Jan. 31 (UPI) — Employees of at least two federal agencies are being instructed by the Trump administration to immediately stop using pronouns in their email signatures, according to memos obtained by multiple media outlets Friday.
One of the memos was sent to employees of the Centers for Disease Control by Jason Bonander, the CDC’s Chief Information Officer, according to ABC News and the tech news website Gizmodo.
The memo cites executive orders signed by President Donald Trump on his first day on office last week which aim to “establish male and female as biological reality and protect women from radical gender ideology” and scrub references that “promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology” from agency communications.
“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,” Bonander’s memo states. “Staff are being asked to alter signature blocks by 5.p.m. ET today (Friday, January 31, 2025) to follow the revised policy.”
Sources told ABC News employees of the Department of Transportation also received a similar demand regarding email signatures on Thursday even as they were coping with the D.C. plane crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in which 67 people were killed.
It remained unclear on Friday if employees at other federal agencies were hit with similar demands.
On Wednesday, a separate memo titled “Initial Guidance Regarding President Trump’s Executive Order Defending Women” issued by Charles Ezell, acting director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, was sent to CDC personnel demanding that employees delete anything “promoting gender ideology” from their materials, according to a copy obtained by Gizmodo.
The memo instructs that the word “gender” be replaced with “sex” on the CDC website and within agency communications. It similarly ordered personnel to “review agency email systems such as Outlook and turn off features that prompt users for their pronouns.”
The process by which the decisions are being made remains opaque, an anonymous CDC employee told the website.
“You don’t even know who’s making these decisions. There’s a lot of anonymity,” the employee told Gizmodo. “Every day there’s a new surprise. We don’t know what exactly the endpoint is going to be. Even before this, we were told to stop communicating altogether, even send emails to anyone outside CDC we wouldn’t normally work with.”