Pentagon Purge of References to Women, Minorities in Docs Delays Air Force Enlisted Promotions
An upcoming Air Force promotion exam for airmen hoping to reach the rank of technical sergeant will be delayed after President Donald Trump's administration ordered all diversity-related material to be scrubbed and reviewed, including the service's study handbook and the test itself.
The testing cycle, which was scheduled to begin Saturday and go through April 15, will be pushed back to March 3 and will continue through May 1, the Air Force said in a statement to Military.com. The delay comes after orders by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to eliminate all efforts throughout the military promoting diverse groups such as women, troops with minority backgrounds, and gay and lesbian service members.
"This delay is to ensure we take appropriate action to evaluate testing materials, remove all [diversity, equity and inclusion-related] content in the AF Handbook and [Career Development Course] study guides, and remain consistent with the orders of our commander in chief and defense secretary," Capt. Kevyn Lee-Anne Kaler, an Air Force spokesperson, said in the statement.
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Air Force Handbook 1, a more than 600-page document that enlisted airmen use to study for the Weighted Airman Promotion System and the Promotion Fitness Examination, was removed from the service's website in late January, Military.com reported last week.
Military.com also reviewed the handbook and found multiple mentions of the Air Force's history and praise of diverse groups of people serving in the ranks, which would likely be the target of removal under Trump's executive orders.
One section titled "Leveraging Diversity" says the Air Force believes "diversity is a military necessity." In another section titled "Respecting Individuality," the service praises the "richness and benefits of diversity," adding "we must increase awareness of individuality and expel stereotypes."
The document also praised the successes of female aviators and the Black Tuskegee Airmen, saying they "dispelled myths, opened eyes, rewrote history, and prepared the USAF for being the first of the U.S. armed services to integrate racially."
The service told Military.com that a new Air Force handbook and study guides with corrected material are expected to be published by Feb. 18, giving airmen only a little more than two weeks to prepare for the beginning of the testing cycle at the start of March.
Delays in studying for promotion testing mean airmen must wait longer to prepare and take an exam to earn new ranks that could significantly increase their paychecks and advance their careers in the service.
Military.com's 2025 paycharts show that a promotion to E-6, technical sergeant, could increase an airman's earnings anywhere from nearly $300 to $800 a month just in active-duty pay.
Even with the new study materials, the promotion exam will still have diversity-related questions, according to the service, which claimed that writing a new test would cause a four-month delay and affect upward of 6,000 promotions. The Trump administration and Pentagon use the term "diversity, equity and inclusion," or DEI, to describe the programs and materials they are purging.
"Until questions can be removed, testers will still see DEI questions and are expected to answer all questions to the best of their ability," Kaler said. "However, any DEI questions will not be scored."
The delays in releasing the study guides as well as the test itself are the latest impact to the rank and file under the Trump and Hegseth push to remove initiatives that have supported and celebrated women, people with minority backgrounds, and gay and lesbian service members in the past. Trump has issued orders to ban transgender troops from serving, and the services are already beginning to carry out that ban.
Hegseth has openly told troops that he does not support DEI initiatives, saying at a Pentagon town hall recently that "the single dumbest phrase in military history is 'our diversity is our strength.'"
Most recently, the Department of the Air Force removed diversity goals for officer applicants, gutted groups that worked to help improve policy for the rank and file, and issued a memo stopping cultural celebration months honoring the history of Black people and women.
Related: Air Force Nixes Officer Applicant Diversity Goals as Directed by Trump's Executive Orders
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He has served not even five years in the state assembly, and has little of the experience generally thought needed to manage a civic workforce of more than 280,000 people and a budget of $115 billion. (The New York Times' editorial board deemed him unqualified for the job.) But Mamdani did have energy and charm, and no shortage of ideas that were quickly turned into easy-to-digest slogans such as 'Free buses' and 'Freeze the rent.' He relentlessly focused on affordability and economic issues, a welcome message in a city with an extraordinarily high cost of living and stark income stratification. Mamdani revealed himself to be remarkably adept at communicating his message, mastering social-media memes and delivering powerful speeches that evoked far more of Barack Obama's loft than Biden's whisper. He said yes to seemingly every interview and every podcast, tossing aside the caution traditionally preached by the focus-group-wielding political-consultant class. He tapped into liberal New Yorkers' anger over Gaza. He resonated with young people, including young men, who not only turned out for him but also volunteered for his campaign, creating an enthusiastic army of believers that created a noticeable contrast with Cuomo's support from donors, unions, and establishment figures. In the race's final days, a cheerful Mamdani walked the length of Manhattan, a metaphor for the tirelessness he brought to the race. 'The Democrats nationally need to start doing what Zohran just did. When we metaphorically sit at the kitchen table and empathize and offer passionate solutions, we win,' de Blasio told me. 'We didn't do that in 2024, and that was a big reason we lost.' Mamdani did what so many Democrats failed to do last fall: He excited new voters, focused on economic issues, and communicated his story well. And most of all, he won, including in racially and economically diverse neighborhoods. As of this writing, it appears that there will be no need to rely on multiple rounds in New York City's new ranked-choice voting system; although Mamdani did not crack the 50 percent threshold last night to win the nomination outright, he surpassed Cuomo by about eight points, and the former governor conceded. 'Mamdani created a movement around his candidacy, and the big lesson for Democrats is that young voters are looking for a larger social-political movement and not just an anti-Trump party,' Basil Smikle, a New York–based political strategist who has worked for Cuomo and Hillary Clinton, told me. 'His victory suggests there's a needed reformation of the Democratic coalition, and repudiation of incrementalism but also a more wholesale shift from establishment politics.' But the reverberations from Mamdani's candidacy aren't all reassuring ones for Democrats. Republicans have mocked his socialist ideas by evoking the barren supermarkets of the Soviet Union. They've seized on his previous calls to 'Defund the police' (Mamdani called for reducing the NYPD budget in 2020; he was the only candidate in the Democratic field this year to not pledge to hire more cops). A few Republicans have trotted out racist and Islamophobic stereotypes (Mamdani is of Ugandan-Indian descent and is Muslim). Some Democrats, too, are leery of Mamdani's call for new taxes on businesses and the rich, warning that such policies could lead to a wealth exodus from New York. Republicans have pointed to the sinking poll numbers of Chicago's progressive mayor, Brandon Johnson, as evidence that liberals can't govern. Last night, Vice President J. D. Vance posted on social media, 'Congratulations to the new leader of the Democratic Party,' tagging Mamdani. Trump today went one step further, posting that Mamdani was a '100% Communist Lunatic.' Mamdani's depiction of Israel's actions in Gaza as a genocide threatens to unnerve some members of the city's large and politically active Jewish population. Within hours of Mamdani's acceptance speech, Republican Representative Elise Stefanik of New York sent a fundraising appeal calling him a 'Hamas Terrorist sympathizer.' Mamdani has defended the pro-Palestinian slogan ' Globalize the intifada ' but has denied accusations that he is anti-Semitic. He has said that he supports an Israel that provides equal rights to all of its citizens, but he has repeatedly dodged questions about whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. Jonathan Chait: Why won't Zohran Mamdani denounce a dangerous slogan? 'Mamdani is a gift to Republicans. They will link every Democrat to his far-left policy proposals,' Susan Del Percio, a Republican strategist who worked in Rudy Giuliani's mayoral administration, told me. 'As mayor of New York City, every single thing he does will be held under a microscope by Democrats and Republicans alike. And some of these things are really out there.' When the mayoral race began, the conventional wisdom was that the Democratic primary would be the de facto general election. That is no longer quite the case. Before last night, Cuomo had previously signaled that if he lost the primary, he might run in November on another ballot line, believing that the glow around Mamdani might wear off with more time and scrutiny. (Those close to Cuomo think that an independent run, though possible, might now be less likely given the margin of his defeat this week.) And while the Republican nominee, the anti-crime activist and radio-show host Curtis Sliwa, seems to have little chance, Mamdani's win might open the door again for Adams; in a remarkable plot twist, the mayor has told associates that he can now position himself as the steadier choice to keep the job. A person close to Trump told me that the president might enjoy wading into the race in his former hometown and would consider endorsing Adams, though he might opt against it out of concern that it would hurt Adams more than help him. Still, the Democratic nominee will be considered the favorite. If Mamdani wins, there will be only so much that his fellow Democrats can learn from the specifics of the race, given New York's liberal tilt. But maybe there will be some lessons that are less about ideology and more about tactics—having energy, communicating clearly and frequently, and focusing on personal economic issues. 'I've already heard from some Democrats who worry that this guy is going to get us all labeled as socialists,' the Reverend Al Sharpton, the civil-rights leader and Democratic stalwart, told me. 'But he hit on something; he connected with something. Mamdani kept showing up. Democrats need to keep showing up.'
