Since early 2024, the Defense Department has cut or restructured 188 jobs that once managed its diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts — including under President Trump’s 2025 push to dismantle federal DEI efforts — according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday.
No DEI-related jobs are expected to remain in the U.S. military after the end of April, the congressional watchdog said in a letter to the top Republicans and Democrats on Congress’s armed services committees.
According to GAO, the cuts to DEI-related jobs occurred in two waves: The first in 2024, as part of a provision included in that year’s National Defense Authorization Act, and then this year as a result of the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI in the military.
GAO found that the NDAA-driven cuts in 2024 resulted in 32 jobs being completely eliminated, with another 115 positions being restructured to reduce or eliminate their DEI-driven duties. Those findings were reported to the armed services committees’ staffs during a briefing in late January.
At that time, GAO said, DOD employees who worked on diversity-related matters performed jobs that included developing training programs, supporting committees and working groups, maintaining and analyzing data and responding to reporting requirements.
As of July 2024, as a result of the NDAA-driven cuts, DOD had 41 DEI positions, 25 of which were military and 16 civilian. After President Donald Trump issued sweeping anti-DEI orders early in his second administration — rescinding former President Joe Biden’s 2021 order to broaden the diversity of the federal workforce — all of those jobs were either abolished or restructured.
GAO also found the military did not widely use contractors for DEI activities. The Army had one part-time DEI contract employee, whose contract was not renewed, and the Defense Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion used two contract personnel, one of whom was a part-time research position. Defense offices had at least 44 contracts for DEI services, mostly for training, in 2023, GAO found.
The 2024 NDAA barred the DOD from appointing or employing any civilian employee in a job that was primarily related to DEI matters at any General Schedule grade higher than GS-10. Anyone who already held a job at GS-11 or above had to be reassigned by June 19, 2024.
Before those cuts, the department had six DEI employees in the Senior Executive Service and 24 at the highest General Schedule grade, GS-15. There were 37 GS-14s, 36 GS-13s, 51 GS-12s and five GS-11s. There were just four employees at GS-9 and below.
During the DEI purge in the first half of 2024, 32 civilian jobs were eliminated entirely and 115 were restructured, GAO said.
Before these positions began to be eliminated, the Air Force and Space Force had the highest number of DEI-related positions of the services, totaling 103, followed by the Navy with 32.
After the 2024 cuts, the Air Force and Space Force had the most DEI-related jobs, with 19 service members and no civilians performing those duties. The Navy had three civilians and one service member performing those jobs, and the Army had seven civilians and five soldiers working on DEI matters. Other DOD components had six civilians in total.
Most of the department’s civilian DEI jobs, 102 in total, served in administrative roles, such as diversity and inclusion coordinators. Another 31 were program analysts, and there were seven equal employment managers.
The Pentagon created a task force in February, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s orders, to oversee the elimination of DEI offices. The task force, which fell under the undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, defined a DEI office or job as one that was “established for the purpose of influencing hiring or employment practices or promoting preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color or ethnicity,” GAO said, adopting the same definition Trump laid out in his Jan. 27 executive order cracking down on DEI.
According to GAO, the task force confirmed on March 1 that the department was no longer using gender, race, or ethnicity to set goals for organizational composition, academic admissions or career fields.
GAO also examined the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, or DACOWITS, which has existed since 1951 to advise the defense secretary on matters relating to recruitment, retention, well-being and treatment of women in the military. DACOWITS officials said it does not develop or implement DEI policy and its civilian staff was not affected by the 2024 NDAA.
GAO ultimately decided DACOWITS is “DEI-adjacent,” but didn’t count its two civilian and two military positions in its totals.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.
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