There will be no more "diversity hires" in the federal government. At least, not officially. More on that in a moment.

On Thursday, the Office of Personnel Management sent out new guidelines for hiring, called the Merit Hiring Plan. This plan was written to implement the Chance to Compete Act, which was passed in late 2024. The Merit Hiring Plan prohibits the consideration of race and sex in hiring decisions.

Why it matters: The Merit Hiring Plan released to agencies Thursday afternoon by the Office of Personnel Management — the administration's HR department, basically — is a major overhaul to how the federal government hires employees.

• It also explicitly orders agencies not to take race and gender into consideration in hiring.

Catch up quick:The memo implements a law, the Chance to Compete Act, that was so noncontroversial it passed the Senate in late 2024 with no opposition.

• "These ideas have been around for a while, but hadn't been done in a comprehensive way," an OPM official told Axios.

Hiring based solely on the applicant's suitability for the job; imagine that. 

One of the key changes is how job candidates are assessed. Currently, they fill out "self-assessments," a widely criticized practice, where applicants rate themselves on their experience and knowledge.

• Going forward assessments will look at actual skills — either in interviews or using different tests.

There's another interesting tidbit in the plan: Government agencies are now prohibited from releasing information on workforce demographics, which makes a certain amount of sense; if the government is hiring on merit alone, those statistics shouldn't matter.

See Also: AG Pam Bondi 'Repurposes' DEI Funds to New Goal: Enforcing the Law

Pentagon Orders Academies to Remove DEI/Anti-Racism From Libraries, Admit Candidates Solely on Merit

Of course, creating and releasing such a plan is one thing; rooting out all the vestiges of DEI hiring in government is quite another. Any future Democrat administration may be able to roll some of this back. While Congress has codified this into law in the form of the Chance to Compete Act, the Office of Personnel Management wields the regulatory stick, and a new administration may seek to "re-interpret" the hiring guidelines. Nothing is permanent in Washington, after all.

There are also an untold number of individual hiring authorities in the federal government. Hiring for federal employment happens not only in Washington but also in federal offices and enclaves around the country; Denver's huge Denver Federal Center comes to mind. There can be no doubt that some of those authorities will be down with the DEI horse squeeze and will engage in a quiet rebellion. It's near-impossible to prove a negative, and just because a certain hiring authority has an unusually large percentage of their hires belonging to ethnic/religious/sex "A" as opposed to "B," it's difficult to prove that this was the primary consideration.

The complete implementation of this plan will require a lot of weeding among federal hiring authorities. The swamp is dark and deep and has many denizens who are practiced at hiding beneath the surface of the dark waters. But the big task is done; DEI is, officially at least, dead in federal hiring. Now - wonder of wonders - the federal government will be basing hiring decisions on who is actually best for the job.

Now, if only we could get this to apply to Congress.

Editor's Note: The Deep State is working overtime to subvert President Trump's agenda and the will of the people.

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