Disappearing DEI or history? Information taken off Arlington National Cemetery site – USA TODAY

A visitor to Arlington National Cemetery’s website earlier this year would have seen links to information about a wide range of notable African Americans, Hispanic Americans and women buried there.
Not anymore.
The Trump administration unpublished, altered, or hid content and links about all three groups buried at the cemetery ‒ one of the nation’s most hallowed military sites.
Links for other “notable graves” of veterans remain, as well as for sports figures, and leaders in politics, medicine, science and culture.
The alterations are part of a sweeping effort by the Trump administration and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to remove references throughout the department to diversity, equity and inclusion issues or “gender ideology.”
Dozens of pages and links on the national cemetery’s website appear to have been caught up in the purge.
One now-missing page on the cemetery’s website linked to 14 educational lesson plans on African Americans, including walking tours and a unit on the famed Tuskegee Airmen, according to a search of the Wayback Machine by Internet Archive. The unlinked lesson plans are still available through a web search.
A similar lesson plan page devoted to the Borinqueneers ‒ a storied unit of Puerto Rican soldiers awarded for their service in the world wars and the Korean War ‒ is now even more difficult to find.
Other pages also vanished from the website, but are still accessible through Google searches.
In response to questions from USA TODAY, the cemetery stated some of the removed content is being restored, while still complying with the orders from President Donald Trump and the Department of Defense. It did not specify which pages will be restored and when.
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Kevin Levin, a historian and educator in Boston who specializes in Civil War history, brought attention to the changes in a newsletter published on March 8. He told USA TODAY he learned of the changes from a teacher using the website.
“The story of Arlington is essentially a story of diversity, equity and inclusion,” Levin said. “That is the very thing that the Trump administration is trying to wipe clean, and that entails erasing our history.”
More than 400,000 people are buried at Arlington. The first military burial at the Virginia cemetery, operated by the U.S. Army, took place on May 13, 1864. Among the historical figures buried there are two U.S. presidents, John F. Kennedy and William Howard Taft; Gen. Colin Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Supreme Justice Thurgood Marshall; and boxer Joe Louis, a former world heavyweight champion and grandson of a slave.
“Stepping on the grounds of Arlington offers a powerful reminder of the service and sacrifice of Americans from all walks of life,” Levin wrote in his newsletter. In recent years, the cemetery had expanded its historical accounts of people who fought and died for the country, he said, creating a way for students around the country who may not get to visit Arlington, to connect with people from more diverse backgrounds.
With the ongoing changes, Levin said he worries about how materials may be rewritten, “and in what way those revisions prevent us from getting at the full history of Arlington.”
From the beginning of his second term, the president made it clear he wanted to eradicate references to diversity, equity and inclusion. He signed an executive order “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs” on Inauguration Day, and another related order on DEI in the military on Jan. 27.
The Office of Personnel Management sent out a memo on Jan. 21 directing all agencies to take several steps on DEI, including taking down “all outward facing media” of diversity and inclusion offices.
On Jan. 29, the DOD distributed a memo stating diversity, equity and inclusion policies are “incompatible” with the department’s values. Hegseth also created a task force to oversee the “standing down” of the diversity and inclusion offices throughout the department and military services and the end of all actions by the offices that promote “ideologies related to systemic racism or gender fluidity.”
“The DOD mission is to win the nation’s wars,” Hegseth said. “To do this, we must have a lethal fighting force that rewards individual initiative, excellence and hard work based on merit.”
Hegseth set a March 1 deadline for an initial report from the task force and a final deadline of June 1.
On Feb. 26, Sean Parnell, assistant to the Defense secretary for public affairs, ordered all department news and feature articles, photos and videos that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion be removed. The memo also directed that all removed items be archived. The memo also stated the websites should provide blanket statements to acknowledge content was being removed to align with the executive orders from the president.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, criticized the recent changes in an emailed statement to USA TODAY, calling them “an egregious insult to the people who have served our country valiantly.”
“Wasting time on so-called culture wars entirely of the Trump Administration’s own making is a monumental waste of time and resources,” Smith said. “If they were serious about addressing inefficiency in the Defense Department there are plenty of real issues to focus on.”
Committee chair Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., did not respond to requests for comment.
Changes also have occurred to other DOD websites, including military branches and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to eradicate mentions of Black History Month and Pride Month, which celebrates gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer and transgender individuals.
In some cases, the keyword searches being used to flag content pulled up subjects that had entirely different meanings. The Associated Press reported, for example, that photos were flagged on the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The news shocked the granddaughter of the pilot Paul W. Tibbetts Jr., whose mother the plane was named for, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
The DOD removed an article linked to Black History Month about Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers, the most senior Black soldier ever awarded the Medal of Honor.
A West Virginia native, Rogers served in the Army for 32 years, including during the Vietnam War. He was recognized for “conspicuous gallantry” for his service while a lieutenant colonel commanding an artillery battalion. He was wounded three times while helping to repel an attack on a forward support base, according to the citation. Awarded the Medal by then-President Richard Nixon in 1970, Rogers was buried at Arlington when he died in 1990.
Social media sleuths noticed the article’s web address in a copy available in the Wayback Machine had the letters “dei” added before medal.
After a public outcry, the department reinstated the article as of Monday, flagging it as part of a historical collection. USA TODAY has asked the DOD for comment about the article removal.
Among the other changes:
◾Some videos and at least three pages with articles for Black History Month in 2024 are no longer available on the Army’s website.
◾Black History Month photos were removed from the DOD’s visual information distribution website.
◾On the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers website, a story about engineering pioneer Hattie Peterson was taken down.
◾On a U.S. Army site, a story with a timeline of LGBTQ+ acceptance in the armed forces is no longer accessible.