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The fight over businesses’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs is heading to the courtroom. This week, a lawsuit was filed against coffee giant Starbucks over DEI practices, which the suit claims, break the law.That lawsuit, filed by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, says the chain is allowing race discrimination. “Starbucks ties compensation to racial and sex-based quotas, discriminates on the basis of race and sex in training and advancement opportunities, and discriminates on the basis of race and sex with respect to its board membership,” the suit reads. “All of this is unlawful.” The lawsuit comes amid a major federal crackdown on DEI policies that has erupted since Trump’s inauguration. On January 21, the president signed an executive order called Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, which instructed all federal agencies to take all appropriate action with respect to the operations of their agencies to advance in the private sector the policy of individual initiative, excellence, and hard work. The action called for the termination of DEI programs, policies, and funding. After the order, it was reported that federal buildings were raided and swept of any DEI materials. Federal employees were also barred from using their pronouns in the email signatures. Pronouns and any other information not permitted in the policy must be removed from CDC/ATSDR employee signatures by 5 p.m. ET on Friday, Jason Bonander, the CDCs chief information officer reportedly wrote. Staff are being asked to alter signature blocks . . . to follow the revised policy. Much like Trump’s response to the recent plane crash over the Potomac River that killed 67 people, in which he blamed, without evidence, DEI hiring, the suit alleges that DEI policies at Starbucks created problems at the chain. Not only did it allege that Starbucks bases hiring on race, it said employees made “more mistakes” on the job. Missouris consumers are required to pay higher prices and wait longer for goods and services that could be provided for less, had Starbucks employed the most qualified workers, regardless of their race, gender or national origin, the lawsuit said. Starbucks is, of course, pushing back on the claims in the suit. The chain told CBS News, “We disagree with the attorney general, and these allegations are inaccurate. We are deeply committed to creating opportunity for every single one of our partners (employees). Our programs and benefits are open to everyone and lawful.” Other companies, such as Target, McDonald’s, Ford, Amazon, Meta, and Walmart, were quick to get on board, post-election, with Trump’s push to eliminate their DEI policies. Although last month, nearly three dozen Walmart investors sent a strongly worded letter to Walmart CEO Doug MacMillon, questioning its DEI-initiatives rollback. Starbucks seems to be holding firm. As stated on its website, “We are expanding workforce diversity to bring new perspectives and experiences that improve our business and workplace. To do this, we reach a broader pool of candidates and talent by prioritizing inclusivity in our recruitment practices, in partner engagement, and by continuing to foster inclusive leadership. We work hard to ensure our hiring practices are competitive, fair and inclusive and that we hire the best person every time.” Likewise, Costco recently doubled down on its diversity practices, when at an annual meeting, the companys board of directors unanimously voted down a shareholder proposal, which asserted that diversity initiatives are discriminatory. JPMorgan also isn’t caving to the new administration’s pressure. In a visit to Columbus, Ohio, this week, CEO Jamie Dimon expressed his view on how massively important the company’s DEI initiatives remain. “We bank cities, schools, states, hospitals. We reach out to veterans. We fought for [the] disabled,” Dimon said. “We have programs for a million different things.”
Category:
E-Commerce
As former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer, Jen Pahlka helped to create the U.S. Digital Service (USDS). Today, the USDS houses Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), hell-bent on quick, disruptive change. Pahlka shares why the motivation behind Musks disruption of the status quo isnt necessarily wrong, arguing that we must clear the sludge out of government processes to finally create the conditions for substantive change. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. When we last spoke, it was in the early days of the pandemic to talk about a new nonprofit that paired volunteer tech pros with struggling government agencies. It was called U.S. Digital Response, modeled in part on the U.S. Digital Service, which you helped set up inside the White House. Now, the U.S. Digital Service has been renamed the U.S. DOGE Service, housing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. When and how did you first learn that USDS was going to change into something else? I found out the way everyone else did, which was the night of inauguration, right? Those EOs started hitting, and the fact that it had actually been renamed the U.S. DOGE Service. It shouldn’t have been a shock. Do you take it personally? I mean, it was a lot of work that you put into creating the U.S. Digital Service. I mean, you can’t take anything personally. I mean, it’s something of an honor that someone with a lot of power sees a thing that you had a hand in building and says, This is the thing that I’m going to use for my agenda. I think that they were very smart about it: There is great tech talent in the U.S. Digital Servicenow the U.S. DOGE Service. It has the hiring authorities that they needed. They could bring Elon and his special government employees and he didn’t have to divest from all his investments. But it hasn’t been necessarily a pleasant experience for folks in USDS, who on the one hand have really been waiting for somebody to give them more oomph and speed up the transformation that they’ve been trying to make for a long time. These new folks come in and they’ve had very brief conversations with the team and then sort of let them go back to their work so far. We’ll see how it goes. And it just means that the USDS is just associated with things like stopping payments to USAID, which is really not at all what USDS is about. When we first talked about USDS, as I recall, there were a lot of rules about what the administration could and couldn’t do. And you took a lot of care in trying to navigate that. In hindsight, were folks too beholden to those rules? Like that they were rules and not laws? I mean, the Trump administration certainly acts as if it’s unencumbered. They sure do. USDS has been able to do some great stuff. You know, they were part of the Direct File launch last year, which was hugely successful. They did online passport renewals recently. I think that whatever you’re doing, whether it’s setting up something like USDS or trying to get Direct File working for low-income Americans, there are a lot of rules. The right way to do it is to come in with a very bold, ambitious, curious agenda and say like, but this is the right thing to do for the American public, right? And these rules seem to be stopping us. Let’s ask, “Is this really a law? Is it a policy? Is it a regulation? Is it a memo?” And figure out how you might change it legally, so that you can serve the public better. And that’s hard. It’s really hard because people will just say it’s illegal. And you have to distinguish, is it something that . . . so this manager over here could change just because it’s just a memo that his predecessor wrote and it can be rewritten? Or do we have to do notice-and-comment rulemaking and actually go through the regulatory process and change it? Or do we have to go back to Congress, right? And that’s the work. That’s the work that needs to happen. And it needed to be happening at a far faster pace than it had. People will say, well, now it’s happening at a faster pace. Yes, if you don’t count the fact that sometimes they’re just ignoring the law entirely, right? You recently wrote an opinion column for The New York Times about how you align with some of the motivations that Musk and Trump express for more efficient government. You talked about, I’m quoting here, “the layers of process and procedure that encrust so much of government operations.” It’s strong words. Yes, I think what I said about motivations was that their motivations seem to be very different from mine. . . . Stopping payments that Congress authorized or firing as much of the workforce as you can indiscriminately seems to be driven by maybe a different motivation. What I think we have in common is the tactics of bringing in talent, having a little less patience with the status quo. I think we should have had less patience with the status quo for the past, say, 20 years. And maybe we would have been able to avoid this irresponsible kind of transformation that seems to be going on right now. In the article, you called your goal “de-proceduralization.” That’s a long word. Can you explain what you mean by that? To define de-proceduralization a little bit . . . I mean, during the pandemic, you know, last time I saw you, we had this crisis in unemployment insurance. All of the state’s labor commissioners got called up in front of their legislatures and yelled at for the backlogs that they’d accumulated. One of them was very smart: Rob Asaro-Angelo. He’s the commissioner of labor for the state of New Jersey. When he gets called up, he brings boxes and boxes of paper and puts them on the table as he’s being yelled at. And they are labeled 7,119 pages of active regulations that govern UI in the state of New Jersey. And he just keeps pointing at the pages and saying, you want a system that can operate at very low levels during times of high employment, and then scale apparently now to 10, even in some cases 15 times the number of claims on a dime. . . . You have to have a simpler system for it to be able to scale. And who created all of those regulations that have made this system so fragile, so complex, and so non-scalable and non-resilient? Well, the state legislature, the federal department of labor, courts. . . . The labor commissioner himself can’t do anything about that. But it does make it very hard to keep trust and faith with the American public when you can’t deliver because you̵re drowning in regulations which then drive great volumes of procedure and process that mean you can’t act quickly and you can’t act in a way that people expect. We have a world that is moving really fast and it seems like government just doesn’t have the capacity to move at that pace. And I guess what you’re saying is it’s not that the people within government don’t have that capacity necessarily. It’s that there’s so many rules and so many hoops to jump through that you just can’t move at that speed. Right. And I think one of the things that Elon seems to be recognizing in real time is that the people that he said such horrible things about before he got into government are the people who most want those regulations changed. So many public servants just want to do their jobs, they just want to serve the public, and they know that they’re really constrained by these huge volumes of procedure, regulation, policy, and law.
Category:
E-Commerce
The 2025 tax season is in full swing, and the number one question most people have on their minds after filing their return is, Wheres my tax refund? Thankfully, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) offers a quick and easy online tool to help you check the status of your tax refund. Heres what you need to know about the tool as well as how long it may take to receive your refund. Check your tax refund status with the IRSs Where’s My Refund? tool If youre anxious about where your refund is, theres good news: you can check its status in just a few seconds using the Where’s My Refund? tool from the IRS. Checking your refund status is pretty easy. Heres how: Go to the IRSs Where’s My Refund? tool at www.irs.gov/wheres-my-refund. Click the Check your refund button. On the refund status page, enter your Social Security Number. Next, select the tax year you are inquiring about. Now, select your filing status for the tax year you selected in the step above. Finally, enter the exact whole dollar amount of the refund you are expecting. Click the Submit button. The IRS says the tool will show you one of three results: Return Received means the agency has received your tax return and it is still processing it. Refund Approved means your refund has been approved. You will also see a date that the IRS expects to issue it by. Refund Sent means the IRS has already issued your refund. How long until I get my IRS tax refund? After receiving word that the IRS has issued your tax refund, the next question most people want answered is, When will I receive my tax refund? According to tax firm Jackson Hewitts Chief Tax Information Officer, Mark Steber, that depends on the method by which your refund is being delivered. If your refund is being delivered by direct deposit to your bank account, you should receive it in your account between 2 to 5 business days after the treasury issues the payment. If your refund is being delivered by paper check, it should be delivered to the address on the check within about 5 to 7 business days. But as Jackson Hewitts Steber points out, the IRS cannot legally send the payments for some refunds out yet. Thats because of a 2015 law known as the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act. The law stipulates that if the taxpayer who files the return claims the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) or Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), the IRS must hold the refund until after February 14. The delay is designed to help the IRS detect and prevent tax return fraud. So, even if you filed your return on the first day of this tax season, if you have claimed either one of those credits, your refund will not have been sent yet. For these people, the IRS says its Where’s My Refund? tool should show an updated status by February 22. The agency further explains that it expects most EITC/ACTC related refunds to be available in taxpayer bank accounts or on debit cards by March 3 if they chose direct deposit and there are no other issues with their tax return.
Category:
E-Commerce
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