Photos of WWII Aircraft Enola Gay Violate New DEI Rules

Photographs of famous World War II aircraft, Enola Gay, have been flagged for deletion as Trump rolls back DEI initiatives across government departments.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegsgeth gave the military until Wednesday 5 March to “remove all DoD news and feature articles, photos, and videos that promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).”

However, it appears that some photos have been flagged for removal simply because their file name included the word “gay”.

Several photographs of service members with the last name “gay” have been targeted, as has the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay, which dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima. A photo of Army Corps biologists are also on the chopping block, seemingly because it mentions some of the data they were collecting on fish- including their weight, size, and gender.

Spokesperson for the Pentagon, John Ullyot said in a statement that he was pleased with the “rapid compliance” throughout the Department that followed the directive to remove DEI content.

“In the rare cases that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly,” he said.

“Bonkers” says former military official

A database obtained by the Associated Press shows more than 26,000 images that are set for removal across every military branch, but the true total could be much higher.

Speaking to the AP, one anonymous official warned that up to 100,000 images or posts could be deleted, including social media pages and other websites on the chopping block for DEI content.

Former spokesperson of the Pentagon, Chris Meagher, called the story “bonkers” in a post on X.

Although we’re not long into Trump’s second presidency, this isn’t the first time content has been unnecessarily deleted as a result of the pushback against DEI.

In January, almost all LGBTQIA+ and HIV content and resources was removed from government websites. The Centres of Disease Control and Prevention were forced to remove any references to transgender people or “gender ideology”, with only days to comply. As such, staff were forced to removed HIV-related content regardless of if they discussed gender.

“There’s just so much gender content in HIV that we have to take everything down in order to meet the deadline,” an anonymous agency staffer told NBC News.