In 1976, during America’s bicentennial, President Gerald Ford became the first president to recognize February as Black History Month. Ten years later, after a joint resolution of Congress decreed it, President Ronald Reagan signed a proclamation observing the event. Every president since Reagan has issued proclamations observing Black History Month.

President Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has scrapped recognition of all “identity” events, including Black History Month, Pride Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Women’s History Month, and National Disability Employment Awareness Month — declaring them all “Dead,” via a memo, according to USA Today.

“Our unity and purpose are instrumental to meeting the Department’s warfighting mission,” Hegseth’s memo, titled, “Identity Months Dead at DoD,” reads. “Efforts to divide the force – to put one group ahead of another – erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”

Standing on a stage last week at a Pentagon town hall (video below), Secretary Hegseth elaborated.

“I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.’ I think our strength is our unity. Our strength is our shared purpose. Regardless of our background, regardless of how we grew up, regardless of our gender, regardless of our race, in this department, we will treat everyone equally. We will treat everyone with fairness. We will treat everyone with respect, and we will judge you as an individual by your merit and by your commitment to the team and the mission. That’s how it has been. That’s how it will be.”

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Last week, Reuters noted that “Hegseth has criticized diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in the military, and, in his latest book, asked whether the top U.S. general has the job because he is Black. Reuters has previously reported about the possibility of mass firing among top brass, something Hegseth repeatedly refused to rule out during his confirmation process.”

Journalist Errol Louis, who has degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Brooklyn Law, last week commented on Hegseth’s remarks: “In 5 years, most recruitable adults will be people of color. The military’s current recruitment crisis is likely to worsen under Hegseth.”

On Monday, Military.com reported that at least four of the five Military service branches — Army, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force — have pulled out of a top recruiting opportunity, “a prestigious Black engineering event,” and by doing so they are “turning down access to a key pool of highly qualified potential applicants amid President Donald Trump’s purge of diversity initiatives in the military.”

“Until this week, Army Recruiting Command had a long-standing public partnership with the Black Engineer of the Year Awards, or BEYA, an annual conference that draws students, academics and professionals in science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM,” Military.com reported. “The event, which takes place in Baltimore, has historically been a key venue for the Pentagon to recruit talent, including awarding Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarships and pitching military service to rising engineers. Past BEYA events have included the Army chief of staff and the defense secretary.”

Three years ago, DOD News, part of the U.S. Department of Defense, reported, “The Defense Department is likely the largest employer of engineers in the United States, and the department will need even more to continue to protect the nation, said Barbara McQuiston, who now performs the duties of the deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.”

“The DOD has over 100,000 engineers, and they are incredibly important to us,” McQuiston also said, DOD News added. “You can imagine the range of capabilities and personnel that we have working on the hardest problems — from civil engineers and software engineers to material engineers and chemical engineers — just a whole range of engineers looking at some of the toughest problems for DOD. We couldn’t function without them. They touch everything that we do.”

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It appears some Army recruiters and officers are not pleased with the decision to pull out of the Black Engineer of the Year Awards conference.

“This is one of the most talent-dense events we do,” an unnamed Army recruiter told Military.com. “Our footprint there has always been significant. We need the talent.”

“It’s f—ing racist,” an unnamed active-duty Army general told Military.com. “For the Army now, it’s ‘Blacks need not apply’ and it breaks my heart.”

But the Pentagon’s involvement in some other recruiting events has not been scrapped.

“Last week, the same Army recruiting unit that would have attended BEYA instead participated in a National Rifle Association-sponsored event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a predominantly white gathering that recruiters acknowledge is less likely to yield high-quality applicants,” Military.com noted.

Military.com spoke with five recruiters who “saw the move as a significant and problematic escalation in the Pentagon’s rejection of diversity initiatives, which have been widely interpreted as programs that recognize women and troops with minority backgrounds, as well as gay and lesbian troops.”

On Monday, Secretary Hegseth announced a “pause” for all medical treatments of transgender service members, and a pause on accepting any new transgender service members into the U.S. Military. During his first term, Trump tried to throw out every transgender service member, but his efforts were stymied in the courts.

Also on Monday, President Trump continued his efforts to entirely reshape the culture of America’s Armed Forces, starting at the very beginning of the pipeline.

“Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years. I have ordered the immediate dismissal of the Board of Visitors for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard,” the Commander-in-Chief announced Monday afternoon. The Boards ensure accountability and civilian oversight at institutions like West Point. “We will have the strongest Military in History, and that begins by appointing new individuals to these Boards. We must make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!”

Watch the video below or at this link.

.@SecDef Pete Hegseth: “The single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength.’ I think our strength is our unity. Our strength is our shared purpose.” pic.twitter.com/xgXobOndeo

— CSPAN (@cspan) February 7, 2025

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