The White House is trying to get journalists to stop including their pronouns in their email signatures by threatening to ghost those who do.

“As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the New York Times. She wrote that in response to a Times reporter who asked about a climate research observatory.

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“Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story,” she added.

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“As a matter of policy, I don’t respond to people who use pronouns in their signatures as it shows they ignore scientific realities and therefore ignore facts,” Katie Miller of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, which is not a real executive department) told another New York Times reporter who sent her a question about DOGE’s record-keeping. “This applies to all reporters who have pronouns in their signature.”

In January, shortly after Donald Trump was inaugurated, the administration’s Office of Personnel Management told executive department and agency heads to remove references to “gender ideology” from all official documents, including emails.

“All employees are required to remove any gender-identifying pronouns from email signature blocks by 5:00 PM today,” a memo sent by a State Department official to department employees said at the time.

Trans people, allies, and progressives often include pronouns — like he/him, she/her, or they/them — in their email signatures in order to be referred to correctly by people they might not have ever met in person. This helps facilitate communication by reducing the chances that someone will be misgendered — either because they’re transgender or nonbinary, their name isn’t exclusive to one gender, or they are from a culture whose naming practices are often misunderstood by the dominant culture — and does so in a way that is non-confrontational.

Some people who are unlikely to be misgendered may also include pronouns in their email signature as a sign of solidarity with trans and nonbinary people.

But conservatives have long been outraged by this practice because it is meant to show solidarity with trans people, who conservatives have devoted years to attacking. Pronouns in email signatures are a constant reminder that trans people exist and that there are people who support their equality.

Matt Berg of Crooked Media told the Times that he tested the White House policy on this. He doesn’t usually have his pronouns in his email signature, but he added a “(he/him)” to it and emailed Miller a question about Ukraine policy. He got the same message back that the Times reporter did.

“I find it baffling that they care more about pronouns than giving journalists accurate information, but here we are,” Berg said.

But the administration has made attacking journalistic independence a key focus. The White House banned the Associated Press (AP) from press briefings and other events where the media is usually present after it refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

The AP sued, and a federal judge ordered the White House to end its ban on AP journalists, citing the First Amendment.

The White House has not said whether it has a formal policy that all administration officials are following about journalists with pronouns in their email signatures or if Miller and Leavitt are just particularly bothered by pronoun-sharing.

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