NASA Orders Employees to Throw Out Rainbow Flags and Any Other Items Signaling LGBTQI Support

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Amid President Donald Trump's sweeping push to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, employees at NASA are reportedly being told to hide their love away.

According to sources who spoke to former NASA researcher Keith Cowing, people working at the space agency — which previously celebrated its queer and trans employees — have been ordered to remove all symbols of LGBTQI pride from their physical and digital workspaces.

"Employees cannot have pride flags, lapel pins, badge lanyard[s], TEAMS backgrounds, clothing, laptop stickers... or anything related to pride in their offices," Cowing wrote on his blog, NASA Watch.

"The penalty for violating this guidance can result in being put on administrative leave," the ex-NASA-er wrote. "This applies to all employees — not just LBGTQ+ but also LBGTQ+ allies."

Unlike the Trump administration's other anti-woke orders — including the other recent one at NASA that requires all mentions of "women in leadership," indigenous people, and environmental justice be removed from agency sites — this regressive decree was not made in writing.

Instead, as Cowing's sources told him, the demand was made verbally from NASA's advisory council, which informed management of the change and commanded they "inform/warn their staff" accordingly.

Separately, a NASA contractor told The Guardian on condition of anonymity that people working within the agency have been quietly instructed to "leave no paper trail" as they carry out the work of erasing the legacy of diversity efforts at NASA. Together, these claims suggest that the Trump administration is attempting to cover its hindquarters in case of legal action.

After news of NASA's alleged anti-LGBTQI order made its way around Washington, a pair of powerful Congressional Democrats used their pulpits to trash it.

"This is a ridiculous overstep and direct assault on NASA HQ employees’ free speech and humanity," Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Valerie Foushee (D-NC), the ranking Democrats on the House's Space and Aeronautics Committee, said in a joint statement.

"Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s rampant homophobia — and phobia of anything that does not serve their narrow-minded view of who counts as American — is rapidly seeping into Washington at their direction," they continued, "and according to this report, allegedly without an official paper trail."

The pair went on to say that this "government-sanctioned censorship is the latest assault on the rights of federal employees and should not stand" — without mentioning any specific or formal censure measures that are very much within the power of Congress.

In the fact of such blatant and rampant bigotry, it's certainly important for Congress members like Foushee and Lofgren to call a spade a spade. But as the onslaught of such bold-faced fascism continues unabated, we have to wonder: when are the people who can do something about it actually going to?

More on NASA rolling back the clock: Trump Orders NASA to Purge All Mentions of Women in Leadership On Its Websites