Did the Military Violate Trump’s DEI Executive Order?

The U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps appear on a list of sponsors for a conference of the American School Counselor Association, which supports diversity, equity, and inclusion—an activist ideology that President Donald Trump directed the federal government to eliminate.

A Department of War source with knowledge of DOW Community Engagement Planning noted that the ASCA’s support for DEI and its reliance on materials from the Southern Poverty Law Center do not align with the administration’s values.

“As we continue to close out contracts and former partnerships at the Department of War that do not serve the best interests of the Department and the American people, there are still instances in which some slip through the cracks,” the source told The Daily Signal Monday. “While an initial review from the services showed the conference mostly based on professional-development or literacy themes, and not prohibited by Executive Order 14173, the ASCA’s promotion of the SPLC’s ‘Social Justice Standards’ and DEI clearly does not align with the values of the DOW or this administration.”

“Our participation in any sponsorships is reviewed for compliance with federal law, including Executive Order 14173 (‘Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity’),” a War Department spokesperson told The Daily Signal. “The Department does not underwrite third-party curriculum and does not endorse every session, speaker, or resource presented at independent conferences.”

Alvin Lui, president of the nonprofit organization Courage Is a Habit, first flagged the relationship with ASCA.

“We are so grateful for the incredible work Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is doing in the military. He is working hard to expel DEI from the Department of War. But at the same time, this same department is still sponsoring ASCA, whose entire mission is influencing children via the guise of mental health to want the same woke ideology Secretary Hegseth is looking to eradicate,” Lui told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday.

Lui warned that ASCA “slips through the cracks and undermines both the parents’ and children’s constitutional rights as well as President Trump’s executive orders.”

“The Department of War Sponsored ASCA’s annual conference in 2025 and we are asking them to rescind and cease their sponsorship for ASCA’s July 2026 conference, as well as any and all programs,” he concluded.

The ASCA is not some obscure organization. It claimed in 2023 to have over 43,000 members across the country.

According to the ASCA 2025 annual conference’s website, four Department of War entities—Military Sealift Command, the U.S. Air Force, the Marine Corps, and the U.S. Army—purchased “diamond” sponsorships costing $35,000, while the Army National Guard purchased a “platinum” sponsorship for $25,000.

The military sponsorships go back years, Lui told The Daily Signal.

According to Courage Is a Habit’s report, “Violation: American School Counselor Association,” the ASCA has repeatedly and systematically supported DEI, from “anti-racist” messaging to pro-transgender policies.

Promoting DEI

In 2021, ASCA adopted an “anti-racist practices” position stating that “racism remains a part of society in the United States and exists throughout all of our institutions,” and “the U.S. education system contributes to maintaining systems of oppression through racist policies, practices, and guidelines.”

The policy calls on school counselors to “embrace their ethical responsibilities within roles as social justice advocates, leaders, and change agents” in order to “actively dismantle racist policies, procedures, and practices.”

While most Americans oppose racism, the “anti-racist” movement ASCA embraced relies on the teachings of critical race theory, an ideology that contends that America is institutionally racist, so Americans must fundamentally question all of society to find hidden racism and advocate radical changes to remove it. This leads to discrimination, in which Americans seek to redress historic injustices by elevating people from supposedly “oppressed” minority groups.

Other ASCA policy documents state that school counselors have a responsibility to “expand personal multicultural and social justice advocacy, awareness, knowledge, and skills,” and that school counselors “advocate for transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive students regarding access of building facilities.”

The ASCA Ethical Standards document stipulates that school counselors will “actively advocate for systemic and other changes needed for equitable participation and outcomes in educational programs when disproportionality exists regarding enrollment in such programs by race, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, language, immigration status, juvenile justice/court involvement, housing, socioeconomic status, ability, foster care, transportation, special education, mental health and/or any other exceptionality or special need.”

The Courage Is a Habit report also notes that ASCA used materials from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s education arm, Learning for Justice, to craft student standards.

ASCA modeled its Student Standards: Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success and Student Standards Crosswalk on Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards.

The Southern Poverty Law Center—best known for putting mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan—defends critical race theory and Learning for Justice advocates teaching about Black Lives Matter in schools.

ASCA’s most recent 2025 National Model for school counseling links to the ASCA Ethical Standards and Student Standards in a section on “definitions.”

Trump’s Executive Orders

Trump wrote in a January executive order on “ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity” that many institutions “have adopted an actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ … that can violate the civil rights laws of this nation.”

Trump ordered “all executive departments and agencies to terminate all discriminatory and illegal preferences … and to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.”

Trump issued another executive order on “ending radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling.”

This order stated that “imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority.” The order mentions “steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent” and “demanding acquiescence to ‘White privilege’ or ‘unconscious bias.'”

His order directs the federal government “to ensure that recipients of federal funds providing K-12 education comply with all applicable laws prohibiting discrimination in various contexts and protecting parental rights.”

The Courage Is a Habit report suggests the Department of War sponsorships for the ASCA annual conference violate both executive orders.

The ASCA did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.

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