D.E.I. D.E.A.D. at D.O.D
A foe the U.S. military can beat
The
Pentagon, which tried and failed for 20 years to defeat the Taliban in
Afghanistan, was able to kill all of its diversity, equity, and
inclusion jobs less than 100 days into President Trump’s second term. Of
course, most of that work had already been done by Congress, which
restricted Defense Department DEI efforts in its 2024 defense
authorization bill.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth created(PDF) a
task force in January that he said was vital to creating a “lethal”
military focused on “lethality” (a two-fer!) by halting efforts to
diversify its ranks. It reported March 1 “that the military services,
the Joint Staff, and the other DOD components conducted evaluations and
certified that there is no use of gender, race, or ethnicity-based goals
for organizational composition, academic admissions, or career fields,”
the Government Accountability Office said in an April 17 letter(PDF) to
Congress. “Further, the report identified key actions the military
services and DOD components took to ensure that no boards, councils, and
working groups promote DEI and other related concepts.”
Given
the Trump administration’s anti-DEI fetish — and the time, focus, and
words they have dedicated to wiping it out — you’re forgiven if you
think Pentagon hallways are now strewn with victims of this purge.
But
under that 2024 law, the GAO reported(PDF) that only 32 DEI positions
were eliminated among the Pentagon’s 950,000civilian workers. The
Defense Department has restricted 115 other jobs “to reduce or eliminate
the positions’ DEI duties,” it added, also under that legislation. And
the Pentagon, it noted, “did not widely use contractors to develop and
implement DEI activities.”
So how many additional DEI slots did Trump’s January edict barring them from the Pentagon end up cutting?
Forty-one,
including both civilian and military personnel. All those positions,
the GAO said, have since been “abolished or restructured” to avoid DEI
cooties.