Down with the Enola Gay? Defense Department purging digital materials under Trump's DEI orders

The Defense Department has marked thousands of pieces of archival material and posts for deletion, complying with President Trump's crusade against anything resembling Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) mandates — including apparently unrelated materials and references flagged by keyword searches.

Among the materials set to be removed from government websites and social media posts are written mentions of WWII veteran history and (at least) 26,000 archival images, reported the Associated Press, including information on Medal of Honor recipients, all women crews, and the Enola Gay, the U.S. military aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

The purge is intended to erase specific military-related mentions of women and minorities — social media posts and website pages that commemorate historic events, but are also inclusive of diversity, are also at risk for removal. The keyword searches for "DEI" content aren't exactly an efficient system, the AP found in its investigation, with posts and image captions that use the term "Gay" (to designate the historical aircraft or, even, a veteran's last name) marked for removal in the database. Information on Army Corps biologists studying the weight, size, and gender of fish were also flagged, as well as seemingly random photos with captions like, “Deadlift contenders raise the bar pound by pound” and “Minnesota brothers reunite in Kuwait.” While some photos and pages have already been deleted, others remain, and it isn't clear what falls under the department's grounds for removal.

An insider told the AP that the purge could result in the deletion of 100,000 images and posts across all military branches, but some workers are attempting to save and screenshot the materials before they are gone. “We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms," said Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot. "In the rare cases that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly.”

The removal order was given by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in February, who recently purged DEI mentions and programs from U.S. military schools and ordered the military to disqualify and ban transgender Americans, expanding an exclusion law put in place under Trump's first term. The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency ("DOGE") recently argued that the cancellation of Defense Department DEI contracts would save $80 million in government spending. The agency has recently been accused of inflating projected savings figures.