Dean Phillips defends removing DEI from campaign website

Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips defended his decision to remove a reference to promoting “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” from his campaign website, saying it had nothing to do with public criticism from a major donor.

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, a leading DEI opponent who recently pledged to send $1 million to Phillips’ campaign, had publicly prodded the campaign on the topic. The Minnesota representative’s campaign this week replaced the phrase “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” with “Equity & Restorative Justice” on the platform section of its website.

“First of all, we didn’t change the language, we did change the drop down and I’ll tell you why: because I believe in diversity, I believe in equity, I believe in inclusion. But what has inclusion done for the Black community in this country? What have both parties done to close the racial wealth gap? I want to take it a step further,” Phillips said Wednesday during an interview on CNN.

The change to the website appeared following public comments from Ackman, who said Sunday on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Phillips would adjust his tone “once he understands what [DEI] is.” Ackman later posted that Phillips was “getting educated as we speak. Let’s listen to what he has to say after he gets educated.”

A cached version of Phillips’ website showed that his platform page continued to list DEI as a policy subject as recently as Monday, according to a POLITICO report. But by Tuesday, the language had been changed to “Equity & Restorative Justice.”

“Nobody buys me. If a donor came to me and told me to do something, I would tell the donor to go pound sand,” Phillips said in the CNN interview.

“I have been learning from so many people over the last two months about a lot of things I wasn’t aware of. Mr. Ackman is one of them, one of thousands of people that have shared perspective — he has not asked me, told me, informed me to do anything at all,” Phillips added.