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      Naval Academy Takes Steps to End Diversity Policies in Books and Admissions

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      The Pentagon and U.S. Naval Academy are proceeding with actions in support of the Trump administration’s push to eliminate “woke” initiatives throughout the federal government.The U.S. Naval Academy said it had ended its use of affirmative action in admissions, reversing a policy it previously defended as essential for diversity and national security, according to a federal court filing on Friday. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office has ordered the Naval Academy to identify books related to so-called diversity, equity and inclusion themes that are housed in the school’s Nimitz Library, and to remove them from circulation.This week, according to a defense official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss policy decisions, Mr. Hegseth’s office became aware that the nation’s military service academies did not believe that President Trump’s Jan. 29 executive order to end “radical indoctrination” in kindergarten through 12th-grade classrooms applied to them, as they are colleges. The defense secretary’s office informed the Naval Academy that Mr. Hegseth’s intent was for the order to apply to the academies, and that the secretary expected compliance.“The U.S. Naval Academy is fully committed to executing and implementing all directives outlined in executive orders issued by the president and is currently reviewing the Nimitz Library collection to ensure compliance,” said Cmdr. Tim Hawkins, a Navy spokesman. “The Navy is carrying out these actions with utmost professionalism, efficiency, and in alignment with national security objectives.”The academy’s library in Annapolis, Md., houses roughly 590,000 print books, 322 databases, and more than 5,000 print journals and magazines, Commander Hawkins said.The court filing on the admissions policy, submitted by the Naval Academy, the Department of Defense, Mr. Hegseth and other officials, states that the Naval Academy changed its admissions policy in February in response to federal directives prohibiting the practice of considering race, ethnicity and sex during the admissions process.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Nonprofit Caught in the Fray of Trump’s Attacks on Big Law

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      A federal inquiry into D.E.I. practices at 20 law firms zeroed in on SEO, a decades-old program that helps students land jobs on Wall Street.In the process of attacking big law firms this week, the Trump administration hinted at another potential target: a decades-old nonprofit that helps students land jobs on Wall Street.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sent letters to 20 law firms on Monday demanding information on their diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., efforts. All of the letters asked about Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, an organization known as SEO.The letters, and the E.E.O.C.’s interest in SEO, may ultimately amount to no more than a headache. But in singling out the organization, President Trump has taken aim at a program that is core to diversity efforts on Wall Street and put a spotlight on the uncertain future of such efforts amid his escalating attacks on D.E.I.“For several decades, that is one of the largest providers of entry-level talent that has gone on — especially across Wall Street — to grow up and be senior-level talent across all these firms,” Porter Braswell, the founder of 2045 Studio, a membership network for professionals of color, told DealBook.“It’s an incredibly important organization that plays a very meaningful role in developing racially diverse talent,” he added.SEO helps prepare students for Wall Street careers, including by assisting them in getting internships at banks and law firms. The highly selective internship program is different from many of the recruiting organizations that have emerged in recent years to help firms quickly live up to their diversity promises. Lawyers say it would have traditionally eschewed legal scrutiny because it was focused on providing opportunities, not fulfilling a target for diversity numbers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Dropped Policy Prohibiting Contractors From Having Segregated Facilities

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      A bus station in Durham, N.C., in 1940.Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group, via Getty ImagesIn 1962, removing a restroom sign at Montgomery Municipal Airport in Alabama, in compliance with a federal court order banning segregation.Associated PressThe Trump administration has removed a longstanding directive from the civil rights era that explicitly prohibited federal contractors from allowing segregated facilities, the latest move to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion policies from government operations that has drawn fierce rebuke.The removal of the segregated-facilities policy was included in a memo last month from the General Services Administration, which manages federal property and oversees procurement for the federal government. The memo, which applies to all civilian federal agencies, was among the many directives from agencies aiming to purge safeguards put in place in the 1960s to comply with executive orders issued by President Trump on race and gender identity. In his first days in office, Mr. Trump directed agencies to rid themselves of “harmful” and “wasteful” diversity policies, and “gender ideology extremism.”The memo, which came to light after it was reported by National Public Radio this week, drops several clauses from the G.S.A.’s Federal Acquisition Regulation, which is used to solicit contracts for services and supplies. The memo said the wording was “not consistent with the direction of the president.” Among the deletions is a policy, last updated in 2015, that stipulated federal contractors couldn’t have “segregated facilities,” such as waiting rooms, work areas, restrooms, lunchrooms and water fountains.The Civil Rights Act of 1964 still bars discrimination, and segregated facilities, in the United States. But civil rights groups have feared that Mr. Trump’s war on D.E.I. programs has signaled the federal government’s willingness to retreat from enforcing it.Dariely Rodriguez, the acting co-chief counsel for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said that like Mr. Trump’s revocation of a decades-old order issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson barring discrimination in hiring for government contractors, the stripping of the segregation provision “weakens the very safeguards that promote equity and inclusion across multiple sectors, including workplaces.”“The Trump administration’s actions are pressure-testing our democracy, eroding more than 60 years of progress,” Ms. Rodriguez said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Arlington Cemetery Website Loses Pages on Black Soldiers, Women in Military and Civil War

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      Materials on the Arlington National Cemetery website highlighting the graves of Black and female service members have vanished as the Trump administration purges government websites of references to diversity and inclusion.Among the obscured pages are cemetery guides focused on Black soldiers, women’s military service and Civil War veterans. Some of the materials were still online Friday, but they were no longer easily accessible through the cemetery’s website.A part of the site devoted to segregation and civil rights was largely scrubbed. That section once included a walking tour focused on Black soldiers and a lesson plan on reconstruction.The cemetery, which is operated by the Army, said in a statement on Friday that it remained committed to “sharing the stories of military service and sacrifice to the nation with transparency and professionalism” and that it was working to restore links to the content.“We are hopeful to begin republishing content next week,” Kerry Meeker, a cemetery spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday.On Friday, the cemetery’s website still had an active page describing Section 27, which includes the graves of thousands of African Americans freed from slavery. Another active page listed prominent African Americans — including Medgar Evers, Thurgood Marshall and Colin L. Powell — buried on the grounds.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Do Republicans Want to Dismantle the Education Department?

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      President Trump’s fixation reinvigorated the debate over the role of the federal government in education, and created a powerful point of unity between the factions of his party.Two months after the Education Department officially opened its doors in 1980, Republicans approved a policy platform calling on Congress to shut it down.Now, more than four decades later, President Trump may come closer than any other Republican president to making that dream a reality.Though doing away with the agency would require an act of Congress, Mr. Trump has devoted himself to the goal, and is said to be preparing an executive order with the aim of dismantling it.Mr. Trump’s fixation has reinvigorated the debate over the role of the federal government in education, creating a powerful point of unity between the ideological factions of his party: traditional establishment Republicans and die-hard adherents of his Make America Great Again movement.“This is a counterrevolution against a hostile and nihilistic bureaucracy,” said Christopher F. Rufo, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank and a trustee of New College of Florida.Here is how the party got to this moment.Conservatives make their argument.During his 1982 State of the Union address, President Ronald Reagan called on Congress to eliminate both the Energy Department and the Education Department.Bettmann, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Fires Joint Chiefs Chairman Amid Flurry of Dismissals at Pentagon

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      President Trump fired the country’s senior military officer on Friday after weeks of turmoil at the Pentagon, injecting politics into selecting the nation’s top military leader.Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., a four-star fighter pilot known as C.Q. who became only the second African American to hold the chairman’s job, is to be replaced by a retired three-star Air Force general, Dan Caine, who endeared himself to the president when they met in Iraq six years ago.“Today, I am honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lieutenant General Dan ‘Razin’ Caine to be the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Mr. Trump said in a message on Truth Social. “General Caine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a ‘warfighter’ with significant interagency and special operations experience.”Joint Chiefs chairmen traditionally remain in place as administrations change, regardless of the president’s political party. But current White House and Pentagon officials said they wanted to appoint their own top leaders.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also indicated, in a statement about General Brown and General Caine, that Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy, was being fired, as was the vice chief of the Air Force, General James C. Slife.“I am also requesting nominations for the positions of chief of naval operations and Air Force vice chief of staff,” Mr. Hegseth said. “The incumbents in these important roles, Adm. Lisa Franchetti and Gen. James Slife, respectively, have had distinguished careers. We thank them for their service and dedication to our country.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What 11 Black Voters Think About Trump’s Actions in His First Month

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      Many Black Americans were frustrated by the Trump administration’s targeting of D.E.I. programs. But others embraced the speed at which he moved.The first few weeks of President Trump’s frenetic second term, including sweeping actions to end federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, have mostly unfurled during the month of February, when the nation recognizes and celebrates Black history each year.For Black Americans around the country, the new administration’s actions to undo diversity programs — while vowing to celebrate Black history — have felt swift, if not entirely unexpected.Some Black voters interviewed on Thursday said they had anticipated that President Trump’s actions would be destabilizing. Those who supported him embraced his quick changes. Those who voted against him — and some who stayed home last November — were aghast. Most were paying close attention, though some said they felt the need to look away.Veronica McCloud in Burke High School’s library in Charleston, S.C.Nora Williams for The New York TimesVeronica McCloud, 63Retired English teacher in Charleston, S.C.“As a person who was born in the 1960s in the heart of the civil rights movement, what we are seeing feels like an attempt to return to a different era,” Ms. McCloud said. “I am talking about a time when Black Americans were without civil rights in their own country and women had to ask their husbands for permission to join the work force.”She was surprised by the speed with which Mr. Trump signed the sweeping executive order that upended diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Trump Attacks D.E.I., Wall Street Worries

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      Goldman Sachs will drop a demand that corporate boards of directors include women and members of minority groups as financial firms backpedal from D.E.I. promises.Wall Street has not typically been accused of doing too much for women and minority groups. The financial services industry, after all, is one in which more major banks are named after the Morgan family than led by a female chief executive.So it meant something over the past half-decade or so when the biggest names in finance said, over and over again, that they would pour dollars and effort into lending to, hiring, promoting and working with underserved communities.And it means something else now, as many of those much-promoted policies and practices are being scrubbed to be sure they don’t wind up in the cross hairs of the Trump administration’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion.The retreat includes white-collar investment banks, consultancies, mutual funds and stock exchanges. The latest was Goldman Sachs, which said on Tuesday that it would drop a quota that forced corporate boards of directors to include women and members of minority groups. Others on Wall Street are curtailing efforts to recruit Black and Latino employees.One international bank, BNP Paribas, even hit the brakes on programming new events for next month’s International Women’s Day.This pullback has thus far been less overt than, say, in the technology industry, whose executives have made public displays of their support for President Trump’s anti-diversity initiatives. And some financial firms had started to make changes long before the election — opening programs aimed at minority candidates to all, for example.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More