The email urges US government employees to report DEI programs

The Trump administration emailed thousands of federal employees on Wednesday, ordering them to report efforts to “disguise” diversity initiatives at their agencies or face “adverse consequences.”

The request came after President Donald Trump banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and programs across the government.

The emails, seen by the BBC, instructed staff to “report all facts and circumstances” to a new government email address within 10 days.

Some staffers interpreted it as a demand to sell colleagues to the White House.

“We’re really scared and overwhelmed,” said an employee at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, instructed the agency’s head to send a notice to employees by 5 p.m. Wednesday. After all, it included the email template that many federal employees received that night.

Some employees, like those at the Treasury Department, got slightly different versions of the email.

The Treasury Department email ignored a warning about the “adverse consequences” of not reporting DEI initiatives, according to a copy shared with the BBC.

In one of his first acts as president, Trump signed two executive orders ending “diversity, equity and inclusion” or “DEI” programs within the federal government and announced the staff working in those roles. they will immediately be placed on paid administrative leave.

These programs are designed to increase minority participation and educate employees about discrimination.

But DEI’s critics, like Trump, say the practice itself is discriminatory because it takes into account race, gender, sexual identity or other characteristics.

Trump and his allies frequently attacked the practice during the campaign.

In a speech at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Trump declared that America was becoming a “merit-based country.”

DEI’s critics praised Trump’s decision.

“President Trump’s executive orders ending affirmative action and banning DEI programs are an important milestone in the progress of American civil rights and a critical step in building a colorblind society,” said Yukong Mike Zhao, president of the Asian American Coalition for Education. statement

The group supported a successful effort in the US Supreme Court to overturn affirmative action programs at US universities.

But current federal workers, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals, said they felt the email they received was an attempt to intimidate workers rather than make the government fairer.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Trump has signed a number of executive orders since taking office, including a hiring freeze in the federal government, an order to bring workers back to the office, and an attempt to reclassify thousands of government workers to ease layoffs.

The HHS employee who spoke to the BBC criticized the government’s DEI practices, saying that while it was important to create a diverse workforce and create opportunities in the health and medical fields, “identity politics has played into the way we normally operate and that is not beneficial. workers.”

“But that doesn’t mean I want my colleagues to be fired,” the worker added.

He described the effect of the email and the DEI orders on his agency as “very calculated chaos.”

The personnel division was thrown into disarray, he said, with questions about hiring practices going forward, as well as what programs and directives to pursue, given Trump’s broad definition of DEI.

A second HHS employee said funding for procurement and research had been frozen and the entire department staff was waiting to see what they could do.

HHS and one of its partner agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provide millions of dollars to universities and researchers around the world to advance scientific research.

Agency staff feared the DEI order could have an impact outside the government as well. One questioned whether grants that allowed labs to create more opportunities to hire minority scientists and medical professionals would now get the ax.

An employee working for the Food and Drug Administration told the BBC that he had not received the email, but that all DEI-related activities had been suspended.

“The elders have told us to continue doing our work,” he said. “But there is a fear of how it will affect our work in general.”