‘Disgusting’: Pentagon Schools Misinterpret Trump’s Directives to Cut Cultural Lessons

The Pentagon school system appears to have misinterpreted the Trump administration’s directive against diversity, equity, and inclusion to require ending lessons on Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, the Holocaust, and even Valentine’s Day.

On his first days in office, Trump issued executive orders prohibiting federal funding of radical gender ideology, critical race theory, and DEI instruction in American education. 

On Jan. 31, Darin Selnick, a former adviser to Trump on veterans affairs who is performing the duties of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, sent an email prohibiting use of Department of Defense time or funding on cultural awareness months.

“DoD Components and Military Departments will not use official resources, to include man-hours, to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months, such as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month,” Selnick wrote in the email obtained by The Daily Signal.

He said service members and civilians remain permitted to attend such events in an unofficial capacity outside of duty hours.

In the ensuing days, enraged parents took to Facebook to accuse the Trump administration of prohibiting lessons on Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, and the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 

One mother posted a picture of an MLK display in a Department of Defense Education Activity school in Japan being taken down “because of Trump’s executive orders.” She also claimed that the school is no longer allowed to acknowledge Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

Rep. Jamie Raskin, R-Md., posted on X that he heard from constituents sending their kids to school on a U.S. military base abroad that Trump ordered “censorship” against military families. 

“One [parent] asked a school official why they removed photos on the walls of Susan B. Anthony and Dr. King, but not Leonardo DaVinci and was told: ‘He was a real historical figure,’” the congressman asserted.

The kindergarten teachers at Bahrain Elementary School in the Middle Eastern nation of Bahrain told their classes they can’t celebrate Valentine’s Day or “the 100th day of school” because of the new guidance, a parent in Bahrain told military mom Amy Haywood.

But none of the executive orders, nor Selnick’s guidance email, prohibits lessons or books on historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr. or Susan B. Anthony.

At a town-hall meeting on Wednesday at Camp Humphreys, an Army base in South Korea, a parent asked whether the executive orders and the cultural heritage guidance applies to Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“All planned special activities and noninstructional events related to monthly cultural awareness observances will not be held pending further guidance,” a female DoDEA employee responded. “So again, we are going to comply with all executive orders, and we will determine what those required actions are going to be for all the day of schools, and we will provide any additional guidance as that information comes forward.”

Members of the DoDEA claiming Trump prohibited them from teaching about Holocaust Remembrance Day or Susan B. Anthony are “performative liars,” said Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind.

“Purposefully withholding lessons on these topics to try and prove a political point is disgusting,” Banks told The Daily Signal.

Banks, a veteran who served in Afghanistan, sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Schools are no longer laboratories for woke teachers to run social experiments like they did under [former President Joe] Biden,” he said.

Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s goal is to restore “strength over weakness and fairness over wokeness.”

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t surprise me that DoD bureaucrats are trying to undermine President Trump and Secretary Hegseth’s mission and are making last-ditch attempts to sneak in radical, woke nonsense into schools serving military families,” she told The Daily Signal.

On Monday, Beth Schiavino-Narvaez, director of the DoDEA since June 1, sent a statement explaining the review of books and curriculum and the end of cultural heritage celebrations. 

“We are working through the Executive Orders at DoDEA headquarters to determine required actions for DoDEA schools and providing guidance, as appropriate, to ensure there are consistent policies and practices in place that comply with current Executive Orders and DoD guidance,” she said. 

DoDEA Communications Director Will Griffin sent a similar statement to The Daily Signal.

“On Jan. 31, 2025, the Secretary of Defense issued guidance to all Department of Defense (DoD) components and Military Departments prohibiting the use of official resources to host celebrations or events related to cultural awareness months,” Griffin said in an email. “As a DoD entity, DoDEA is fully complying with that guidance.”

A mom and Army veteran whose child attends school on a Kentucky military base told The Daily Signal the school cut cultural celebrations suddenly and with no explanation to the students. While she said she largely agrees with Trump’s changes to the military, she believes DoDEA schools have taken the executive orders too far.

“I think they have to be able to celebrate those things,” she said, “so that they can learn that there are differences.”

In contrast to the Pentagon school system’s zealous removal of cultural lessons, DoDEA attempted to conceal its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts by renaming social-emotional learning as “resilience.”

“Unfortunately, sometimes words have the potential to get in the way of that, which is why we’ve made some adjustments or some transitions in some of the language that’s part of our lexicon,” Griffin said in a Jan. 6 winter planning meeting, a recording of which The Daily Signal obtained.

“Building student resilience, you probably saw the new logo for [Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports], resilience is the name of the game in terms of how we can talk about what we used to say [social-emotional learning] for,” Griffin, the DoDEA communications director, continued.

Hegseth made it clear that he would enforce the president’s ban on DEI at the Department of Defense.  

“The Pentagon will comply, immediately,” he said. “No exceptions, name-changes, or delays.”

Prior to Trump’s executive orders banning gender ideology and critical race theory, Pentagon schools were under fire for pornographic LGBTQ+ library books and age-inappropriate Pride Month celebrations.

Trump’s executive order caused cuts to lessons on “gender identity,” and “sexuality,” and the removal of a book about a transgender-identifying teen called “Becoming Nicole.” 

School libraries in the Department of Defense Education Activity offered widely banned books with sexually graphic content such as “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “Sex: A Book for Teens,” and “This Book is Gay,” Fox News Digital reported. 

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