(WASHINGTON) — Employees at multiple federal agencies were ordered to remove pronouns from their email signatures by Friday afternoon, according to internal memos obtained by ABC News that cited two executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office seeking to curb diversity and equity programs in the federal government.
“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,” according to one such message sent Friday morning from Jason Bonander, the CDC’s Chief Information Officer. “Staff are being asked to alter signature blocks by 5.p.m. ET today. (Friday, January 31, 2025) to follow the revised policy.”
Federal employees with the Department of Transportation received a similar directive on Thursday, the same day the department was managing the fallout from the D.C. plane crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Employees were instructed to remove pronouns from everything from government grant applications to email signatures across the department, sources told ABC News.
Employees at the Department of Energy also received a similar notice Thursday.
Energy Department employees were told this was to meet requirements in Trump’s executive order calling for the removal of DEI “language in Federal discourse, communications and publications.”
It was not immediately clear whether employees in other federal agencies received similar messages. Spokespeople for HHS, CDC and Energy Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
The mandate to remove pronouns from email signatures is the latest result of the Trump administration’s push to do away with diversity and equity efforts in the federal government.
On his first day in office, Trump signed a pair of executive orders calling for an end to what his administration called “radical and wasteful DEI programs” and seeking to restore “biological truth to the federal government.” Both orders were referenced in the Friday message to agencies.
The memos included instructions for how to edit email signatures.
At least one career civil servant met the order with irritation.
“In my decade-plus years at CDC I’ve never been told what I can and can’t put in my email signature,” said one recipient, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution.
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.
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