Did President Trump order federal workers to remove pronouns from their email signatures? Several viral social media posts make this claim. “JUST IN: President Trump reportedly has ordered all federal employees to remove pronouns from their email signatures today,” reads one Instagram post with more than 13,000 likes. “BREAKING: Trump administration orders federal employees to remove pronouns from their email signatures by today at 5PM,” reads a similar post on Threads.
The claims are true. While Trump did not explicitly order the removal of notes attached to email signatures specifying the sender’s preferred pronouns, employees of multiple federal agencies have been asked to remove gender pronouns from their email signatures following guidance issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on one of Trump’s executive orders.
On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” that broadly instructs federal agencies to terminate activities that do not align with the administration’s recognition of only two sexes. In one section of the order, agencies are instructed to “remove all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology, and shall cease issuing such statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications or other messages.”
Last week, in response to Trump’s executive order, OPM sent a memorandum to the heads of federal departments and agencies providing initial guidance on the executive order’s implementation. Though the memorandum did not explicitly reference pronouns in email signatures, it instructed department and agency heads to “take prompt actions to end all agency programs that use taxpayer money to promote or reflect gender ideology,” including by terminating agency programs, removing outward-facing media, and canceling employee trainings that “promote or inculcate gender ideology.” Heads were ordered to take the steps by 5 p.m. ET on Friday, January 31, and asked to report back to OPM on all steps taken to implement the guidance by noon ET on Friday, February 7.
According to reports from the New York Times, ABC News, and CNN, employees at several federal agencies—including the State Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Department of Labor—received instructions to remove gender-identifying pronouns from their email signatures following the issuance of OPM’s guidance. “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,” read one such message sent to employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Tuesday, a federal lawsuit was filed by multiple plaintiffs in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland requesting an injunction on the executive order.
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