Los Angeles mayor slashes fire department DEI bureau in proposed budget months after woke backlash

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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appeared to be backing away from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the city’s fire department after facing massive backlash over the poor response to the deadly wildfires earlier this year.

Last week, Bass released her balanced budget proposal for the 2025-26 fiscal year. Her proposal included the goal of hiring 227 new positions at the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) with approximately half of them being firefighters.

Bass also requested in the proposal that the LAFD Fire Chief take the "necessary steps" to begin consolidating the Bureau of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion into the Professional Standards Division, which is expected to remove five "equity and inclusion" positions.

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Some thought this move by Bass was inspired by the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI initiatives.

"This was Karen Bass cowing to the Trump administration," former fire commissioner Rebecca Ninburg told the Los Angeles Times on Monday. "Chief [Kristen] Crowley was very proud of this, and they are basically eliminating this project during their installation of a whole new regime."

The LA Times reported that Bass said in an interview on Friday the LAFD remains committed to pushing for diversity and inclusion and that her proposal was not in response to anti-DEI sentiment.

"That’s the beauty of living in L.A. I don’t need to placate anybody over diversity and inclusion," Bass said. "We are looking at doing some reorganization at that level. But we would never roll back the goals. We don’t have any reason to do that at all."

Fox News Digital reached out to the LAFD for comment.

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The Bureau of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion was established in 2022 under then-Mayor Eric Garcetti and then-Fire Chief Kristen Crowley. 

Crowley was fired by Bass earlier this year after she criticized the mayor and city leadership for failing the city during the wildfires.

The proposal to consolidate the Equity Bureau also comes a few months after the city was attacked for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on various DEI programs despite cutting the LAFD budget by approximately $17.6 million dollars.

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