"Justice." "Dignity." "Respect."
Those words are now considered red flags by the Army as it does a wide-ranging scrub of the massive amount of digital content the service has created online over the years -- a purge that is leading to the removal of images and videos featuring women and minority soldiers from official platforms.
The deletion of photos, video and other content is part of an order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that all the military services eliminate online material not allowed by the Trump administration. Hegseth has pushed to eliminate any trace of diversity efforts, which has included policies and programs -- and now media -- that recognizes women and troops with minority backgrounds.
Read Next: Air Force Academy Investigating Nearly 100 Cadets for Cheating, Honor Code Violations
Army public affairs officials, who shepherd the service's media and coordinate communications with journalists, have been directed to take down online content that includes race, gender and affirmative action, as well as observances of Black History Month and Women's History Month, according to an internal memo reviewed by Military.com.
"The danger here is this stuff has never really been defined," one senior Pentagon public affairs official told Military.com. "It's going to get us thinking about race and gender in ways that are problematic, and it's inevitably going to lead to exclusion."
Military.com spoke with nine public affairs officials, all of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly and to avoid retaliation.
Even historic milestones have been targeted.
Kristen Geist, the first woman to graduate from the Army's grueling Ranger School, has been erased from some of the service's social media and its publicly accessible media database, the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, or DVIDS.
On Friday, the Army's Office of the Chief of Public Affairs, or OCPA, sent the memo to public affairs officials throughout the service directing the removal of content. OCPA ultimately oversees the service's communications with the public. Army regulations dictate that all public communications are federal records and must be archived.
The directive tasks officials with combing through past communications using a list of 59 flagged key words.
Among those words are "culture," "racism," "justice," "dignity," "diversity," "sexuality," and "tolerance." One of the most striking inclusions is "respect" -- a word that is one of the Army's own seven core values.
"This directive is antithetical to everything public affairs is supposed to be about," an Army public affairs official told Military.com. "The Army has ethically compromised everyone."
Additionally, officials are being directed to remove mentions of the Army's "people first" initiative, a slogan championed by the service's previous trio of senior leaders: Army Secretary Christine Wormuth; Gen. James McConville, the service's top officer at the time; and Sergeant Major of the Army Tony Grinston, who have all since retired from military service.
The "people first" initiative was an effort by top officials to focus on the health and welfare of soldiers, which can include quality of barracks and food, access to physical fitness resources, and positive professional relationships with superiors. The idea was that if the individual soldier was taken care of, they'd be better fit to fight in war.
The slogan's namesake came from the People First Task Force, a group created to address the findings of the Fort Hood report, a significant independent investigation into the conduct of leaders at the base, since renamed Fort Cavazos, and the handling of sexual violence cases after the murder of Spc. Vanessa Guillén. The report led to the firing of 14 Army officials.
"I guess I'll just stop taking photos of and sharing the stories of women and Black soldiers," another public affairs official told Military.com. "Not sure how else to interpret this."
The scrubbing of online content is only the latest move the Pentagon and services have taken during the beginning of the Trump administration that has reduced the visibility and presence of women and minorities.
Last week, Hegseth fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the Navy's first female chief, as well as Gen. Charles "CQ" Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is the second Black man to serve in the position. The Department of Homeland Security relieved the top Coast Guard officer, Adm. Linda Fagan -- the first woman to lead any military service -- just hours into President Donald Trump's second term.
Recruiting of minorities and women has also been slowly scaled back.
Earlier this month, all of the services abandoned a significant annual recruiting event at the Black Engineer of the Year Awards, or BEYA, a prestigious Black engineering conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The Army also ceased its relationship with Ashley Hall, an all-girl preparatory school where it used to do annual outreach events.
Army recruiting units have also been tasked to review all the schools and events where they might do outreach and to look for any association with a particular race or gender, according to internal emails between service officials reviewed by Military.com.
That review comes amid a decline in male eligibility and interest in service, partly due to dwindling test scores. Meanwhile, recent recruiting wins have been largely bolstered by women. Black Americans made up nearly one-quarter of enlistment in recent years, while being only 14% of the general population.
Related: No More Female 4-Stars: Franchetti Firing Leaves Top Ranks Filled by Men
