Trump Fires Boards Of U.s. Military Service Academies

President Donald Trump on Monday said he had ordered the firings of the boards of visitors for all of the U.S. military’s service academies, the outside advisory panels that help oversee academic programs and student life, saying that the government’s training grounds for military officers had been invaded by so-called “woke” ideology.

“Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I have ordered the immediate dismissal of the Board of Visitors for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard.” The president did not immediately announce the appointment of new members to the boards.

Trump campaigned on a promise to purge the U.S. military of officers he deemed "woke" and has used the start of his second term to try and rid the Pentagon of diversity initiatives by executive order.

The purge has begun to extend to the nation’s service academies, where Republican lawmakers have long complained that so-called "woke" literature is seeping into the curriculum. The Washington Post reported on Friday that the U.S. Defense Department had begun restricting access to some books in its school systems. The service academies themselves had already begun disbanding student clubs focused on diversity in response to Trump’s executive orders, with West Point getting rid of a dozen such organizations last week, including the Asian-Pacific Forum Club and the National Society of Black Engineers Club.

The boards of visitors are typically split between presidential appointees and members appointed by Congress, usually lawmakers themselves. The Biden administration also removed top former Trump officials from the service academy boards in 2021.

“We will have the strongest Military in History, and that begins by appointing new individuals to these Boards,” Trump wrote in his post on Monday morning. “We must make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!”