As the Republican leader attacks programs aimed at addressing systematic racism, the administration of US President Donald Trump has ordered that all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) employees be placed on paid leave and subsequently fired.
According to a memo from the Office of Personnel Management that CBS News first reported, agencies were instructed to put DEI office employees on paid vacation by Wednesday at 5 p.m. (22:00 GMT) and remove all publicly accessible webpages with a DEI focus by the same time. Federal employees are being instructed to report to the office within 10 days if they feel that any DEI-related program has been renamed to obscure its purpose, or face "adverse consequences." Agencies are also required to terminate any DEI-related contracts and cancel any DEI-related training.
Federal agencies have been instructed to create a list of federal DEI offices and employees as of November Election Day by Thursday. By next Friday, they must also come up with a strategy to implement a "reduction-in-force action" against those federal employees.
The actions come after Trump issued an executive order this week on his first day in office that calls for a comprehensive overhaul of the federal government's DEI programs, which may include support for minority farmers and homeowners as well as anti-bias training.
Trump has referred to the programs as "discrimination" and demanded that employment practices be returned to what he calls "merit-based." However, civil rights activists contend that in order to overcome systemic racism and long-standing injustices, DEI programs are required.
The Trump administration's claim that diversity initiatives were "diminishing the importance of individual merit, aptitude, hard work, and determination" troubled political strategist and policy adviser Basil Smikle Jr. because it implied that women and people of color lacked qualifications or merit.
According to Smikle, "there is this obvious attempt to impede, if not undermine, the political and economic power of women and people of color." He claimed that it "opens the door for more cronyism."
Trump continues where his first administration left off with his anti-DEI campaign.
An executive order prohibiting federal agency contractors and recipients of federal funding from doing anti-bias training that covered topics like systemic racism was one of Trump's last actions during his first term, which ran from 2017 to 2021.
On his first day in office, his successor, Democrat and former US President Joe Biden, swiftly revoked that order and signed two executive orders that have since been revoked, detailing a strategy to advance DEI across the federal government.
Trump's new anti-DEI program is more forceful than his previous one, and it arrives amid far more hospitable business terrain, even though many measures may take months or even years to accomplish.
In response to Trump's election and litigation supported by conservatives, many corporations, including Walmart and Facebook, have already reduced or discontinued some of their See More.....
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