- Jackie Robinson’s page was briefly removed from the Department of Defense website.
- The Pentagon has been removing pages to comply with Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders.
- It has since restored the page, saying it salutes Robinson’s heroic service to the country.
A webpage dedicated to American baseball legend Jackie Robinson was removed and then restored to the Department of Defense’s website.
To comply with President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders, the Pentagon has been scrubbing its website of articles, photos, and videos that it says promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Robinson’s page, which was part of a “Sports Heroes Who Served” series, was one of those briefly removed. It’s not clear exactly how long the page was down, but one journalist posted a screenshot on Bluesky on Tuesday morning showing a “404 Page Not Found” error message across the page with “dei” inserted in the URL.
The famed Brooklyn Dodgers player’s page has since been restored, and Pentagon press secretary John Ullyot confirmed the error on Wednesday in a statement shared with Business Insider.
Ullyot’s statement notes that, in some “rare cases,” content outside the scope of the directive gets removed “either deliberately or by mistake.”
“Everyone at the Defense Department loves Jackie Robinson, as well as the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Marines at Iwo Jima, and so many others — we salute them for their strong and, in many cases, heroic service to our country, full stop,” Ullyot said in the statement.
Robinson’s now-restored page details his life and accomplishments, from growing up in California in the 1920s to serving in World War II to his illustrious baseball career, first in the Negro Leagues and then as one of the first Black players in Major League Baseball. Robinson was also a prominent leader in the Civil Rights movement.
“We do not view or highlight them through the prism of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or sex,” Ullyot’s statement continues. “We do so only by recognizing their patriotism and dedication to the warfighting mission like every other American who has worn the uniform.”
Robinson’s page repeatedly references his race and the struggles he faced as a Black man, including “hatred from fans” and being told that he’d have to “be willing to withstand the inevitable racial abuse directed at him.”
It’s not clear why Robinson’s page was removed or if the department intends to remove references to Robinson’s race from the webpage to comply with Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s anti-DEI directives. When reached for comment, the Department of Defense did not answer whether it plans to alter the page’s content.
In his statement, Ullyot called DEI “Discriminatory Equity Ideology,” adding that it’s “a form of Woke cultural Marxism that Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission.”
A spokesperson for the Jackie Robinson Foundation was not available for comment when contacted by Business Insider.
Read the full article here
