Federal and state health officials and staff members scrambled on Friday to comply with a 5 p.m. deadline by the Trump administration to terminate any programs that promote “gender ideology,” and to withdraw documents and any other media that may do so.
Federal workers had already been ordered to halt diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, to scrub public references to those efforts and to place employees involved in them on administrative leave.
At federal health agencies, veterans hospitals, and local and state health departments, compliance took a variety of forms. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, employees hurried to remove terms like “transgender,” “immigrant,” “L.G.B.T.” and “pregnant people” from the website.
Employees at some VA Hospitals were told that L.G.B.T.Q. flags and other displays were no longer acceptable, according to an administrative email reviewed by The New York Times.
Bathrooms at health agencies were to be set aside for use by a single “biological sex,” according to federal directives, and the word “gender” was to be removed from agency forms.
The instructions are a 180-degree pivot for health scientists and clinicians, who have worked for years to integrate diversity and equity into research and clinical services, including those for gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.
The directives “risk dismantling programs that have been built up over decades to serve the needs of Americans,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health.
Federal health agencies are being forced to terminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, delete public references to those efforts and place employees involved in them on administrative leave.
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