Article On Jackie Robinson’s Military Career Removed From Defense Dept. Website Due To Trump’s Anti-DEI Order

An article detailing the late baseball icon Jackie Robinson’s military career was removed from the U.S. Department of Defense website. Pages honoring a Black Medal of Honor winner and Japanese American service members were also removed during the department’s campaign to remove content singling out the contributions by women and minority groups, which Donald Trump’s administration calls diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

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Trump ordered the Pentagon to review federal websites for articles, social media posts, photos, news articles and videos and remove any web pages promoting DEI. Several websites under Pentagon jurisdiction removed thousands of pages describing the history of people of color, LGBTQ people, women and others from marginalized backgrounds and their contributions to the U.S. military. 

Many pages about Robinson, who ended racial segregation in baseball when he started playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, were taken down, including a page about black baseball players talking about serving in the military.

On March 18, a message appeared on the page, saying it “might have been moved, renamed, or may be temporarily unavailable.” The letters “dei” were also automatically included in the URL.

“We were surprised to learn that a page on the Department of Defense’s website featuring Jackie Robinson among sports heroes who served in the military was taken down,” David Robinson, the son of Robinson and a board member of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, said in a statement on Wednesday. 

“We take great pride in Jackie Robinson’s service to our country as a soldier and a sports hero, an icon whose courage, talent, strength of character and dedication contributed greatly to leveling the playing field not only in professional sports but throughout society,” David went on to say.

“He worked tirelessly on behalf of equal opportunities in education, business, civic engagement, and within the justice system,” he noted. “A recipient of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, he, of course, is an American hero.”

ESPN baseball columnist Jeff Passan noticed this removal.

“The ghouls who did this should be ashamed,” Passan declared in an X post. “Jackie Robinson was the embodiment of an American hero. Fix this now.”

Later on Wednesday, the page reappeared on the department’s site, and the Pentagon delivered a statement.

“As Secretary [Pete Hegseth] has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department,” Pentagon press secretary John Ullyotsaid in this statement. “Discriminatory 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,” Ullyot added. “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.”

“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 — we salute them for their strong and, in many cases, heroic service to our country, full stop,” he mentioned. “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 (every) other American who has worn the uniform.”

The department’s page on Robinson stated that “during World War II in 1942,” he had been “drafted and assigned to a segregated Army cavalry unit in Fort Riley, Kansas. In January 1943, Robinson was commissioned a second lieutenant Robinson was then assigned to Fort Hood, Texas, where he joined the 761st ‘Black Panthers’ tank battalion.”

“On July 6, 1944, Robinson boarded an Army bus,” the page about Robinson mentions. “The driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus, but Robinson refused. The driver called the military police, who took Robinson into custody. He was subsequently court-martialed, but he was acquitted.”

“After his acquittal, he was transferred to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky, where he served as a coach for Army athletics until receiving an honorable discharge in November 1944,” the page states.