The Department of Energy will resume payments to its funding recipients for things like stakeholder engagement and workforce development in underserved communities, Latitude Media has learned. These are efforts the Trump administration has branded as “illegal DEI,” an acronym for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The agency issued “stop work” orders in late January, in an effort to implement directives laid out in a handful of executive orders President Trump signed on his first day in office. Those memos directed funding recipients to suspend any activities related to DEI programs, including community benefit plans and Justice40 requirements.
But DOE is rescinding those orders “as soon as tomorrow” for several of the department’s offices, general counsel Chris Calamita told some agency employees earlier today; those include the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the National Energy Technology Laboratory, which falls within the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.
That means grant recipients whose contracts were signed before January 20 can now apply to be reimbursed for DEI-related activities outlined in the agreements they signed with the Biden administration.
The decision to reimburse grant recipients for DEI costs comes after a federal district court in Maryland issued a temporary injunction in late February blocking certain provisions of executive orders 14151 and 14173. They directed agencies to terminate equity-related grants or contracts; contractors and grantees to certify that they don’t operate DEI programs; and the attorney general to encourage the private sector to end “illegal discrimination preferences, including DEI.”
The Department of Justice has since “issued guidance to make sure we are in compliance with that court order,” Calamita told hundreds of DOE staffers in a virtual meeting.
The forthcoming memos will instruct recipients that invoices submitted for “allowable DEI costs” will be paid under the award. However, recipients can voluntarily opt not to undertake those activities. “The administration is putting out the messaging that ‘Yeah, you can do it if you want to do it…we’re not going to look at it,’” Calamita said.
Individual DOE offices should let their respective recipients know that the matter is still subject to litigation, he added. After all, anything the agency does say could change “two minutes after we tell them,” he acknowledged.
Out of an “abundance of caution,” those stop work orders will be ended both for awards whose primary purpose is related to DEI, and for those whose primary purpose is not equity-based but which have some type of equity element, like a community benefit plan, Calamita added. The vast majority of DOE awards, he said, are not considered equity-based.
The walk-back does not apply to pre-award negotiations or notices of funding. For those awards, the Secretaries of both Infrastructure and Science and Innovation are currently presenting a process proposal to Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s office. Moving forward, however, DEI, community benefit plans, and Justice40 elements have been removed from templates for notices of funding, Calamita said.
This comes in a moment of confusion for the department, which has flipped between limbo and chaos in the weeks since President Trump took office. In February, roughly 1,000 probationary staffers were laid off, and in the months since DOE has issued return-to-work orders that would require people to move to either Washington, D.C. or Colorado before knowing how the next round of layoffs shakes out.
