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WASHINGTON — President Trump announced Monday he would be dismissing members of the Boards of Visitors of four service academies to combat “woke leftist ideologues.”
“Our Service Academies have been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years. I have ordered the immediate dismissal of the Board of Visitors for the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard,” Trump, 78, wrote on Truth Social.
“We will have the strongest Military in History, and that begins by appointing new individuals to these Boards. We must make the Military Academies GREAT AGAIN!”
Members of the boards of visitors are appointed variously by the president, vice president and members of Congress. Presidential appointees serve three-year terms.
The boards provide academy officials with advice and recommendations on the operation of each institution.
Former President Joe Biden pushed out Trump’s first-term appointees in September 2021, asking 18 board members to step down.
The move was meant to ensure the members were “aligned” with Biden’s vision for the military and to make sure they were “qualified to serve on them,” then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at the time.
The Trump appointees who were asked to step down in 2021 included several prominent allies of the 45th president, including Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer, Russ Vought and Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.
Some former board members tried to appeal Biden’s actions all the way up to the Supreme Court, but the justices refused to hear the case in November 2024.
There has been a trend of liberal initiatives at several of the service academies since the Biden administration takeover.
In October 2023, the Merchant Marine Academy — the fifth of the nation’s five military academies — implemented a new policy allowing midshipmen undergoing gender transitions to seek exemptions from their military service requirement.
In March, then-Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) questioned West Point’s move to drop its “Duty, Honor, Country” motto from its mission statement, replacing it with the generic “Army Values.”
Trump has rolled out several executive orders dealing with the military in recent weeks, including directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to dismiss transgender service members, end DEI initiatives and reinstate soldiers who were dismissed for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine.
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