Let's not turn this in to a pointless political debate. But stories such as the Republican appointee to the DoI saying "diversity isn't important" [0] lead some people to conclude that there's effort to cast other goals as more important than diversity. There are enough threads on HN debating the relative merits of diversity and meritocracy that there's no need to add them here, but this is just an answer to the citation request.
0: https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/26/politics/ryan-zinke-diversity...