If we thought 2024 was bad for efforts to make schools and workplaces more inclusive, it’s looking even worse in 2025.

When I last wrote about attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion about a year ago, anti-DEI sentiment was definitely gaining steam, but we hadn’t yet seen widespread implementation of that sentiment as we did over the past year.

Now, with President-elect Donald Trump set to take office in a week, companies and educational institutions seem to be falling over themselves to show how much they are willing to obey the new administration in advance.

Over the past year, huge corporations like Toyota, Meta, Molson Coors, John Deere, Walmart, Ford, Lowe’s and, most recently, McDonald’s, announced they would roll back diversity efforts.

Last week, social media behemoth Meta — which owns Facebook and Instagram — announced it would reverse its content moderation strategy to align more with the will of Trump and of Elon Musk’s X. There will be no more fact checkers in favor of “community notes,” and a loosening of rules against hate speech and abuse. These moves are expected to particularly harm transgender people and immigrants.

The company also announced it — like Amazon — would drop many of its DEI efforts.

On the educational front, Inside Higher Ed reported “The impact of 2024’s anti-DEI legislation reached beyond the states where it was passed. In several states where bans were proposed but failed, colleges have chosen to take pre-emptive action, dissolving offices and cultural centers despite the fact that no law required them to do so.”

As they put it, “In many ways, the year was defined by this overcompliance.”

Trump barred federal DEI programs at the end of his first administration — a decision President Biden reversed — and promised to eliminate them in his next administration.

Author Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote on Instagram about the Emmy she won in 2024 for the TV version of her “1619 Project” and said, “Reflecting on it is bittersweet because the racial justice, anti-Black backlash is so complete that we probably couldn’t even get this documentary made if we were trying to today.” Sadly I think she is right.

I don’t think of myself as a naive person, but I will admit I am surprised how far backward we have gone from 2020, when it seemed as if the country’s stubborn marriage to systemic racism was beginning to fray.

Martin Luther King, Jr., famously said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” but that arc can sure feel mighty circuitous.

It’s also very clear that 2025 is no 2017. Since Trump was reelected, the resistance to his administration has been much quieter than it was the last time around. There is a People’s March planned on Saturday in D.C. with an expected turnout of about 50,000 — a significant number but nothing close to the million people who came out to the Women’s March in 2017.

One of my favorite columnists, The New York Times’ Charles M. Blow, wrote last month that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Taking time to pause, regroup and restore ourselves is healthy, as long as it is a temporary disconnection and not a “permanent acquiescence,” he wrote.

And I would also say restoration is most needed (and deserved) for those who are likely going to bear the greatest brunt of Trump 2.0. Existing in a state of constant hypervigilance is not healthy or sustainable, but that’s also not a permission slip for those with the most privilege to lay back and opt out of working for change.

Not every company has prostrated itself at the feet of the next administration, as depicted in a now infamously rejected cartoon by former Washington Post cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who quit after editors killed the piece.

The Northwest’s own Costco recently took a different tack, telling shareholders last month that no, it would not abandon its commitment to DEI.

In response to a conservative organization’s efforts to get the company to go the way of so many other corporations, Costco’s board said, “Our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary. Our efforts at diversity, equity and inclusion remind and reinforce with everyone at our Company the importance of creating opportunities for all.”

As we look ahead to the next four years, I confess I, too, feel a certain weariness. There’s a feeling of Groundhog Day — like we have done this all before.

But maybe in the quiet and stillness of the Big Dark, we can take some time to take stock, reconnect with the people and things that matter most to us, and fortify our strength for the fights ahead.

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