President Donald Trump’s executive orders against “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion policies have left corporations and their lawyers struggling to grasp exactly what that means.

Many underrepresented people who built successful government careers credited those laws and their enforcement with expanding the path to prosperity.

On his first full day in office Tuesday, President Donald Trump continued sweeping actions, including ordering the shuttering of all executive branch diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and ordering all employees working in such offices to be placed on leave.

DEI has its defenders at Costco. Shareholders rejected--by a vote tally of around 98% to 2%--a proposal by a conservative activist group pushing the company to revisit its DEI policies. While many other companies have retreated from their DEI programs,