A conservative nonprofit has posted the names and photos of more than 50 federal workers on what it is calling a “watch list” related to diversity, equity and inclusion, asking President Trump to fire them.
The group says the workers named in its “D.E.I. bureaucrat watch list” supported diversity, criticized Mr. Trump on social media or made donations to Democrats. Many of the targets are Black workers at health agencies.
The list was compiled by the American Accountability Foundation, a small right-wing nonprofit that was founded in 2020 to oppose Biden administration policies and nominees. Since Mr. Trump’s election, the group has stepped up its targeting of specific federal workers — some of them career employees with little power — that it believes oppose his agenda.
The list included “dossiers” about individual staff members, listing what it called their “D.E.I. offenses.”
For example, one 24-year-old C.D.C. staff member was singled out for a social media post she published on her 20th birthday about “the harsh truths of racism,” and for reposting a social media item about pain equity — an issue underpinned by research finding bias in how women, Black and Latino people are treated when in pain.
The foundation previously published “watch lists” of workers at the Defense, Education and Homeland Security Departments. This latest list, published on an affiliated website, includes workers from federal health agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many of them in programs aimed at improving the health of people of color and other vulnerable Americans.
The nonprofit called them “woke D.E.I. devotees in the federal government who need to be fired.” Supporters of federal workers said they worried that the workers could be targeted for harassment or violence.
The publication of the list was the latest sign of the far-reaching backlash against diversity programs since Mr. Trump took office. Mr. Trump and his allies have sought to do far more than eliminate federal diversity offices, which the president mandated in an executive order. They also are seeking to make the idea of pro-diversity programs toxic and taboo, in the private sector and in federal workers’ private lives.
Many of the purported offenses that got them on Mr. Jones’s list were common sentiments in former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration or represented government policies supported by decades of research showing adverse health outcomes and shorter life spans for minorities.
The nonprofit’s president, Thomas Jones, a longtime conservative activist, said in an interview that he wanted to single out people who had not already been suspended in Mr. Trump’s purge of federal diversity offices.
“We wanted to just make sure we’re not just going, ‘Hey, let’s look at the people in the D.E.I. offices,’” Mr. Jones said. “Let’s look at people who are advocates for the policy.”
He said that his group had identified them by looking at political donations to Democrats, and by looking at social media posts. He said he had not reached out to the workers to verify the information he published, or even to determine if they still worked for the government.
“I’m busy; I’ve got a lot of stuff to do,” Mr. Jones said.
When the American Accountability Foundation started, its mission was “getting up every morning and with the goal of making it as difficult as possible for the Biden administration and their allies on the Hill to implement their agenda,” Mr. Jones told Fox News in an interview.
The group has links to the America First Legal Foundation, founded by the Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who is now the White House deputy chief of staff. In 2022, Mr. Miller’s group listed itself in tax forms as the “direct controlling entity” of the American Accountability Foundation, and said it had given the group $25,000.
Mr. Jones said his group is now run independently. Mr. Miller did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday, including one sent through a White House spokeswoman.
The American Accountability Foundation received a $100,000 grant last year from the Heritage Foundation, the group behind the Project 2025 blueprint for a Republican presidency. The Heritage Foundation said the grant was intended to identify “anti-American bad actors burrowed into the administrative state.”
Mr. Jones’s group has also received more than $500,000 in donations from the Conservative Partnership Institute, a nonprofit stocked with former Trump staff members, and $50,000 from the 85 Fund, a nonprofit linked to conservative activist Leonard Leo.
Mr. Jones, in his interview, said he was not concerned that the posts would put workers in danger.
One worker whose name and photo was posted on the list said she had already been put on administrative leave during the Trump administration’s purge of diversity offices. That was before the list was published.
“The current situation threatens my safety, the safety of my family and my ability to return to work or find other employment,” the worker said. She asked not to be named because of fears for her personal safety.
Another government worker singled out is a cancer biologist at the National Institutes of Health who trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and who re-tweeted a post about a Black journalist, noting that she had been tear-gassed at a peaceful demonstration near the White House in June of 2020 so President Trump could go through the area for a photo shoot.
“They are talking about these people who are conscientious civil servants who are committed to following the law, and they are talking about them as if they are criminals,” said Debra S. Katz, an employment attorney in Washington.
Health experts who reviewed the list said they were particularly troubled by its efforts to target federal offices within the C.D.C., the Food and Drug Administration and the N.I.H. that are aimed at improving the health of people in vulnerable communities, including people of color, low-income people and people who live in rural areas.
“People who are doing that kind of work are seeking to advance and protect the health of all Americans, including the people who are living in vulnerable communities,” said Dr. Reed Tuckson, a past senior vice president of the American Medical Association and former D.C. health official. “To imply that there is something wrong or malicious or devious about working hard to ensure that every American has the best opportunity for health outcomes is a fallacy.”
The C.D.C. and N.I.H., who employed the majority of the people on the list, declined to comment on Wednesday.
One of the few white people on the list is a physician and researcher who works on climate equity, an effort that recognizes people can be disproportionately impacted by climate disasters. That physician researcher, a member of the National Academy of Medicine, was singled out over prior employment at the Environmental Defense Fund, a group with “a long history of opposing conservative policies.”
Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, called the list “reprehensible.” He said that the majority of the C.D.C. employees on the list are African American and were targeted for having “anything to do with trying to focus on underserved populations.”
“Everybody is aghast at this,” Dr. Benjamin said.
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