How rapid-fire executive orders from new U.S. President Donald Trump will change the U.S. Virgin Islands remained unclear Wednesday evening. Government House officials were working to decipher the avalanche of dramatic federal mandates’ effects.
Trump’s myriad executive orders target government hiring, immigration and refugee programs, environmental and energy policies, civil rights, schooling and more. Many have reportedly already met legal challenges.
Although the executive orders target federal employees and programs, Government House was assessing how they may intertwine with territorial operations.
“We are currently working with our internal counsel and with other jurisdictions to look through the deluge of the president’s executive actions to discern which have the potential to impact our local functions,” said Richard Motta, Government House’s director of communications.
One of the most broad-reaching executive orders, disseminated Tuesday from the acting director of the Federal Office of Personnel, repealed President Joe Biden’s 2021 Executive Order 14035, which advances diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility — known as DEIA or DEI — in the federal workforce.
Trump’s orders also unwound Biden’s Executive Order 13985, Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government. Trump’s executive orders were titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing and Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions.
He revoked 78 Biden-era executive orders that sought to promote protection from gender and sexual orientation discrimination and racial discrimination, promote equity and ethics, promote worker safety and education, strengthen Medicaid and public schools, combat climate change, and much more.
At the Port Authority, Director Carlton Dowe said he didn’t think the executive order ending Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion would have any effect on operations as his employees were all territorial hires.
Ryan Nugent, communications director for the Human Services Department, said some of the federal orders might not affect duties undertaken territorially by territorial employees, but he was not certain. Even less clear was how the orders might affect people working in various Virgin Islands government departments that receive a paycheck using federal funds.
Officials from the Virgin Islands Personnel Department and the United States Attorney’s Office in the territory declined to comment.
The University of the Virgin Islands plans to offer a class in February called What is DEI, one of several planned on diversity issues.
“Understanding diversity, equity, and inclusion is critical to the professional success of any individual or team,” according to the course description.
UVI President Safiya George was in Switzerland for a summit and unable to be reached late afternoon Wednesday.
The orders ending DEIA endeavors mandated federal offices send memos informing federal employees they must report “efforts to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language” by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
They also effectively alerted all DEIA employees they would soon be dismissed, saying “all employees of DEIA offices that they are being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately as the agency takes steps to close/end all DEIA initiatives, offices and programs.”
They also eliminated all “outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.) of DEIA offices.”
All federal diversity and accessibility trainings were canceled. DEIA employees were being hunted.
By Jan. 31, federal agencies must turn over the names of DEIA-assigned employees performing their duties from Nov. 5 to Jan. 20 and “a list of all contract descriptions or personnel position descriptions that were changed since November 5, 2024, to obscure their connection to DEIA programs.”
