DEI Madness at the Department of Defense (UPDATED)

UPDATE: The DoD removes more minority contributions from their website, returns Charles Rogers article

UPDATE (3/17/25): The article about Charles Rogers has been returned due to the outrage generated over the past day or so. In addition to the removals I reported below, Axios reported that articles about Indigenous Code Talkers have been removed by the DoD history erasers.

UPDATE (3/16/25): There is more. I count six altogether. An article about African American soldiers and war heroes has gone missing from the DoD website with the same “dei” treatment. Apparently, a Google search no longer brings up the DoD link, but if you search the DoD website, you can find it. I discovered this by searching the DoD website for William Carney, the first African American recipient of the Medal of Honor.

The result was Carney’s name in an article about the contributions of African American soldiers throughout history. This article lauds Revolutionary War hero James Armistead Lafayette and numerous other heroes and Medal of Honor recipients. What can this be other than racism? When I clicked on the link to the article, I got the same result as for Charles Rogers.

You can read the original article via the Wayback Machine here. You can read an article by Katie Lange (the author of the removed article about Charles Rogers) about William Carney, the first African American Medal of Honor recipient here.

I have found other instances of similar redirections using “dei” to lead website visitors to a “404 - page not found.” I will post those links at the end of this article.

…………………………………………………………. (The original article begins below)

You may not believe this. I didn’t at first. Feel free to check this out for yourself. In fact, I hope you do and if something changes, let me know.

First, use a search engine (I used Google) and search for “Charles Calvin Rogers.” See the image below for the results at the top of the page. Specifically look at the Department of Defense article titled, “Medal of Honor Monday: Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers.”

Now click the link in your search results. If you do, you should go to a page that looks like my image below. (update, Google isn’t bringing up this result today. Just click the link to get to the next step).

You will find that the article is missing with a message “page not found.” Probably you have heard the Trump administration is taking websites down relating to minorities and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), but it is worse than that. Look at the address line of the webpage. It is hard to see so look below at the section in the yellow oval.

Do you see where the address says “deimedal-of-honor-monday?” Someone, apparently at the DoD, added the letters “dei” in front of medal of honor to make the website fail. This appears to be a racist attack at the memory of Charles Rogers. If you search for Charles Calvin Rogers on the DoD site, you get the same link but when you click it, you come to this same page. Rogers’ page has not been moved to another place on the DoD website; it has been sabotaged.

This is infuriating and very sad. Rogers is an American hero and his memory should be held in high esteem. The tribute to Major General Rogers is available at the Internet Archive at this link. If you examine the web address for the archived article, notice there is no “dei” before medal of honor. The last time the page was archived was March 5th so this happened recently.

Unless someone has another explanation, it looks like racism is the official policy of the U.S. DoD. I don’t know enough about hacking to know if someone outside the DoD could do this. I have a request for information in to the press office, if anybody is still working there, maybe I will hear something. If I do, I will pass it along.

According to this DoD press release, articles like this are supposed to be exempt. To read the DoD memorandum, click here.

I didn’t find this on my own. I saw this on BlueSky via an account owned by Brandon Friedman. It is blood-boiling if it is what it seems to be. Even if it isn’t exactly what it seems, it needs to be corrected and Charles Rogers given the respect he earned.

UPDATE: More article removed

Other articles the public can no longer see which appear to be the victim of the DoD’s misguided anti-DEI initiative. I don’t pretend to understand why these articles were chosen and others were not, but none of this is logical.

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3455113/deibrown-would-accelerate-change-in-us-military-to-maintain-deterrence/ (Brown Would Accelerate Change in U.S. Military to Maintain Deterrence > U.S. Department of Defense > Defense Department News)

https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/3675201/deihighlighting-history-wwi-doc-blazes-trail-for-black-hospital-ems-community/ (Highlighting History: WWI Doc Blazes Trail for Black Hospital, EMS Community > U.S. Department of Defense > Story)

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3326203/deimilitary-celebrates-womens-history-month/ (Military Celebrates Women's History Month > U.S. Department of Defense > Defense Department News (https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3326203/military-celebrates-womens-history-month/Rhea McFarland became the firstAfricanAmericanfemale C-17 pilot to receive the...Rhea McFarland became the firstAfricanAmericanfemale C-17 pilot ...)

https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2915157/deiface-of-defense-serving-excellence/ (Face of Defense: Serving Excellence > U.S. Department of Defense > Story (https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2915157/face-of-defense-serving-excellence/Spencer's grandfather was the firstAfricanAmericanprofessor at the University of...Month His father was the firstAfricanAmericanchief judge in ...)

I stopped adding links but when I searched for Hispanic and lgbtq, the same thing happened. It appears that “dei” is being added to the links to divert them to a 404 message. Some photos of minority service members have also been removed as well. Some articles pertaining to minority groups remain on the site. It isn’t clear to me why. Some are news releases and I believe those are exempt from Hegseth’s order. I think they may be in the process of removing them all and just aren’t finished. In any case, as far as I can tell, all of the articles are archived in the Internet Archive. This is all very sad, infuriating, and unnecessary.