In February 2026, Internet users shared a rumor that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had removed the name of former Secretary of State Colin Powell from the list of notable military figures on the Arlington National Cemetery website.
The rumor originated in March 2025 and mentioned the removal of links to pages about black, Hispanic and female veterans buried at the site. Department of Defense The recall comes in the early weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term.
this The Army Cemetery Office is a department of the United States Army, Operation A famous military cemetery outside Washington. Army and other military departments Report To the Department of Defense.
For example, a Threads user retweeted (archived) a meme on February 1, 2026, which read: “Pete Hegseth removed Colin Powell’s name from the list of famous Americans buried in Arlington. Hegseth also removed the name of every person of color and every woman on the same list. Only white men remain.” Social media users shared rumors about Hegseth, who is white, and Powell, who was black, and Powell, who died in 2021.
(@joeybraun50/thread)
In short, as of March 2025, and continuing into February 2026, the cemetery’s website’s page titled “Outstanding Military Figures” still contained a brief biography describing Powell’s military career, in which he achieved the rank of four-star Army general.
While neither Hegseth nor anyone else under the Department of Defense completely removed Powell’s name from the page, sometime between late February and early March 2025, one or more people with authority to edit the page removed some biographical information related to Powell’s race, as well as a mention of Powell’s name in the biography of another noteworthy military member. Someone later recovered the information in mid-to-late March.
The rest of the rumor claims that “Hegseth removed the names of every person of color and every woman” and “only white men remained,” which isn’t entirely true. In a March 2025 post from Hegseth’s personal X account, he called the entire rumor “fake,” responding to a popular X post (archived) that promoted the text that later appeared in the meme pictured above.
In a March 2025 email to Snopes, Kerry L. Meeker, director of public affairs at Arlington National Cemetery, called the suggestion that someone had removed Powell’s name from the website “inaccurate.” “All the famous graves will be on our site, including Colin Powell’s,” she said.
She pointed us to a statement on the cemetery’s website (archived) which stated “No military personnel have been permanently removed from the ‘Famous Graves’ section of our website. “The statement also mentioned “Comply with the executive orders issued by the president and the direction of the Department of Defense.”
President Donald Trump issued an executive order (on file) on January 20, 2025, the first day of his second term, seeking to end “unlawful” programs and activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion and DEIA, where the “A” stands for Accessibility. The order targets “the federal government’s missions, policies, programs, preferences, and activities, regardless of how they appear,” related to DEIA.
Historical facts about Powell temporarily removed
An archived version of the “Distinguished Military Figures” page of the Arlington National Cemetery website from late February 2025 shows Powell’s biography, which begins with this sentence: “Vietnam War veteran General Colin Powell was the first African American to hold the three highest offices in the U.S. government: National Security Advisor (1987-1989), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-1993), and Secretary of State (2001-2005).”
In early March, another archived version of the page was confirmed to have removed the fact that Powell was the first African American to hold those three positions. sometime between March 17 and twenty oneone or more people restore the sentence to the page.
Between February and March, one or more individuals also removed mention of Powell’s name from the brigadier general’s biography, which was later reinstated. General Roscoe Conklin “Locke” Cartwright. In the late February version, one sentence was completely removed from the page: “Cartwright founded a social group to provide mentoring and leadership training to African American officers; notable members included General Colin Powell (Section 60) and General Roscoe Robinson, Jr. (Section 7A). “
Colin Powell receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George H.W. Bush at the White House on July 3, 1991. (Howard L. Sachs/CNP/Getty Images)
‘Anti-Asian stereotypes’ and glaring omissions
Other “outstanding military figures” temporarily removed from service Page “African Americans” were mentioned 17 times, and “blacks” were mentioned about 12 times. Many of the references to “African Americans” and “Negroes” describe milestones such as Brig.-Gen. General Hazel W. Johnson Brown, originally recorded on this page as “the first African-American female general in the United States Army.”
Major Kurt Zhou Lee’s biography originally described him as “the first Asian American officer in the Marine Corps.” As of March 21this fact and the term “Asian American” no longer appear on the page. The latest version of his biography also removes the following sentence that appeared in previous years: “Kurt Chew-Een Lee’s service record not only brought honor to his country but also shattered anti-Asian stereotypes: ‘I want to dispel the notion that the Chinese are docile, mild-mannered and obsequious,’ he told the Los Angeles Times in 2010.” These facts about Lee, as well as this sentence, reappeared on the site at some point in between. March 24 and March 29based on page versions archived via the Wayback Machine.
As of March 17, the page still showed Lt. Col. Alexander T. Augusta, a glaring oversight in the process of removing race-related content. of The U.S. Army is known as “the highest-ranking African American officer of the Civil War,” as well as “the Army’s first black physician, the United States’ first black hospital administrator (Friedman Hospital, Washington, D.C.), and the first black professor of medicine (Howard University).”
sometime between March 17 and twenty oneSeveral references to “black people” and “African Americans” reappeared on the site, according to archived page screenshots.
After we asked Mick about removing anti-Asian stereotypes from Lee’s biography and the fact that Augustana’s biography still mentioned his race four times — before reverting the deletion of Lee’s biography — an Arlington National Cemetery spokesperson Becky Wardwell provided a link video From Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell. In the March 20 video, Parnell said, “We want to make it very clear that history is not DEI.” He also discussed making mistakes and mentioned using artificial intelligence to do some content editing to comply with the Trump administration’s orders.
Three women removed, then reinstated
The error mentioned by Parnell may refer, at least in part, to the deletion and subsequent reinstatement of three female entries in “Outstanding Military Figures” Page. Those women are Lieutenant Colonel. Barbara Ellen Rainey”, Maj. Mary Theresa Rossi, “the Navy’s first female pilot,” “the first American female combat commander to fly into combat during the Persian Gulf War,” and Lt. Kara Spears Holtgreen, “the U.S. Navy’s first female carrier-based fighter pilot and the first woman to qualify as an F-14 combat pilot.”
All three women disappeared completely from the cemetery’s website pages in late February or early March, and reappeared at some point during this time. March 17 and twenty onebased on archived page captures.
Source:
Burns, Robert et al. “Colin Powell, the trailblazing general stained by Iraq, dies.” Associated PressOctober 19, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/colin-powell-dead-covid-9c918dc1c137ebf368f2cbb461e4fad4.
Christensen, Larke. “Arlington National Cemetery Removes Links to Web Pages About Black, Hispanic and Female Veterans.” SnopesMarch 14, 2025, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/arlington-national-cemetery-veterans/.
“Colin Powell | Biography & Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannicahttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Colin-Powell.
“Ending Aggressive and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferences.” White HouseJanuary 20, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/.
“Learn more about Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA).” New York State Department of Statehttps://dos.ny.gov/dei.
“organize.” U.S. Armyhttps://www.army.mil/organization/.
“Our cemetery.” office of secretary of the armyhttps://armycemeteries.army.mil/About-Us/Our-Cemeteries.
“Time Machine”. Archives Networkhttps://web.archive.org/.
