By Bo Erickson and Humeyra Pamuk
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. agencies under new President Donald Trump were pushing to implement his mandates to reshape the federal bureaucracy on Thursday, 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 little secret of his disdain for the sprawling federal workforce and in particular for diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which promote opportunities for women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people and other traditionally underrepresented groups.
In a speech delivered by video on Thursday to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said his orders ending DEI programs would make America a “merit-based country” once again.
“These are policies that were absolute nonsense, throughout the government and the private sector,” he said.
Trump and his supporters say DEI programs end up unfairly discriminating against other Americans, while civil rights advocates say the efforts are needed to address longstanding inequities and structural racism.
A memo distributed to thousands of federal workers across the government on Wednesday commanded employees to turn in co-workers who sought to “disguise” DEI efforts by using “coded language,” warning that a failure to report relevant information would trigger “adverse consequences.”
The messages carried the imprimatur of top-level Trump appointees: the State Department memo was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for instance, while the Veterans Affairs Department email was signed by acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs Todd Hunter.
Officials overseeing DEI programs in numerous agencies and departments were put on leave on Wednesday, and their offices were set for permanent closure by month’s end.
The steps were part of Trump’s broader campaign targeting the federal bureaucracy, which he has sometimes disparaged as the “deep state” secretly working against his agenda.
Trump, a Republican, has frozen virtually all federal hiring and signed an executive order on his first day in office on Monday that would allow his administration to fire at will tens of thousands of career civil servants, who historically have enjoyed job protections that insulate them from political partisanship.
The order, known as Schedule F, would permit Trump to fill those positions with hand-picked loyalists. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 150,000 workers in three dozen agencies, filed a lawsuit challenging the move.
“This gleeful hatred of the federal workforce will lead to nothing good,” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who represents 140,000 federal workers in Virginia, told reporters.
Trump’s decision to shut down diversity programs drew immediate condemnation from Democrats and civil rights advocates
Trump has also sought to dissuade private companies that receive government contracts from using DEI programs and has asked government agencies to identify any that might be subject to civil investigation.
In a Wednesday order, Trump rescinded a 1965 executive order requiring federal contractors to use affirmative action to ensure equal opportunity and banning them from discriminating in employment practices.
The decades-old order, signed by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, was seen as a significant moment of progress in the civil rights movement, coming at a time when Black Americans faced the threat of violence and “Jim Crow” laws that prohibited them from voting and from living in predominantly white neighborhoods.
The federal government committed $739 billion to contractors in fiscal year 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office.
(Reporting by Bo Erickson and Humeyra Pamuk; Addition reporting by Daniel Trotta, Bianca Flowers, Andrea Shalal and David Ljunggren; Writing by Joseph Ax; Editing by Howard Goller)
