Mentions of race, gender and, in some cases, disabilities have been scrubbed from an upcoming report from a federal task force aimed at improving veterans' access to parks and other outdoor recreation, according to copies of different versions of the report reviewed by Military.com and a task force member who resigned in protest of the changes.
The censored report from the Interagency Task Force on Outdoor Recreation for Veterans is the latest example of how the Trump administration's efforts to curtail what it frames as diversity efforts run amok have, in reality, resulted in women, minorities, LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities being erased from public life.
For example, a draft of the report completed in May 2024 recommended federal agencies enhance outreach to veterans by "creating tailored materials for racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, and religious minorities, as well as veterans with disabilities (especially veterans with mobility limitations)."
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After edits by the Trump administration completed this month, the report will instead recommend that agencies "create tailored materials for all veterans."
"That doesn't make any sense," Lindsay Church, the executive director of Minority Veterans of America and the task force member who resigned in protest, said in an interview with Military.com. "When you're doing tailored outreach, you don't do tailored outreach to everyone. You do tailored outreach to communities that have barriers or have unique populations with unique needs and experiences."
The changes were made to comply with executive orders President Donald Trump signed in his first days in office this year, calling for the elimination of so-called "diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility," or DEIA, and "gender ideology" programs across the federal government.
"Gender ideology" was essentially defined as being transgender, and the orders called for its removal under the guise of "defending women." DEIA was not defined at all in the orders, leading to broad interpretations from agencies and the erasure of women, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities and other marginalized groups from federal government materials.
The outdoor recreation task force was created by a law passed by Congress in 2020 and signed by Trump during his first term in office.
The task force, composed of representatives from several government agencies and veterans groups, was meant to build on earlier research that showed outdoor activities improved veterans' long-term mental health, the supporters of the legislation said in 2020.
The law gave the task force three goals: identify ways for the Department of Veterans Affairs to coordinate with public land agencies on using outdoor spaces to help veterans' health and wellness; identify barriers to providing veterans with outdoor recreation opportunities; and develop recommendations on how to better use public lands for therapies and care for veterans.
By Church's account, the task force all but finished its work last spring, but the draft report needed to be approved by each federal agency involved before being released. The lengthy, bureaucratic review process was nearly done when the Trump administration took office in January and froze pending reports to do its own reviews.
Task force members were not told what the Trump administration was looking for in its review, Church said, but Church suspected it was related to the anti-diversity and anti-transgender executive orders. Church's fears were realized when they were given a copy of the final report earlier this month.
"Half of the references to women are now gone," Church said. "What I am genuinely confused about is how this is actually defending women when you're taking women out of the references and the tailored outreach and the programmatic offerings -- the things that were genuinely about expanding access for the people that they're saying they're defending."
Some of the edits are as granular as changing the job title of a representative from outdoor recreation company REI from "Senior Manager, Local and Inclusion Marketing" to simply "Senior Manager" in the acknowledgments section, according to the copies reviewed by Military.com.
Other changes outright alter or dilute the meaning of the report. For example, in talking about the barriers some veterans face to accessing outdoor recreation, the original report noted that "the 'adventure gap' or 'nature gap' is the consistent finding that people of color, women and marginalized persons are less likely than their white counterparts to participate in outdoor recreation or visit natural spaces, such as parks."
The revised report instead says that "the 'adventure gap' or 'nature gap' refers to the consistent finding that certain groups participate in outdoor recreation or visit natural spaces such as parks, at lower rates than others."
Several mentions of "gender-neutral restrooms" were replaced with the more generic term "single stall restrooms" in a section of the report that recommends agencies assess the accessibility of infrastructure on federal public lands.
Another section of the report originally called for training for VA and public lands staff to include "best practices for inclusive outdoor experience" and "best practices for accessible outdoor experiences." The revision changes those to "best practices for facilitating outdoor experiences."
Several sentences were also cut from a section calling for more research into veterans' access to outdoor recreation, including one that said the research should incorporate "disaggregated data and information based on race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disability status."
Asked for comment on the edited report and Church's criticism, a VA spokesperson did not deny that changes were made but said the report isn’t complete yet so “anyone who claims to know what the final version looks like is spreading disinformation.”
“In general, however, VA is proud to have abandoned the Biden administration’s divisive DEI policies to refocus on the department’s core mission: providing the best possible care and benefits to all eligible veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors,” VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz added in the emailed statement.
The Department of the Interior, which co-chaired the task force with the VA, deferred comment to the VA.
Besides Church, non-government members of the task force included representatives from Paralyzed Veterans of America; Team Red, White and Blue; and the Veterans’ Outdoor Advocacy Group. None responded to emailed requests for comment on their views about the changes in the report.
Watering down the report will have practical effects going forward, Church argued.
"If you gut the recommendations that have to do with specific populations experiencing these barriers differently, and you don't invest in the ways that we had very much clearly articulated in unison that you need to invest in these equity-related strategies, 10 to 20 years’ worth of investments are going to be gone from the communities that need them most," Church said.
"For many veterans that needed the access to the outdoors the most," Church added, "it will get worse."
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