Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth’s misguided effort to get rid of all variety, fairness, and inclusion content material from the Pentagon’s web site has resulted within the removing of things containing the phrase “gay,” regardless of context.
In a single occasion, the Related Press reported that this led the division to mistakenly goal a photograph of the B-29 plane Enola Homosexual, which dropped the primary atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, throughout World Conflict II. In response to the outlet, one such picture options Col. Paul Tibbets Jr. posing in entrance of the aircraft, famous within the caption to be named after his mom.
Different flagged photographs seemingly embrace a headshot of U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. A.C. Homosexual, who seems to have been focused on account of his final title. One other photograph of Military Corp biologists was on the record, too, apparently as a result of it talked about that the group was recording knowledge about fish—together with their gender, dimension, and weight.
The AP reported that at the least 26,000 photos in complete had been flagged for removing as a part of a Day One govt order from President Donald Trump to get rid of such packages throughout the federal authorities, however the purge may delete as many as 100,000 photographs or posts in all.
Notably, this isn’t the primary time Trump and his cronies have labored to whitewash the army. Final month, Pentagon officers directed workplaces to evaluate their respective web sites and take away any references to DEI. Departments had been assigned a deadline of March 5.
The careless technique employed by the Pentagon to take away these photographs highlights how the time period DEI has misplaced its significance underneath the Trump administration. By way of this sweeping mandate, Republicans have demonstrated their failure to understand the true which means of DEI; it capabilities as a substitute as a smokescreen for the social gathering, the place the actual objective is to allow the federal authorities to disclaim alternatives based mostly on race and gender.
That is evident when analyzing different focused supplies similar to photographs of the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation’s first Black fighter pilots to combat for the U.S. Army; an image of retired Air Power Maj. Laura Perry earlier than her gender reassignment surgical procedure in 2014; a photograph of an all-female crew taken throughout Ladies’s Historical past Month; and a picture of one of many first three feminine graduates of the Infantry Coaching Battalion.
Certainly, Hegseth’s division didn’t solely inappropriately goal photographs containing the phrase “gay”; in accordance with AP, many different flagged contents have fun individuals of coloration, transgender troopers, and girls.
Given that almost all if not all of those latter deletions align with Hegseth and Trump’s struggle on DEI, they’re unlikely to get clawed again. (The AP famous, as an example, that some photographs of the Tuskegee Airmen could also be protected on account of historic content material.) However the administration’s ineptitude and hatred are equally vital relating to measuring the impression of the president’s second time period.
Requested concerning the database, a spokesperson for the Pentagon advised AP: “We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms. In the rare cases that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly.”
What’s taking place on the Pentagon displays the Trump administration’s effort to get rid of any DEI-related language on the Inside Income Service, which was equally shortsighted.
Reporting on the time revealed that unrelated content material was additionally focused, similar to references to the “potential ‘inequity’ of withholding a taxpayer’s money or mentions of the potential ‘inclusion’ of a taxpayer identification number on a form,” as reported by The Wall Avenue Journal.
It seems that Pentagon officers didn’t be taught their lesson from that federal company’s slip up. One Marine Corps Official advised the AP that the pictures they’ve submitted “either has been taken down or will be taken down.”
