Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell Lays Out the Facts on DoD DEI Removal

There have, in recent days, been a lot of discussions and shouting (mostly from the left) about the removal of the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) horse squeeze from the websites and online material of the various government departments, agencies, and offices. No undertaking of this size is going to proceed without some mistakes and oversights, and the Department of Defense is no exception. On Wednesday, the DoD noted that some incorrectly removed information had been restored. On Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell took to X with a video explaining just what is going on.

Here are the facts about the removal of DEI content. pic.twitter.com/gHQWi40aIx
— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellATSD) March 20, 2025

Mr. Parnell said:

Hey, everyone, I want to take a short moment to provide some clarity on our efforts to ensure that our public facing content honors our warfighters, our mission, and reflects President Trump and Secretary Hegseth's priorities. Over the past few weeks, we've taken action to identify and archive DEI content from our websites and social media platforms.
The previous administration's zealous and destructive commitment to DEI not only divided our nation and weakened our force, but it also reduced our country's finest to their immutable characteristics. Without question, this task was an arduous but incredibly important undertaking. We enforced an aggressive timeline for our DOD services and agencies to comb through a vast array of content, while ensuring that our force remains ready and lethal.
Every now and then, because of the realities of AI tools and software, some important content was incorrectly pulled offline to be reviewed. We want to be very clear, history is not DEI. When content is either mistakenly removed or if it's maliciously removed, we continue to work quickly to restore it. We are so proud of our nation's heroes and our heritage. We honor the accomplishments of our warfighters and the content of their character. Americans, past and present, are the greatest people the world has ever known, and we live in the greatest country the world has ever known. And our strength now and has always been our unity and shared purpose.

There are a couple of key points in that statement that merit consideration.

Pentagon Restores Deleted Records of American Heroes to Website, After Possible Malicious Compliance

First, the mention of the previous administration's commitment to DEI, most especially in the Department of Defense. The armed services are like no other institution in our country; they not only should be solely merit-based, they must be merit-based. The very survival of the nation may depend on us having the sharpest spear in the rack, and DEI runs completely counter to that.

Second, a slight hint that some of the data removal may have been malicious compliance: "When content is either mistakenly removed or if it's maliciously removed..." That's interesting, as it's an acknowledgment that some of this may have been done deliberately. Parnell's statement was, by and large, gracious in maintaining the presumption that any data removed was unintentional, other than this one slight blip; it's unclear if they suspect some of it was intentional or not, but it's doubtful many would be surprised if there were some such incidents.

Whether Democrats, the left in general, or former Biden administration members like it or not, the push to remove DEI content from the federal government's websites and social media presences will continue. And that is an unmitigated good thing; it's unnecessary, it's divisive, it's destructive to accomplishing the country's work, and it's unfairly discriminatory. It needs to be dug out, root and branch, and the Trump administration is doing just that.

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