Braxton Taylor
President Donald Trump footstomped his agenda to remove all diversity efforts within the ranks on Monday evening by issuing an executive order directly related to the military, a move that comes as the services are working to comply with similar actions issued on his first day in office.
The executive order titled “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” aims to “abolish every [diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI] office within the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security,” meaning it would apply to all the uniformed services — including the Coast Guard.
Trump’s order comes on the heels of his first executive orders signed last week, which already sent the military services scrambling to remove anything they deemed would be related to diversity efforts. Initial actions included removing Air Force groups that advocated for better quality-of-life changes, canceling a wide range of seemingly unrelated Navy policies, and stopping all outward-facing media related to diversity in the Army.
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“The EO [executive order] and DEI efforts signed last night extend the original EO from issues that more broadly affected all government employees to the specific implementation for uniformed service members,” Katherine Kuzminski, the deputy director of studies and the director of the Military, Veterans and Society Program at the Center for a New American Security think tank, told Military.com on Tuesday.
The removal of those diversity efforts in the military was one of several defense-related executive orders signed Monday evening.
While some specific policies related to Trump’s executive actions have been cut, none of the services has provided a comprehensive explanation or list of what is deemed in violation of the executive orders. The Pentagon on Tuesday was still unpacking what the latest directive means for the Department of Defense.
“The Department of Defense will fully execute and implement all directives outlined in the executive orders issued by the president, ensuring that they are carried out with utmost professionalism, efficiency and in alignment with national security objectives. We will provide status updates as we are able,” according to a department statement.
Implementation of Trump’s initial executive order last week seemingly caused widespread confusion among the services, and even led to the Air Force temporarily removing educational material related to the historic Tuskegee Airmen and female pilots during World War II from the service’s boot camp curriculum. The courses were reinstated days after being removed for review if the lessons were in violation of the president’s orders.
Notably, Trump’s order asks the military to “carefully review the leadership, curriculum and instructors of the United States service academies and other defense academic institutions associated with their respective departments to ensure alignment with this order.”
Some programs within the services seem like they may be a clear target for Trump’s executive order, such as the Air Force’s 2022 initiative to recruit more diverse candidates into the officer corps.
Military.com reported last month that the service failed to reach many of its aspirational and lofty diversity goals in the 2023 and 2024 school years for the Air Force Academy and Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC. Air Force officials have not disclosed the status of that program to Military.com.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have 30 days to provide guidance to their respective departments, the order says.
Additionally, in 10 days, Hegseth and Noem must submit a report “documenting the progress of their respective departments in implementing this order.”
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