As the Trump administration continues to get rid of diversity programs throughout the government, it is deleting any mention of the words “diversity,” “equity” and “inclusion”.
That meant that in the Internal Revenue Service’s procedural handbook for employees, the terms were wiped out when referring to finances and tax procedures rather than actual DEI programs, the Wall Street Journal reported.
“One section that was still deleted as of Wednesday morning mentioned the potential ‘inequity’ of holding on to a taxpayer’s money and described the potential ‘inclusion’ of a taxpayer identification number on a form,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Webpages that previously included information on the agency’s diversity measures are now gone, showing a “page not found” message.
Donald Trump’s administration officials are deleting these pages and programs across the government after Trump ordered them to end any DEI-related initiatives and cancel contracts that promote these ideas. He encouraged employees to rat out their colleagues who were clandestinely working on diversity issues, setting up a tip line that has been spammed by internet users with jokes and explicit content.
Trump took his anti-DEI stance a step further after a mid-air plane crash this week, suggesting baselessly DEI was to blame.
The “department of government efficiency” (Doge), Elon Musk’s extra-governmental agency, has been posting on X about the contracts canceled and programs deleted, claiming to have terminated about $1bn in DEI-related contracts across government agencies.
Still, the Wall Street Journal found, Trump officials are trying to find more people to fire whose work related to DEI, believing there are more than they have initially found because “it seemed that the Trump administration had expected the number to be larger”.
