The Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, issued guidance requiring agency heads to send notices to their staff by 5:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday. It included an email template that many federal staff eventually received that night.
Some employees, such as those in the Treasury Department, received slightly different versions of the email.
According to a copy shared with the BBC, the Treasury Department email omitted warnings about the “negative consequences” of not reporting DEI’s actions.
In one of his first actions as president, Trump signed two executive orders ending “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “DEI” programs within the federal government and announced that those serving in those roles Any employee shall be immediately placed on paid administrative leave.
Such programs are designed to increase minority participation in the workforce and educate employees about discrimination.
But DEI’s critics, like Trump, argue that the practice itself is discriminatory because it takes into account race, gender, sexual identity or other characteristics.
Trump and his allies frequently attacked the practice during the campaign.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Trump announced that he was building America into a “merit-based nation.”
Critics of the DEI have praised Trump’s decision.
“President Trump’s executive orders repealing affirmative action and banning DEI programs marked an important milestone in the progress of American civil rights and building a society of color,” said Yukong Mike Zhao, president of the Asian American Coalition for Education, in a statement. It’s an important step forward.” statement
The group supported a successful effort in the US Supreme Court to end affirmative action programs at US universities.
But current federal employees, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals, said the emails they received looked more like an attempt to intimidate staff than to make the government fairer. Felt.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President Trump has signed executive orders since taking office, including freezing jobs in the federal government, ordering workers back to work and trying to reclassify thousands of government employees to make them easier to fire. be
An HHS employee who spoke to the BBC criticized the government’s DEI practices, believing that while it was important to develop a diverse workforce and create opportunities in the health and medical fields, “identity politics played a role in this.” is how we normally operate and it is not beneficial to their workforce”.
“But that doesn’t mean I want to fire my colleagues,” the employee added.
He described the impact of the email and DEI orders on his agency as “very calculated chaos.”
The division of employees was confused, he said, by questions about how to proceed with the hiring process, as well as allowing programs and directives to continue given Trump’s broad definition of DEI.
Another HHS employee said hiring and research grants have been frozen and the entire department is waiting to see what they can do next.
HHS, and one of its subsidiary agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), issue millions of dollars in federal grants to universities and researchers around the world to advance scientific research.
Agency employees feared that the DEI order could have ramifications outside the government. One questioned whether grants allowing laboratories to create more opportunities to hire minority scientists and medical professionals would now be axed.
An employee at the Food and Drug Administration told the BBC that she had not received the email but that all DEI-related activities had been suspended.
“We have been told by the seniors to keep doing their job,” he said. “But there’s a sense of dread about how it will affect our work in general.”
