Federal agencies bar Black History Month

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Federal agencies on Friday rushed to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at curtailing diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

The executive orders prompted a flurry of memos and emails obtained by NBC News that modified the rules for staff at intelligence agencies, in the military and across civilian departments regarding employee resource groups and the celebration of cultural awareness events.

This week, the Defense Intelligence Agency ordered a pause of all activities and events related to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month, Juneteenth, LGBTQ Pride Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day and other "special observances" to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order, according to a memo obtained by NBC News.

The memo listed 11 observances that are now banned. It also said that all affinity groups and "employee networking groups" are immediately on pause.

The directive comes as the Trump administration has made it a top priority to go after any programs perceived to be related to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal government.

U.S. intelligence agencies are also working to eliminate or suspend any activities that could be interpreted as supporting past DEI policies, multiple current and former officials said. The agencies are still trying to determine what activities or events will be prohibited, but officials are erring on the side of caution rather than risk failing to comply with the administration’s orders, the sources said.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the country’s intelligence services, recently issued written guidance to employees saying that DEI-related boards and working groups have been “curtailed” and that no official work time or work spaces should be used for DEI-related activities, according an excerpt from a memo obtained by NBC News. Future travel related to these activities also has been cancelled, the memo stated.

Pentagon leaders on Friday received a similar email mandating that, effective immediately, they may no longer dedicate official resources, including man-hours, to cultural awareness months.

Service members and civilians will still be permitted to attend these events in an unofficial capacity and outside of duty hours, the memo added.

As for the Central Intelligence Agency, a spokesperson said the agency is carrying out the executive order on scrapping DEI programs.

“CIA is complying with the Executive Order. We are laser-focused on our foreign intelligence mission,” a spokesperson said in an email.

Former intelligence officials said there was a risk that the administration’s moves to eliminate events marking Martin Luther King Day, the Holocaust or Americans’ ethnic heritage could prove counterproductive and discourage potential recruits from joining the intelligence services.

The CIA and other spy agencies for decades have sought to hire from a more diverse pool of talent to ensure the country has intelligence officers with language skills and cultural backgrounds that help improve intelligence gathering abroad.

“From an intelligence community perspective, I really think it could hurt our ability to do our job,” the former senior official said.

“We’re going to strangle off talent pipelines that were already narrow to begin with. And that’s going to deprive our intelligence community and our national security establishment of critical knowledge, talent, skills, language … that might be valuable in trying to get somebody into a foreign country,” the former official added.

On Friday afternoon, the Office of Personnel Management sent around a memo, obtained by NBC News, ordering that all references to "gender ideology" be removed by 5 p.m. across the federal government.

The memo stated that this includes removing references from all public-facing websites and social media accounts, and specifically ordered the removal of Outlook prompts that directed staff to write out their pronouns.

In line with that new memo, State Department employees have also been instructed to remove all gender-identifying pronouns from their email signatures by 5 p.m. Friday.