1792 Insights
The 1792 Exchange is committed to delivering sharp, data-driven analysis of corporate America’s political entanglements. Discover what investors, executives, and concerned citizens should know regarding why businesses should return to neutral, mission-focused operations.
Corporate Ideological Capture Begins in the Classroom
On July 23, 1792 Exchange filed a comment urging the Department of Education to finalize its proposed rule rescinding the Equity Assistance Center Program regulations. Congress created the program in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for one purpose: helping school districts desegregate, which it defined as assigning students without regard to race. By 2016 the Department had renamed the Desegregation Assistance Centers as “Equity” Assistance Centers and read gender identity into a statute about sex, a reading a federal court struck down in 2025. Desegregation was a fixed command to stop sorting children by race. “Equity” became a blank check, and in February 2025 the Department cut $33 million in grants funding DEI, Critical Race Theory, and gender-identity training for school boards. We support the repeal because we document where this pipeline ends. 1792 Exchange’s Corporate Bias Ratings map ideological capture at more than 4,500 of America’s largest employers as of August 5, 2026, in the hiring mandates and speech codes that arrive with each graduating class. What begins in the classroom ends in the boardroom. We urge the Department to finalize the rule without delay and hold the program to the promise of 1964: every American child assigned …
Comment of 1792 Exchange in Support of the Proposed Rule, “Rescinding the Equity Assistance Center Program Regulations
Dear Assistant Secretary Baesler: 1792 Exchange writes in support of the Department’s proposal to remove the Equity Assistance Center Program regulations, and we strongly urge the Department to complete this process. 1792 Exchange is a nonprofit corporate accountability organization. We document ideological capture across American companies and institutions and work to return them to neutrality by upholding free speech, free exercise, and free enterprise. That work gives us a clear view of this program, because we sit at the far end of the pipeline it feeds. The drift this rule corrects begins at the schoolhouse. We document where it ends. Congress created this program in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for one purpose: to help school districts desegregate. Congress even defined the word “desegregation” so no official could bend it. “Desegregation” means assigning students without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. And in the same sentence, Congress said what desegregation is not: moving children around to hit racial targets. The rule runs in one direction only. Race is not to be used, not even for approved causes. The Supreme Court says the same thing in plain words: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” That …