A look at the implementation of the CinC and SecDef’s anti-CRT/DEI/Woke orders:
By Andrew Bahl | The Cap Times
On Jan. 20, his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to purge the federal government of what he has called “radical” diversity, equity and inclusion programming.
Within two days, the ripple effects reached Wisconsin.
Emails obtained by the Cap Times via an open records request paint a picture of state officials responding with a mix of urgency and confusion to the rapidly changing situation in the early days of the Trump administration.
“Any guidance on applicability of these timelines at the state level?” wrote David May, then the leader of the Wisconsin National Guard, in an email to a top official in the National Guard Bureau on Jan. 22.
State military officials didn’t wait long, though. Almost immediately they massaged language on the Wisconsin National Guard websites to de-emphasize equity work and rewrote anti-sexual harassment policies. This was despite the National Guard’s history of mismanaging harassment complaints, as a previous Cap Times investigation revealed.
Staff members also canceled a planned event on mentorship for women, removed references to Holocaust remembrance and heritage days, deleted a plan for hiring people with disabilities, and considered how much it would cost to change signs for the Guard’s bathrooms to match Trump’s language on genders.
The president’s anti-DEI directive and other executive orders had a unique effect on the Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs, which includes the National Guard branch and the agency overseeing disaster and emergency responses in the state.
That’s because the Department of Military Affairs is the only state agency that employs a large number of both state and federal workers, making many of its Guard members, support staff and leaders subject to directives from the president.
A follow-up memo from the White House Office of Personnel Management required federal departments to quickly notify all employees of the order, place any workers charged with DEI efforts on administrative leave and take down any public-facing websites or social media accounts for equity work.
That last item was the most notable action item for the Wisconsin National Guard. May, who served as adjutant general until mid-April, quickly notified staff they would need to remove National Guard-related online posts for an indefinite period of time.
“DEI content is potentially embedded in our various communications at all levels, including social media accounts down to the unit level,” May wrote. “We need time to assess each platform.”
Wisconsin was not alone in taking these steps, though state officials appeared to show greater alacrity in addressing the issue than their counterparts in other states. The Ohio National Guard later removed social media posts it believed promoted DEI. Pennsylvania and Arkansas made similar moves.
“I think the memo is fairly restrictive,” Arizona Adjutant General Kerry Muehlenbeck wrote to May about what the provisions might mean for their agencies.
‘Equal Opportunity’ pages censored
By the end of the business day on Jan. 22, staff members had not only taken down the Guard websites and social media accounts for review but had removed a federally funded employee from a position on the Department of Military Affairs’ State Equity and Inclusion committee.
A memo from Leslie Westmont, a legislative liaison for the Department of Military Affairs, laid out what red flags to look for, ranging from posts promoting diverse hiring initiatives to efforts to make websites accessible to those with disabilities.
Some websites came back online quickly, less than 24 hours later. Others took longer and required more extensive changes.
The Department of Military Affairs’ “Equal Opportunity and Equal Employment Opportunity” webpage touted “It is the goal of the agency to resolve and settle all allegations and complaints of discrimination fairly, equitably, and expeditiously.”
Revisions removed the word “equitably” and deleted a link to the department’s plan for improving the hiring of people with disabilities.
Other parts of the Equal Opportunity webpage have also been removed. Gone is a list of holiday observations, ranging from Holocaust Remembrance Day to Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month to LGBT Pride Month. Under new Department of Defense policy, personnel are barred from celebrating those events in their military capacity.
The online page no longer mentions federally mandated programs supporting women and employees who are disabled or Hispanic.
The federal government requires agencies to post data regarding employment discrimination complaints lodged with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That data has also been hidden on the Equal Opportunity page and is not accessible elsewhere on the Department of Military Affairs website, nor on the websites for the Wisconsin Air National Guard wings.
The agency did not respond to questions about how it planned to provide the information on discrimination complaints and broader questions about how it planned to maintain an inclusive workplace in light of the changes.
Gov. Tony Evers’ office did not respond to questions about concerns over the agency’s ability to recruit diverse applicants in light of the executive orders. As governor, Evers is commander in chief of the Wisconsin National Guard.
Six days after the Department of Military Affairs website was brought back online, the department’s human resources leader, Stacie Meyer, pointed out that a state-mandated document outlining the agency’s equity and inclusion plans, among other information, had been removed.
Those materials were not reinstated until nearly two weeks after they were taken down, prompting an urgent internal message.
“This is still down — it has our state Affirmative Action information on it, which needs to be up,” Leah Moore, a staffer in the Adjutant General’s office, wrote on Feb. 5 to two colleagues. “Who can I check with on this to find out its ETA and get it up?”
Staffer worries about bathrooms; sexual harassment policy vanishes
The flood of executive orders from Washington applied to other issues, too, such as requiring the National Guard’s federal workers to return to the office full time.
Eleven days after Trump’s swearing-in, May informed staff that the Department of Military Affairs also would be forced to comply with a mandate rolling back protections for transgender people and requiring federal agencies to recognize only two genders, male and female.
A senior National Guard official, Col. Matthew Elder, said in an email that the order presented “No major concerns or known non-compliance, but services need to do their due diligence in scrubbing through those items listed below.”
But in an email later that day, a Guard staffer said the order could require the agency to ditch its current bathroom signs, which use the labels “men” and “women.”
“If the new EO (executive order) requires the specific terms of ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ we will have to do a wholesale latrine/shower sign replacement,” wrote Nathan Olson, who said he would follow up later with an estimate of how much the changes might cost.
The Department of Military Affairs did not respond to questions about whether sign changes were ultimately required and how much they might have cost the state.
Some of the responses within the Wisconsin National Guard appeared to run counter to recent efforts to better address misconduct.
A 2019 report from the federal National Guard Bureau found that the Wisconsin National Guard had mishandled nearly two dozen cases of alleged sexual assault by investigating the complaints internally instead of referring cases to local police or federal officials for review.
The Guard, as well as state legislators, updated policies in an effort to improve the culture within the agency.
Earlier in 2025, the website continued to include a 2020 policy that outlined procedures for reporting and investigating sexual harassment. At some point, the document was taken off the website.
Eventually, an updated version of the policy — overhauled in February after Trump’s orders — was published online. The new document is broader than its predecessor, applying to all forms of discrimination, not just sexual harassment.
Gone is language from the 2020 document that states sexual harassment, specifically, “is incompatible with our core values and it degrades mission readiness, unit cohesion, and morale” and that “commanders, leaders, managers, and supervisors will not tolerate sexual harassment in the workplace.”
Instead, the new policy more broadly states that “discrimination and harassment” are problematic. A separate portion of the language does focus specifically on sexual harassment as a “particularly grievous form of harassment and has additional investigation requirements.” The revised version also axed any references to gender.
The new policy affects most Guard members and civilian employees but, in a new development, explicitly does not apply to those who have been called up to active duty military service by the president.
The executive orders changed physical operations of the National Guard, as well.
In 2024, for the first time, the Wisconsin Army National Guard held a women’s symposium. At the time, the event was portrayed as “reinforcing the organization’s commitment to gender equality and empowering leaders, women and allies to advocate for one another.”
In the wake of Trump’s DEI order, the 2025 event was cancelled. A draft email to participants, circulated among Guard staff and Gov. Evers’ office, indicated the plan was to bring back the symposium in the future in a modified format that included speakers, mentorship “and a series of panel discussions featuring both current and former leaders, male and female.”
“Looking ahead, we are hopeful that we can reschedule and reengage on this important event in the future,” said the draft email, which was unsigned. “Our goal is to continue to hold events that will be open to ALL Soldiers and servicemembers at all levels of leadership.”
The Department of Military Affairs did not respond to questions about the future of the symposium.try have warned they do not expect to receive federal funding. The Wisconsin Emergency Management agency did not respond to questions from the Cap Times about how this fresh round of news would affect the state.
Andrew Bahl is a politics reporter for the Cap Times. Andrew writes about Wisconsin politics with a focus on state government and elections. Email story ideas and tips to Andrew at abahl@captimes.com or call (608) 252-6418.
First published on The Cap Times
Leave a Comment