The email asks US government employees to notify DEI programs

The Trump administration sent an email to thousands of federal employees on Wednesday ordering them to report any efforts to “hide” diversity initiatives at their agencies or face “adverse consequences.”

The request comes after President Donald Trump banned Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices and programs across the government.

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

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

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

The Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, has issued instructions to agency officials to send notices to their employees at 5 p.m. Wednesday. It includes the email template that many federal employees eventually received that evening.

Some employees, like the Treasury Department, received slightly different versions of the email.

The Treasury Department email did not include a warning about “adverse consequences” for not reporting DEI initiatives, a copy shared with the BBC said.

In one of Trump’s first acts as president, he signed two executive orders ending “diversity, equality and inclusion” or “DEI” programs in the federal government, announcing that any employees working in those roles would be fired. You will be placed on paid administrative leave immediately.

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

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

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

In a speech at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday, Trump announced that he is making America a “competency-based nation.”

DEI critics applauded Trump’s decision.

“President Trump’s executive order to rescind affirmative action and suspend DEI programs is a major milestone in America’s civil rights progress and a critical step in building a color-blind community,” said Mike Zhao, president of the Asian American Education Coalition. press release.

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

But the federal government employees, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said they felt the e-mail they received was an attempt to intimidate the employees rather than do justice to the government.

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

Since taking office, President Trump has signed executive orders, including hiring freezes in the federal government, ordering workers back to work and attempting to reclassify thousands of government workers with ease.

An HHS employee who spoke to the BBC criticized the government’s DEI approach, saying that while it is important to build a diverse workforce and create opportunities in the health and medical sector, “identity politics has played into the way we work on a regular basis, and that’s for the workforce.”

The employee added, “This does not mean that I want my colleagues to be fired.”

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

He said the workforce was thrown into confusion about future hiring practices and which programs and policies were allowed to continue, given Trump’s broad interpretation of the DEI.

A second HHS employee said employment and research grants have been suspended and that all department employees are waiting to see what they can do next.

H.H.S. And one of its partner agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), provides millions of dollars in federal grants to universities and researchers around the world to advance scientific research.

Agency staff feared that the DEI order could have ramifications outside of government. Grants that create more opportunities for labs to hire minority scientists and clinicians will now get the axe, one asked.

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

We were told by the elders to continue our work, she said. “But there is a general sense of fear about how it will affect our work.”