By Bo Erickson and Humeyra Pamuk
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. agencies under new President Donald Trump pushed on Thursday to implement his mandates to reshape the federal bureaucracy, encouraging workers to report any clandestine efforts to maintain diversity programs and preparing to close offices dedicated to such efforts by next week.
Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the sprawling federal workforce and particularly for diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which promote opportunities for women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ and other traditionally underrepresented groups.
Trump and his supporters say DEI programs end up unfairly discriminating against other Americans and weaken the importance of applicant merit in hiring or promotion.
A memo distributed Wednesday to thousands of federal officials across the government ordered employees to report colleagues who sought to “disguise” DEI efforts using “coded language,” warning that failure to communicate relevant information would trigger “adverse consequences”. “
The messages carried the imprimatur of Trump appointees at the highest levels: the State Department memo was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for example, while the Department of Veterans Affairs email was signed by Acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs Todd Hunter.
Officials overseeing DEI programs at many agencies and departments were placed on leave Wednesday and their offices are expected to close permanently by the end of the month.
The moves were part of a broader campaign by Trump targeting the federal bureaucracy, which he has sometimes denigrated as a “deep state” secretly working against his agenda.
Trump, a Republican, froze virtually all federal hiring and signed an executive order on his first day in office Monday that would allow his administration to fire tens of thousands of career civil servants, who historically benefit from job protections, at will. which isolate them. political partisanship.
The order, known as Annex F, would allow Trump to fill these positions with hand-picked loyalists. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 150,000 workers at three dozen agencies, filed a lawsuit challenging the decision.
“This gleeful hatred of federal workers is not going to lead to anything good,” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who represents 140,000 federal workers in Virginia, told reporters.
Trump’s decision to end diversity programs drew immediate condemnation from Democrats and civil rights advocates, who say such efforts are necessary to combat structural racism and long-standing inequities.
Trump also sought to discourage private companies that receive government contracts from using DEI programs and asked government agencies to identify those that could be subject to civil investigation.
In an order issued Wednesday, Trump repealed a 1965 executive order requiring federal contractors to use affirmative action to ensure equal opportunity and prohibiting them from discriminating in employment practices.
The decades-old order, signed by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, was seen as an important moment of progress in the civil rights movement, coming at a time when black Americans faced the threat of violence and to the “Jim Crow” laws which prohibited them. voting and living in predominantly white neighborhoods.
The federal government has committed $739 billion to entrepreneurs in fiscal year 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office.