US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off.
The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs.
Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and called to restore “merit-based” hiring.
Photo: AP
The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by former US president Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients.
It is using one of the key tools utilized by the administration of former US president Joe Biden to promote DEI programs across the private sector — pushing their use by federal contractors — to now eradicate them.
The US Office of Personnel Management in a memo directed agencies to place DEI office staff on paid leave by 5pm yesterday and take down all public DEI-focused Web pages by the same deadline. Several federal departments had removed the Web pages even before the memorandum.
Agencies must also cancel any DEI-related training and end any related contracts, and federal workers are being asked to report to the US Office of Personnel Management if they suspect any DEI-related program has been renamed to obfuscate its purpose within 10 days or face “adverse consequences.”
By today, federal agencies are directed to compile a list of federal DEI offices and workers as of election day in November last year. By Friday next week, they are expected to develop a plan to execute a “reduction-in-force action” against those federal workers.
The memo was first reported by CBS News.
The move comes after Monday’s executive order accused Biden of forcing “discrimination” programs into “virtually all aspects of the federal government” through DEI programs.
That step is the first salvo in a campaign to upend DEI efforts nationwide, including leveraging the US Department of Justice and other agencies to investigate private companies pursuing training and hiring practices that critics consider discriminatory.
Trump’s agenda comes amid amenable terrain in the corporate world. Prominent companies from Walmart to Facebook have already scaled back or ended some of their diversity practices in response to Trump’s election and lawsuits against them.
Among the policies and programs that Trump aims to dismantle are: Diversity offices, training and accountability; federal grant and benefits programs; and pay equity and hiring practices.
Trump’s executive order is a “seismic shift and a complete change in the focus and direction of the federal government,” said Dan Lennington, deputy council for the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which has pursued several lawsuits against federal programs.
The institute recently released a report listing dozens of programs the Trump administration should consider dismantling.
Lennington said that unwinding some entrenched programs might be difficult.
For example, the US Department of the Treasury implements housing and other assistance programs through block grants to states that have their own methods for implementing diversity criteria.
However, the process might take a long time, said Noreen Farrell, executive director of gender rights group Equal Rights Advocates.
Despite the sweeping language of Trump’s order, “the reality of implementing such massive structural changes is far more complex,” Farrell said.
“Federal agencies have deeply embedded policies and procedures that can’t simply be switched off overnight,” she added.
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