Pentagon webpage for Black Medal of Honor winner restored after outcry

The US defense department webpage celebrating a Black Medal of Honor recipient that was removed and had the letters “DEI” added to the site’s address has been restored – and the letters scrubbed – after an outcry.

On Saturday, the Guardian reported that US army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers’s Medal of Honor webpage led to a “404” error message – and that the URL had been changed, with the word “medal” changed to “deimedal”.

Rogers, who died in 1990, served in the Vietnam war, where he was wounded three times while leading the defense of a base. Then president Richard Nixon awarded him the Medal of Honor, the country’s highest military honor, in 1970, making him the highest-ranking African American to receive it, according to the West Virginia military hall of fame.

On Saturday the web page honoring him was no longer functional, with a “404 – Page Not Found” message appearing along with the note: “The page you are looking for might have been moved, renamed, or may be temporarily unavailable.”

A screenshot posted on Bluesky by the writer Brandon Friedman noted that a Google preview continued to show the defense department’s profile page – noting of Rogers that, “as a Black man, he worked for gender and race equality while in the service”. Friedman added that the page no longer worked and the URL had been “changed to include ‘DEI medal’”.

By Monday, however, the site was operational once more – and the URL had returned to its original formulation, with the letters DEI no longer present.

In a statement Monday that did not elaborate, a defense department spokesperson told the Guardian: “The department has restored the Medal of Honor story about army Maj Gen Charles Calvin Rogers … The story was removed during auto removal process.”

Since retaking the Oval Office in January, Donald Trump has moved his administration to roll back DEI – diversity, equity and inclusion – efforts across the federal government.

One executive order sought to terminate all “mandates, policies, programs, preferences and activities in the federal government”, which the Trump administration deems “illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility’ (DEIA) programs”.

In a win for the Trump administration, an appeals court on Friday lifted a block on executive orders that seek to end the federal government’s support for DEI programs.