White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that U.S. federal employees working in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) offices will be placed on paid leave by this evening.
“To every reporter asking about this: I can gladly confirm!” Leavitt wrote on X, sharing a memo from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The memo states that “No later than 5:00 pm EST on Wednesday, January 22, 2025,” employees must be informed of the closure of DEIA programs and asked “if they know of any efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.”
All websites pertaining to DEIA offices will be shut down.
By 12:00 pm EST on January 23, the OPM will receive a report on all the steps taken to implement the memo.
“These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination,” the memo says.
Shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to end federal DEIA efforts.
“The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military,” the executive order states, adding that “Americans deserve a government committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect, and to expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.”
The order emphasizes individual merit. “Federal employment practices, including Federal employee performance reviews, shall reward individual initiative, skills, performance, and hard work and shall not under any circumstances consider DEI or DEIA factors, goals, policies, mandates, or requirements,” it says.
