NASA instructs employees to remove pronouns from all work communications

NASA employees are being required to strip all pronouns from emails and other applications, according to an all-staff email seen by NPR.

The unsigned email came in response to several executive orders, including one called “Defending women from gender ideology and extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.” The order was signed by President Trump on the day he entered office, and among other things, calls on agencies to “end the Federal funding of gender ideology.”

“In response to the Executive Orders, NASA has disabled features in id.nasa.gov and Teams that allows users to add pronouns in their display name in Microsoft Outlook and Teams,” the email reads. “For users who have previously added pronouns to their display name, those pronouns will be automatically removed from the system this week.”

“In addition,” the email says, “NASA has adopted a uniform signature block for emails that are sent using any nasa.gov email address. All users (civil servants, contractors, and grantees) must modify their signature block to follow the appropriate signature block… the signature block should not include additional embellishment.”

The step to remove pronouns is the latest by the space agency to comply with the White House’s desire to restrict certain kinds of content within government systems. The outlet 404 media, an independent journalist-founded media website, has reported that NASA employees were required to “drop everything” and remove a list of words from public facing websites including “Indigenous people” and “Anything specifically targeting women (women in leadership, etc.).”

And NASA’s acting administrator had previously announced that the agency was ending all DEI programs because they “divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination.”

NASA’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.