Trump’s Blow to Federal DEI Programs Places Hundreds of Bureaucrats on Leave, Slashes $420M in Contracts
President Donald Trump’s executive order ending all federal DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs has already resulted in 395 government bureaucrats being placed on leave, a senior administration official told Fox News Digital.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Trump’s new department headed by Elon Musk, said on Friday that an estimated $420 million in current and impending contracts, mostly focused on DEI, have been canceled.
Prior to being inaugurated, Trump vowed to end former President Joe Biden’s “diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates,” and “return our country to the merit system.” On his first day as president, he issued an executive order ending the “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.”
The sidelined bureaucrats and slashed programs come after the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a memo following Trump’s executive action, ordering all federal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) employees to be placed on paid leave by 5:00 p.m. on January 22 as the offices and programs started to close down.
In a post on X, Ed O’Keefe, a senior White House and political correspondent with CBS News, revealed that the U.S. OPM had issued a memo addressed to the heads and acting heads of departments and agencies within the government that each agency and department head should “take prompt actions regarding the offices and agency sub-units focusing exclusively on DEIA initiatives and programs.”
Agency heads were directed to “send an agency-wide notice to employees informing them of the closure and asking employees if they know of any efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language” and to “send a notification to all employees of DEIA offices that they are being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately as the agency takes steps to lose/end all DEIA initiatives.”
The agency heads were also directed to “take down all outward facing media” such as websites and social media accounts, “withdraw any final or pending documents, directives, orders, materials, and equity plans issued by the agency,” and “cancel any DEIA-related trainings, and terminate any DEIA-related contractors.”
Agency heads were also given until “no later than” noon on Thursday, January 23, 2025, to “report to OPM on all steps” they had taken to implement the memo, along with providing the OPM a “complete list of DEIA offices and any employees” who were in those offices “as of November 5, 2024,” and to provide the OPM with a “complete list of all DEIA-related agency contracts as of November 5, 2024.”
Trump’s action notably undid Biden’s first executive order, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” and several other “racial equity” orders Biden imposed.
Elizabeth Weibel contributed to this report.
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