Trump admin orders federal employees in DEI offices to be placed on paid leave as agencies wind down diversity initiatives
The Trump administration on Tuesday ordered all federal employees working on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to be placed on paid leave as government agencies work to shutter DEI offices. The Office of Personnel Management — the government’s top human resources agency – notified federal department heads in a memo that DEI program employees must be notified by 5 p.m.Wednesday that their administrative leave is “effective immediately.” The memo further directs federal agencies to take down all “outward facing media” – such as webpages and social media accounts – focused on DEI programs, cancel all employee diversity trainings and terminate any DEI-related contracts by the same deadline OPM also asked agency heads to ask “employees if they know of any efforts to disguise” DEI programs with “coded or imprecise language,” and to report back their findings on attempts to obfuscate the initiatives by Jan.
31. Employees who do not report DEI programs that may have been renamed to skirt the Trump administration’s widely expected move to gut diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives may face “adverse consequences,” OPM warns. By the end of the month, OPM also wants “a written plan” from all federal agencies for how they will execute “a reduction-in-force action regarding the employees who work in a DEIA office.” The missive was sent in response to President Trump’s first day executive order directing federal agencies to dismantle the “illegal and immoral discrimination programs” promoted by the Biden administration. Trump’s order slams DEI programs, which were deployed throughout the government by the Biden administration to promote racial and environmental “justice,” as discriminatory and an “immense public waste.” OPM’s DEI memo was released on the same day the White House announced that the president will order the Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration to “im...