More stories

  • in

    We’re minimizing the horror of Trump’s military birthday parade | Judith Levine

    In 2017, watching a two-hour Bastille Day procession, Donald Trump told the French president that we’d have one too, only better. That time, the grown-ups said no. The reasons given were costs – estimates ran to $92m – hellish logistics, and the Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser’s worries that tanks and other armored vehicles would tear up Washington’s streets.Some retired generals objected publicly to the totalitarian-adjacent optics, especially given the US president’s praise for such bad actors as Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin. Several Republican lawmakers also expressed their distaste. “Confidence is silent, and insecurity is loud,” the Louisiana senator John Kennedy told MSNBC. “America is the most powerful country in all of human history … and we don’t need to show it off. We’re not North Korea. We’re not Russia, we’re not China,” he continued, “and I don’t wanna be.”This time, as Washington prepares for a huge military shindig on 14 June, Trump’s 79th – and, oh yes, the US army’s 250th – birthday, the generals are silent. The Republicans have sworn allegiance to the king. And the media are focused on the price tag, the potholes and the impending pomp; on tensions between the blue city of Washington and the red capital; and on the decimation of veterans’ healthcare, housing, and pensions while the administration throws $25m to $45m at a circus of war.All are important parts of the story. Yet commentary is muted and the debate mischaracterized as normal political discourse. The horrific point is missed: the spectacle of a massive show of military might, before a president who behaves like a dictator and views the armed forces as his personal foot soldiers, evinces memories of the worst totalitarian regimes. History may mark 14 June 2025 as the ceremonial birth of a new American fascism.Military Parade in Capital on Trump’s Birthday Could Cost $45 Million, Officials Say, reported the New York Times in mid-May. CBS also led with the cost. The Washingtonian described in detail the street-damage-preventive measures the army is installing: metal plates under the parade route, rubber padding on the tank treads – though transportation experts warn that running, at last count, 28 Abrams tanks, 28 Bradley fighting vehicles, 28 Strykers, and four Paladins, each behemoth weighing as much as 70 tonnes, could buckle the asphalt and smash power, water and telecom lines underneath.Even the New Republic, the president’s daily disparager, put the cost up top, tallied the ordinance, and noted that the man who “signed an executive order creating a program to ‘beautify Washington DC’” was now “plotting to transform his expensive birthday party into a demolition derby that will cause serious damage to the roads that line the nation’s capital”.In late May, three weeks after the Associated Press first revealed the parade plan, the army promised it would pay to fix the streets. It did not commit to picking up the multimillion-dollar tab for policing and cleanup, however, which will come out of a city budget from which the House cut $1.1bn in March and didn’t get around to restoring.Still, the partial resolution of the infrastructure problems liberated the press to get on with the fun stuff: “what to expect” on the festive day: not just planes, tanks and 6,700 soldiers, but also fireworks, football players and fitness competitions. USA Today linked to the free tickets page and published the parade route, plus a map of the military goodies on display, including robots and night-vision goggles. It called the event an “unofficial birthday party”. ABC News ran a feature on Doc Holliday, the dog who will join the parade in a mule-drawn cart.Tucked into some stories was a sentence or two indicating controversy, such as this from Reuters: “Critics have called a parade an authoritarian display of power that is wasteful, especially as Trump slashes costs throughout the federal government.”“The plans have drawn some criticism from Democrats,” said CBS.The Hill wrote: “Democrats and critics have questioned both the cost of the parade and whether it politicizes the military, which has traditionally been nonpartisan. The fact that the parade falls on Trump’s birthday has only fueled criticism from Democrats who view it as a way for the president to celebrate himself.”Over at Fox, they were telling the critics to get over themselves. “The Democratic party, they’ve chosen to be an outrage machine at a time when there is outrage fatigue in this country,” scoffed Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s former press secretary and current Fox News host. “People are fed up with the ‘authoritarianism coup’ language.”It’s true. Only one party is complaining. But what is striking about their complaints is the relative dearth of authoritarian coup language. “The egotist-in-chief wants taxpayers to foot the bill for a military parade on his birthday,” said Steve Cohen, a US representative from Tennessee, in a statement. As if the president were moved by mere narcissism.Reported Forbes on 15 May: “There has been no formal pushback to the proposal.”Trump likes hulking lethal toys, but he hasn’t always been partial to the people who run them. There was the fight he picked with a couple of Muslim Gold Star parents during his first campaign; the comments on a 2018 European trip that fallen soldiers are “losers” and “suckers”; the undisguised queasiness about seeing or being seen with wounded veterans; the Pentagon session where he called his top officers“a bunch of dopes and babies”.But he is warming to the role of commander in chief. In his commencement speech at West Point, between bloviations on Nato, drag shows, golf and trophy wives, he boasted about the unprecedented $1.1tn military budget. “You’ll become officers in the greatest and most powerful army the world has ever known,” he said. “And I know because I rebuilt that army, and I rebuilt the military … like nobody has ever rebuilt it before.”Also breaking from script on Memorial Day at Arlington Cemetery, he suggested that the parade, on top of nabbing the World Cup and the Olympics, was divinely ordained. “Look what I have, I have everything,” he cried. “Amazing the way things work out. God did that.”If he is to ease from commander of the armed forces to commander of everything, he will need more than God on his side. He’ll need to own the military. Forty-five million bucks is a good starting bid.Stalin’s 50th birthday celebration, in 1929, is considered the kickoff of his cult of personality. Hitler’s 50th birthday military parade, in April 1939, was organized by the propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels for maximum grandeur, including a motorcade of 50 white limousines. Five months later, Germany invaded Poland.Kim Jong-un changed Loyalty Oath Day from 1 January to his birthday, 8 January. This February, the Republican US representative Claudia Tenney of New York introduced a bill to designate Trump’s birthday as a national holiday. It hasn’t gone anywhere – yet.The pieces are lining up like a phalanx of soldiers. The website of America250, the non-profit fundraising and marketing arm of the Semiquincentennial Commission, is an advertisement for Trump. Its description of the “grand military parade” refers to him in the second sentence and proclaims that under his “leadership, the U.S. Army has been restored to strength and readiness”.At the parade, the crowd of 200,000 spectators will be dominated by Maga idol worshippers. Trump will watch the extravaganza from a reviewing stand, just like Xi Jinping and Putin did recently at Red Square. The army’s Golden Knights parachute team will land on the Eclipse and hand the president a flag. Officials say there are “no plans” to sing Happy Birthday, but there are rumors the army will also give Trump a birthday gift.Let’s call 14 June what it promises to be: the ceremonial birth of the US’s 21st-century fascist regime.

    Judith Levine is a Brooklyn journalist and essayist, a contributing writer to the Intercept and the author of five books. Her Substack, Today in Fascism, is at judithlevine.substack.com More

  • in

    Trump peppers Memorial Day speech with personal boasting and partisan attacks

    Donald Trump honored the sacrifices of US military veterans in the traditional presidential Memorial Day speech at Arlington national cemetery, but also peppered his address on Monday with partisan political asides while talking up his own plans and achievements.The US president laid a wreath and paid tribute to fallen soldiers and gave accounts of battlefield courage as tradition dictates, from prepared remarks, after saluting alongside his vice-president, JD Vance and defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who both served in Iraq.But Trump also veered off into rally-style personal boasting and brief partisan attacks during the solemn event.“Those young men could never have known what their sacrifice would mean to us, but we certainly know what we owe to them. That valor gave us the freest, greatest and most noble republic ever to exist on the face of the earth,” he said of those killed in military service.Then he went on: “A republic that I am fixing after a long and hard four years. That was a hard four years we went through.”The president continued with an anti-immigration statement that chimes with his agenda, though without directly mentioning his predecessor, Democratic president Joe Biden who served between Trump’s first term and the Republican’s return to the White House this January.“Who would let that happen? People pouring through our borders unchecked. People doing things that are indescribable and not for today to discuss,” Trump said.It was a nod to his Truth Social platform on Monday morning where he posted a tirade against judges who hold up his deportation aims, chiefly because of his ignoring due process obligations, as “monsters” and again attacked undocumented immigrants, using sweeping disparagements.At Arlington, he added, to cheers from supporters in the crowd: “We will do better than we’ve ever done as a nation, better than ever before. I promise you that.”Drawing attention to airmen lost in a raid over Vietnam and to a soldier lost to a suicide bombing in Iraq, while family members listened to the speech at the cemetery on the outskirts of Washington DC, Trump said: “These warriors picked up the mantle of duty and service, knowing that to live for others meant always that they might die for others. They asked nothing. They gave everything. And we owe them everything and more.”“The greatest monument to their courage is not carved in marble or cast in bronze – it’s all around us, an American nation 325 million strong, which will soon be greater than it has ever been before,” he said. “It will be.”He also used the solemn occasion to promote the celebration next month of the US army’s 250th anniversary, which he said “blows everything away, including the World Cup and including the Olympics, as far as I’m concerned”.Both events – the soccer World Cup next year, and the next summer Olympics in 2028 – are set to be held in the US within the span of Trump’s second term.Trump said: “We have the World Cup and we have the Olympics. I have everything. Amazing, the way things work out. God did that – I believe that,” he remarked of the timing. He added that “in some ways I’m glad I missed that [consecutive] second term” because then he wouldn’t have been president for these milestones.He then returned to honoring fallen soldiers.Trump also said on Monday he is considering taking a further $3bn of grant money away from Harvard University and giving it to trade schools across the US, while a former president of Harvard and current professor there, Drew Gilpin Faust, warned that American freedoms and democracy were at risk.At Arlington, Hegseth referenced men who sacrificed their lives for the nation but made no reference to women. Hegseth has systematically and bluntly attacked all diversity efforts in the US military. Vance, however, noted that the national cemetery is the “eternal resting spot for our nation’s sons and daughters”.Trump has previously attracted heavy criticism for various actions and remarks that were disrespectful to fallen and wounded military veterans. More

  • in

    Trump’s West Point graduation address veers from US-first doctrine to politics

    Donald Trump told graduating West Point military academy cadets on Saturday that they were entering the officer corps at a “defining moment in the army’s history”, in a commencement address that included political attacks and a discourse on the folly of older men marrying “trophy wives”.Referring to US political leaders of the past two decades who “had dragged our military into missions” that people questioned as “wasting our time, money and souls in some case”, Trump told the young leaders that “as much as you want to fight, I’d rather do it without having to fight”. He predicted that, through a policy of “peace through strength”, the US’s adversaries would back down. “I just want to look at them and have them fold,” he said.The president also said US soldiers had been sent “on nation-building crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us, led by leaders that didn’t have a clue about distant lands while abusing our soldiers with absurd ideological experiments here and at home”.“All of that’s ended, strongly ended. They’re not even allowed to think about it anymore,” Trump added.Making apparent reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programs that defense secretary Pete Hegseth has cancelled, Trump weaved together criticism of his predecessors with a new focus on curbing illegal immigration.“They subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes, while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries’ wars. We fought for other countries’ borders but we didn’t fight for our own borders, but now we do like we have never fought before,” he said.He later said that “the job of the US armed forces is not to host drag shows or transform foreign cultures”, a reference to drag shows on military bases that his predecessor Joe Biden halted in 2023 after Republican criticism.Wearing a red “Make America great again” campaign hat throughout, the president told the 1,002 graduating cadets that the US is the “hottest country in the world”, and boasted of his administration’s achievements.The president also returned, once again, to a cautionary tale he often tells young people about the danger of losing momentum in life, illustrated by an anecdote about what he called the unhappy retirement of the post-war housing developer William Levitt, the creator of Levittowns, planned communities on Long Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.Repeating a story he told at a Boy Scout jamboree in 2017, and at the University of Alabama three weeks ago, the president said that Levitt was unsatisfied by life without work, even though he married “a trophy wife” and bought a yacht. “It didn’t work out too well, and that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you, a lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t work out,” the president told the young women and men. “But it made him happy for a little while at least.”Trump also used the occasion to repeat an unfounded accusation he first made in 2020: the claim that Russia had stolen US hypersonic missile technology during Barack Obama’s presidency. “The Russians stole it, something bad happened. But we’re now building them, lots of them,” Trump said, praising eight cadets who had built their own. “We are building them right now. We had ours stolen. We are the designers of it. We had it stolen during the Obama administration.”Outside the gates of West Point, protesters gathered with drums, banners and signs to condemn what they called the president’s attack on American democracy.At points during Trump’s address, he veered between praising the graduating military cadets and maintaining political criticism of the Biden administration.The graduation address, which ran to almost an hour long, comes before an expansive military parade in Washington on 14 June to celebrate the 250th anniversary celebration of the nation. The date is also the president’s birthday.Alongside the military parade featuring more than 6,700 soldiers, it will include concerts, fireworks, NFL players, fitness competitions and displays all over the National Mall for daylong festivities. The army expects that as many as 200,000 people could attend and that putting on the celebration will cost an estimated $25m to $45m.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

  • in

    Drastic cuts under way bending US national security council to Trump’s will

    The Trump administration started to dramatically overhaul the White House national security council on Friday, preparing to reassign hundreds of staff and consolidating power with aides trusted by the president, according to people familiar with the matter.The changes involved downsizing the NSC to about 150 from 300 staff and cutting a number of committees. Most NSC staff are drawn from other parts of the administration including the Pentagon and the state department, and were expected to be sent back to their home agencies.At the leadership level, the administration appointed the vice-president’s national security adviser Andy Baker and Donald Trump’s longtime policy aide Robert Gabriel to become dual-hatted as deputy national security advisers for the NSC, sources said.The restructuring of the NSC marked the first set of major changes to the White House’s national security coordinating body since Donald Trump last month replaced Mike Waltz as national security adviser with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who is serving in both roles.It underscored how the NSC is set to be changed from a body that traditionally helped presidents formulate an overarching national security policy into one that implements ideas already held by the president.Trump advisers familiar with the dynamics noted that the addition of Baker and Gabriel, senior aides to JD Vance and Trump respectively, is likely to ensure the White House maintains significant control of the NSC even with Rubio as its titular head.They also suggested it would end the NSC’s traditional bottom-to-the-top approach, where staff filtered policy recommendations through multiple layers before they reached the cabinet level, since Baker and Gabriel are set to use the NSC to focus more on execution of their bosses’ views.In doing so, the new leadership may help solve the lingering problem of Trump’s second term NSC being left without an overarching strategy in the wake of Mike Waltz’s removal.The US strategy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict in particular had remained a work in progress, because Waltz wanted Trump to hit Vladimir Putin with deep, punitive sanctions if the Russian president failed to agree to a peace deal brokered by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.That recommendation from Waltz put him at odds with Trump and Vance, who have been more interested in finding ways to normalize relations with Moscow. With Vance’s top national security aide embedded into NSC leadership, implementing policy may be more straightforward.The abrupt nature of the personnel changes, which were communicated in a 4.20pm email sent by the NSC chief of staff, Brian McCormack, before the long Memorial Day weekend, means that some of the dismissals and restructurings are expected to drag on until next week, the sources said.Senior staff leaving the NSC include Alex Wong, who was the principal deputy to Mike Waltz; Eric Trager, who had been handling Middle East affairs; Andrew Peek, who had been handling Europe; and the communications team.The changes come three weeks after Waltz was pushed out in the wake of a series of controversies including mistakenly adding a journalist to a Signal group chat that shared sensitive information about US missile strikes in Yemen before they took place. More

  • in

    Trump news at a glance: president unveils Golden Dome project – and claims Canada is interested

    Donald Trump has announced that his administration will move forward with developing a multibillion-dollar missile defense system, called “Golden Dome”, and claimed that Canada was interesting in being part of it.“Once fully constructed, the golden dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they are launched from space,” Trump said. “Forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland.”The US space force general Michael Guetlein will oversee implementation of the project, Trump said. The selection of Guetlein, vice-chief of space operations at the space force, means the elevation of a four-star general widely seen at the Pentagon to be competent and deeply experienced in missile defense systems and procurement.Here are the key stories at a glance:Trump rolls out Golden Dome missile defense project Flanked by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, Trump announced the Golden Dome missile defense project on Tuesday in the Oval Office. The president said he wanted the project to be operational before he left office, and added that Republicans had agreed to allocate $25bn in initial funding and Canada had expressed an interest in taking part.What exactly Golden Dome will look like remains unclear. Trump said on Tuesday evening that he had settled on architecture for the project and suggested the total cost of putting it into service would reach $175bn. He provided no further details.Read the full storyTrump officials ‘illegally deport’ Vietnamese and Burmese migrants Immigrant rights advocates have accused the Trump administration of deporting about a dozen migrants from countries including Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in violation of a court order, and asked a judge to order their return.Read the full storyRubio clashes with Democrats over Afrikaner ‘refugee’ statusMarco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has defended the Trump administration’s decision to admit 59 Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees after Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, said they were getting preferential treatment because they were white.The clash between Rubio and Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s former running mate, came a day before South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was due to meet Donald Trump at the White House in an encounter that promises to be highly charged thanks to the controversy surrounding the Afrikaner arrivals.Read the full storyTrump bangs drum for tax bill as some still hold outDonald Trump traveled to the Capitol on Tuesday to insist that the fractious House Republican majority set aside their differences and pass his wide-ranging bill to enact his taxation and immigration priorities.In a speech to a closed-door meeting of Republican lawmakers, the president pushed holdouts to drop their objections, afterwards saying: “I think we have unbelievable unity. I think we’re going to get everything we want, and I think we’re going to have a great victory.”But it is unclear if the president’s exhortations had the intended effect as at least one lawmaker said afterwards they still do not support the bill.Read the full storyMusk claims he won’t spend as much on politicsElon Musk claimed that he would decrease the amount of money he spends on politics for the foreseeable future. If true, the reduction would represent a significant turnaround after the world’s richest person positioned himself as the US Republican party’s most enthusiastic donor over the last year.Read the full story‘Plenty of time’ to fix climate crisis, says Trump aideThe US has “plenty of time” to solve the climate crisis, the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, told a House committee on Tuesday.The comment came on his first of two days of testimony to House and Senate appropriators in which he defended Donald Trump’s proposed budget, dubbed the “one big, beautiful bill”, that would extend tax reductions enacted during Trump’s first term, while cutting $5bn of funding for the Department of the Interior.Read the full storyMost US companies say tariffs causing higher pricesA majority of US companies say they will have to raise their prices to accommodate Trump’s tariffs in the US, according to a new report. More than half (54%) of the US companies surveyed by the insurance company Allianz said they will have to raise prices to accommodate the cost of the tariffs.Read the full storyPatel scraps FBI watchdog teamThe FBI director, Kash Patel, has scrapped a watchdog team set up to scrutinise a warrantless surveillance law he previously claimed was being abused to target supporters of Donald Trump.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    Charles Kushner, the father of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, has secured US Senate confirmation to serve as the nation’s ambassador to France.

    A participant in the January 6 attack pardoned by Trump was recently arrested for burglary and vandalism in Virginia.

    The Trump administration lifted a stop work order on a $5bn windfarm off the New York coast after negotiations – but cancelled plans for a gas pipeline could be revived.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 19 May 2025. More

  • in

    Trump rolls out Golden Dome missile defense project and appoints leader

    Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration will move forward with developing a multibillion-dollar missile defense system, called “Golden Dome,” that he envisions will protect the United States from possible foreign strikes using ground and space-based weapons.Flanked by the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, in the Oval Office, Trump also said that he wanted the project to be operational before he left office. He added that Republicans had agreed to allocate $25bn in initial funding and Canada had expressed an interest in taking part.“Once fully constructed, the golden dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they are launched from space,” Trump said. “Forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland.”What exactly Golden Dome will look like remains unclear. Trump has not yet decided which of three options proposed by the defense department that he wants to pursue. Pentagon officials recently drafted three proposals – small to medium to large – for Trump to consider.The proposals all broadly combine ground-based missile interceptors currently used by the US military with more ambitious and hi-tech systems to build a space-based defense program.But the option that Trump chooses will determine its timeline and cost. The $25bn coming from Republicans’ budget bill is only set to cover initial development costs. The final price tag could exceed $540bn over the next two decades, according to the congressional budget office.Trump said on Tuesday evening that he had settled on architecture for the project and suggested the total cost of putting it into service would reach $175bn. He provided no further details.US space force Gen Michael Guetlein will oversee implementation of the project, Trump said.View image in fullscreenThe selection of Guetlein, the vice-chief of space operations at the space force, to oversee the project means the elevation of a four-star general widely seen at the Pentagon to be competent and deeply experienced in missile defense systems and procurement.The project is expected to end up largely as a partnership with major defense contractors, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX, given it has the capacity to manufacture rockets to launch military payloads into orbit and satellites that can deliver next generation surveillance and targeting tools.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIt will also rely on companies that manufacture ordnance currently used by the US military. The project’s baseline capabilities are set to depend on existing systems including the Thaad and Aegis Ashore systems made by Lockheed Martin and Patriot surface-to-air missiles made by Raytheon.“Golden Dome” came into existence as Trump believes that the US should have a missile defense program to track and kill missiles headed towards domestic US targets, possibly sent by China, Russia, North Korea or other strategic foreign adversaries, similar to Israel’s “Iron Dome” program.Shortly after he took office again in January, Trump signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to develop proposals for a “next-generation missile defense shield” in order to upgrade the US’s missile defense capabilities, which he noted had not materially changed in 40 years.The order came as the defense department has become more concerned about the threat of long-range strikes from strategic adversaries. Last week, the Defense Intelligence Agency released an assessment that said China has about 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles, Russia has 350, and North Korea has a handful.Initially, the White House had named the options for a space-based missile defense system “Moonshot Plus” and “Moonshot Plus Plus”. They were later renamed by Hegseth to be called silver, gold and platinum-dome options based on the three tiers, two former Pentagon officials said. More

  • in

    Pentagon orders military to pull books related to DEI and ‘gender ideology’

    Military leaders and commanders at the Pentagon were ordered on Friday to go through their libraries and review all books that were related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), in the US military’s latest anti-DEI move.Leaders were ordered to “promptly identify” materials that promote “divisive concepts and gender ideology [that] are incompatible with the department’s core mission”, according to a memo sent to leaders that was seen by the Associated Press. The department gave leaders until 21 May to remove the books.Also on Friday, the Pentagon sent a separate memo to the military’s training academies that the institutions should have “no consideration of race, ethnicity or sex” in their admission process and should focus “exclusively on merit”, though they can allow for students who show “unique athletic talent”, according to the AP. The department ordered the administrations to certify these standards by mid-June.The memo to leaders on books follows a similar order that was given to the military academies, including the US Naval Academy, that led to the removal of nearly 400 books from its library. Books that were withdrawn from the library included Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, novels by writers of color including the Palestinian American Etaf Rum, and academic books that examine race and gender.The department said that a temporary “academic libraries committee” would convene to help the other colleges and academies remove similar books from their collections. Librarians and staff were ordered to use search terms like “affirmative action”, “anti-racism”, “critical race theory” and “white privilege” when determining which books could be subject for removal.The book bans also affect K-12 school libraries that are on military bases around the world. A list of banned children’s books, including books about LGBTQ+ teens and others dealing with race, has been issued by the Department of Defense Education Activity, or DoDEA, which oversees the schools attended by the children of military families abroad.On the list is a New York Times bestseller chronicling the true story of a teenager set on fire by a fellow teenager while riding an Oakland, California, bus, as HuffPost reported. The list also includes a collection of poems and short stories by a New York Times bestselling author documenting the feelings and experiences of teenagers in love.The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has vowed to purge DEI from the Pentagon, saying when he took office earlier this year that “our diversity is our strength” is “the single dumbest phrase in military history”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSince January, the Trump administration has been overseeing a widespread culling of anything the White House considers to be DEI within the federal government. The specific number of DEI roles that have been removed is unclear as the federal government isn’t keeping track or reporting which roles have been eliminated, but estimates say hundreds or possibly thousands of employees have been fired since the start of the year. More