Robert Iger.

Carr notified Comcast and NBCUniversal in February that they were targets of an investigation into their diversity and equality efforts, thanking Trump at the time for efforts to "root out the scourge of DEI."

Trump's assault on diversity across the United States government is dismantling decades of racial justice programs.

Delivering on a campaign promise, the Republican billionaire made it one of his first acts in office to terminate all federal government DEI programs, which he said led to "illegal and immoral discrimination."

Earlier this month, Civil War historian Kevin M. Levin reported that Arlington National Cemetery had begun to wipe its website of the histories of Black, Hispanic and women war veterans.

Descendants of the Native Americans who played a vital role for US forces in World War II said they had been shocked to discover their ancestors' heroic contributions had been effectively deleted from the public record.

The president's move to end DEI programs has also affected more than just the federal government.

Since Trump won last year's election, several major US corporations -- including Google, Meta, Amazon and McDonalds -- have either entirely scrapped or dramatically scaled back their DEI programs.

The American Civil Liberties Union says Trump's policies have taken a "'shock and awe' approach that upends longstanding, bipartisan federal policy meant to open doors that had been unfairly closed."

US federal anti-discrimination programs were born of the 1960s civil rights struggle, mainly led by Black Americans, to promote equality and justice after hundreds of years of slavery.

After the United States abolished slavery in 1865, the country continued to see other institutional forms of racism enforced.

Today, Black Americans and other minorities continue to disproportionately face police violence, incarceration, poverty, homelessness and hate crimes, according to official data.