No White Men Need Apply

On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump promised to end federal spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. Yet the government has continued to award contracts based on race and sex. Despite rampant fraud and multiple court rulings against the practice, the Small Business Administration (SBA) has used “disadvantage” essays from business owners to skirt the rules and continue discriminatory programs that dole out billions in government contracts.

For decades, the federal government has awarded certain special contracts exclusively to so-called disadvantaged businesses and women-owned small businesses. Until 2023, SBA presumed that racial minorities were “disadvantaged.” The resulting discrimination was absolute: according to an analysis conducted between 2020 and 2023, these programs made not a single award to white men.

Though the second Trump administration has taken steps to limit these contracts, the largest disadvantaged-business initiative—the SBA’s 8(a) program—is thriving. The program “is still one of the most lucrative and sought after” SBA certificates, one contracting lawyer said in November. In fact, fiscal year 2025 saw the largest 8(a) spending on record, totaling $26 billion.

President Trump signed an executive order forbidding federal DEI discrimination, and a federal district court struck down the SBA’s presumption that minorities are disadvantaged. How, then, has 8(a) survived?

Much as colleges have used personal essays to evade affirmative-action bans, the Small Business Administration has asked companies to submit “social disadvantage narratives” to qualify for the 8(a) program. These allow business owners to establish minority status through descriptions of racial taunts or alleged discrimination. Applicants might not check a racial box, but the implication is clear: no white men need apply.

The SBA’s “Guide for Demonstrating Social Disadvantage” reveals how the shell game works. The guide teaches applicants how to play the system, featuring examples of potential “disadvantage.” It gives minorities and women the magic words: “I believe my application [for a bank loan] was denied due to bias toward my race” and “I believe my request [to declare a business major] was denied based on sex bias.” Once the agency approves the application, the contracts can start flowing—no real evidence required.

Are these applicants always disadvantaged? No. Consider Earl Stafford Jr., a black contractor who wrote an essay to apply for the 8(a) program. The Washington Business Journal reported on Stafford’s “painstaking” ordeal of writing the essay, in which he described unspecified acts of discrimination that made him think that he did not have “what it took to be in business.” Yet his father, Earl Stafford Sr., founded a successful defense firm and started his own private foundation—hardly the background of a disadvantaged person.

As with any racialized initiative, the 8(a) program is ripe for fraud. White business owners can find a minority front man or a woman to head a nominally disadvantaged or woman-owned firm, which the white man continues to run behind the scenes. Another option is for minority-owned firms to receive the government contract but act as “pass through,” taking a cut off the top and paying another firm to do the contracted work. The Supreme Court ruled last year against a “disadvantaged” company that provided none of the required paint for a Philadelphia bridge and train station and passed the work to other firms.

Out-and-out dishonesty is also common. In 2023, Margarita Howard and her companies HX5 and HX5 Sierra were forced to pay the government almost $8 million for lying about Howard’s assets in order to participate in 8(a). At the time she claimed to be disadvantaged, Howard was living in a 14,000-square-foot waterside Florida mansion featured on HGTV’s Extreme Homes, the complaint against her alleges. Howard is still the CEO of HX5 (a “woman-owned small business”) and applies for federal money. The Trump administration awarded her company millions last year.

Other aspiring federal contractors have pretended to be Native American or embezzled funds intended for Natives. ProPublica recently highlighted the case of Charles Dawson, a contractor whose companies won hundreds of millions of dollars on a promise to use his profits to help “Native Hawaiians.” He funneled some of the money into private jets, Porsches, and polo. Even after a federal raid on Dawson’s house, the companies continued to win federal support.

Everyone within the system knows such fraud is rampant. A 2018 government audit reviewed 25 8(a) recipient firms which together received more than $100 million. Of these, 20 “should have been removed from the . . . program” due to ineligibility.

The Trump administration has taken important steps to address these problems. Late Friday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced he was ordering a “line by line” investigation of 8(a) contracts. President Biden’s SBA sought to award 15 percent of all federal contracts to disadvantaged firms. Trump SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler has reduced the goal to the law’s actual standard of 5 percent. Her administration has also demanded financial records from 8(a) businesses to weed out fraud.

But the core problem with these programs is not fraud. It is that they systematically discriminate against one group: white men.

Instead of trying to reform 8(a), the Trump administration should abolish it. Under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, the administration would be within its rights to stop all contracting based on race and sex, even if such contracting were justified under the fig leaf of a “disadvantage” essay. The White House could also support Senator Joni Ernst’s “Stop 8(a) Contracting Fraud Act,” which would pause 8(a) contracting until a thorough audit is completed, or call on Congress to end the program altogether.

When the administration says, “no DEI,” it should mean it. In federal contracting, that’s also what the Constitution requires.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images