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Staff members overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts were to be placed on paid administrative leave by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
In a new executive order, President Trump also ordered that all “illegal discrimination” end. Credit… Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times The Trump administration on Tuesday ordered that officials overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the federal government be placed on leave on Wednesday and that agencies take steps to close their offices.
In a memo from the Office of Personnel Management, the heads of departments and agencies were ordered to purge such officials by placing all D.E.I. staff on paid administrative leave, effective immediately, by 5 p.m. Wednesday, and to make plans for staff reductions by the end of the day on Jan. 31.
The memo also directed agencies to take down any language or advertisements about their D.E.I. initiatives and to withdraw any pending documents or directives that would undermine the new orders. It also ordered agency heads to inform D.E.I. officials that their offices would be closed and that employees would be questioned about whether there were any remaining efforts that remained “in disguise” by using coded or imprecise language.
The directive was a swift attempt to carry out elements of President Trump’s Day 1 executive order dismantling federal diversity efforts. In a new executive order on Tuesday, Mr. Trump encouraged the private sector to follow the federal government’s lead and “end illegal D.E.I. discrimination and preferences and comply with all federal civil-rights laws.” His order also directed agencies to investigate the compliance of corporations and foundations with those laws.
While the federal government has no purview over many private-sector practices, it does have discretion to enforce its rules on heavily relied-upon private contractors and subcontractors who would be subject to the new rules. In anticipation of Mr. Trump’s taking office, several companies, like Meta and McDonald’s, have rolled back their D.E.I. initiatives.
The order on Tuesday said that D.E.I. policies “undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”
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