US President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday decided to end affirmative action federal contracting and ordered that federal Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) employees be placed on paid leave and eventually fired.

Movements follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering the complete dismantling of federal government diversity and inclusion programs that could touch everything from anti-bias training to funding for minority farmers and homeowners, Trump called the programs “discriminatory” and insisted on a strictly “dignity-based” job restoration.

The affirmative action executive order rescinds an order issued by U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and curtails DEI programs for federal contractors and grantees.

It is using one of the key tools used by the Biden administration to promote DEI programs in the private sector, promoting their use by federal contractors, now to eradicate them.

Personnel Management Office in Tuesday's message ordered agencies to place DEI office staff on paid leave by 5:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday and to remove all public DEI-focused web pages by the same deadline.Several federal agencies had removed web pages even before the memo.

The agencies must also cancel any DEI-related training and terminate any related contracts, and federal employees are asked to report to Trump's Office of Personnel Management if they suspect any DEI-related program has been renamed, its purpose within 10 days. to misrepresent, or to face adverse consequences.”

On Thursday, federal agencies were ordered to compile a list of federal DEI offices and employees by next Friday, and are expected to develop a “retrenchment action” against those federal employees.

The memo was first reported by CBS News.

Step comes next Monday's executive order Former US President Joe Biden accused the “discriminatory” programs of forcing “almost every aspect of the federal government” through the “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs known as DEI.

The move is the first in an aggressive campaign to undermine DEI's efforts across the country, including the use of the U.S. Department of Justice and other agencies to investigate private companies that pursue training and hiring practices that conservative critics say discriminate against non-minority groups such as are white people.

Aggressive campaign

The executive order picks up where the first Trump administration left off. One of Trump's most recent actions during his first term was banning federal agency contractors and recipients of federal funding from providing anti-bias training that addresses concepts such as systemic racism.

Biden promptly rescinded that order on his first day in office and issued several executive orders, now revoked, outlining a plan to promote DEI in the federal government.

While many changes may take months or even years to implement, Trump's new anti-DEA agenda is more aggressive than his first and comes on a more comfortable footing in the corporate world.

Prominent companies, from Walmart to Facebook, have already scaled back or ended some of their diversity practices in response to Trump's election and conservative-backed lawsuits against them.