By the end of Wednesday, heads of departments and agencies must start taking action to close all diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and put government employees working in those offices on paid leave, according to a notification from the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
On Tuesday night, Charles Ezell, the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, sent a memo to department and agency heads and acting heads instructing them to do the following by Wednesday, January 22, at 5 p.m.:
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
–Send a notification to all employees of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) offices that they are being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately as the agency takes steps to close/end all DEIA initiatives, offices and programs.
–Take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) of DEIA offices
–Withdraw any final or pending documents, directives, orders, materials and equity plans issued by the agency in response to the now-repealed Executive Order 14035, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce (June 25, 2021)
–Cancel any DEIA-related trainings and terminate any DEIA-related contractors
The memo, as detailed by Fox News, also directed department and agency leaders, that by noon Thursday, Jan. 23, they must share with OPM:
–A complete list of DEIA offices and any employees who were in those offices as of Nov. 5, 2024
–A complete list of all DEIA-related agency contracts as of Nov. 5, 2024
–Any agency plans to fully comply with the above executive orders and this memorandum
By Friday at 5 p.m., agency heads must submit to OPM:
–A written plan for executing a reduction-in-force action regarding the employees who work in a DEIA office
–A list of all contract descriptions or personnel position descriptions that were changed since Nov. 5, 2024, to obscure their connection to DEIA programs
President Donald Trump’s executive order to halt all federal DEI programs on Monday prompted the release of the memo.
Additionally, an order signed by the president states that “the official policy of the U.S. government to only recognize two genders: male and female.”
On Tuesday, Trump signed two additional executive actions that targeted DEI: a memo to repeal a Biden administration policy that gave preference to DEI hiring at the Federal Aviation Administration and an executive order to end discrimination in higher education and the workplace through sex- and race-based preferences under the pretense of DEI.
In the executive order signed Tuesday, Trump sought to protect Americans from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. He said these civil-rights protections “serve as a bedrock supporting equality of opportunity for all Americans” and that he “has a solemn duty to ensure that these laws are enforced for the benefit of all Americans.”
“Yet today, roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, critical and influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) or ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation,” the order reads.
