Email Demands U.S. Government Workers Report About DEI Programs

The Trump administration sent emails to thousands of federal employees on Wednesday, ordering them to report any 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.

Emails seen by the BBC asked workers to “report all facts and circumstances” to a new government email address within 10 days.

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

“We are really scared and overwhelmed,” said one Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) employee.

The Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, issued guidance requiring agency heads to send notice to their staff by 5 p.m. ET Wednesday. It included an email template that many federal employees eventually received that night.

Some employees, such as those at the Treasury Department, received slightly different versions of the email.

The Treasury Department email excluded the warning about “adverse consequences” for failing to report on DEI initiatives, according to a copy shared with the BBC.

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

Such programs are designed to increase minority participation in the workforce and educate employees about discrimination.

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

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

In a speech Thursday at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland, Trump declared that he was making the United States a “merit-based country.”

DEI critics have praised Trump’s decision.

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

The group had supported a successful effort at the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn affirmative action programs at American universities.

But current federal employees, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, said the email they received seemed more like an attempt to intimidate staff than to make the government more fair.

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

President Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders since taking office, including a hiring freeze in the federal government, an order for workers to return to the office, and an attempt to reclassify thousands of government employees to be easier to fire them.

The HHS employee who spoke to the BBC criticized the government’s DEI practices, believing that while it was important to build a diverse workforce and create opportunities in the medical and health fields, “identity politics have influenced the way we function.” normally and that is not beneficial for the staff.

“But that doesn’t mean I want my co-workers fired,” the employee added.

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

The employee division had been thrown into confusion, he said, with questions about future hiring practices, as well as what programs and directives could continue, given Trump’s broad definition of DEI.

A second HHS employee said that hiring and research grants had been frozen and that all department staff were waiting to see what they could do next.

HHS and one of its subsidiary agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), award millions of dollars in federal grants to universities and researchers around the world to advance scientific research.

Agency employees feared that the DEI order could have an impact outside the government as well. One wondered if grants that allowed labs to create more opportunities to hire minority scientists and medical professionals would now be eliminated.

An employee who worked at the Food and Drug Administration told the BBC that she had not received the email, but that all DEI-related activities had stopped.

“The older people have told us to keep doing our jobs,” he said. “But there’s a sense of trepidation about how it’s going to impact our work overall.”