Trump DEI Purge Deletes Page On Golden Girls Icon Bea Arthur’s Military Service
Image: goldengirls/Instagram
Golden Girls actor Bea Arthur is one of the latest victims of Trump’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) purge, with a page documenting her service in the Marine Corps being erased from the Department of Defence website.
Arthur, known then as Bernice Frankel, was one of the first women to join the US Marine Corp Women’s Reserve, signing up in February 1943 at the age of 20, just five days after they began recruiting women.
The actor became a typist at the Marine Corp headquarters in Washington DC, before attending the Motor Transport School where she became a truck driver and dispatcher in North Carolina. She was honourably discharged in September 1945 as Staff Sergeant Arthur.
A webpage detailing her contributions and those of other female veterans was deleted from the Department of Defence, with the link leading to a “404 not found” page.
The Advocate reports that the 404 page first appeared on March 17, although deletion of Arthur’s service was first flagged on X on March 20. The post had been viewed over 900,000 times at the time of writing.
Following widespread backlash, Arthur’s page has since been reinstated.
Mass DEI deletion across department websites
Arthur and her fellow female marines appear to be the latest victim of Trump’s efforts to roll back DEI initiatives across government departments.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegsgeth announced earlier in the month that the military had until Wednesday 5 March to “remove all DoD news and feature articles, photos, and videos that promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).”
The executive order behind these moves, titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing”, was signed by President Trump on his first day back in office, and outlines the elimination of DEI offices, positions, plans, actions, programs or initiatives within 60 days.
As has happened across other departments, some resources unrelated to DEI have been caught in the crossfire, such as several photographs of service members with the last name “gay”, and the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay, which dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima.
A photo of Army Corps biologists were also on the chopping block, seemingly because it mentions some of the data they were collecting on fish- including their weight, size, and gender.
Former spokesperson of the Pentagon, Chris Meagher, said the initiative was “bonkers” in a post on X.
