This action is part of the US president’s effort to eliminate DEI initiatives and transgender protections.
Internal memos obtained by multiple news organizations reveal that federal employees have been instructed to remove pronouns from their email signatures. This directive reportedly stems from two presidential executive orders aimed at reducing diversity and equity programs throughout the government.
Upon resuming his presidency, President Trump rescinded 78 executive orders issued by his predecessor, Joe Biden. These included measures safeguarding transgender rights and promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The orders also mandated a 60-day deadline for federal agencies to discontinue DEI-related practices.
The memos regarding pronoun removal reportedly set a Friday afternoon deadline.
“Pronouns and any other information not permitted in the policy must be removed from CDC/ATSDR employee signatures by 5 p.m. ET on Friday,” one such message to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees stated, according to ABC News. The message was sent Friday morning.
ABC News also reported that a similar notice, urging the removal of DEI “language in Federal discourse, communications, and publications,” was received Thursday by employees at the Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation.
According to The Guardian, several federal agency websites, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the Census Bureau, experienced temporary outages on Friday. Some pages displayed as blank before restoring access later in the day. The Guardian also noted that the Bureau of Prisons renamed a webpage from “inmate gender” to “inmate sex” and ceased displaying a list of transgender inmates.
In his inaugural address on January 1st, President Trump declared that the US would officially recognize only two genders. One of the executive orders he signed that day, titled ‘Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government’, asserts that “there are only two genders, male and female,” and directs agencies to update official documents, such as passports and visas, accordingly.