An article about the life of Jackie Robinson was quietly restored on the Defense Department website Wednesday afternoon after it was taken down as part of a purge of content linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
The webpage details the legendary baseball player’s life before breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball in 1947, as well as his service in the Army during World War II when he was drafted to a segregated unit and later commissioned a second lieutenant.
But on Wednesday morning, the page reportedly redirected to a URL that included “DEI” and an error message stating “Page Not Found.” The page has since been restored, along with other profiles on Native American code talkers and on Ira Hayes—one of the Marines who raised the American flag at Iwo Jima in 1945.
The Pentagon has been working on a “digital content refresh” to comply with President Donald Trump’s directive to scrub federal websites of mentions of DEI, Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot told the Daily Beast in a statement on Wednesday.
“We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms,” Ullyot said. “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 so it recognizes our heroes for their dedicated service alongside their fellow Americans, period.”
Ullyot called DEI “Discriminatory Equity Ideology.”
“It is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission,” he said.
Robinson’s son David said their family was “surprised” to learn that the webpage had been taken down.
“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 said in a statement hailing his father as “an American hero.”
Trump announced last month that Robinson’s statue would be added to a garden of national heroes “who helped drive our country forward to greatness,” alongside NBA star Kobe Bryant and boxing legend Muhammad Ali.
In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.’”
That same month, the General Services Administration announced in a memo that future contracts for government acquisitions are no longer required to include a clause prohibiting segregated facilities.
