West Point Caves to Trump’s Culture Wars in Bonkers Memo

The U.S. Military Academy West Point is disbanding 11 affinity groups as a result of Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In a memo Tuesday, the school announced that the Asian Pacific Forum Club, Japanese Forum Club, Korean-American Relations Seminar, Vietnamese-American Cadet Association, Native American Heritage Forum, and Latin Cultural Club were all disbanded and ordered to cease all activities immediately.

The National Society of Black Engineers, the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers were also shut down.

The Corbin Forum, which “empowers and promotes women’s leadership within the Corps of Cadets and Army,” was disbanded, and its web page was removed from West Point’s website. Spectrum, a group supporting LGBTQ+ cadets, was similarly ordered to shut down.

The memo also dissolved the Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club, which supported cadets who were “transitioning from civilian to cadet and cadet to officer.”

The dispersal of these groups, meant to provide resources and community to cadets, many of whom are from marginalized backgrounds, was done “in accordance with recent Presidential Executive Orders, Department of Defense guidance, and Department of the Army guidance,” according to the memo. No other rationale was provided for the action.

The U.S. Army and Air Force closed their respective DEI offices and programs in January. Last week, after Trump baselessly blamed the government’s DEI practices for a deadly plane crash, federal employees at several agencies received instructions to remove their pronouns from their email signature.

Donald Trump’s foolish pledge to take over the Gaza strip was quickly slammed by major world leaders, including American allies.

The president said Tuesday in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the “U.S. will take over the Gaza strip” and send its Palestinian residents to a “beautiful area with homes and safety … so that they can live out their lives in peace and harmony,” boasting that he would turn the territory into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

Trump’s plan for ethnic cleansing was immediately panned by the U.S.’s Arab allies. Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Gaza needed to be rebuilt “without moving the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.” Saudi Arabia also issued a statement reaffirming its desire for a Palestinian state as a “firm, steadfast and unwavering position,” contradicting Trump’s statements about the Gulf country earlier in the day.

“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia also stresses what it had previously announced regarding its absolute rejection of infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policies, annexation of Palestinian lands or efforts to displace the Palestinian people from their land,” the Saudi statement said.

China also criticized Trump’s harebrained idea, stressing that it supports a two-state solution.

“We oppose the forced relocation of people in Gaza and hope that the relevant parties will take the ceasefire and post-war governance in Gaza as an opportunity to push the Palestinian issue back on the right track,” said Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Turkey, a member of NATO with U.S. military bases, harshly criticized Trump’s plan, with the country’s foreign minister calling Trump’s plan to deport Gaza’s Palestinians to neighboring countries “unacceptable.”

“Deportation (of Palestinians) is something neither we nor the region can accept. Even thinking of it is absurd. Even launching a debate on it is wrong,” Hakan Fidan told the state-run Anadolu Agency.

Of course, the people actually living in Gaza are not fans of the idea either. Palestinians of all factions came out against Trump’s ethnic cleansing scheme, with Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri saying the president’s remarks “are ridiculous and absurd, and any ideas of this kind are capable of igniting the region. We consider them [the plan] a recipe for generating chaos and tension in the region because the people of Gaza will not allow such plans to pass.”

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, said, “These calls represent a serious violation of international law. Peace and stability will not be achieved in the region without establishing a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital on the borders of 1967, based on the two-state solution.”

Perhaps Palestine’s U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour put it best.

“For those who want to send the Palestinian people to a ‘nice place’, allow them to go back to their original homes in what is now Israel,” Mansour said, using Trump’s own words. “The Palestinian people want to rebuild Gaza because this is where we belong.”

Trump’s plan has even drawn skepticism from Republicans in Congress, with Senators Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Josh Hawley, and others puzzled at the idea. It’s going to be a hard sell for the president to convince his “America First” supporters, let alone the rest of the country, to invade, ethnically cleanse, and then occupy Gaza against the will of its long-suffering people.

Trump’s “buyout” offer (aka the “agree with me or leave” special) has hit the CIA.

The Central Intelligence Agency on Tuesday became the first of the intelligence community to receive Trump’s exit offer of eight months of pay and benefits. The agency is also now enforcing a hiring freeze, and anyone who was hired or in the process of getting hired at the CIA will likely have their offers pulled—especially if their background doesn’t align with the Trump administration’s goals, an aide told The Wall Street Journal.

Those goals are more aggressive surveillance and more anti-China activity, the aide said. Trump’s CIA plans to spy on allied governments like Mexico and take a more hardline approach to drug cartels, classifying them as terrorist organizations. This buyout is yet another step in Trump’s efforts to reshape the federal bureaucracy in his image and fill it to the brim with loyalists who will carry out his goals no questions asked.

The buyout itself is also highly questionable, as Trump does not have the line-by-line authority to authorize funds for such a thing.

“There’s no statutory authority that I can see for the president making this offer,” Senator Tim Kaine told The Wall Street Journal. “The administration immediately knows, you don’t want to work for me. They’ll find some other way to get rid of you. You should not raise your hand.”

Some federal workers in other agencies have resisted the buyouts thus far. How the CIA will respond remains to be seen.

After days offline, USAID’s website was finally restored late Tuesday … with a notice announcing that all employees will be placed on administrative leave.

“On Friday, February 7, 2025, at 11:59 pm (EST) all USAID direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs,” the notice said. “Essential personnel expected to continue working will be informed by Agency leadership by Thursday, February 6, at 3:00pm (EST).”

The Department of State, which has seemingly absorbed USAID, “is currently preparing a plan” to assist its personnel posted outside of the U.S. to return home, according to the announcement. The Agency would arrange and pay for the return of its employees within 30 days, and would “provide exceptions and return travel extensions based on personal or family hardship, mobility or safety concerns, and other reasons.”

The rest of the website is empty. The newest announcement comes just days after Musk declared that the agency would be shuttered and sent agents from the Department of Government Efficiency to raid USAID’s offices for access to all personnel and payment files.

On Tuesday, some USAID employees received letters telling them they’d been placed on administrative leave with pay “until further notice,” according to correspondence reviewed by The Hill. Those who had already been locked out of the internal system did not receive a letter.

It seems that Musk’s illegal plans to dismantle the world’s single largest humanitarian donor are proceeding according to schedule, without organized pushback from Democrats, and to the delight of America’s global adversaries.

Donald Trump’s latest plan to effectively “take over the Gaza strip” is seemingly too extreme for his Republican colleagues—though their tepid responses still leave wiggle room for Trump to push forward with the idea.

In a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, the president claimed that the United States would push Palestinians out of their home and “own it and be responsible.” That spontaneous and brazen idea caught most of his conservative colleagues—both in Congress and the media—off guard, as they grappled with whether Americans could be convinced to send their loved ones overseas to ethnically cleanse a war-torn region.

“We’ll see what our Arab friends say about that,” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham told Politico. “I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. I think that might be problematic, but I’ll keep an open mind.”

Graham added that he imagined Gaza would be a “tough place to be stationed as an American.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune told the outlet that how to achieve peace in the Middle East is still “a subject of conversation,” though he added that it sounds like Trump has “got an idea on that.”

Meanwhile, Senator Josh Hawley said, “I don’t know that I think it’s the best use of United States resources to spend a bunch of money in Gaza. I think maybe I’d prefer that to be spent in the United States first. But let’s see what happens.”

Another Republican senator, granted anonymity to candidly react to Trump’s invasion, said that they “did not have this” on their “bingo card.”

Even Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy sounded skeptical of the plan, optimistically saying Wednesday morning that Trump “knows the United States can’t invade another country.”

The definition of ethnic cleansing is the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society, per the Oxford English Dictionary. Ethnic cleansing has not been identified as an independent crime under international law, according to the United Nations.