WASHINGTON — NASA is beginning to implement a White House executive order to terminate certain diversity programs at the agency that were once praised by its current acting administrator.
In a memo to employees Jan. 22 obtained by SpaceNews, NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro said the agency was working to close offices related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) at the agency and cancel relevant contracts.
“These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination,” she wrote in the memo.
The steps, she wrote, are intended to implement an executive order issued by President Trump hours after his Jan. 20 inauguration. The order called on federal agencies to terminate DEIA programs and positions related to them, calling such efforts “discriminatory” and an “immense public waste.”
That was followed the next day by a memo to federal agencies by Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), directing them to remove “outward facing media” related to DEIA programs by 5 p.m. Eastern Jan. 22 and to place employees of DEIA offices on paid administrative leave.
The memo also requires agencies to provide lists of their DEIA offices and employees, as well as related contracts, by Jan. 23, and submit plans for laying off DEIA employees by the end of the month.
The website for NASA’s Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity returned a “404 Not Found” error message after the close of business Jan. 22. Some people reported the website was offline earlier in the day after being available in the morning, although for others the site was still available until late in the day.
Websites for similar offices at some NASA field centers also returned similar errors or were otherwise not available late Jan. 22. “Office Of Diversity and Equal Opportunity has been decommissioned,” stated the website for that office at NASA’s Langley Research Center.
Notably, the DEIA-related website at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was still active as of late Jan. 22. JPL is a federally funded research and development center that is funded by NASA but run by the California Institute of Technology.
The OPM memo included a template for agencies to use to notify their employees of the changes. That template is identical to the memo sent by Petro to NASA employees, including a threat of “adverse consequences” if employees did not report any changes to contract or personnel descriptions since the November general election intended to “disguise” links to DEIA.
“There will be no adverse consequences for timely reporting this information. However, failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences,” both the OPM template and Petro’s memo stated.
While the NASA memo, on its own, would make it appear that Petro was critical of DEIA initiatives, she has previously praised them. In a November 2021 interview with Engineering News-Record, Petro, at the time several months into her tenure as director of the Kennedy Space Center, said diversity efforts were important to NASA and to her personally.
“At NASA and Kennedy Space Center, our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility has been paramount to mission success. The entire NASA leadership team stands behind this commitment,” she said in the interview.
She noted in the interview that, earlier in her career at NASA and the U.S. Army, she was often either the only woman in meetings or “only one of a couple” and that a sibling has a disability. “I am, therefore, profoundly committed to promoting opportunities for growth for all,” she said then.
That included in employment. “It is crucial that we are more intentional about hiring and recruiting,” she said. “All selected individuals will continue to be among the well-qualified, and therefore it is crucial that we are intentional about identifying diverse sources of talent to be among that pool.”