Layoffs loom as Trump administration orders leave for federal DEI workers

President Donald Trump’s administration ordered federal diversity, equity and inclusion employees to be placed on leave no later than Wednesday, highlighting how quickly the new commander in chief is moving to demolish DEI initiatives across the federal government.

The move builds on Trump’s Day 1 executive orders, in which he directed an end to what he called “radical and wasteful” federal government DEI programs.

The White House’s Office of Personnel Management also directed government DEI offices to be shut down, according to a Tuesday memo. Eventually, impacted employees will be laid off or reassigned to other roles.

The directives in Trump’s first 48 hours back in the White House are an immediate test of the powers of his office and his ability to fulfill the politically polarizing promises he made on the campaign trail. His expansive moves have invited scrutiny from legal experts and advocacy groups, and they are likely to be challenged in court.

Trump and other Republicans have made attacks on DEI initiatives a cornerstone of their political agenda, baselessly blaming corporations’ and the Biden administration’s efforts to foster a more equitable environment for a host of problems, including the spread of fires in California and the Secret Service’s failure to protect Trump from an assassination attempt. The programs have emerged as a key fault line in the country’s fraught racial politics, as conservatives allege that DEI initiatives result in minorities getting jobs or opportunities over more qualified white candidates.

The Trump administration’s directives had an immediate impact on federal employees. OPM acting director Charles Ezell instructed federal department and agency heads to inform all employees of DEI offices by 5 p.m. Wednesday that they were being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately.

By Jan. 31, agency heads must provide OPM with a written plan for “executing a reduction-in-force action” of DEI office employees, he said, using the federal government’s term for layoffs.

Agency heads must ask employees “if they know of any efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language,” the memorandum said. DEI-related websites, social media accounts and other media must be taken down, it said.

OPM provided boilerplate language to be emailed to employees that said DEI programs had “divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.” There would be “adverse consequences” for failing within 10 days to report any attempts to disguise DEI-related contracts and personnel, OPM added.

The directives build on Trump’s efforts to dismantle central pillars of the Biden administration’s agenda. In his first hours in office, he signed an executive order overturning 78 Biden-era executive actions in front of a cheering crowd at Capital One Arena. He overturned orders that instructed federal agencies to promote diversity among their workforces and for people accessing their programs, with a stated goal of “advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”

The Biden orders instructed federal agencies to review their programs and policies searching for structural barriers to full and equal access by people from different backgrounds, among other strategies, which Trump called “illegal and immoral discrimination.”

Trump’s ascension to the White House gives conservatives more political fuel to advance their anti-DEI agenda.

Republicans introduced a bill in June, which has not passed, that would have ended federal funding for agencies, schools and other organizations that have DEI policies.

In December, Trump tapped attorney and conservative activist Harmeet K. Dhillon to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights office, touting Dhillon’s record of “suing corporations who use ‘woke’ policies to discriminate against their workers.”

In the private sector, companies including Meta – which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – McDonald’s and Walmart have scrapped DEI programs in recent months, following a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that overturned affirmative action in college admissions.

It is also a priority of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” a body established by Trump and led by tech billionaire Elon Musk to identify ways to cut federal government spending.

DOGE is reviewing a 19-page report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a right-wing civil rights nonprofit, that identified more than $120 billion annually in what it said was “diversity, equity and inclusion” spending, according to two people familiar with the conversations and a copy of the report that was obtained by the Washington Post.

The dollar figure refers to DEI spending in federal programs and largely not on federal employees.