In mid-March 2025, claims surfaced online that the Arlington National Cemetery website had removed links to pages about Black, Hispanic, and female veterans buried there. These claims circulated on various platforms such as X, Facebook, Threads, Reddit, and Bluesky. The report originated from Task & Purpose, a military news outlet, which revealed that between December 2024 and March 2025, several links related to these veterans were removed from the cemetery’s website. Using the Wayback Machine, Snopes verified the removal of links to specific sections, including “Notable Graves,” “Themes” in the Education section, and “History of Arlington National Cemetery.” Task & Purpose reported that cemetery officials confirmed they “unpublished” these pages in compliance with a Trump administration executive order targeting race and gender-related language and policies in the military.
The removal of these pages sparked controversy, as the pages included significant content on African American, Hispanic, and women’s histories at Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington National Cemetery officials said they were working to align the site with Department of Defense guidelines and to republish the content soon. Furthermore, a Department of Defense memo issued in February 2025 required a “digital content refresh” that called for removing content promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, including material about immutable characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or sex.
Despite the removal from the website’s links, the pages themselves were still accessible through direct URLs, though not via navigation links. The removal of these educational materials has led to concerns over the loss of important historical content.
