Amid the ongoing and controversial elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs by U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration, claims that a decorated Black Medal of Honor recipient was removed from the Department of Defense (DOD) website circulated online in March 2025.
Further, the claim alleged the web address, or URL, of the page in question was changed to include the acronym "DEI." This change adjusted the end of the URL "slug" from "medal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers" to "deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers" (emphasis ours).
Users across multiple Reddit threads pointed out the deletion, with some commenting that it disrespected all United States veterans. Users on social media platforms like X (archived) and Instagram (archived) spread the claim further, eventually prompting outlets like Newsweek, The Guardian and Military.com to report on it.
As a result, readers inundated the Snopes email inbox with questions about the truth behind the reports.
This is blood-boiling. Charles Rogers was awarded the Medal of Honor in Vietnam after being wounded three times leading the defense of a position. Google his name and the entry below comes up. When you click, you'll see the page has been deleted and the URL changed to include "DEI medal."
[image or embed]— Brandon Friedman (@brandonfriedman.bsky.social) March 15, 2025 at 10:25 PM
The claim first surfaced through a post on the social media website BlueSky (archived).
The post shared images of the broken webpage and the changed URL and said, "This is blood-boiling. Charles Rogers was awarded the Medal of Honor in Vietnam after being wounded three times leading the defense of a position. Google his name and the entry below comes up. When you click, you'll see the page has been deleted and the URL changed to include 'DEI medal.'"
The claim that the DOD removed a page celebrating Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers and updated the page URL to include "DEI" is true. The page was reinstated soon thereafter, however, which is why we have rated this claim outdated.
The page was originally published on the DOD website on Nov. 1, 2021. An archival link is available for viewing on the Internet Archive.
On or before March 15, 2025, the page was removed and instead users were redirected to a page that said "404 - Page Not Found." The URL was updated to include "DEI." Both the "404" error and the adjusted URL slug can be seen in this archived link from that date.
(Internet Archive)
As of this writing on March 17, the page has been restored to its original appearance and URL. An attempt to go directly to the "DEI" version of the URL now brings up the original page and URL.
Using the Screaming Frog SEO Spider web crawler, Snopes confirmed there is a redirect in place, which means the DOD corrected the removal by ensuring any visits to the "DEI" version of the URL would instead send a user to the restored original link rather than the "404" screen. In sum, anyone without prior knowledge of the removal would likely never know it happened.
"The Department has restored the Medal of Honor story about Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers at https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/medal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/. The story was removed during auto removal process," a Department of Defense official told Snopes via email, but did not immediately respond to a follow-up about what exactly the "auto removal process" entails.
However, it is likely related to the ongoing efforts of the Trump administration to remove references to "DEI" from government websites and programs. In January 2025, a similar scrubbing happened with U.S. Air Force training programs that featured Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Airforce Service Pilots.
"It's difficult to determine if the unpublishing was intentional or from incompetence, but what is true is that it was targeted and action was taken because it was flagged as being related to DEI," Jon Henshaw, a search engine optimization expert, told Snopes via email.
According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society website, Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Richard Nixon on May 14, 1970, for actions that occurred on Nov. 1, 1968 during the Vietnam War, citing Rogers' "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty."
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Rogers' temporary removal from the DOD website or his service in the U.S. Army. Rogers died in 1990, according to the profile on the DOD's website.
Rogers' Medal of Honor page is not the first to be removed from government websites since Trump returned to office. Snopes previously reported on claims that Arlington National Cemetery removed webpages about Black, Hispanic and female veterans and claims the U.S. military purged WWII Enola Gay aircraft photos.