By Andrea Shalal and Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. agencies under incoming President Donald Trump are pushing to implement his mandate to reshape the federal bureaucracy, encouraging workers to report any covert efforts to maintain diversity programs and removing more than 150 national security and foreign policy officials.
The Republican president has made little secret of his disdain for the growing federal workforce, and especially for diversity, equity and inclusion programs that advance opportunities for women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people and other traditionally underrepresented groups.
In a video speech Thursday at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said his orders to end the DEI program would make America “a merit-based country” again.
“These are policies that have been absolute nonsense, across government and the private sector,” he said.
Civil rights advocates say DEI programs are needed to address long-standing inequalities and structural racism, but Trump and his supporters say the efforts end up unfairly discriminating against other Americans.
A memo distributed Wednesday to thousands of federal workers across the government directs employees to report associates who sought to “obfuscate” DEI’s efforts by using “coded language,” warning that failure to report relevant information would have “damaging consequences.” “
The messages had the imprimatur of top Trump appointees: the State Department memorandum was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for example, while the Department of Veterans Affairs email was signed by Acting Veterans Affairs Secretary Todd Hunter.
Officials overseeing DEI programs in numerous agencies and departments were placed on leave Wednesday, and their offices will be permanently closed until the end of the month.
There were other signs that Trump’s order was having an impact. The U.S. central bank has deleted the “Diversity and Inclusion” section from its website, with previous links to the central bank’s diversity standards statement and data on the race, ethnicity and gender of its economists and researchers now placed on the home page.
The anti-diversity moves were part of Trump’s broader campaign targeting the federal bureaucracy, which he has sometimes disparaged as a “deep state” that secretly works against his goals.
About 160 National Security Council staff members, who come from the State Department, the Pentagon and other parts of the US government, were told during a brief call on Wednesday to turn in their devices and badges and go home, three former NSC officials told Reuters.
NSC spokesman Brian Hughes said Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, had authorized a full staff review.
“It is entirely appropriate that Mr. Waltz ensure that NSC staff are committed to implementing President Trump’s America First agenda to protect our national security and use the tax dollars of American workers wisely,” Hughes said.
The news came as a surprise to staff, who had been expecting new assignments or perhaps a pep talk, according to one former official who spoke to colleagues who were on the call.
The employees, known as “detailees” — career diplomats, military officials and civil servants — have not been fired, and many are likely to return to their home agencies, another said.
But the move leaves the council lacking the expertise to quickly respond to domestic or foreign crises, and could actually make it harder for the Trump administration to implement foreign policy, former officials said.
It was not immediately clear how many employees remained at NSC. About 70 people were political appointees who left with the Biden administration, and about 60 new officials came in with the Trump administration, the sources said.
REMOVAL OF WORKPLACE PROTECTION
Trump froze virtually all federal hiring and signed an executive order on his first day in office Monday that would allow his administration to fire at will tens of thousands of career civil servants, who have historically enjoyed workplace protections that insulate them from political partisanship.
The order, known as Schedule F, would allow Trump to fill those positions with handpicked loyalists. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 150,000 workers in three dozen agencies, filed a lawsuit challenging the move.
“This gleeful hatred of the federal workforce is not going to lead to anything good,” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who represents 140,000 federal workers in Virginia, told reporters.
Trump has also sought to dissuade private companies that receive government contracts from using the DEI program and has asked government agencies to identify those that could be subject to civil investigations.
In Tuesday’s order, Trump rescinded a 1965 executive order requiring federal contractors to use affirmative action to ensure equal opportunity and prohibiting them from discriminating in employment practices.
The decades-old order, signed by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, was seen as a landmark moment of progress in the civil rights movement, which came at a time when black Americans faced the threat of violence and “Jim Crow” laws that barred them. from voting and from living in predominantly white neighborhoods.
The federal government has committed $739 billion to contractors in fiscal year 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office.
