On day one, newly inaugurated President Trump signed an order aimed at eliminating the idea of a “gender identity” separate from sex in the federal government. The order’s scope is broad — it rescinds a long list of Biden-era policies, changes “gender” to “sex” on government forms and calls to end funding for “gender ideology.”

That phrase, “gender ideology,” became one of Trump’s favorite slogans on the campaign trail last year.

“I will take historic action to defeat the toxic poison of gender ideology and reaffirm that God created two genders, male and female,” he said in an October campaign speech.

Now, in that order and in several that followed, the administration is trying to put a longtime political phrase into practice, trying to ensure that the government is not promoting or supporting what it calls “gender ideology.” That means first giving the slogan a definition.

And that definition is a paragraph long:

“”Gender ideology’ replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.”

Opponents say that the definition — and therefore the order’s implementation across the government — are confusingly loose. To Harper Seldin, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, an advocacy group focused on civil rights including transgender rights, that looseness is intentional.

“This is written in a way that is meant to be broad, but also with a specific goal, which is to push trans and non-binary people out of civic life,” he said.

To Jay Richards, director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center at the conservative Heritage Foundation, the definition works.

“‘Gender ideology’ as it’s used in executive order is fairly general, but it’s not hard to tease out what’s meant by the term by actually looking at the effects and the emphases of the executive order itself,” he said.

‘Gender ideology’ as official policy

People gather to defend transgender rights in New York City on Feb. 3, 2025, protesting against President Trump’s executive order signed Jan. 28 to restrict gender transition procedures for people under the age of 19.

Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

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Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

The term “gender ideology” existed well before Trump started using it. According to Factbase, which archives Trump’s public appearances, he first said the phrase publicly in 2022. Transgender and nonbinary people and their allies oppose the term “gender ideology,” as it implies a belief system rather than an identity.

“If we had an executive order that said ‘the left-handed ideology,’ people would understand immediately that that was not quite right,” said Seldin, at the ACLU. “Being left-handed is just a natural variation. Same with being transgender.”

Nearly 2 million American adults identify as transgender, according to a 2023 survey by KFF and the Washington Post, just under 1 percent of adults as a whole.

An administration memo giving directives on implementing the executive order has sparked further confusion, and even fear.

A mental health provider with the Department of Veterans Affairs spoke to NPR anonymously, for fear of retaliation. They said guidance at their job can shift from day to day about, for example, what statistics they can use in presentations.

They also pointed to a line in the memo saying employees whose jobs include quote “promoting gender ideology” should be put on paid leave.

“When we read that we were like, what does that mean? Is that any of us?” the provider said. “Or because of the way our profession looks at gender, is that all of us?”

Ultimately, the provider fears that if policy inhibits mental health care, suicide rates among transgender patients could rise.

A White House spokesperson, speaking on background to provide the administration’s general view, told NPR that they stand by the definition.

Focused on safety

The administration’s definition has a bigger impact than Trump’s initial action focusing on “gender ideology.” It also factors into orders aimed at removing that “ideology” from the military and K-12 schools.

Trump and his allies have long argued that all of this is about keeping women and girls safe.

“The concern is, especially with children and especially in private women’s spaces and in particular, I think, women’s prisons, the categories of gender ideology have started to dissolve the clear distinction between the biological sexes,” said Richards, at the Heritage Foundation.

He points to instances where women in prison have accused transgender women inmates of abuse, including rape. Government data has shown transgender inmates are at a higher risk of sexual victimization than other inmates.

The administration’s actions come amid a broader lack of clarity about the legal rights of transgender people in the United States.

For example, the Supreme Court has ruled that employers cannot fire workers for being transgender. But they have not spelled out further specifics — for example, about bathroom and locker room usage. To Seldin, that lack of clarity gives these orders more power.

“I think executive orders like this are giving folks permission to push the limits of what they can do,” he said.

A transgender woman working in intelligence for a defense contractor also spoke to NPR anonymously for fear of retaliation. She has been told that she’s soon losing access to her workplace’s women’s bathroom.

But Trump’s various executive orders have her wondering what else is coming. She pointed to the order about “gender ideology” in the military, which says that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.”

Should that logic extend beyond military members, she said, she fears losing her security clearance, and therefore her job. As a result, she’s moving into a friend’s basement.

“I don’t feel comfortable signing a new lease anywhere,” she said. “It’s very hard to focus and feel motivated to work for a government that seems like it could fire me at any moment.”

SEOUL — In his meeting with President Trump today, Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba faces a challenge to build personal chemistry with the leader of the country his people depend on for security and trade, while also overcoming Trump’s long-held concerns about being taken advantage of by allies.

Ishiba is the second foreign leader to meet with Trump in his second administration, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Japan hopes that a candid exchange of views between the two leaders will help take the bilateral relationship to “new heights,” chief cabinet secretary and government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said in announcing the visit this week.

Japanese media report that Ishiba spent last weekend huddled with his ministers, working out a game plan for the meeting. But Trump’s concerns, at least, are well known, as he’s been harping on them for more than three decades.

Trump has long felt that Japan and other wealthy allies take advantage of the U.S., racking up big trade surpluses, while paying too little for the cost of American military protection. He famously griped about this in a 1987 full-page advertisement he took out in three top U.S. newspapers.

Currying favor with Trump

On the trade surplus, Ishiba is expected to try to please Trump by offering to buy more U.S. liquified natural gas.

He is also expected to highlight Japan’s role as the largest direct foreign investor in the U.S. for the past five years, although President Biden’s rejection of Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion acquisition of US Steel on national security grounds could dampen Japanese enthusiasm for investing in the U.S.

Ishiba can also point to Japan’s 2022 commitment to roughly double defense spending to 2% of GDP by 2027. Trump has long criticized the defense spending of U.S. allies, saying they don’t contribute enough and rely too much on American support.

But Trump is likely to want more, says Brad Glosserman, deputy director of the Tama University Center for Rule Making Strategies in Tokyo.

“My sense is that the United States is now going to be asking for 3% at a minimum and perhaps even more,” he says.

“That’s going to be extremely difficult for the Japanese to do, given the difficulties that they have at this moment. Again, because of a weak prime minister with competing national policy priorities,” such as trying to boost the country’s plunging birth rate.

Glosserman notes that Ishiba’s party is in the minority in Japan’s parliament, and defense hawks in his own party find him too moderate, and too conciliatory towards China.

It also remains to be seen whether Ishiba can develop a personal rapport with Trump. His predecessor, the late former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, used golf games, sumo wrestling matches and Wagyu burgers to help to cultivate ties with Trump, as he successfully avoided a major tariff war with the U.S.

Ishiba has long called for a more equal alliance with the U.S. “I believe that having the Japan-U.S. relationship as equal as possible will enhance the sustainability of the alliance,” Ishiba told NPR in a 2023 interview.

“Japan has its own national interests, and the United States has its own national interests,” Ishiba commented to reporters following Trump’s inauguration. “I would like to establish a relationship of trust through sincere discussions on how we can make the most of our bilateral relationship for world peace and the global economy,” he added.

Japan considers its alliance with the U.S. as the cornerstone of its foreign policy and any Japanese leader must be seen to be an effective alliance manager. That means Japanese leaders try to get in the White House door as early as possible in a new U.S. administration, regardless of what outcomes can be assured, and before the new administration’s policies have become clear.

“This basic foundation doesn’t change,” says Yoshihide Soeya, professor emeritus at Keio University in Tokyo.

Japan’s unstated fears of U.S. abandonment

What neither Ishiba nor other Japanese officials will discuss publicly is their concern that the U.S. might move away from its commitment to the U.S.-Japan alliance.

“The Trump phenomenon is giving us a signal, a warning, that we should begin to think in a different sort of security paradigm,” Soeya says.

Soeya envisions a new paradigm that includes a “robust middle power network among our regional countries,” such as South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Japan showed its leadership of such a network when Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement in 2018, and Japan regrouped the 11 remaining members of the pact and forged ahead without the U.S., leaving it out of a deal which could have added billions of dollars to U.S. GDP through trade liberalization.

Brad Glosserman believes that “Japan again, has the opportunity to demonstrate leadership,” because Trump has said he will pull out of the 14-member Indo-Pacific Economic Framework established by the Biden administration.

What these powers cannot do without U.S. involvement, Yoshihide Soeya says, is rival China’s growing military might. Were the U.S. to completely retreat from Asia, Soeya says, Japan could find itself back in the sort of China-led Asian order that prevailed for much of the pre-modern era.

Soeya doesn’t think the U.S. will turn its back on Asia, but given the direction in which America-first nationalism and isolationism are currently heading, he says it might be wise for Japan to hedge its bets and look beyond its alliance with the U.S.

Chie Kobayashi contributed to this report in Tokyo.

Some big companies have been announcing the end of their diversity programs – but many others are quiet quitting.

At least a dozen of the largest U.S. companies have deleted some, or all, references to “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and “DEI” from their most recent annual reports to investors, an NPR analysis of regulatory filings has found.

A year ago, all of these companies made references to diversity and inclusion in their disclosures — but in their new reports, all of these companies have rewritten at least some of this language. In some cases, they no longer mention “diversity” at all.

Most of these companies have filed these annual reports in the past two weeks. That’s usually when their reports – which are meant to provide a comprehensive financial review of the past year and update investors on the current business environment – are filed. But these updates are also coming at a time when President Trump has ordered an end to DEI in the federal government — and for its contractors, which includes many private companies.

Companies are also under pressure from conservative critics who say DEI programs are themselves discriminatory against non-minorities.

The companies that have recently deleted or softened their DEI language include Disney, Google, GM, GE, Pepsi, Intel, PayPal, Chipotle, Comcast, 3M, Regeneron, and Philip Morris, according to the NPR analysis. Most companies have not disclosed the reasons for the changes, although some told NPR that they are re-evaluating some of their DEI programs as well as examining Trump’s executive orders.

Silently deleting DEI references

These changes come after Walmart, Target, Amazon, Meta, Ford, and other big companies have made headlines for ending or changing some diversity programs. Now NPR’s analysis finds that many more companies are quietly changing how they talk about DEI to investors.

For most companies, “it makes very little sense to issue a press release saying, ‘I’m going to stop’ — because that’s like waving a red flag to a bull,” says Shiva Rajgopal, a professor of accounting and auditing at Columbia University. “Whenever practices change, the folks who drop them silently are usually in the majority.”

Many companies are indeed being silent about these changes. Last year, for example, automaker General Motors devoted three paragraphs to a section that began: “At GM, we are committed to fostering a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion.”

But in its new 2024 report, filed last week, GM doesn’t mention “diversity” once. (The carmaker does, however, tout its “diverse EV lineup.”) GM, which is a federal contractor, did not respond to requests for comment.

Disney, meanwhile, shortened its “diversity, equity and inclusion” section in its most recent annual report, filed in November. Among other changes, it removed the previous year’s references to a website “for amplifying underrepresented voices” and highlighting “some of Disney’s DE&I commitments and actions.” A Disney spokesperson declined to comment.

And Pepsi eliminated almost all references to diversity, a year after telling investors that “our culture of diversity, equity and inclusion is a competitive advantage.” In its new report this week, Pepsi only mentions diversity in reference to a board committee focused on “sustainability, diversity, and public policy.” The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Slipping DEI changes into the fine print 

Publicly-traded companies are required to file annual reports and other investor disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Many companies end their financial years in late December or soon after, and file these reports starting in late January (although some companies are on different financial calendars).

These annual reports can run more than 100 pages long, and are typically written in dense, lawyered corporate-speak. So it’s relatively common for companies to use these filings to quietly disclose lawsuits or government investigations they are facing — or to slip in other information that they are required to tell investors but don’t wish to announce separately.

In this case, companies are eliminating information and rhetoric that has become politically toxic. There’s no regulatory requirement for companies to disclose their DEI goals or philosophy. Many companies voluntarily did so in the past, especially to please investors, employees, and customers — but now the political environment has changed.

“We have seen companies start to decide that the reward is not necessarily outweighed by the risk anymore,” says Becky Baker, an employment lawyer with Vinson & Elkins.

Some changes go beyond rhetoric

It isn’t the first time that companies have stealthily backtracked from their DEI pledges — or used their annual reports to quietly unveil the changes.

Last April, a Wall Street Journal analysis found that dozens of companies had “altered descriptions” of DEI initiatives in their annual reports. At the time, the Journal reported, “In general, companies say they aren’t cutting back on their programs or longer-term goals.”

But today, some companies are changing more than just their rhetoric. Google on Wednesday told employees that it was ending some diversity hiring targets and re-evaluating some DEI efforts that “raise risk, or that aren’t as impactful as we’d hoped,” the Journal reported.

The tech giant also removed references to diversity from its annual report filed that day. It even went so far as to rename a website focused on its DEI efforts: Last year, Google told investors that more information could be found at the website “diversity.google.” But now that website redirects to “about.google/belonging/.”

“We’re committed to creating a workplace where all our employees can succeed and have equal opportunities,” a Google spokesperson told NPR by email. She added that as a federal contractor, “our teams are also evaluating changes required following recent court decisions and executive orders on this topic.”

Other companies identified by NPR’s analysis have also deleted the specific diversity goals they had previously announced.

For example, Intel told investors in its 2023 annual report that it wanted women to account for 25% of its senior executives by the end of the decade.

“Diversity and inclusion are core elements of Intel’s values,” the tech giant said back then. But in its 2024 report filed last week, Intel deleted the goals. It also erased “diversity” from that sentence, and said instead that “inclusion is a core element of Intel’s values.”

Intel is also a federal contractor. A spokesperson declined to comment.

NPR reached out to all of the other companies discovered in the analysis to have deleted DEI language from their annual reports. PayPal and Philip Morris declined to comment. Chipotle, GE, Comcast, and Regeneron did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump is ramping up the pressure on companies

Some big companies were retreating from DEI before President Trump, a longtime critic of DEI, was re-elected. But now Trump has signed executive orders ending DEI in the federal government, calling them “illegal” as well as “radical and wasteful.”

One of the executive orders threatens to impose financial sanctions on contractors with “illegal” DEI programs. Trump also directed federal agencies to identify up to nine publicly traded companies or other large private institutions for “potential civil compliance investigations.”

These actions are adding to the pressure facing many private employers that have made public promises around diversity, equity, and inclusion. The stakes are especially high for those that – like Google, GM, and Intel – do business with the federal government and are directly affected by the executive orders.

The manufacturing conglomerate 3M, for example, is also a federal contractor. It recently renamed a section on “Diversity, equity, and inclusion,” in the part of its 2023 annual report that discussed its workforce, to just “Inclusion” in its 2024 report filed on Wednesday.

“We will continue to monitor and comply with any changes to our legal obligations as a federal government contractor,” a 3M spokesperson told NPR, adding that the company is “committed to maintaining a work environment where all our people are respected, supported, and encouraged to take individual initiative.”

Companies once embraced DEI, and pledged that creating a more diverse, inclusive workforce would help employees, customers, and the bottom line. But things have changed a lot since the Supreme Court in 2023 overturned affirmative action at colleges and universities. That ruling handed a new legal tool to critics of DEI.

Since then, right-wing politicians, lawyers, and other activists have been ramping up their pressure on companies that have embraced DEI — even before President Trump was re-elected. Anti-DEI activists are also introducing shareholder proposals to pressure various companies into ending their diversity pledges.

But not all companies are bowing to the pressure. Costco, for example, has stood up for its DEI efforts — and last month its shareholders overwhelmingly defeated an anti-DEI shareholder proposal.

The retailer filed its most recent annual report in October. A section on diversity, equity, and inclusion tweaks a few words, but is mostly unchanged from the previous year: “The commitment to ‘Take Care of Our Employees’ includes promoting diversity, equity and inclusion and creating an inclusive and respectful workplace,” Costco said in its latest annual report.

Google, Amazon, Meta, Comcast, and Ford are among NPR’s corporate funders.