WaPo (“Trump targeted federal workers in his opening act, starting with DEI employees“):
President Donald Trump targeted federal workers in an opening act aimed at exerting political control over a sprawling bureaucracy — putting federal diversity, equity and inclusion employees on leave, banning remote work and stripping employment protections from civil servants.
The moves, which came in rapid succession during Trump’s first 48 hours as president, seek to fulfill a campaign pledge and a rallying cry among conservatives to crack down on programs that they consider unnecessary and exclusionary. DEI, the acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion that Trump uses in a derisive way, has long been a focus for some of his senior advisers such as Stephen Miller, now his deputy chief of staff.
Trump on Tuesday ordered all employees whose work is focused on DEI initiatives to be placed on leave no later than 5 p.m. Wednesday, and on Wednesday he revoked a 60-year-old executive order banning discrimination in hiring practices in the federal government. Some acting agency heads started enacting the guidance, with multiple directors Wednesday telling staff that all DEI offices are closing and mandating employees report instances where government workers were trying to “disguise” programs by using “coded or precise language,” according to emails obtained by The Washington Post. The White House did not respond to questions about how many of the 2.3 million federal employees were affected by his order.
Federal workers, meanwhile, are scrambling to make sense of the decrees, which may apply differently to each agency, depending on the person in charge and the fine print of union contracts. The return-to-office executive order in particular mystified employees and their supervisors, who are trying to parse whether it also affects telework, which is when employees who are based in an office work from home. The night Trump issued the executive order, Google searches for “federal workers return to office” spiked by more than 600 percent — with the most interest in the D.C. region, where 15 percent of federal workers are based.
[…]
Trump has now rescinded much of what former president Joe Biden did with the federal workforce during his time in office, continuing eight years of policy ping-pong between the two leaders. Toward the end of his first term, Trump signed an executive order that banned federal contractors from conducting anti-bias training. Biden quickly rescinded that order when he took office and promoted diversity and equity programs among federal government offices and contractors.
[…]
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Virginia), who has for years introduced bills to protect the civil service, blamed the Biden administration for failing to push through legislation to permanently block Trump from creating job categories that convert career positions to political ones, like Trump originally tried to do at the end of his first term.
“Now we are paying a price for what I think is poor judgment in the previous administration in this one realm,” he said.
Russell Vought, Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, at a Senate hearing Wednesday sidestepped questions about the rights of workers fired under the Trump’s newly restored “Schedule F,” the classification that would remove protections from civil servants.
“Schedule F is a different classification,” Vought said in response to a question about if workers fired under the classification would have the due process rights granted to civil servants. “It is meant to ensure the president’s administration has people working for him that are actually going to do the policies he ran on.”
An email to employees at the Education Department on Wednesday advised that all DEI offices were closing and all DEI-related contracts were being terminated. “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination,” new chief of staff Rachel Oglesby wrote.
Benjamine Huffman, acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, the agency responsible for public security, on Monday terminated “all current memberships on advisory committees” within the agency, “effective immediately.” He also ordered all employees to immediately report to work in person and mandated their managers submit reports of those who did not, with documented justification, within 30 days, according to an email and memo obtained by The Post.
A memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio warns State Department officials that they will face “adverse consequences” if they fail to report on colleagues who have concealed or obscured existing DEI programs at the department.
WaPo (“Federal Workers Ordered to Report on Colleagues Over D.E.I. Crackdown“):
The Trump administration on Wednesday threatened federal employees with “adverse consequences” if they fail to report on colleagues who defy orders to purge diversity, equity and inclusion efforts from their agencies.
Tens of thousands of workers were put on notice that officials would not tolerate any efforts to “disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.” Emails sent out, which were based on a template from the Office of Personnel Management, gave employees 10 days to report their observations to a special email account without risking disciplinary action.
“There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information,” the template sent to agency heads said. “However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.”
The message also said: “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars and resulted in shameful discrimination.”
Some agencies, such as the Education Department and the State Department, sent the template to their employees on Wednesday. Other agencies made slight modifications when they sent emails to their workers. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, said failure to report D.E.I. efforts “will result” in adverse consequences.
The warnings were a dramatic escalation of President Trump’s war on diversity programs that seek to reverse decades of systemic inequities. They were also part of a broader assault on the federal work force, which the president has long viewed as a bloated bureaucracy. He has pledged to eliminate departments and has ordered remote workers back to the office.
I gather that OPM (the Office of Personnel Management) sent out a mandatory template and have seen essentially identical memos from various agencies, including NASA, posted on social media. Thus far, neither my wife nor I have received one directly.
As a matter of public policy, I largely disagree with the move. While there are no doubt that DEI programs have been poorly administered—some disastrously so, in ways guaranteed to generate resentment rather than understanding—their goals are worthwhile. While I understand the objections to “Equity” as a goal rather than equal treatment, it’s simply undeniable that treating unlike things the same results in unfavorable outcomes. Whether it’s justified in achieving organizational missions is really case-dependant.
Regardless, Candidate Trump explicitly ran on this agenda and we should not be surprised that he’s seeking to implement it. I’m frustrated how poorly some agencies have done in preparing for this inevitability—especially given the long transition period between the election and inauguration. One suspects that at least parts of this will run afoul of the law and collective bargaining agreements. (Neither my wife nor I are covered by the latter.)
I am, of course, troubled by the potential for abuse in the requirement to report attempts to hide DEI programs. I am, however, aware that some agencies (albeit not one I’m associated with) indeed renamed DEI programs things like “Civil Rights” ahead of the transition in hopes of evading the coming policy. Rooting those instances out is a legitimate aim of those seeking to enforce the President’s policies.
