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Tag: Directs

  • Trump directs all federal DEI staff be put on leave and eventually laid off


    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off.

    The moves Tuesday follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs that could touch on everything from anti-bias training to funding for minority farmers and homeowners. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and insisted on restoring strictly “merit-based” hiring.

    The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by President Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It’s using one of the key tools utilized by the Biden administration to promote DEI programs across the private sector — pushing their use by federal contractors — to now eradicate them.

    The Office of Personnel Management in a Tuesday memo directed agencies to place DEI office staffers on paid leave by 5 p.m. Wednesday and take down all public DEI-focused webpages by the same deadline. Several federal departments had removed the webpages even before the memorandum. Agencies must also cancel any DEI-related training and end any related contracts, and federal workers are being asked to report to Trump’s Office of Personnel Management if they suspect any DEI-related program has been renamed to obfuscate its purpose within 10 days or face “adverse consequences.”

    By Thursday, federal agencies are directed to compile a list of federal DEI offices and workers as of Election Day. By next Friday, they are expected to develop a plan to execute a “reduction-in-force action” against those federal workers.

    The memo was first reported by CBS News.

    The move comes after Monday’s executive order accused former President Joe Biden of forcing “discrimination” programs into “virtually all aspects of the federal government” through “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, known as DEI.

    That step is the first salvo in an aggressive campaign to upend DEI efforts nationwide, including leveraging the Justice Department and other agencies to investigate private companies pursuing training and hiring practices that conservative critics consider discriminatory against non-minority groups such as white men.

    President Donald Trump’s administration moved Tuesday to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off.

    The executive order picks up where Trump’s first administration left off: One of Trump’s final acts during his first term was an executive order banning federal agency contractors and recipients of federal funding from conducting anti-bias training that addressed concepts like systemic racism. Biden promptly rescinded that order on his first day in office and issued a pair of executive orders — now rescinded — outlining a plan to promote DEI throughout the federal government.

    While many changes may take months or even years to implement, Trump’s new anti-DEI agenda is more aggressive than his first and comes amid far more amenable terrain in the corporate world. Prominent companies from Walmart to Facebook have already scaled back or ended some of their diversity practices in response to Trump’s election and conservative-backed lawsuits against them.

    Here’s a look at some of the policies and programs that Trump will aim to dismantle:

    Diversity offices, training and accountability

    Trump’s order will immediately gut Biden’s wide-ranging effort to embed diversity and inclusion practices in the federal workforce, the nation’s largest at about 2.4 million people.

    Biden had mandated all agencies to develop a diversity plan, issue yearly progress reports, and contribute data for a government-wide dashboard to track demographic trends in hiring and promotions. The administration also set up a Chief Diversity Officers Council to oversee the implementation of the DEI plan. The government released its first DEI progress report in 2022 that included demographic data for the federal workforce, which is about 60% white and 55% male overall, and more than 75% white and more than 60% male at the senior executive level.

    Trump’s executive order will toss out equity plans developed by federal agencies and terminate any roles or offices dedicated to promoting diversity. It will include eliminating initiatives such as DEI-related training or diversity goals in performance reviews.

    Federal grant and benefits programs

    Trump’s order paves the way for an aggressive but bureaucratically complicated overhaul of billions of dollars in federal spending that conservative activists claim unfairly carve out preference for racial minorities and women.

    The order does not specify which programs it will target but mandates a government-wide review to ensure that contracts and grants are compliant with the Trump administration’s anti-DEI stance. It also proposes that the federal government settle ongoing lawsuits against federal programs that benefit historically underserved communities, including some that date back decades.

    Trump’s executive order is a “seismic shift and a complete change in the focus and direction of the federal government,” said Dan Lennington, deputy council for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which has pursued several lawsuits against federal programs. The institute recently released an influential report listing dozens of programs the Trump administration should consider dismantling, such as credits for minority farmers or emergency relief assistance for majority-Black neighborhoods.

    He acknowledged that unwinding some entrenched programs may be difficult. For example, the Treasury Department implements housing and other assistance programs through block grants to states that have their own methods for implementing diversity criteria.

    Pay equity and hiring practices

    It’s not clear whether the Trump administration will target every initiative that stemmed from Biden’s DEI executive order.

    For example, the Biden administration banned federal agencies from asking about an applicant’s salary history when setting compensation, a practice many civil rights activists say perpetuates pay disparities for women and people of color.

    It took three years for the Biden administration to issue the final regulations, and Trump would have to embark on a similar rule-making process, including a notice and comment period, to rescind it, said Chiraag Bains, former deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under Biden and now a nonresident senior fellow with Brookings Metro.

    Noreen Farrell, executive director of gender rights group Equal Rights Advocates, said that she was hopeful that the Trump administration “will not go out of its way to undo the rule,” which she said has proved popular in some state and cities that have enacted similar policies.

    And Biden’s DEI plan encompassed some initiatives with bipartisan support, said Bains. For example, he tasked the Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council with expanding federal employment opportunities for those with criminal records. That initiative stems from the Fair Chance Act, which Trump signed into law in 2019 and bans federal agencies and contractors from asking about an applicant’s criminal history before a conditional job offer is made.

    Bains said that’s what Biden’s DEI policies were about: ensuring that the federal government was structured to include historically marginalized communities, not institute “reverse discrimination against white men.”

    Despite the sweeping language of Trump’s order, Farrell said, “the reality of implementing such massive structural changes is far more complex.”

    “Federal agencies have deeply embedded policies and procedures that can’t simply be switched off overnight,” she added.





    In a shocking move, President Trump has directed all federal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) staff to be put on leave and eventually laid off. This decision has sparked outrage and criticism from advocates for diversity and inclusivity in the workplace.

    The move is seen as a major setback for efforts to promote diversity and equality within the federal government. DEI staff play a crucial role in ensuring that all employees are treated fairly and have equal opportunities for advancement.

    Many are concerned that this decision will lead to a less diverse and inclusive work environment, potentially harming morale and productivity. It also sends a troubling message about the administration’s commitment to diversity and equality.

    Critics argue that this move is a step backwards and goes against the progress that has been made in recent years to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace. It remains to be seen how this decision will impact federal agencies and their employees moving forward.

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  • OPM directs agencies to quickly comply with Trump’s return-to-office mandate


    Agencies have until the end of the day Friday to revise their telework policies and begin ordering federal employees to work onsite full-time, according to a return-to-office memo from the Office of Personnel Management Wednesday evening.

    OPM is recommending agencies target a 30-day deadline to be in full compliance with the return-to-office directive President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office. Trump’s executive order told agencies to return their federal employees to work at the office “as soon as practicable.” The order also called for agencies to end “remote work arrangements” and require employees to work in person full-time, while leaving room for some exemptions.

    OPM’s latest memo offers further details on Trump’s initial executive order. Since the order only referenced remote work arrangements, and not telework arrangements, the Jan. 20 directive led to some initial confusion.

    “The executive order is quite unclear in terms of exactly what it’s covering, because it does use the term remote work,” Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, told reporters during a press conference Tuesday.

    For the federal workforce, “telework” and “remote work” are two distinct types of work arrangements for federal employees. Generally, federal employees with telework agreements are expected to report to their “official duty stations” on a “regular and recurring basis.” Remote agreements for federal employees, however, let employees work from an “alternative worksite,” and remote employees are generally not expected to report to work onsite at an agency.

    OPM’s memo now calls for a full return to in-person work for a majority of currently teleworking federal employees. Agencies and federal supervisors can grant exemptions to the return-to-office mandate for individuals with a disability, a qualifying medical condition or another “compelling reason,” the memo states.

    Additionally, employees who are located more than 50 miles away from an agency office should be designated to “the most appropriate agency office, based on the employee’s duties and job function,” the memo states.

    OPM’s memo also tells agencies to submit their expected date for being in full compliance with the return-to-office directive. Agencies should notify all employees of Trump’s return-to-office mandate and have their telework managing officers oversee compliance with the guidance, OPM said.

    The actual implementation of the mandate will likely vary by agency. But some agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, have already announced return-to-office directives for their teleworking employees as a result of Trump’s order this week.

    Currently, 54% of the federal workforce works entirely onsite due to the needs of their jobs. Telework-eligible federal employees comprise about 46% of the federal workforce, and they are spending an average of 60% of their work hours in person, according to May 2024 data from the Office of Management and Budget. About 10% of federal employees work entirely remotely.

    The move toward a more hybrid federal workforce began in April 2023 when the Biden administration called on agencies to strike a balance between in-person work and telework for eligible federal employees. But the Trump administration has taken a harder stance on returning to the office.

    “The [presidential mandate] reflects a simple reality. The only way to get employees back to the office is to adopt a centralized policy requiring return-to-work for all agencies across the federal government,” OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell wrote in the memo. “Seeking to cajole individual agencies to try to get employees to return to the worksite has not succeeded.”

    In the memo, Ezell also said fully in-person work is needed for better efficiency and accountability, as well as to fill federal office space.

    “Virtually unrestricted telework has led to poorer government services and made it more difficult to supervise and train government workers,” Ezell wrote.

    Critics of the full return-to-office mandate, however, said telework options have been available to eligible federal employees for years — well before the COVID-19 pandemic — and that they are an important tool for the federal workforce.

    “The reality of this is that there has been bipartisan support for telework in the federal space for many, many years, because it’s been shown — in certain circumstances and when well-applied — to provide both for better performance and improved ability to recruit the best talent for federal positions,” Stier told reporters earlier this week.

    “Telework began decades ago in the federal government as a smart, cost-effective program allowing agencies to downsize their office space and lower real estate costs,” Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement. “Certain positions in the government have been eligible to telework part of each week for years — well before the pandemic — and they have done so successfully under strict supervision while being held to the same productivity and accountability standards as non-teleworking employees.”

    Many federal employees themselves have also said they’re more productive while having the ability to telework, according to a recent survey Federal News Network conducted. Many respondents expressed concerns about a “one-size-fits-all” return-to-office policy having adverse impacts on productivity, efficiency, employee retention and more. When asked about office space, 44% of respondents said they were “extremely concerned” about their agencies having enough space to accommodate a full return-to-office mandate.

    Federal unions have also pointed to existing provisions in collective bargaining agreements that secure telework arrangements for federal employees.

    “OPM’s guidance explicitly states that collective bargaining obligations and applicable law must be met when carrying out the president’s memorandum, so hybrid work schedules detailed in our collective bargaining agreements remain legally binding,” American Federation of Government Employees spokesperson Tim Kauffman said in an email to Federal News Network. “Should agencies implement policies contrary to our contracts, employees should comply, but we as a union will be prepared to file grievances.”

    Copyright
    © 2025 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.





    The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has issued a directive to federal agencies instructing them to quickly comply with President Trump’s return-to-office mandate. This directive comes as the administration pushes for a full return to in-person work for federal employees, despite concerns about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

    In the memo, OPM Acting Director Michael Rigas emphasized the importance of ensuring a safe and efficient transition back to the office for federal workers. The directive outlines specific steps that agencies must take to meet the administration’s deadline for a full return to in-person work.

    Many federal employees have expressed concerns about returning to the office, especially as the Delta variant continues to spread and cases of COVID-19 rise. However, the OPM directive makes it clear that agencies must prioritize compliance with the return-to-office mandate.

    It remains to be seen how federal agencies will navigate the challenges of returning to in-person work in the midst of a pandemic. As the situation continues to evolve, employees and agencies alike will need to remain flexible and adaptable in order to ensure a safe and successful transition back to the office.

    Tags:

    OPM, Trump return-to-office mandate, government agencies, compliance deadline, workplace safety, remote work policies, federal employees, telework options, office reopening guidelines, COVID-19 protocols

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  • Trump says ICE can arrest people at churches and schools, directs agency to use ‘common sense’



    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Federal immigration authorities will be permitted to arrest people and carry out enforcement actions in and near places such as churches and schools, marking a departure from long-standing policy to avoid so-called sensitive areas.

    Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman announced the end of two directives in a statement, giving agents more authority over whether they carry out enforcement and eliminating a legal pathway for migrants seeking to come to the United States.

    “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense,” the statement reads.

    It’s a key example of how enforcement is going to be different under the new Trump administration from the Biden administration.

    Immigration and Customs Enforcement set a policy in 2011 preventing agents from making arrests in sensitive locations. The Biden administration put out similar guidance. Immigrant advocates have shared concerns over stripping that policy, arguing that doing so would stoke fear in immigrant communities and keep children from going to school or people from seeking care at hospitals.

    The second directive includes the phaseout of parole programs that allowed certain migrants to temporarily live and work in the United States. Republicans have repeatedly said the Biden administration abused the parole program by extending it to multiple nationalities. The statement doesn’t clarify which programs will be phased out, but says the program will be returned to a “case-by-case basis.”

    “The Biden-Harris Administration abused the humanitarian parole program to indiscriminately allow 1.5 million migrants to enter our country. This was all stopped on day one of the Trump Administration. This action will return the humanitarian parole program to its original purpose of looking at migrants on a case-by-case basis,” the statement says.



    In a recent statement, President Trump declared that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has the authority to arrest individuals at churches and schools. He directed the agency to use “common sense” when carrying out these arrests.

    This announcement has sparked controversy and raised concerns among immigrant communities and advocates. Many argue that places of worship and educational institutions should be considered safe spaces where individuals, regardless of their immigration status, should not fear being targeted for enforcement actions.

    Critics of the Trump administration’s immigration policies argue that this directive could have a chilling effect on individuals seeking refuge and assistance at churches and schools. They worry that this could deter vulnerable populations, such as undocumented immigrants, from seeking help and accessing essential services.

    On the other hand, supporters of the President’s stance on immigration enforcement argue that ICE should have the ability to apprehend individuals who are in the country illegally, regardless of where they may be located. They believe that enforcing immigration laws is crucial to maintaining national security and protecting American citizens.

    As the debate continues, it remains to be seen how ICE will interpret and implement this directive. The implications of allowing arrests at churches and schools are significant and have far-reaching consequences for immigrant communities across the country.

    Tags:

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  • NOGGLE The, 10ft – Kid’s Personal Air Conditioning System, Made in USA, Directs Cool Air to Children in The Backseat – Air Conditioning Vent Hose for Vehicles, Making The Back Seat Cool Again – Black

    NOGGLE The, 10ft – Kid’s Personal Air Conditioning System, Made in USA, Directs Cool Air to Children in The Backseat – Air Conditioning Vent Hose for Vehicles, Making The Back Seat Cool Again – Black


    Price: $79.95
    (as of Dec 17,2024 03:38:30 UTC – Details)




    Make the Back Seat Cool Again – The Noggle is the ultimate comfort system for your car, preventing sweaty, uncomfortable and potentially dangerous car rides for children and pets in the summer and keeping them warmer during the winter. Made in the USA.
    Must-Have For Parents – Choose Noggle to ensure your little ones are comfortable during car rides. Made in 3 sizes to accommodate rear-facing car seats, front-facing car seats, and even 3rd row seats. Includes rectangular and circular adapters to fit most car vents.
    Quick & Easy To Use – The Noggle is lightweight, flexible and installs in less than 30 seconds with no tools required. Simply loop, secure, and turn. Comes with 2 reversible ties for easy on and off removal from your dash. Stores away neatly when not in use.
    Fun & Functional Design – The Noggle is a creative and inexpensive way to stay cool in the backseat. Available in a variety of lengths and cover designs, plus a matching loop to attach to the headrest, car seat or backseat handle, directing air right where you need it.
    10 Foot Length, Black Ice Design – Purchase peace of mind when traveling by keeping temperatures comfortable and kids happy, so you can focus more on driving. The Noggle is the only vehicle comfort system that is CPSIA tested and approved.

    Customers say

    Customers appreciate the auto accessory’s simple design and universal fit for any vehicle. They like its quality. However, some report issues with air volume and leakage. Opinions vary on functionality and cooling effect.

    AI-generated from the text of customer reviews


    Introducing the NOGGLE: The Kid’s Personal Air Conditioning System for the Backseat!

    Tired of hearing complaints from your kids about being too hot in the backseat during car rides? Say goodbye to sweaty, uncomfortable rides with the NOGGLE! This innovative air conditioning system is designed specifically for children in the backseat, providing them with their own personal cool air flow.

    Made in the USA, the NOGGLE is a 10ft long air conditioning vent hose that easily attaches to your vehicle’s existing vents. With adjustable vents and a powerful fan, the NOGGLE directs cool air right where your kids need it most, keeping them comfortable and happy during long drives.

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