Trump doesn't only want to end DEI. He's also voiding a Civil Rights-era anti-discrimination rule.

Among the flurry of executive orders since his Jan. 20 inauguration, President Donald Trump has taken aim at rooting out diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs within the federal government. But his efforts go beyond DEI, with one recent order rescinding a Civil Rights-era rule that has helped protect millions of workers from discrimination. 

Mr. Trump's Jan. 21 order — "Ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity" — revokes the Equal Employment Opportunity rule signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. According to the rule, federal contractors, who today employ 3.7 million people, can't discriminate against job applicants or workers on the basis of race, gender and other protected characteristics.

Revoking the 60-year-old rule eliminates a bedrock civil rights protection for American workers, signaling an effort to target workplace issues that go beyond DEI, labor experts say. While DEI is shorthand for programs that encourage equality in the workplace for women, minorities and other groups, the Equal Employment Opportunity rule prohibited federal contractors from engaging in acts of discrimination, such as refusing to hire someone due to their race or paying an employee less because of their gender.