The Claim

Directed the Department of War to end its nonsensical “diversity, equity, and inclusion” measures that inhibited service members from meeting their mission.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

That the president directed the Department of War (the rebranded Department of Defense) to terminate DEI programs, and that those programs were “nonsensical” and actively “inhibited service members from meeting their mission.”

What is being implied but not asserted?

Several things at once. That DEI programs were a significant drag on military readiness. That removing them constitutes a meaningful “win” for the armed forces. That the president’s action was the decisive cause of their elimination. And that calling the Pentagon the “Department of War” is a natural, established fact rather than a rhetorical rebranding executed seven months after the DEI executive order was signed.

What is conspicuously absent?

That Congress had already mandated the elimination of most DEI positions through the bipartisan FY2024 NDAA — signed by President Biden — which removed 78% of DEI positions before Trump took office. That no peer-reviewed evidence has ever demonstrated DEI programs “inhibited” mission performance. That the “Department of War” is not the department’s legal name — only an executive-order-authorized secondary title that has no statutory force. And that this claim substantially duplicates item 191, which claims credit for “reversing Biden-era diversity mandates.”

Padding Analysis: Overlap with Item 191

Item 191 claims: “Improved overall military readiness by reversing Biden-era diversity mandates and readiness declines.” Item 201 claims credit for directing the end of DEI measures. Both describe the same executive order (EO 14185, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” January 27, 2025) and the same Hegseth memo establishing the task force. The only distinction is framing: item 191 focuses on the readiness improvement supposedly caused by DEI elimination, while item 201 focuses on the directive itself. This is a single action presented as two separate “wins.”

Items 198 (transgender ban), 199 (grooming/physical standards), and 200 (sex-change surgery funding) are also components of the same executive order and accompanying Hegseth directives. The January 27, 2025 cluster of military orders has been sliced into at least five separate “wins” in this list.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

Trump signed Executive Order 14185, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” on January 27, 2025, directing the abolition of all DEI offices within DoD and DHS. The EO instructed the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Homeland Security to issue implementation guidance within 30 days, complete a review of past DEI actions within 90 days, and submit a progress report within 180 days. It prohibits race- or sex-based preferences in promotions, command assignments, and special duty selections, and bans teaching “divisive concepts” and “gender ideology.” ¹

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo on January 29, 2025, establishing the “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” task force. The task force was “charged with overseeing the Department’s efforts to abolish DEI offices and any vestiges of such offices that subvert meritocracy, perpetuate unconstitutional discrimination and promote radical ideologies related to systemic racism and gender fluidity.” Initial report due March 1, 2025; final report due June 1, 2025. ²

Congress had already eliminated the majority of DoD DEI positions before Trump took office. Section 1101 of the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act — signed by President Biden — capped DEI civilian positions at GS-10 pay grade and mandated reassignment of personnel with primary DEI duties. GAO documented that DoD reduced DEI positions from 188 to 41 by July 2024. Of the original 188 positions, 147 (78%) were eliminated or restructured under the Biden administration’s compliance with the bipartisan congressional mandate. Trump’s executive orders eliminated the remaining 41. ³

By April 2025, GAO confirmed all DEI positions at DoD had been eliminated. The remaining 41 positions (25 military, 16 civilian) were abolished or restructured following the executive orders. The Air Force and Space Force had the most (19), followed by the Army (12). A federal DEI advisory committee was disbanded. ⁴

Trump signed Executive Order 14347 on September 5, 2025, authorizing the secondary title “Department of War.” This is the order that renamed DoD for branding purposes. It functions as a “doing business as” arrangement — only Congress can formally rename a federal department by amending the National Security Act of 1947. The January 2025 DEI executive order used “Department of Defense” throughout, because the “Department of War” rebranding did not exist yet. The claim retroactively applies the September branding to a January action. ⁵

Pentagon DEI spending was a fraction of the defense budget. Dedicated DEI activities were budgeted at $68 million (FY2022), $86.5 million (FY2023), and $114.7 million (FY2024 request). For context, the FY2024 defense budget was $886 billion. DEI spending represented approximately 0.013% of the defense budget. ⁶

Strong Inferences

No peer-reviewed evidence demonstrates that DoD DEI programs “inhibited service members from meeting their mission.” RAND Corporation research has consistently found that diversity and inclusion efforts have minimal negative impact on readiness and unit cohesion. Their 2010 study on sexual orientation integration found “few impacts on the readiness of U.S. armed forces.” Studies on gender integration found “only small effects on the matters that count most: defense readiness, unit cohesion, and morale.” The Heritage Foundation and Claremont Institute have published arguments that DEI harmed readiness, but these are advocacy positions, not empirical studies with controlled methodology. The claim that DEI “inhibited” mission performance is an assertion without supporting evidence from military readiness metrics. ⁷

The anti-DEI campaign extended well beyond eliminating programs into purging personnel and content. Six senior officers were fired in February 2025, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. CQ Brown and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti — the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs. Hegseth called Franchetti a “DEI hire.” Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield was fired reportedly for a Women’s Equality Day presentation she gave in 2015. 381 books were removed from the Naval Academy library using keyword searches for “diversity,” “gender,” and “feminism.” The Army identified 59 keywords including “respect” — one of its own seven core values — to locate and delete online content related to women and minority soldiers. ⁸

Military recruiting improved in FY2025, but the turnaround began under Biden and is attributable to multiple factors unrelated to DEI elimination. All services met FY2024 goals before DEI elimination took effect. The Army’s Future Soldier Preparatory Course (launched 2022) provided ~25% of recruits. Congress approved 4.5% base pay raises plus 10% for junior enlisted. PolitiFact rated Trump’s claim of credit for recruiting improvements as “Mostly False.” Women’s enlistment rose 18% year-over-year in 2025 — an outcome inconsistent with the theory that eliminating DEI and the transgender ban would improve recruiting. ⁹

What the Evidence Shows

The factual core of this claim is real: Trump did sign an executive order directing the elimination of DEI programs within the Department of Defense. That order was implemented, and by April 2025, the GAO confirmed no DEI positions remained. This is verifiable, documented government action.

But the claim is misleading in nearly every other dimension. The claim that DEI measures “inhibited service members from meeting their mission” is a political assertion presented as established fact. No military readiness metric supports it. DEI spending represented 0.013% of the defense budget — a rounding error in a department that has failed its own financial audit seven consecutive times. The actual readiness challenges facing the U.S. military — aging equipment, recruitment shortfalls driven by physical fitness and economic factors, housing quality, base infrastructure — are orders of magnitude larger than anything related to DEI programming.

The rhetorical packaging is doing heavy lifting. Calling the Pentagon the “Department of War” — a name change that didn’t occur until eight months after the DEI order was signed — signals a combative, martial framing. The claim retroactively applies September 2025 branding to January 2025 policy. This is not a factual error so much as a deliberate narrative construction: the “Department of War” ended the “nonsensical” DEI regime. The reality is that the Department of Defense issued an executive order eliminating programs that Congress had already largely defunded.

The most troubling aspect is what the DEI elimination campaign actually entailed beyond the formal program closures. The firing of senior officers including the first female Chief of Naval Operations and the second Black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the removal of 381 books from academy libraries, the Army’s use of keywords including “respect” and “dignity” to purge content about women and minority service members — these actions go well beyond eliminating bureaucratic programs. They represent a systematic effort to remove not just DEI offices but the institutional recognition of diversity as a military value. Thirty-five retired senior defense officials, including four former Joint Chiefs chairmen, warned that placing a diverse force under homogeneous leadership is “a recipe of internal resentment, discord, and violence.”

The Bottom Line

Steel-man acknowledgment: The Trump administration did direct the elimination of DEI programs within the Department of Defense, and the directive was fully implemented. Reasonable people can debate whether DEI programs in the military had become bureaucratically excessive or misaligned with warfighting priorities. The $114.7 million FY2024 budget request represented growth, and some training content — like unconscious bias workshops — had unclear connections to combat readiness. A president has legitimate authority to set policy priorities for the armed forces.

But the claim is misleading on multiple fronts. It takes credit for completing a process Congress had already mandated and the Biden administration had already largely executed. It asserts without evidence that DEI programs “inhibited” mission performance. It uses anachronistic branding — “Department of War” — that didn’t exist when the action was taken. It substantially duplicates item 191’s identical claim of credit. And the execution of the anti-DEI campaign went far beyond eliminating programs, extending into personnel purges, content censorship, and the removal of “respect” from the Army’s own acceptable vocabulary. The directive was real; the framing is a scaffold of unsupported assertions and rhetorical packaging around a largely pre-accomplished outcome.

Footnotes

1. White House, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” January 27, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-americas-fighting-force/ ↩

2. U.S. Department of Defense, “Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s Guidance on Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” January 29, 2025. https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4047141/ ↩

3. GAO-25-107397, “Department of Defense: DEI Workforce Reductions,” April 2025. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107397 ↩

4. Defense One, “There’s no more DEI at DOD, watchdog finds,” April 17, 2025. https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/04/theres-no-more-dei-dod-watchdog-finds/404669/; Federal News Network, “DoD eliminated most DEI jobs well before Trump took office,” May 2025. https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-main/2025/05/dod-eliminated-most-dei-jobs-well-before-trump-took-office/ ↩

5. White House, “Restoring the United States Department of War,” September 5, 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restoring-the-united-states-department-of-war/; Military.com, “The Department of War? Not Legally,” October 17, 2025. https://www.military.com/feature/2025/10/17/department-of-war-not-legally-what-trumps-executive-order-really-does.html ↩

6. Fox News, “Pentagon asks for $114M to spend on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in 2024.” https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pentagon-asks-114m-spend-diversity-equity-inclusion-accessibility-2024; National Review, “Pentagon Requests $114 Million for DEI Initiatives.” https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pentagon-requests-114-million-for-dedicated-diversity-and-inclusion-activities/ ↩

7. RAND Corporation, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Military.” https://www.rand.org/nsrd/pubs/topics/diversity-equity-and-inclusion.html; RAND, “New Opportunities for Military Women: Effects Upon Readiness, Cohesion, and Morale.” https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR896.html ↩

8. CFR, “Trump’s DEI Purge in the Military Puts U.S. National Security at Risk,” April 2025. https://www.cfr.org/blog/trumps-dei-purge-military-puts-us-national-security-risk; Military.com, “No More Female 4-Stars,” February 27, 2025. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/27/no-more-female-4-stars-franchetti-firing-leaves-top-ranks-filled-men.html; Military.com, “Army Deleting Online Content,” February 28, 2025. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/02/28/respect-among-key-words-army-using-delete-online-content-related-women-minority-troops.html ↩

9. NPR, “Military recruiting numbers are up, but the rise started before the election,” May 19, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/19/nx-s1-5397229/military-recruiting-numbers-are-up-but-the-rise-started-before-the-election; PolitiFact, “Military recruitment is up. Donald Trump? Joe Biden?” March 11, 2025. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/mar/11/donald-trump/military-recruitment-is-up-donald-trump-joe-biden/ ↩