Jackie Robinson's Army history briefly scrubbed from Department of Defense websites
An article about baseball great Jackie Robinson's time in the Army was briefly removed from the Department of Defense's website Wednesday, reappearing a few hours later.
Before Robinson's story was restored, the , implying the change was connected to President Donald Trump's executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion.
The article titled "Sports Heroes Who Served: Baseball Great Jackie Robinson Was WWII Soldier" mentioned Robinson's time in the Army when he was drafted in 1942. The original article can be .
Also part of the purge of Jackie Robinson's history of military service were pieces published on the and the . At the time of publication, the Air Force article remains down.
In a statement to regarding why the articles had been removed, Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot referenced DEI and "Woke cultural Marxism."
"As Secretary (Pete) Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Discriminator Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military. It Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services' core warfighting mission. We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms. In the rare cases that content is removed -- either deliberately or by mistake -- that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content accordingly."
The Pentagon added in a follow-up statement to Passan:
"Everyone at the Defense Department loves Jackie Robinson, as well as the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee airmen, the Marines at Iwo Jima and so many others 鈥� we salute them for their strong and in many cases heroic service to our country, full stop. We do not view or highlight them through the prism of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or sex. We do so only by recognizing their patriotism and dedication to the warfighting mission like ever (sic) other American who has worn the uniform."
A search of the Army's website for "Jackie Robinson" found 18 results. Of those 18 articles, 14 of them had been deleted, including pages titled "U.S. Army Soldiers face off against Romanian National Team in Jackie Robinson Trophy baseball game" and "'Wagonmasters' Ruck to Honor Jackie Robinson."
This is not the first major historical webpage to be taken down amid the administration's push to stop diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the U.S. government. Articles about Navajo Code Talkers, Iwo Jima flag-raisers and the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb have all been removed.
Some articles originally taken down have been restored, the Associated Press reported.
The Pentagon said Monday that internet pages honoring a Black Medal of Honor winner and Japanese American service members were mistakenly taken down 鈥� but staunchly defended its overall campaign to strip out content singling out the contributions by women and minority groups, which the Trump administration considers 鈥淒EI.鈥�
Those pages also had "dei" added to the webpage URLs.