Trump Administration Escalates D.E.I. Crackdown in Latest Threat to Federal Workers

The Trump administration on Wednesday threatened federal employees with “adverse consequences” if they fail to report on colleagues who defy orders to purge diversity, equity and inclusion efforts from their agencies.

Tens of thousands of workers were put on notice that officials would not tolerate any efforts to “disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.” Emails sent out, which were based on a template from the Office of Personnel Management, gave employees 10 days to report their observations to a special email account without risking disciplinary action.

“There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information,” the template sent to agency heads said. “However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.”

The message also said: “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars and resulted in shameful discrimination.”

Some agencies, such as the Education Department and the State Department, sent the template to their employees on Wednesday. Other agencies made slight modifications when they sent emails to their workers. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, said failure to report D.E.I. efforts “will result” in adverse consequences.

The warnings were a dramatic escalation of Mr. Trump’s war on diversity programs that seek to reverse decades of systemic inequities and make the federal government look more like America. They were also part of a broader assault on the federal work force, which the president has long viewed as a bloated bureaucracy in need of large-scale reduction. He has pledged to eliminate departments and has ordered remote workers back to the office.

In his Inaugural Address, Mr. Trump said he would stop efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”

“We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based,” Mr. Trump declared during the address.

On Tuesday night, the Trump administration released a memorandum that employees working in D.E.I. offices across the federal government would be placed on administrative leave by 5 p.m. Wednesday, the first step toward shutting down the offices and programs altogether. Agencies were ordered to devise plans to lay off the staff members by Jan. 31.

Mr. Trump’s orders were felt within hours of that memorandum being issued.

Stop-work orders went out as early as Wednesday morning. A contractor for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, was told to stop a project collecting demographic data for the agency, which for years has documented details on gender, race and veteran status. The person said the results of a D.E.I. survey conducted last year would no longer be released next month, as planned.

Also on Wednesday, asylum officers with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had their invites to an event honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. canceled, according to an email obtained by The New York Times. The event, planned for Jan. 29, was set to include speakers discussing Dr. King’s legacy and a reading of his “I Have a Dream” speech.

It was to be put on by the Houston office at the agency.

Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said Mr. Trump’s attacks on D.E.I. were “just a smoke screen for firing civil servants.”