Bye-bye, DEI. The Pentagon has shuttered and reassigned all personnel working in diversity, equity, and inclusion jobs. A Government Accountability Office report released Thursday announced that all DEI positions across the Defense Department had been “abolished” as of April to comply with recent White House executive orders. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth even celebrated Defense One’s coverage of the development Friday morning on social media.
- Fine print: Most of the roles were eliminated last year by an act of Congress. That is, as a result of a provision in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, as Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reports. Most of the remaining DEI jobs, 25, were held by service members. Read more here.
And bye-bye, John Ullyot. He’s been a disruptive, mid-level public affairs official in Hegseth’s Pentagon since January 20, when he began working as Acting Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. Prior to that, he’d served in the first Trump administration “running strategic communications at the [National Security Council] as a Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and as Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs” at the Department of Veterans Affairs, defense officials announced in late January.
Since Trump’s inauguration, Ullyot’s “tenure proved controversial,” Politico’s Jack Detsch reported Thursday after Ullyot shared news of his resignation letter. Behind the scenes, Ullyot “signed the memo that took away the Defense Department workspaces of numerous longstanding media outlets, including Politico, and reassigned them to conservative outlets such as Breitbart and One America News Network,” Detsch writes.
But more publicly, “Ullyot defended the agency after the Pentagon took down dozens of military webpages in a purge of diversity content in March, including a story about baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s service,” Detsch reminds readers. ESPN has more on that.
Another issue for Ullyot: “Sean Parnell, a combat veteran and former Republican congressional candidate in Pennsylvania, took on the chief Pentagon spokesperson role in February, and Ullyot found himself sidelined,” Detsch reports. Ullyot said in a statement to Politico, “I made clear to Secretary Hegseth before the inauguration that I was not interested in being number two to anyone in public affairs.”
- Worth noting: “Ullyot is the fourth DoD official to resign or be suspended this week,” behind Dan Caldwell, Darin Selnick, and Colin Carroll, Detsch wrote on social media. Continue reading, here.
Now welcome the 20-somethings to OSD. Two young men announced recently that they’re taking posts at the Office of the Secretary of Defense: 23-year-old Royce Chamberlin and 2024 Clemson graduate Amjed Yacu, who spent the remainder of the year interning at the House and Senate.
Neither has any known military experience, and one seems to have inadvertently flubbed his opening announcement. “I am excited and honored to announce I have been appointed to the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the DoD,” Royce—who is the son of Florida state Rep. Ryan Chamberlin—wrote on social media Thursday. He added that he’d be “Helping ensure our country is viewed as a force not to be reckoned with.”
It’s unclear what either will be doing at OSD. But Yacu said Thursday evening in his announcement, “It is a privilege to join Secretary Hegseth’s fight to restore faith and transparency within the Department of Defense.” Congratulations, gentlemen; and good luck in your new roles.
Weekend reading: Each year, Defense One reviews the U.S. military’s five services to help better prepare readers and policy makers for the spectrum of ideas and issues affecting the future of national defense. This year, Meghann Myers, Audrey Decker, and Bradley Peniston assessed the Marine Corps, Army, Air Force, Space Force, and Navy in five special reports you can choose from below.
- State of the Marine Corps // Meghann Myers: “Everything is in danger of slipping,” commandant says of Marine modernization.
- State of the Army // Meghann Myers: The entire service is trying to transform “in contact.”
- State of the Air Force // Audrey Decker: The unveiling of a new, sixth-gen fighter jet bodes well for more air power investment, but readiness problems and funding questions persist.
- State of the Navy // Bradley Peniston: Could a new, more productive era in shipbuilding be on the horizon?
- State of the Space Force // Audrey Decker: As Trump envisions “our manifest destiny into the stars,” the Space Force is set to play a key role in America’s space ambitions.
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Lauren C. Williams. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1946, former Army 2nd Lt. Jackie Robinson made his regular season debut for the Montreal Royals, America’s first integrated minor league baseball team. Robinson’s historic debut with Major League Baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers occurred the following year, on April 15.
Yemen strikes
The U.S. military carried out deadly airstrikes on an oil port on Yemen’s western coast Thursday, allegedly killing at least 70 people and wounding more than 170 others, the Associated Press reported Friday, citing a Houthi official and satellite imagery taken after U.S. officials confirmed the attack.
Targeted: Yemen’s Ras Isa port, which Central Command officials described as a “source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists” that yielded “illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years.”
CENTCOM’s message: “The Houthis, their Iranian masters, and those who knowingly aid and abet their terrorist actions should be put on notice that the world will not accept illicit smuggling of fuel and war material to a terrorist organization.” The military officials noted, “This strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen, who rightly want to throw off the yoke of Houthi subjugation and live peacefully.”
More on the port: “Ras Isa takes in gasoline, diesel and liquefied petroleum gas for the Houthis,” Jon Gambrill of AP writes. “Satellite images of the port from Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by The Associated Press showed destroyed oil tanks and vehicles. Oil also appeared to be leaking into the Red Sea.” Continue reading, here or via the New York Times.
Related reading:
Trump 2.0
Update: U.S. intelligence reportedly contradicts President Trump’s justification for mass deportations. A secret assessment by the National Intelligence Council found that the Venezuelan government was not directing a U.S. invasion by the prison gang Tren de Aragua, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
The finding used input from the United States’ 18 intelligence agencies; only the FBI disagreed. The report, which was classified and released this month, found “minimal contact between some members of the gang and low-level members of the Venezuelan government, there was a consensus that there was no coordination or directive role between gang and government,” the Associated Press reports.
The assessment also stressed that Tren de Aragua was “not coordinated with or supported by the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, or senior officials in the Venezuelan government.”
The Trump administration wants to significantly expand the nation’s immigration detention system. President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign promise of mass deportations has gained momentum as the administration discusses ways to expand the capacity of existing domestic detention centers, the Associated Press reports.
Latest: The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has invited companies to bid on contracts worth up to $45 billion to operate detention centers and more than double their capacity—a move that comes as Congress considers a $175 billion budget for immigration enforcement.
ICYMI: Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting director, said the agency needs “to get better at treating this like a business,” suggesting it operate “like Amazon, trying to get your product delivered in 24 hours.” Lyons added that trying to “do that with human beings and trying to get them pretty much all over the globe is really something for us.” More, here.
One of the Pentagon’s top contractors, Palantir, wants to use its AI to help the Trump administration deport people, 404 Media reports. Leaked company chats on the popular Slack platform reveal Palantir’s plans to use its AI technology for “producing leads for law enforcement to find people to deport” as well as organizing certain “logistics of Trump’s mass deportation effort,” veteran tech journalist Joseph Cox of 404 Media reported this week.
Palantir also recently sealed a separate $30 million contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to develop a prototype to improve immigrant tracking, including self-deportation and individuals who have overstayed their visas. Business Insider’s Rosemarie Ho has more, reporting Thursday, here.
And lastly: U.S. defenses against mis- and disinformation took a hit this week after the Trump administration shuttered a State Department office on Wednesday. Within the department, it was known as R/Fimi, which refers to their responsibility to monitor foreign disinformation, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports.
R/Fimi was part of State’s Global Engagement Center, which was created in 2016 by the Obama administration to counter Russian disinformation. But State Secretary Marco Rubio alleged the GEC “actively silenced and censored the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,” which is a claim the center denies and insists there’s no evidence to support.
The move is part of a larger White House effort targeting government entities that monitor or respond to foreign influence campaigns. But while experts worry the office closings leave Americans vulnerable, the administration sees it as a preservation of free speech. Read on, here.
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