The email requires US government officials to report on DEI programs

The Trump administration sent an email to thousands of federal employees on Wednesday, ordering them to report any efforts to “cover up” 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.

The emails, seen by the BBC, directed workers to “report all facts and circumstances” to a new government email address within 10 days.

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

“We are truly frightened and devastated,” said one official at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal workforce, issued guidance requiring agency heads to send notice to their staff by 5:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday. It includes a template email that many federal employees ended up receiving that night.

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

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

In one of his first acts as president, Trump signed two executive orders ending “diversity, equity and inclusion” or “DEI” programs within the federal government and announced that all employees working in those roles would to be immediately 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 frequently attacked the practice during the campaign.

In a speech Thursday at the World Economic Conference in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said he was turning America into a “merit-based country.”

DEI critics praised Trump’s decision.

“President Trump’s executive orders to roll back affirmative action and ban DEI programs are a major milestone in the advancement of American civil rights and a critical step toward building a color-blind society,” said Yukong Mike Zhao, president of the Asian American Education Coalition , in a statement.

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

But current federal officials, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the email they received felt more like an attempt to intimidate staff than to make the government fairer.

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

President Trump has signed a slew of executive orders since taking office, including a federal government hiring freeze, an order to bring workers back to the office and an attempt to reclassify thousands of government employees to make them easier to fire.

The HHS official who spoke to the BBC criticized the government’s DEI practices, believing that while it is important to build a diverse workforce and create opportunities in health and medicine, “identity politics has affected how we normally function and it’s not good for the workforce.”

“But that doesn’t mean I want my colleagues to be fired,” the employee added.

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

The personnel department has been thrown into disarray, he said, with questions about hiring practices and what programs and directives can continue given Trump’s broad definition of DEI.

A second HHS official said hiring and research grants have been frozen and all department staff are waiting to see what they can do next.

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

Agency officials feared that the DEI order could have an impact beyond the government. One questioned whether grants that allow labs to create more hiring opportunities for minority scientists and medical professionals will now get the ax.

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 been paused.

“The adults told us to keep doing our jobs,” she said. “But there is a sense of dread about how this will affect our work as a whole.”