Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

4. Department of Defense · Major

Abolish DOD diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff

Done

103 4. Department of Defense

“Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs and abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    Section 901 of the FY2026 NDAA (P.L. 119-60) repealed the DoD Chief Diversity Officer (10 U.S.C. 147), the diversity-in-leadership program (10 U.S.C. 656) and the senior advisors for diversity and inclusion, and barred the Secretary from maintaining any DEI office, position, chief diversity officer, affinity group, equity team or DEI training. The administrative abolition validated in May 2025 is now statutory — the Secretary cannot re-establish what the task force eliminated — and sec. 901(f)(1)(F)'s training prohibition codifies the Quote's "Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs" half.

  2. Done

    The Restoring America's Fighting Force task force finished the validation the January memorandum ordered, and the Department said so in its own words: the task force "confirmed DOD's successful implementation of a departmentwide directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion offices and initiatives". Tim Dill, performing the duties of deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness: "The secretary's guidance to eradicate DEI in the department was faithfully implemented across all of our many installations", and "each of the services had already implemented the policies and certified completion to the task force" before the capstone visits to six installations in April and early May. That is the allowlisted statement that the sweep is complete which an open-ended "all X" ask needs (playbook §3). The task force's final report was due to the Secretary by 2025-06-01, after which USD(P&R) stood it down as mission complete.

  3. Partially done

    First piece delivered. The Department published the Secretary's guidance "Identity Months Dead at DoD": "DoD Components and Military Departments will not use official resources, to include man-hours, to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months", naming Black History Month, Women's History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month and National American Indian Heritage Month, effective immediately. Programs of the kind the Quote's first half names were stopped; the offices and staff its second half names were still standing.

  4. Attempted

    Secretary Hegseth's memorandum "Restoring America's Fighting Force" directed the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to stand up a multi-functional task force "charged with overseeing the Department's efforts to abolish DEI offices and any vestiges of such offices", with an initial report on terminated DEI initiatives due 2025-03-01 and a final report no later than 2025-06-01. The same two-page memorandum carries the Quote's other half directly: "No element within DoD will provide instruction on Critical Race Theory (CRT), DEI, or gender ideology as part of a curriculum or for purposes of workforce training"; it also barred sex-, race- or ethnicity-based goals for organizational composition, academic admission or career fields, and ordered all advisory boards, councils and working groups to cease operations related to gender ideology, DEI and CRT. A directive with nothing yet abolished.

  5. Attempted

    Executive Order 14151 directed every agency, DoD included, to terminate DEI offices and positions within 60 days; nothing at DoD had yet been abolished.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • The three claims this log used to carry, that these pages refused to open, were wrong. All three documents — the Hegseth memorandum, the “Identity Months Dead at DoD” release and the task-force validation story — can be read, and all three were read on 2026-09-06. They are now the Evidence. The Government Executive account of 2025-01-29 that had been standing in for the memorandum is retired: the memorandum carries every fact it did.
  • The done rung dates from 2025-05-22, not from the statute. The May 2025 validation is the Department stating that the sweep across its own installations was complete; the December NDAA makes it permanent. Both events are recorded because they are different acts.
  • The task force’s own scope note is worth keeping in view: Dill said the RAFF guidance “in no way impacts DOD policies related to topics like equal opportunity or sexual harassment”, so equal opportunity offices survive the abolition of DEI offices. The Quote asks about the latter.
Action
abolish
Object
DOD diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff
ID
173