White House registers DEI.gov and Waste.gov amid federal workforce purge

By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has registered two new government websites, DEI.gov and Waste.gov, as President Donald Trump and his allies push forward with plans for a massive purge of the federal workforce.

The purpose of the websites - which internet registry records shown were created Tuesday evening at the request of the Executive Office of the President - isn't clear. Neither site was responsive as of Wednesday afternoon. The White House did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

Alexander Urbelis, a lawyer who spotted the change, said the wording of the domains seemed to be drawn from Trump's Jan. 20 executive order slamming DEI, which is short for "diversity, equity, and inclusion" and has become a catch-all term for government or corporate efforts to fight bigotry and promote diversity.

"I think it's a safe bet to guess that both domains will be used to further the administration's anti-waste and anti-DEI agenda," said Urbelis, who works as the general counsel for the Ethereum Name Service and is the architect of a domain name monitoring system that spotted the new sites.

Urbelis said DEI.gov might be used to promote the administration's fight against or perhaps even shame companies who don't toe the administration's line. He said Waste.gov might serve a similar purpose for programs targeted by Elon Musk's team at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to carry out sweeping cuts to U.S. spending.

Musk, the world's richest man, has promised to make swinging cuts to the federal workforce and has routinely taken to the internet to single out specific federal programs or individual government workers for ridicule.

(Reporting by Raphael Satter; editing by Nick Zieminski)