Donald Trump has ordered that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on paid leave “immediately” and eventually laid off.
The move follows an executive order the President signed on his first day back in the White House which revoked President Lyndon Johnson’s protection of workers against discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin.
President Trump’s order also encourages the private sector to “end illegal DEI discrimination and preferences”.
Heralding a “new golden age” for the US, he has sought to quickly dismantle many Biden-era policies with a flurry of executive orders on immigration, gender and climate.
The President has vowed to fire more than a thousand of his successor’s appointees, including Adml Linda Fagan, who Joe Biden appointed to lead the US Coast Guard in 2022.
Mr Trump sacked Ms Fagan on Tuesday for excessive focus on diversity policies.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) directed agencies to place DEI office staffers on paid leave, take down all public DEI-focused webpages and cancel any DEI-related training by 5pm EST on Wednesday (10pm GMT).
The memo also encouraged employees at federal agencies to inform on those attempting to disguise diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes.
Federal department and agency bosses are required to ask “employees if they know of any efforts to disguise these (DEI) programmes by using coded or imprecise language”.
The memo, issued on Tuesday, included a template email for bosses to send to employees, which asks them to report to OPM if they are “aware of a change in any contract description or personnel position description since November 5, 2024 (Election Day) to obscure the connection between the contract and DEIA or similar ideologies”.
The memo added that DEI programmes “divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination”.
Federal government departments had started to take down public webpages associated with diversity, equity and inclusion on Wednesday, in line with the OPM memo and ahead of the 5pm deadline.
The US Treasury, Department for Labor, Agency for International Development and the General Services Administration appeared to have heeded the order by dismantling their DEI landing pages.
The State Department also appeared to have removed the “selecting your gender marker” page from its website.
Where previously those applying for or updating a passport were advised on selecting between male (M), female (F), or unspecified or another gender identity (X), now the page redirects applicants to a general passport information page.
The move comes a day after Donald Trump issued an executive order instructing all government agencies to ensure official documents such as passports and visas “accurately reflect the holder’s sex”.
The order also declared that the US government would recognise only two sexes, male and female, as part of a wider campaign to end “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
Marco Rubio has pledged to eliminate DEI from the State Department and restore “strict meritocracy”.
In a memo to the diplomatic corps, Mr Rubio, who was confirmed as Secretary of State on Tuesday, said: “There is tremendous talent and expertise in this Department – I have seen it first-hand in missions across the globe – and upholding strict meritocracy is essential to securing our nation’s future.”
He added that he would follow Donald Trump’s executive order to ban diversity programmes “in both letter and spirit”, and that his new department must stop “pushing political and cultural causes that are divisive at home and deeply unpopular abroad”.