You have to suspect there is a lot of this going on in the federal government. President Trump's clampdown on DEI was always going to result in a certain amount of rebranding and hiding the ball by agencies that didn't actually intend to comply with his executive orders. 

Yesterday the Free Press reported that even before Trump took office, preemptive moves were made at the U.S. Mint to reassign DEI staffers and hide their backgrounds from prying eyes. All of this comes from an insider who was pushed out of his former job to make room for the DEI refugees.

On January 20, Trump issued an executive order effectively terminating all DEI offices, positions, and programs across the federal government. The U.S. Mint, a division of the U.S. Treasury responsible for manufacturing coins, has employed five staffers in its Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) since the department’s inception in 2022. On December 3, 2024, the OEI office was closed and all five staffers were rehomed in other parts of the agency, Mint employee Brian Martin told The Free Press.

Martin said he is personally aware of these moves—because two of the staffers have since taken his job.

Again, pay attention to the dates here because this action wasn't a response to Trump's executive order, it was taken more than a month earlier. Clearly someone at the Mint had a good idea what was coming and wanted to shield their DEI staffers from getting the axe. But in Brian Martin's case that meant being shoved out of his job and lied to about the reasons why.

Martin, who used to work as a web content manager in the Mint’s public affairs department, said two DEI officers—Luz Sullivan and Vicky Best-Morris—are now doing the PR duties he once performed, including writing and distributing educational content for children, conducting outreach to schools, and supervising public affairs contractors. On December 29, he was reassigned to the sales and marketing department. Before he was shifted, chief human capital officer Cami McClain told Martin the move was “for efficiency” and “based solely on the business needs of the Mint,” according to an email obtained by The Free Press.

This led Martin to register a formal complaint to the Office of Personnel Management, which he shared with The Free Press. “What has happened to me over the last few months,” he wrote in the complaint, “is a prime example of the toxic nature of forcing political values into a federal office and the complete disregard for equal and fair treatment that comes about as a result.”

It wasn't just Martin who was being lied to. The Mint’s Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer, Dennis Fish, was transferred and became the Mint's Chief of Public Affairs. However, if you look at his bio on the Mint website, you'll notice there's no mention of his time as the head of DEI:

Dennis Fish serves as the Chief of Public Affairs at the U.S. Mint. He originally joined the Mint in 2022.

No one reading that would have any idea he's been in his current job for less than 3 months. That was intentional. There used to be another sentence in his bio describing his work as the DEI chief but it was removed several days after Trump issued his executive order.

Initially when the request was made, the web designer said he couldn't make it because removing DEI information would need to be reported up the chain. It was actually Brian Martin who responded to the request explaining "If this action were to take place, we would be obligated to report the violation to both Treasury and the OPM team, and there could be consequences involved for those making the changes."

So instead, Dennis Fish, the former head of DEI, reached out to another person who worked on the Mint's e-commerce site and requested the change to his bio. That person made the change and then informed people he hadn't felt he could say no to Fish.

Of course there's still a question about whether or not the Mint is complying with the EO or just hiding the five DEI staffers who were reassigned under other job titles. As for Martin, he filed a grievance with the union for Treasury workers but it was denied earlier this week. He's considering a lawsuit next.

Finally, there is a possible change happening at the Mint as a result of this story by the Free Press. Today the Treasury account on X announced that Mint DEI staffers had been suspended.

This morning, the Treasury Department placed a group of individuals at the U.S. Mint on Administrative Leave and have begun investigating allegations of DEI practices that are contrary to the President’s mandate.

— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) February 28, 2025

I'll update this story if anything else happens today.