President Trump’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is ordering every head of departments and agencies to terminate all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and workers within 60 days.
The OPM, in a new Friday memo, has directed each leader of every agency, department or commission to “terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions within sixty days.”
A Tuesday memo from OPM told agencies to place all DEI employees on paid leave by Wednesday evening. Both agencies and departments were told to report all steps taken to comply with the directive and to submit the plan by Jan. 31.
Instead, the agencies now “can and should begin issuing [reduction in force] notices to employees of DEIA offices now,” according to the memo issued on Friday.
Agencies were urged in a Wednesday memo from the OPM informing them of a 30 day timeline to implement the president’s return-to-office mandate following his executive order that he signed on Monday.
“The [presidential memorandum] reflects a simple reality. The only way to get employees back to the office is to adopt a centralized policy requiring return-to-work for all agencies across the federal government,” acting OPM director Charles Ezell wrote in the Wednesday memo.
The various directors followed Trump’s Monday executive order dubbed “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.”
Ezell wrote in the latest memo that “agencies are reminded to define the competitive area solely in terms of the DEIA office where the employees worked.”
