Trump administration draw up plans for firing workers in DEI roles
Trump orders all federal diversity, equity and inclusion employees placed on paid leave starting Wednesday
The Trump administration also directed government agencies to draw up plans for firing workers in DEI roles.
The Trump administration is ordering all federal employees in diversity, equity and inclusion roles placed on paid leave by Wednesday evening, according to a new memo from the Office of Personnel Management.
The memo, issued Tuesday to heads of departments and agencies, sets a deadline of no later than 5 p.m. ET Wednesday to inform the employees that they will be put on paid administrative leave as the agencies prepare to close all DEI-related offices and programs and to remove all websites and social media accounts for such offices.
It also asks federal agencies to submit a written plan by Jan. 31 for dismissing the employees.
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday ending “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity and inclusion programs in federal agencies, with DEI offices and programs being ordered to shut down.
“President Trump campaigned on ending the scourge of DEI from our federal government and returning America to a merit based society where people are hired based on their skills, not for the color of their skin,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Tuesday night. “This is another win for Americans of all races, religions, and creeds. Promises made, promises kept.”
It was not clear how many employees would be affected. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The head of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents hundreds of thousands of federal workers, ripped the executive order, as a “smokescreen for firing civil servants, undermining the apolitical civil service, and turning the federal government into an army of yes-men loyal only to the president, not the Constitution.”
“The federal government already hires and promotes exclusively on the basis of merit,” the union’s national president Everett Kelley, said in a statement. “The results are clear: a diverse federal workforce that looks like the nation it serves, with the lowest gender and racial pay gaps in the country. We should all be proud of that.”
Trump signed 46 executive orders and presidential actions Monday that addressed a number of campaign pledges, including ending Biden-era border policies and pardoning the Jan. 6 Capitol rioters.
Tuesday, he signed an executive order that targeted diverse hiring practices at the Federal Aviation Administration, arguing that such initiatives penalized “hard-working Americans who want to serve in the FAA but are unable to do so, as they lack a requisite disability or skin color.”
Trump’s steps in the first days of his second administration continue efforts he made near the end of his first term. In 2020, he signed an executive order prohibiting federal DEI programs. President Joe Biden countered that by signing actions aimed at bolstering racial equality shortly after he took office in 2021.
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NBC News