NASA has come under scrutiny over the last few weeks due to its compliance with executive orders penned by U.S. President Donald Trump. These are orders that directly impact all federal organizations and have, for instance, compelled the space agency to end initiatives focused on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives as well as scrub its websites of information relating to the topic.
Recently in the saga, reports presented by NASA watchdog website NASA Watch suggested that agency employees are being asked to remove any symbols that may represent LGBTQI+ Pride from their workspaces. In response to our coverage of this report, a NASA spokesperson emailed Space.com a statement on Feb. 11 saying the following:
“There are no new bans on any personal affects in employees’ workspaces. As always, the items must adhere to legal, safety, and NASA rules and guidelines. Some managers have been reminding employees to be mindful of what personal affects they have in their workspaces, but there are no penalties or warnings about being placed on administrative leave for displaying personal items.”
This same statement was also reportedly emailed to NASA Watch on Feb. 11, four days after the website’s original post about the subject. The unnamed sources at NASA Headquarters who provided NASA Watch with claims of LGBTQI+ representation being removed from agency offices have not commented on NASA’s response.
Prior to the agency’s statement, ranking U.S. House Space and Aeronautics Committee members Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Valerie Foushee (D-NC), had spoken out in a joint message about the concept of NASA management limiting what Pride-related gear employees keep in their workspaces.
“This is a ridiculous overstep and direct assault on NASA HQ employees’ free speech and humanity,” they said, “this government-sanctioned censorship is the latest assault on the rights of federal employees and should not stand.”
Yet this is only one example of how President Trump’s Executive orders have swept public criticism over NASA. For instance, an internal memo sent out in late January — that was based on written instructions from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — was signed by acting NASA administrator Janet Petro and met with negativity from the scientific community.
Besides outlining efforts to remove DEIA language from agency websites, claiming that “these programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination,” this memo provided employees with a warning. Failure to come forward in a timely manner with evidence of possible efforts to subvert orders regarding DEIA initiative purging, it said, may result in “adverse consequences.”
Workers at NASA were also allegedly told to “drop everything” and remove mentions of terms like “Indigenous People,” “Environmental Justice,” and “anything specifically targeting women (women in leadership, etc.),” according to an internal directive obtained by independent, journalist-funded news website 404 media.
But NASA is not the only federally-funded scientific organization adhering to White House requests of nixing DEIA language; the Rubin Observatory, for instance, has adjusted many sections of its website, most notably the biography of Vera Rubin, for whom the observatory was named. She was a pivotal force in the discovery of dark matter, and is widely esteemed for breaking barriers for women in the field.
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