Federal Agencies Ordered to End Initiatives That Support ‘Gender Ideology’

The Trump administration has ordered agencies to shut down programs, grants and other initiatives that “promote or reflect gender ideology,” and that employees who work on them be placed on administrative leave, in the latest action to execute the president’s charge to root out “woke” ideology from the federal government.

In a memo from the Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday, agency heads were instructed to take sweeping actions stemming from an executive order that President Trump signed on Jan. 20 aimed at “defending women from gender ideology extremism” and “restoring biological truth to the federal government.”

The order required, among other provisions, that the federal government recognize only two sexes — male and female — and effectively eliminated any rights and recognition afforded to transgender Americans and others who don’t identify as the sex they were assigned at birth.

Among the directives in the new guidance were for agencies to review all programming, grants, contracts and other initiatives that “inculcate gender ideology” by Friday, and inform employees who work on such initiatives that they would be placed on administrative leave effectively immediately.

The memo also instructed agencies to remove all public-facing media that promoted their work on “gender ideology,” suspend employee resource groups and review their email systems to turn off features that prompt users to identify their pronouns. It mandated a review of all agency forms and communications that require an employee to identify a gender to ensure that only “male” or “female” could be chosen, and to replace any references to “gender” with “sex.”

The order instructed agencies to ensure that “intimate spaces” are “designated by biological sex and not gender identity.” The directive appeared to settle the case of whether, at least in the federal government, transgender Americans can use bathrooms, locker rooms and other spaces in accordance with their gender identity — an issue that has been the subject of debate and legal challenges for several years.

According to the executive order, “gender ideology” was defined as “the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true.”

The memo is the latest action the administration has taken to eradicate federal recognition of the rights of groups of Americans whom conservatives have argued infringe on the rights of others. It also fulfills Mr. Trump’s promise to restore “common sense” and halt efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”

Last week, the personnel office sent similar guidance related to programs that promoted diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, resulting in the mass shut down of programs and imminent layoffs of employees tasked with any work related to reducing systemic barriers to opportunity for women; Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American people; and people with disabilities.