By Andrea Shalal and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. agencies under new President Donald Trump are pushing to implement his orders to overhaul the federal bureaucracy, urging workers to report any covert efforts to maintaining diversity programs and sidelining more than 150 national security and foreign policy officials.

The Republican president has made little secret of his disdain for the growing federal workforce and especially for diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which promote opportunities for women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people and other traditionally underrepresented groups.

In a speech delivered by video on Thursday at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said his orders to end DEI programs would make America a “nation based on merit” once again.

“These are policies that are absolute nonsense, across the government and the private sector,” he said.

Civil rights advocates say the DEI programs are needed to address long-standing inequities and structural racism, but Trump and his supporters say the efforts end up being unfair. prejudice against other Americans.

A memo distributed to thousands of federal workers across the government on Wednesday directed employees to turn away co-workers who seek to “disguise” DEI efforts by using “coded language,” which warns that a failure to report relevant information will cause “bad consequences.”

The messages bear the imprimatur of Trump’s top-level appointees: the State Department memo was signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for example, while the Veterans Affairs Department email was signed by acting Secretary of Veterans Affairs Todd Hunter.

Officials in charge of DEI programs in several agencies and departments were placed on leave Wednesday, and their offices are set for permanent closure by the end of the month.

There are other signs that Trump’s order is having an effect. The US Federal Reserve scrubbed a “Diversity and Inclusion” section from its website, which previously contained links to a statement on the central bank’s diversity standards and data on the racial, ethnic and gender makeup of economists and researchers who are no longer on the homepage.

The anti-diversity moves are part of Trump’s broader campaign targeting the federal bureaucracy, which he sometimes disparages as the “deep state” that secretly works against his agenda.

About 160 National Security Council staff, drawn from the State Department, the Pentagon and other parts of the US government, were told in a brief call Wednesday to turn in their devices and badges and go home, three former NSC official. told Reuters.

An NSC spokesman, Brian Hughes, said Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, had authorized a full staff review.

“It is entirely appropriate for Mr. Waltz to ensure NSC personnel commitment to the implementation of President Trump’s America First agenda to protect our national security and the wise use of tax dollars to America’s working men and women ,” Hughes said.

The news surprised the staff, who were expecting new assignments or maybe a pep talk, according to one of the former officials who spoke to colleagues who were on the call.

The employees, known as “details” — career diplomats, military officers and civil servants — have not been fired, and many are likely to return to their home agencies, one said.

But the move leaves the council lacking the expertise to respond quickly to domestic or foreign crises, and could make it harder for the Trump administration to implement foreign policy, former officials said.

It was not immediately clear how many NSC employees remain. About 70 people were political appointees who left with the Biden administration, and about 60 new officials came in with the Trump administration, the sources said.

REMOVAL OF LABOR PROTECTIONS

Trump froze nearly all federal hiring and signed an executive order on his first day in office Monday that would allow his administration to fire at will thousands of career civilian employees. , which historically enjoyed job protections that kept them from political partisanship.

The order, known as Schedule F, will allow Trump to fill positions with loyalists of his choice. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 150,000 workers at three dozen agencies, filed a lawsuit challenging the move.

“This gleeful hatred of federal workers is not going to lead to anything good,” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who represents 140,000 federal workers in Virginia, told reporters.

Trump also sought to prevent private companies receiving government contracts from using DEI programs and asked government agencies to identify anyone who could be subject to a civil investigation.

In a Tuesday order, Trump revoked a 1965 executive order that required federal contractors to use affirmative action to ensure equal opportunity and prohibited them from discriminatory employment practices.

The decades-old order, signed by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, was seen as a key moment in the development of the civil rights movement, coming at a time when Black Americans faced the threat of violence. and the “Jim Crow” laws that banned them. from voting and from living in predominantly white neighborhoods.

The federal government committed $739 billion to contractors in fiscal year 2023, according to the Government Accountability Office.