At least 60 Veterans Affairs employees have been placed on administrative leave following the closure of multiple diversity, equity and inclusion offices across the department, part of a government-wide crackdown on the issue.
In a statement to Military Times, VA officials said that all department DEI offices are “permanently closed” and that the workers on leave were solely focused on those inclusion policy efforts. They did not provide any additional information on when a decision will been made to reassign or fire those workers.
On Wednesday, acting VA Secretary Todd Hunter sent a staff-wide message announcing the closure of the offices in accordance with White House guidance earlier in the week. Similar messages were sent by other department heads, although Hunter’s memo also included a line saying the “programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”
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The moves have left numerous department employees on edge. Internal department message boards, portions of which were shared with Military Times, have been peppered with fears about additional firings and other actions against individuals who worked on initiatives related to the closed offices.
At the same time on those message boards, one employee pushed new administration leaders to go even further, asking for officials to roll back policies like requiring identifying pronouns from official emails and to punish staffers who championed those kinds of efforts during the last administration.
The White House has also set up a special effort to identify “efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language” and is encouraging federal workers to report co-workers engaging in such behavior to administration officials.
Earlier this week, the program manager for VA’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (I-DEA) Influencers Network — responsible for a host of initiatives to bring more minority and LGBTQ+ veterans into the department’s network — announced the shuttering of that office with a note stating, “please know that this transition does not diminish the value of your contributions or the importance of the work you have championed.”
Union officials have blasted the moves as unnecessary and potentially harmful to military readiness and veterans’ access to care.
“Undoing these programs is just another way for President Trump to undermine the merit-based civil service and turn federal hiring and firing decisions into loyalty tests,” Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement.
President Donald Trump has blasted the inclusion programs as divisive and harmful because of their focus on racial and cultural differences.
In addition to closing DEI offices, VA websites containing information on past inclusion efforts have been deleted, and employees ordered to “withdraw any final or pending documents, directives, orders, materials, and equity plans issued by the agency” related to the topic.
The department workforce is over 450,000 individuals, with around 90% of them working in health care posts or medical center support jobs.
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
