Funding for To The Contrary provided by: This week on To The Contrary: Business leader report uncertainty and anxiety over the Trump administration's and immigration policies.

And data sho boys and men are falling behind in several areas compared to women and girls.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to To The Contrary a discussion of news and social trends from a variety of perspectives.

Up first, DEI.

Most employers, in a new survey appearing online in Fortune Magazine, say President Trump's DEI and immigration policies are creating significan challenges for their businesses.

On DEI, the administration is ending earlier affirmative action rules.

It is also targeting DEI mandates to stress merit based approaches instead of changing policy towards people of color and women.

Business leaders are afraid of possible staffing shortages or major lawsuits.

Joining me on the panel this week are Democratic strategist Patricia Sosa Republican strategist Ann Stone, feminist activist Erin Matson, and conservative author and podcaster April Chapman.

And welcome to you, April, your first time on the show.

So let's start with you, Patricia.

In the Round Robin what is causing so much anxiety among business leaders abou these changes in the policies?

The Trump administration takes this position on DEI because they thought, you know, the woke left was mandating things that were unnecessary.

But the problem is now that they're turning around and they're behaving just like the extreme left, and they're mandating things and companies that do not want them.

DEI is an example.

We, for example, know the board of Apple decide that they wanted to keep their inclusive DEI policies.

So, it is hard because the the society's diverse, the workforce is diverse, and some of these policies are based in reality in the— in the sense of buildin the capacity and the leadership of the community that they serve.

So it makes it very uncomfortable.

The immigration issues are obviously because the talent that these companies have attracted historically from all ove the world have been important.

But they claim— they complain about th the paperwork, the bureaucracy, that they have all these to do with requirements.

So it's the opposite of government intrusion.

Instead of government intrusion from the left, now we have government intrusion from the right.

Actually, Trump's administratio is getting rid of regulations.

Its going to make it easier in the long run.

We never had a problem with the D. We never had a problem with the I.

Our problem was with the E Equity is a communist construct.

That's not—doesn't work.

I mean, every—every country tha tried to run itself by equity, it falls apart.

We want equality of opportunity, equality of access, not equality of outcome.

That comes with merit.

Now your thoughts, Erin.

What we've seen from the Trum administration is unprecedented interference into private business operations.

And that's happening on DEI, that's happening on immigration, that's happening with a number of things.

And what we're seeing is that business leaders are simply flummoxed, and they're unable to plan in this environment of chaos.

And your thoughts, April, what— what do you think is flummoxing them, to steal a word from Erin, the most?

There might be some anxiety, but it more—has more to do with exposure.

Many of these businesses buil these bloated DEI departments, and now they have to justify, based on identity instead of merit.

And what Trump is trying to do is just go back to some old fashioned American principles, which is—this is unsustainable.

People should have positions based on merit, and not these intrinsic realities that we can't control such as our gender or ethnicity.

What does everybody think about what's going to happen to the color of American companies from now on?

Are we going to see companie becoming more white, more male?

No, we're going to see companies become more based on capacity and capability, because the idea that just because we're removing DEI implies that people of color and women are not talented.

If you are the best at what you do, people will recognize that because it impacts the bottom line.

Your skill set is what makes room for you an adds value to the marketplace.

Not something as how I look or who I sleep with or what my ethnicity is.

I can't control any of those things, but what I can do is become more marketable and have greater skills and talents that make me more valuable in the marketplace.

Bonnie, if I could just jump in— I mean, first of all, when—what are we going to see companies look like We're already seeing right now— They're shrinking across the board because of these tariffs, because of the uncertainty, because of the chaos, because contracts are getting canceled, because there's a retribution campaign.

But in terms of wha the administration is seeking, I think the answer is pretty clear.

They are seeking to see more white men in leadership.

We want to have a conversation about merit.

Look at someone like Pete Hegseth, who is just an incredibly incompetent Secretary of Defens sharing classified information.

But yet for all this talk about merit, they're standing behind him.

And you also see it in things where they're trying to encourage, you know they want mothers staying home.

They're very specific about that.

They want to elevate white men in the workplace.

And on the white piece, just another way to see this and understand as a proof point is also this idea of offering refugee statu to Afrikaners from South Africa.

That is absolutely the group that they're seeking to elevate in business and everywhere.

I agree, and I would say in practice is where we see it.

Okay, I don't object to a society that everybody gets their job based on a merit.

I want that society.

Unfortunately, the United States of America is not being that society for a long time.

And you know where I see it in practice.

Why is that Black African American femal head of the Library of Congress, a position that takes years and years, and she's an effective, well known person, being fired because she, at some point had statements on DEI.

The Joint Chief of Staff, objectively the most capable man i the military, was removed.

And— so many examples.

Disproportionately in the National Institutes of Health, diversity bodies, all the women and people of color were the ones removed.

And the white men stayed.

So yes, in principle, I agree with April.

But in practice, what we're seeing is an elevation of white men and being a woman and being a person of color in any high level position in the federal government, according to the Trum administration, you are suspect.

You know, a lot of workplace lawsuits are over exclusion based on gender and racial discrimination.

So are we going to see even more of these lawsuits or fewer because President Trump is appointing judges who are not as concerned about them, maybe?

As prior.

Yeah.

And I think there' multiple things going on, right.

Number one you think about what's happening in the federal agencie that enforce this and the fact that federal agencies are being gutted and everybody is being fired, right.

And so that's going to slow down people who are attempting to seek relief in the courts.

Then you also have the fact that in the first Trump administration, something that—something that the administration, sought out to do and achieve success on was really in stacking the judiciary.

And so you do see a very strong, conservative bent throughout much of the judicial system.

So I think that's a piece.

But, you know, to get bac to the issue of what's happening in companies I think it remains to be seen.

What I find really interesting is it does seem like it's about— I don't have the facts to spell it out, but it does seem like it's about half and half for companies, that some are really visibl pulling away from DEI, pulling all statements, pulling all language, cutting programs, and somewhere around half are actually doubling down and saying, no we're going to keep doing this and we're committed to this work.

And so I think we're still seeing this play out.

Let me ask all of you a question which is, what are companies going to do about hiring and what is—what are, employees or would be employees who don't get the jobs or promotions they want going to do about it?

Are we going to see a lot of craziness in the court system, or are we going to see a population that just accepts it and moves on?

I find it insulting that all of a sudden we can't figure out how to hire and choose people that are good for the job, because this conversation of diversity, equity and inclusion, which is reverse racism, i now become a thing.

We should do what has always been the gold standard.

If you are talented and are good at your job, you come to work and you bring those ideas to the workplace and the marketplace will decide these things.

We can't force companies to make hiring decision to fill quotas just so they can even the playing field.

Companie are already pulling away from this DEI conversation because they were terrified o being sued by activist lawyers.

A lot of this was fear drive compliance in the first place.

It didn't come from a heart of we really want to see our workplace diversified.

This didn't really help more people.

It put a lot of people in positions that they didn' really necessarily qualify for.

Just so on the outset we could virtue signal and say, look how diverse we really are.

We have a pretty expansive language.

And couldn't people— and anybody jump in and answer this question— but couldn't corporate officers just use different terms and end up hiring just as diverse personnel?

I mean, it's all about why do you need diversity, okay?

So I disagree with April on her statement.

I do think that many companies embrace diversity because it's really not only who they employ, but who they serve.

And it's really diversity, and, and the effort of inclusivity was to remove bias—bias in hiring.

So we really, really hire the best people, and we draw fro the largest pool.

The reality is that many companie like half, as Erin was saying, are keeping the policies because they have to.

Because they need to.

And I hope that they will find a way of having an employment team that reflect the communities they serve.

Some companies to a lesser degre and it will be tougher in engineering and other fields that are predominantly by white men.

We may—we may continue, but others will definitely be diverse.

The key here is we don't want the Trump administration saying because youre diverse, that means you're a suspect.

You know?

That is the concern he Not—not the—the if you follow the traditional or the other strategies.

Companies have the right to be diverse and to seek that diversity in their staff.

I don't think anyone's questioning diversity that's done organically.

I've worked for plenty of companies that were diverse, and it was just done organically.

But what we do have to do, we have to admit that there's been some unintended consequences of this DEI discussion.

We have to be honest, sometimes the bar was lowered and resentment was created.

True equity isn't handouts or headstarts.

It's equal opportunity rooted in merit.

And if that ends up being a diverse workforce then we will celebrate that.

It's the artificial virtu signaling that is creating us— Why every female in the military have to be removed from high office?

Every single female.

The military is one of the most objective places for hiring, because the skills that you need in the military are pretty straightforward, you know, because you don't bypass the physical fitness status, the combat training, all the criterias required to have a high leadership position, and they removed every single female.

That's what I'm talking about.

I'm not talking about, you know, the other, you know, how to use pronouns, all that stuff.

I'm removing all of that because I don't think that's what the Trum administration has been about.

That is my concern.

Being a woman and a person of color becomes suspect when they hire you.

Wome should not be kept in positions.

They're not doing the job.

The ones that were removed in the military were not doing their job the best.

They put in better people.

Other women will be elevated.

And again, I—a lot of disinformation has bee put out through the segment so f First of all some companies may be shrinking, others are expanding, ne companies are growing like crazy and more will come with all the new investment that's come in the United States.

Further, most businesses i this country are small business.

Well guess what?

Women are startin small business at a rapid rate and like a 3 to 2 rate, they're succeeding over their male small businesses.

So youre going to see a lot of getting more jobs out of small businesses, maybe not in the large corporate, but they're going to be just fine.

We do have to address childcare because that's the only thing thats keeping them down.

Now, we've mainly talked abou DEI, but what about immigration?

Is that going to have a huge impact on the color, so to speak, of companies?

Well, absolutely.

Immigration was a big source of diversity.

People from all over the world were coming to American universities.

Many of them were staying in the workforce or the construction business.

We know where they were coming from.

All of that is going to change.

All of that is going to change if we continue the policies in the direction that they are going.

And, and the problem her is not so much color as much as the brains that these people will bring—the ideas, you know, how the technology companie were built in the, in the know, they took people from all around the world that decided to come to the United States and build their lives and give their talent to the companies in this country.

So we'll see.

I hope it doesn't happen, but I'm very worried.

For me, it' actually a really huge challenge because I think DEI, in many ways—diversity is intrinsic.

But the brain drain—that is big problem if the immigration laws are so tied that these talent cannot stay and work with us in the United States, and for us.

There are ways to immigrate immigration to get the workers you need.

There are permits that can be issued for it.

I don't have any worry about that Theyre removing those permits.

They're removing those permits from universities.

Theyre threatening Harvard for allowing the students to come.

They're not giving them their visas.

So they're playing around with it, with the students.

They are removing students fro the street with masked agents.

Let's also remember that and be clear that this is part of a broader agenda of intimidation.

We have to—we have to move on to the next topic.

Let us know what you think.

Please follow me on Twitter @BonnieErbe.

From DEI to boys and men.

This is not new.

We covered it at least a doze times in the 90s and the 00s, but it's back.

New research shows boys and young men are facing significant challenges and falling behind females in school relative to boys and men.

For one, they have lower graduation and college enrollment rates.

They also experience problems in mental health, particularly ADHD and autism, and they have less emotional support.

And while women are more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression, me have much higher suicide rates.

So let's go to Ann Stone.

Why is this happening again?

Did it ever stop happening?

What's going on here?

What happene was the culture made a decision over a decade ag to shift more to support women.

And as you know, I favored having that happen, being a female chauvinist.

However, the pendulum really swung probably a little too far and our culture reinforced being a man was bad.

I mean, it was terrible.

You saw it through everything from sitcoms to drama to commercials.

It was all women.

No men, bad—men are bad, men are you know, and weakened and feminized them.

Just horrible.

And that's one of the things that Trump capitalized on, part of why he won such a large share of the male vote.

However, going forward, it doesn't mean you swing the pendulum all the way the other way either.

And as you know, a a proponent of women's history, I think teaching women's history where we show real success in this world and in the country has been when men and women partner.

And getting men to accept women as, as equal partners, seeing in history that most successes came out of that is going to be one of the ways forward.

The other is— Okay, but Ann, let me ask you this, what's going to happen?

And what's Trump going to do when we see at least major corporations becoming whiter and whiter in management, if that happens?

Well, because women are outpacing men in college you're going to see by necessity, upper management is going to eventually become more female as well, because they're going to be the ones that qualify.

But men now are looking at the trades, they're looking at vocation, they're looking at going to become electricians and plumbers, which, quite frankly they'll probably make more money than the guys in the suits as a result.

And there's going to be a real orientation that that's where they're going to go.

That's part of why they're not going to school anymore.

They don't see the merit in spending all that money o four years of liberal education, when they can go and become a plumber, electrician and mechanic and make a heck of a lot more money and support their families, support themselves, much more quickly.

Erin, would you say that companies that spend a lot of money promoting women and people of color just wasted that money?

No, Bonnie, I wouldnt and, you know, I actually started my career working in a consulting firm that supported Fortune 500 companies in helping to fill their pipeline with women and people of color.

And I've seen how that wor is transformative for companies.

I think that, you know, the issue here is that we want to make sure that everyone has access to a good future, good opportunity and multiple things can be true at the same time, Bonnie.

It can be true that women are systematically underpaid for their work, that women are shuffled into, you know, kind of pink collar jobs.

On a systematic level, it can be true that discrimination does exist against women in all facets of our lives.

I believe that to be deeply true.

I'm a feminist.

I've devoted my life to working on that.

It can also be true at the same time that boys are really struggling in the educational system right now, right?

And that we need to address both things at the same time that men, just like women, need access to good jobs and good opportunities.

So I just— I hope that we can break beyond a paradigm of a gender war on this, because my primary concern is oftentimes when we're talking about these very real statistics of me who are hurting in this economy that has been made a horrible economy for no real reaso except the whim of a president, that what we see is oftentimes this narrative is used in service of tryin to pick a fight with feminists.

And that's ridiculous.

We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

April, your thoughts?

Do yo agree with everything that Erin just said?

No, well, I'm not a feminist.

I have more of a complementarian worldview.

But what I would sa is we've spent a very long time with an overemphasis on feminist worldview that has told boys that they need to sit down and be quiet, and we gotta elevate women.

And now boys have grown up to feel ashamed of their masculinity.

So they're disengaging, they're checking out, they're overly medicated and probably emotionally abandoned.

So are we shocked that they are falling behind?

This is what happens when you have an unhealthy imbalance of too much of one thing.

Masculinity isn't toxic.

Being a woman and wanting to be a wife and being a mom is neither toxic either.

Boys need structure, girls are a little bit more emotional.

Boys want visio and purpose for their manhood.

And none of those things should be demonized.

So if men are having a mental health crisis and a suicide crisis, there are multiple facet that have contributed to this.

And eithe we're going to get more balanced or we're going to see more of the same.

And, so what do you think, Ann?

Are we going to see a overreaction or just a reaction?

Well, my hope is—with working with the administration— is to try to get them to not overreact and not do things that are going to, you know, again, elevate men to the exclusion of women.

And there is the tendency by some in the administration to do that.

So something to fight back against.

But I think that with the elevation of women over the last decade or so, it was good for society as a whole to start to recognize the real part that we played.

We need to play up the positive parts to that, meanwhile giving our men support I mean, they need it.

They're not as tough sometimes as they like to think they are.

They do need the same sor of community and group support, and they don't seek it out like women do.

Erin, your thoughts, what next?

What's going to happen next?

Bonnie, I wouldn't be surprised that we continue to see, you know, as you said at the outset of this, the show has been covering this issue for some time.

I think there are some pretty entrenched issues in our society that are even, not just gender issues specifically, but things like the shifts in our econom and the struggles that we have.

You know, certainly with education and shifts there.

And the fact that we're, you know, folks are trying to abolish the Department of Education what does that mean in a context when we're trying to figure out how to better educate boys and young men so that they're succeeding.

Right.

Like, so there's a lot of question here, in terms of what's next.

But I will say, and just reiterate I think the most important thing is to remember that this is a both and that we should be promoting everybody, that everyone deserves a fair shot and success.

Patricia, you think it'll work out that way?

Well, we have a bigger problem that both girls and boys are going to be facing, which is AI.

Ezra Klein just had a wonderful conversation in this show about what to think about the future of education now with artificial intelligence.

So the boys are behind.

We don't know how the girls are going to react and how the economy how are we going to be teaching?

How are we going to be learning?

What are the requirements for learning that we're going to have in these new realities, not just a new economy.

It's a new reality completely with artificial intelligence, and their role is going to play in impacting elementary education, higher education.

But with Erin, it's not a zero sum game.

We have to address everybody's concern, including our boys.

Well, what do you all think is going to be the reaction of women and people of color if they're watching TV?

For example, a couple of weeks ago was the Met— Metropolitan Museum Gala and it was all African-Americans.

And if people see this on T and they go into their companies and they see 75% white management, how are they going to react?

They need to react just how they were—live their lives and not being so obsessed and consumed with seeing themselves everywhere they go.

I mean, it's a real ethnically narcissistic way to view the world.

You can't just live in the world where everything is always about you and you're the only one to celebrate it.

Everyone has unique gifts and talents and abilities that make them unique and special, and you need not look to the outside world and be worried about what other people are doing, in order for you to feel validated.

You're validated at home when your children look at yo and see someone to be proud of.

You're validated when your husband looks at you and says, you're doing a great job managing this family and working outside the home, or doing whatever it is that makes you happy, but to look to the rest of the world to validate you, for you to be seen says that you're dealing with some bigger deficiencies that can't be dealt with by a statue or a day.

Okay, but let me—but let me ask you this, April, what about men who want to stay home and run the family and women who want to go out and work?

I mean, if that's how you wan your household to function, that is—that's on you.

I think that's a very mismatched way and of, of of—use of gifts the way God wired us.

But if that works for your home, that works for you— That works for me.

It just doesn't work for my home.

My husband is gifted to do things, and I'm gifted to do other things.

And I stay in my lane.

And I love my role, and my children are happy and well-adjusted because of it.

All right.

And, Ann, maybe you have some more thoughts that we can go out on.

I was going to say that for men that don't have wives or supportive girlfriends, maybe we'll get them emotional support robots fueled by AI.

Do you think we'll see a increase in the pay of—of jobs that require a lot of physical strength?

We will, because, again, we are really severely lackin in all of the trades right now.

And, I'll tell you, even in my own life, we do a lot of buying and selling of the antiques and all that—finding people that can help us moving large objects— You wont believe what we have to go through.

I mean, yeah, it's, there's a need out there.

All right, that's it for this edition of To The Contrary.

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