WASHINGTON — Federal agencies on Friday rushed to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at curtailing diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The executive orders prompted a flurry of memos and emails obtained by NBC News that modified the rules for staff at intelligence agencies, in the military and across civilian departments regarding employee resource groups and the celebration of cultural awareness events.
This week, the Defense Intelligence Agency ordered a pause of all activities and events related to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, Juneteenth, LGBTQ Pride Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day and other “special observances” to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order, according to a memo obtained by NBC News.
The memo listed 11 observances that are now banned. It also said that all affinity groups and “employee networking groups” are immediately on pause.
The directive comes as the Trump administration has made it a top priority to go after any programs perceived to be related to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal government.
The DIA did not immediately return a request for comment.
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U.S. intelligence agencies are also working to eliminate or suspend any activities that could be interpreted as supporting past DEI policies, multiple current and former officials said. The agencies are still trying to determine what activities or events will be prohibited, but officials are erring on the side of caution rather than risk failing to comply with the administration’s orders, the sources said.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the country’s intelligence services, recently issued written guidance to employees saying that DEI-related boards and working groups have been “curtailed” and that no official work time or work spaces should be used for DEI-related activities, according an excerpt from a memo obtained by NBC News. Future travel related to these activities also has been cancelled, the memo stated.
Pentagon leaders on Friday received a similar email mandating that, effective immediately, they may no longer dedicate official resources, including man-hours, to cultural awareness months.
Service members and civilians will still be permitted to attend these events in an unofficial capacity and outside of duty hours, the memo added.
As for the Central Intelligence Agency, a spokesperson said the agency is carrying out the executive order on scrapping DEI programs.
“CIA is complying with the Executive Order. We are laser-focused on our foreign intelligence mission,” a spokesperson said in an email.
Former intelligence officials said there was a risk that the administration’s moves to eliminate events marking Martin Luther King Day, the Holocaust or Americans’ ethnic heritage could prove counterproductive and discourage potential recruits from joining the intelligence services.
The CIA and other spy agencies for decades have sought to hire from a more diverse pool of talent to ensure the country has intelligence officers with language skills and cultural backgrounds that help improve intelligence gathering abroad.
“From an intelligence community perspective, I really think it could hurt our ability to do our job,” the former senior official said.
“We’re going to strangle off talent pipelines that were already narrow to begin with. And that’s going to deprive our intelligence community and our national security establishment of critical knowledge, talent, skills, language … that might be valuable in trying to get somebody into a foreign country,” the former official added.
On Friday afternoon, the Office of Personnel Management sent around a memo, obtained by NBC News, ordering that all references to “gender ideology” be removed by 5 p.m. across the federal government.
The memo stated that this includes removing references from all public-facing websites and social media accounts, and specifically ordered the removal of Outlook prompts that directed staff to write out their pronouns.
In line with that new memo, State Department employees have also been instructed to remove all gender-identifying pronouns from their email signatures by 5 p.m. Friday.
“The Department of State is reviewing all agency programs, contracts, and grants that promote or inculcate gender ideology, and we are removing outward facing media that does the same,” the new Under Secretary for Management Ambassador Tibor P. Nagy wrote in an email — whose subject line was “Defending Women” — reviewed by NBC News. “Bureaus have already been alerted to review trainings, forms, and plans that involve gender ideology.”
Last week, the Justice Department sent a memo to staff announcing the closure of all of its DEI programs, saying, “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”
The Pentagon memo on Friday barring the use of official resources for cultural awareness months echoed the same language, stating that “efforts to divide the force — to put one group ahead of another — erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that outlined “the termination of all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government.”
A similar email went out from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last week, notifying employees that all affinity groups, also known as employee resource groups, were “being disbanded and special observances are being canceled.”
Employee resource groups (ERGs), which exist in both the public and private sectors, are voluntary, employee-led groups for people with similar backgrounds or life experiences. Common groups include ones for Native Americans, LGBTQ people, Black employees, women and veterans, among others.
Other agencies have also ended their ERGs, including DOJ Pride, the Justice Department’s LGBTQ employee resource group that has been around for 30 years.
During a press briefing Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to a question from NBC News about whether Trump plans to keep with tradition and sign a proclamation about Black History Month ahead of its start on Saturday.
“The president looks forward to signing a proclamation celebrating Black History Month. I actually spoke with our great staff secretary. It’s in the works of being approved, and it’s going to be ready for the president’s signature to signify the beginning of that tomorrow,” Leavitt said.
Trump later signed the proclamation.
“I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities,” he wrote, calling it “an occasion to celebrate the contributions of so many black American patriots who have indelibly shaped our Nation’s history.”
Juneteenth was established as a federal holiday just four years ago, during the Biden administration. Also known as Emancipation Day, Black Independence Day and Jubilee Day, the holiday commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S.
It was the first federal holiday created since 1983, when Martin Luther King Jr. Day was established.
Andrea M. O’Neal, a former White House official who helped drive federal policies and observances behind Black History Month under President Joe Biden, said observances allow for full acknowledgement of American history.
O’Neal also said they help raise awareness about what communities are experiencing that may have a direct impact on how the federal government can help better serve them.
“This kind of rollback is demoralizing to communities who finally had a seat at the table [and] were finally acknowledged for their contributions,” O’Neal said.
“When presidents and governments decide who’s important [and] who’s not, that has downstream effects that we may not fully understand yet,” O’Neal said, adding that the changes implemented from the executive order will make people feel less comfortable at work and cause them to have lower morale, she added.
Troy Blackwell, who worked for the Department of Commerce in the Biden administration, said a big piece of DEI involves making policies and resources accessible for underserved communities.
In his final year working for the Department of Commerce, Blackwell and his team opened patent and trademark resource libraries at Hispanic-serving institutions and historically Black colleges and universities.
“I’m heartbroken to be honest,” Blackwell said. “It’s despicable what’s happening and I think it’s definitely a sign of government overreach.”
“We celebrate Black History Month knowing that there’s been a history of enslavement and Jim Crow and civil rights and what that has done to the fabric of the United States and the contributions of African Americans who have been overlooked for not decades, but centuries,” added Blackwell, who is Afro-Latino. “The literal White House that the president sits in and his team works in was built by slaves.”
Trump’s inauguration happened to fall on MLK Day this year.
In a speech following his swearing-in ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda, Trump acknowledged the historical significance of the holiday and spoke directly to the Black and Hispanic voters who cast a ballot for him last year.
“To the Black and Hispanic communities, I want to thank you for the tremendous outpouring of love and trust that you have shown me with your vote,” he said, adding: “Today is Martin Luther King Day. And his honor — this will be a great honor. But in his honor, we will strive together to make his dream a reality. We will make his dream come true.”
