Building lethality in the military may be the buzzword for the new Trump administration, but busywork and paperwork have become the reality at the Pentagon, as service members and civilian workers are facing a broad mandate to purge all of the department’s social media sites and untangle confusing personnel reduction moves.
On Wednesday, the department’s top public affairs official signed and sent out a new memo requiring all the military services to spend countless hours poring over years of website postings, photos, news articles and videos to remove any mentions that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion.”
If they can’t do that by March 5, they have been ordered to “temporarily remove from public display” all content published during the Biden administration’s four years in office, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The new directive comes as the military services also are scrambling to identify probationary workers the administration has targeted for firing under its campaign to slash the government workforce. They are also trying to figure out how many civilian workers have agreed to leave under the government-wide buyouts and whether they have been approved.
Among the firings were senior military leaders late last week, including Gen. CQ Brown Jr., who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations; Gen. Jim Slife, vice chief of the Air Force; and the judge advocates general for the services. Top leaders had been targeted as part of the campaign to rid the military of so-called “woke” leaders, but the firing of the JAGs didn’t seem to fall into that category.
The latest social media directive hits just days after the department issued a separate memo to the services reminding forces to remain apolitical and focused on “the non-partisan execution of their duties.”
“Given the intense focus on recent changes within the department, maintaining the public trust is more important than ever,” said the memo, signed Feb. 19, by Darin Selnick, who is temporarily working as the undersecretary for personnel.
The move to purge content on diversity is part of Trump’s broader executive order ending the federal government’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs. But confusion has swirled among federal agencies, since Trump himself marked Black History Month at the White House with a reception that featured golf legend Tiger Woods.
U.S. officials said this week that military leaders were initially told they would have just days to scour their websites going back decades for stories on gains in the military by women and minorities or stories celebrating cultural heritage. When the leaders said they didn’t have the manpower to meet the deadline, they got the option to simply wipe away all posts from the last four years.
Employees would then go through all that content to determine what must be publicly removed and archived and what can be reposted. But officials said that given the expanse of the task, many may just remove all content from the last four years and start over with new sites — essentially erasing the Biden tenure from the department’s online history. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to relay internal discussions.
Signed by Sean Parnell, the department’s new chief spokesman, the memo provides a bit more detail on the DEI purge that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered. But it also has left the services and department sections scrambling to find workers to devote substantial time to the detail-intensive task.
Officials said they are concerned that the directive has added yet another distraction as they try to focus on meeting Trump’s broader mandate to increase lethality. They worry there is little time to strip years of old military web pages of all DEI content — and to do so means pulling staff from other more critical warfighting and security tasks.
It also isn’t entirely clear what makes a story, post, photo or video “DEI-related.”
According to the memo, it includes content that promotes programs or materials about critical race theory, gender ideology and special treatment for individuals based up gender, race or ethnicity. It also refers to any content that is counter to “merit-based or color-blind policies” — which could include news items that focus on a service member or employee’s race or gender.
And despite Trump’s celebration of Black History Month, it also calls for the elimination of all content that promotes so-called cultural awareness months that Hegseth decried in an earlier memo titled “Identity Months dead at DOD.”
In that Jan. 31 memo, he said that “efforts to divide the force — to put one group ahead of another — erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.” He has also argued that efforts to broader diversity took emphasis away from warfighting.
As a result, he said the department and the services can’t use official resources to host celebrations or events related to Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month and National American Indian Heritage Month.
Instead, he said units and offices “are encouraged to celebrate the valor and success of military heroes of all races, genders, and backgrounds as we restore our warrior culture and ethos.”
The new edict raises questions about how workers will determine what to pull down. And it triggers fears that there could be another overreaction — as workers remove all photos or videos of women and minorities to ensure they don’t miss something.
Such overreach caused problems early on following Trump’s initial order to purge DEI from social media — the Air Force quickly took down new recruit training courses that included videos of the Tuskegee Airmen.
That mistake drew the White House’s ire and left the service open to criticism that it was engaging in “malicious compliance.” The Air Force quickly reversed the removal of the videos.
Tara Copp is a Pentagon correspondent for the Associated Press. She was previously Pentagon bureau chief for Sightline Media Group.
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