Anti-American ideology still festers at West Point



Diversity, equity, and inclusion employees are still running amok in the hallowed halls of the United States Military Academy at West Point. President Trump and members of his administration have taken the first steps toward eliminating DEI in the military, but there won’t be lasting change until all traces of it are removed from our military’s oldest academy.

In 2024, Congress and watchdog groups started asking why cadets were being taught DEI and critical race theory ideology in West Point classrooms. Over the next several months, West Point was embroiled in controversy as the academy faced a barrage of congressional hearings, lawsuits, and Freedom of Information Act requests. But the school was able to successfully shield many of its woke policies through disingenuous public relations tactics.

As long as these officials remain in charge, any claims of returning to a pre-DEI, mission-focused ethos ring hollow.

More than six months into the new administration, it is clear that West Point’s “compliance” with President Trump’s “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” executive order and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s anti-DEI memo is merely perfunctory — and even deceptive. Their orders are being undermined by the continued presence of woke employees who continue to prop up a leftist regime that has embedded itself at West Point.

DEI by any other name

Dr. Morten Ender is a full professor of sociology at West Point whose work confirms his allegiance to DEI dogma. Before Congress became wary of DEI in the military, Ender worked as the co-chair of USMA’s Diversity and Inclusion Studies Minor. He was the point of contact for classes such as "Deconstructing Patriotism" and "The Evolution of Cross-dressing in the Military."

Ender also taught classes such as "Deviance and Social Control" and "Race, Class, Gender, and Ethnicity.” His work has included publications including “Dinner and Conversation: Transgender Integration at West Point and Beyond” and books like “Inclusion in the American Military: A Force for Diversity.” It’s absurd to believe that a person who so vigorously embraced the politicization of the military would simply give up that crusade in a new role, with a new title.

Since Congress took a harder line on DEI in the military, the DEI minor’s website has disappeared, and Ender’s bio has been cleaned up, removing any trace of his association with DEI. Originally, West Point’s site listed his many accomplishments, including his pro-DEI articles and woke classes.

West Point may try to cover up its history, but it will not fool us.

RELATED: ‘Get DEI and CRT out of the military’: Leftist media in shambles after Hegseth pick

  Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

 

The continued employment of Lisa Benitez, another woke professor, is also puzzling in light of Hegseth’s clear directive to stop the inculcation of toxic ideologies like DEI and CRT in the military. The former chief diversity officer of West Point’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equal Opportunity, Benitez’s role has taken several new forms since 2024. In June of last year, she was given the title of Chief Engagement and Retention Officer and then became Equal Employment Manager only a few months later.

While Benitez no longer has an official presence on the academy’s website, her LinkedIn profile still lists her as a West Point employee, and her phone number matches that of the equal employment manager role.

Benitez organized the annual West Point Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Conference. This conference had been a bastion of woke ideology in our nation’s premier military academy, hosting talks on “The Evolution of Diversity” and “Corporate Diversity.” The name of the conference changed in January to “The Iris and Herman Bulls ’78 Family Legacy of Graduates and Leaders Forum” and was eventually canceled due to controversy. It’s clear, however, that the radical ideology it once openly promoted remains.

Col. Archie Bates III, the deputy director of West Point’s Behavioral Science and Leadership Department, attended one of those conferences. In addition to doing academic work on preferential college admissions, he touts himself as a skilled promoter of DEI and lists his many woke accomplishments. He also co-authored the military’s DEI policy, which authorized women for combat arms in 2011. Bates is currently the academy’s acting department head of Behavior Sciences and Leadership.

Another member of the DEI faculty still in place at West Point is Maj. Catherine Grizzle, who is currently an instructor for the Behavioral Science and Leadership Department.

Grizzle came up through the ranks when woke leadership was being openly promoted and praised. She has long been a poster child for DEI, becoming only the third female field artillery Basic Officer Leader Course gunnery instructor. Her LinkedIn profile showcases her full commitment to DEI, and she is the only West Point faculty member to have DEI listed as one of her research interests.

Fortunately, at least one faculty member who teaches DEI is leaving voluntarily. USMA history professor Anthony Guerrero, who has been at West Point for over two years, is resigning in protest due to President Trump’s crackdown on DEI.

In a New York Times op-ed, Guerrero called Trump’s executive order on military excellence and readiness a “legal command that provides cover for bigotry. It delivers hate in the guise of a national security issue, dressed up in medicalized language.” Not only is Guerrero defending transgender ideology, but he is also contradicting a direct order to keep his concerns private.

Ideology runs deep

West Point’s DEI leadership — including figures like Ender, Bates, Grizzle, Benitez, and Guerrero — represents just a fraction of DEI’s ideological entrenchment there. Despite recent efforts to present a façade of reform, West Point remains captive to the same people who have been championing divisive policies on race and sex for years.

As long as these officials remain in charge, any claims of returning to a pre-DEI, mission-focused ethos ring hollow. The result is an officer corps trained in ideological conformity rather than the lethality, leadership, and war fighting excellence our national defense demands.

While the Trump administration has taken commendable steps to roll back DEI in the military, those efforts cannot succeed if the very officials who created these policies remain in positions of influence. Lasting reform requires not just policy change but also serious personnel change.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.

ICE Detained An Illegal Alien Once ‘Flagged’ On Terror Watchlist. Media Call Him A ‘Children’s Chaplain’

The narrative of his detention will focus mostly on his religious work and hardly about his immigration status.

Metropolitan Police Department refuses public access to Jan. 6 use-of-force reports



The District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department refused to provide Blaze News with copies of the Use of Force Incident Reports from its massive presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Blaze News filed a Freedom of Information Act request with MPD on May 15, seeking the officer-prepared reports on the use of force for crowd control at the Capitol during the explosive Jan. 6 protests and subsequent rioting.

‘No, you’re going to kill her!’

Under MPD policy, the department had until June 2 to provide a response to the Blaze News request, but failed to do so until June 10.

“Your request was considered,” wrote MPD FOIA specialist Shania Hughes in a letter to Blaze News. 

“A review of our records determined the information you seek is law enforcement sensitive and not for public release.”

Hughes’ letter cited §2-534(a)(4) of the Code of the District of Columbia, which states:

The following matters may be exempt from disclosure under the provisions of this subchapter: Inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters, including memorandums or letters generated or received by the staff or members of the Council, which would not be available by law to a party other than a public body in litigation with the public body.

The D.C. Code makes no mention of the subjective and nebulous term “law enforcement sensitive.”

Hughes’ letter said release of the details of force used against protesters at the Capitol “would constitute as a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” She cited §2-534(a)(2) and §2-534(a)(3)(c) of the D.C. Code, which make reference to “information of a personal nature” that would “constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

RELATED: Former Jan. 6 defendant gets life sentence for plot to kill FBI agents, other law enforcement

  MPD Sgt. Frank Edwards fires crowd-control munitions into the packed West Plaza crowd at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. U.S. Department of Justice / Metropolitan Police Department

The sections of D.C. Code do not define the term “personal privacy” or explain why it applies to police officers employed by a government agency who were on duty during rioting at the Capitol.

Blaze News filed another FOIA request with MPD on May 1, seeking a record of all Jan. 6 use-of-force complaints. The department returned a spreadsheet listing a single complaint having to do with “shoving.”

Jacqueline Hazzan, legal counsel for the MPD Office of Police Complaints, said the details of that complaint would not be released because they would “reveal information about the agency’s internal deliberative process before it was completed” and “cause an unwarranted invasion of others’ personal privacy.”

The issue of police use of force on Jan. 6 still draws interest 4.5 years later because of what is contained on Capitol Police CCTV security video, MPD bodycam footage, and third-party videos that were often seized by the FBI for use in prosecuting close to 1,600 people who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

‘It wasn’t until I saw the video that I realized how bad it was.’

Metropolitan Police routinely refuse to release any bodycam footage from Jan. 6. Former Jan. 6 defendants have posted a large cache of MPD bodycam video, but the department practice has been that the public is not allowed access to Jan. 6 video.

Blaze News covered a high-impact use-of-force case in the point-blank shooting of Pennsylvania dump-truck driver Mark Griffin with a 40mm shell filled with hard rubber baton rounds. The shot — fired by an officer, according to video — split Griffin’s left femur from top to bottom. The injury required several surgical procedures to repair, including insertion of a titanium plate with 14 screws.

Sgt. Frank Edwards, the officer who video shows fired the shot, told a colleague late in the day on Jan. 6 that MPD went through 500 crowd-control munition shells, grenades, and gas canisters that day.

Other prominent Jan. 6 use-of-force cases included the beating of protester Rosanne Boyland by MPD Officer Lila Morris. Boyland had collapsed at the mouth of the Lower West Terrace Tunnel and appeared to be lifeless when Morris used a wooden walking stick to strike Boyland in the face, head, and ribs, according to video evidence.

RELATED: 141 days after President Trump’s pardon, Jan. 6 defendant Elias Nick Costianes Jr. released from prison

  Metropolitan Police Department Officer Lila Morris winds up with a wooden walking stick to strike protester Luke Coffee and shortly turns her fury to a lifeless Rosanne Boyland outside the Lower West Terrace Tunnel at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. U.S. Department of Justice/Metropolitan Police Department Bodycam

It is unknown the extent of injuries Boyland suffered as a result. Third-party video and bodycam footage showed that Boyland was bleeding from her right eye and her nose. There was a visible injury above her right eye that was not mentioned or documented by paramedics, the emergency room physician, or the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in its autopsy report.

The use of the walking stick against Boyland was “brought to our attention and reviewed thoroughly,” MPD public affairs specialist Alaina Gertz told the Epoch Times in April 2022. The review “did not substantiate the allegations you have outlined,” she said, suggesting that the videos of Morris striking Boyland were not properly vetted for “authenticity.”

Bagshaw had ‘gone hands-on with demonstrators in Washington for years.’

The Epoch Times filed a FOIA request for Officer Morris’ Jan. 6 bodycam footage, but MPD refused to grant access, saying releasing the video would violate Morris’ privacy.

Protester Victoria C. White of Rochester, Minn., was beaten in the head, neck, and face by then-Lt. Jason Bagshaw and other officers inside the Lower West Terrace tunnel about 20 minutes before Boyland collapsed, video showed. Capitol Police CCTV security video and MPD bodycam footage showed that White was struck nearly 40 times with steel riot batons and fists.

At 4:11 p.m., a bystander at the tunnel mouth repeatedly tried to intervene to protect White. He shouted at police, “No, no, no, no. Please … please don’t beat her!” and “No, you’re going to kill her!” according to the bodycam of MPD Officer Andrew Wayte. In one violent series, Bagshaw repeatedly pummeled White in the side of the face with a closed fist, security video showed.

“It wasn’t until I saw the video that I realized how bad it was,” White said in a 2022 Jan. 6 documentary. She sued Bagshaw and MPD Officer Neil McAllister in March 2024. That lawsuit is ongoing before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols.

RELATED: Fact-check: President Trump authorized 20,000 National Guard troops for duty on Jan. 6, 2021

  Protester Victoria White is tossed around by police during a severe beating in the Lower West Terrace Tunnel at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Bodycam Images/Metropolitan Police Department

The lawsuit said White was subjected to “objectively unreasonable, excessive, and indeed, deadly force that shocks the conscience.”

Bagshaw has been with MPD for more than 22 years. A July 2022 article in the Washington Post said Bagshaw has “gone hands-on with demonstrators in Washington for years, winning colleagues’ respect but drawing criticism from demonstrators.” The article did not mention Bagshaw’s actions against White in the tunnel on Jan. 6. Bagshaw was promoted to commander in April 2022.

The FBI began collecting use-of-force data from law enforcement agencies nationwide on Jan. 1, 2019. Of 18,514 federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies nationwide, 5,481 reported use-of-force data to the FBI. Participation in the National Use-of-Force Data Collection is encouraged, but not mandatory.

Both MPD and the Metro Transit Police Department supply use-of-force data to the FBI, according to the FBI Crime Data Explorer.

In 2024, 11,445 of the nation’s 19,277 law enforcement agencies participated in the data collection system. The reporting agencies represent 72% of federal, state, local, and tribal sworn officers nationwide, according to the FBI.

In 2024, the primary uses of force reported included firearms, hands/fists/feet, canine, and electronic control weapons such as a taser, according to the database. Police uses of force were a response to failure to comply with verbal commands, attempt to escape or flee from custody, using a firearm against an officer or other person, displaying a weapon at an officer, and resisting being handcuffed or arrested, the FBI reported.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

FBI Settles Lawsuit Over Biden Era Cover-Up Of Trans Killer Manifesto

The FOIA settlement agreement is a victory for transparency and open government, but it’s personal for this reporter.

New evidence could blow open the Oklahoma City bombing case



For years, the FBI denied that key evidence existed in the Oklahoma City bombing. But court documents, leaked files, and eyewitness accounts suggest a darker truth buried beneath the official story.

President Bill Clinton visited a church in Oklahoma City on April 19 to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1995 bombing that resulted in the deaths of 168 people. In his remarks, Clinton said we “owe” it to the victims to “do better” in honor of their sacrifice. But just like three decades ago, commemorating the bombing still requires airbrushing a mountain of contradictory evidence.

This is a test of whether the Trump administration will honor its promises on transparency.

Clinton’s Justice Department owed the nation the full truth about the bombing. Instead, it spun a cover story that both distorted the past and endangered the future, leaving the American people exposed to new threats.

Among the most striking but forgotten facts surrounding the Oklahoma City bombing is the mystery of “John Doe 2,” a man 24 eyewitnesses claimed to have seen in the Ryder truck with Timothy McVeigh. The FBI now insists he never existed.

After the bombing, the media abandoned its role as a watchdog and became, in too many cases, an enabler of the official narrative of lone-wolf terror. It professed that the FBI acted swiftly and heroically, the Justice Department delivered justice, and President Clinton led the country through its pain with grace and resolve.

Fortunately, not everyone gave up on the truth. Today’s most relentless truth-seekers are anonymous digital investigators and citizen journalists, armed with Freedom of Information Act filings, archived footage, and a hunger to uncover what the gatekeepers tried to hide.

I’ve been part of one such effort for almost two decades. Working alongside attorney Jesse Trentadue, I’ve investigated the likely connection between the Oklahoma City bombing and the horrific 1995 death of Jesse’s brother, Kenneth, in federal custody. Jesse’s FOIA lawsuits unearthed shocking documents about the FBI’s concealed activities — clues that led us deeper into the bureau’s involvement than we could have imagined.

Then, a former FBI undercover operative came forward. What he revealed gave us a key piece of the puzzle. And yet for all we’ve uncovered, the vaults of secrecy remain shut.

Which brings us to a critical moment. On March 26, Trentadue submitted a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, urging the release of a decade-old sealed deposition from that very whistleblower. The contents of that deposition could expose the true scope of PATCON — the FBI’s sweeping 1990s operation to infiltrate alleged right-wing extremist groups — and potentially tie it directly to the Oklahoma City bombing.

This is a test of whether the Trump administration will honor its promises of transparency. Very few are aware that the Oklahoma City bombing was caught on camera. We know this not just from speculative claims but from on-the-record sources — contemporaneous media reports, corroborating federal files, and sworn FBI testimony. The footage exists. It’s a documented fact. Yet the tapes remain hidden. Authorities only released video of the aftermath.

For over a decade, the FBI fought Trentadue in court to keep the video out of public view. The footage may prove conclusively that McVeigh was not acting alone. If made public, the tapes could shatter the myth of lone-wolf domestic terror. They could implicate associates of McVeigh who were never charged.

Further, the videos could show that 168 Americans were murdered not just by a madman but by a preventable failure of federal surveillance — or worse, by a deliberate cover-up. This cover story has allowed neo-Nazi terrorists to slip through the cracks, denied justice to the victims, and kept the American public in the dark for far too long.

That’s why the Justice Department must act. Release the tapes. Unseal the deposition. Let the American people decide for themselves what really happened. We stand at the threshold of a new era in open-source journalism. If the Trump Justice Department delivers on its promise to unmask secrets, it could mark the rebirth of investigative integrity in America.

As Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) wryly observed earlier this year, “Sounds to me like we need to get some new conspiracy theories, because all the old ones turned out to be true.”

It’s time to test another.

A baby got high on cocaine — shocking report on tax-funded KinderCare



One of the nation’s largest day-care providers, KinderCare, is not the rosy, child-friendly company it purports to be — and independent investigative journalist Edwin Dorsey has the receipts.

“One thing that I’m very good at is using FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act, to get copies of complaints people are sending to regulators. So one common thing I’ll do in my research is I’ll go to the FTC, and see what complaints people are submitting to the FTC, and go to local state attorney offices and see what complaints people are submitting to state AGs,” Dorsey tells Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable.”

When he did this for KinderCare, he found that the company has “a lot of child safety issues.”

“And not the type of stuff you’d normally expect, where maybe a kid fights with another kid or somebody has allergies. There was issues where kids were escaping from the KinderCare locations, kids were getting locked in rooms with no supervision, kids were overdosing on drugs brought by the staff,” he tells Stuckey.


In one case, a woman dropped her child off at KinderCare, only to be called six hours later and told that her child was throwing up and needed to be picked up.

“She took him home and she knew right away something was wrong, and so she went back to KinderCare and said ‘What happened? My kid was fine this morning and now he’s very, very sick and has all these bruises, and clearly, something’s wrong,’” Dorsey explains.

“KinderCare denied anything was wrong, but the mother knew something was wrong, so she took her kid to the hospital, and the hospital did a drug test and this 2-year-old tested positive for cocaine,” he continues.

The police got involved and searched the mother’s house, but they didn’t find anything. That’s when they looked into KinderCare, where it turned out one of the staff members brought cocaine to work in a bag.

“This is the type of pattern of misconduct you’ll see at KinderCare locations. There’s about 70 in the state of Texas; there’s hundreds nationwide,” Dorsey says. “And the common theme I see in all these KinderCare cases is the company is never transparent with the parents about what happened.”

Not only are there more stories like this child's, but KinderCare is receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in government subsidies.

“KinderCare largely caters to working families. They also have a program to watch kids whose parents are in the military, so service members, and about 35% of their revenue comes from the U.S. taxpayer, which is their largest source of revenue, through the child care development block grant,” Dorsey tells Stuckey.

This grant was started in 1990 under President George H.W. Bush.

“The idea being that early childhood education, having kids in information day-cares, is so beneficial to early childhood education and to kids' development that the government should be subsidizing it. And the reality is, it’s kind of the opposite,” Dorsey says.

“In addition to all these safety issues and ingesting cocaine and roaming the streets, it does not seem like it’s beneficial for your development to have 20 kids in a room supervised by someone earning $12 an hour in a corporate environment that just doesn’t care about these kids,” he adds.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Why Is Trump’s DOJ Hiding An FBI Informant’s Deposition On The Oklahoma Bombing?

An attorney in Utah is working to unearth the truth through his ongoing lawsuit for surveillance footage of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Legal Watchdog: D.C. Police Demand $1.57 Million To Release Jan. 6 Bodycam Footage

The non-profit published a press release outlining the department's demands in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

Conservative Legal Group Launches Project To Expose Censorship-Industrial Complex

Alliance Defending Freedom is sending a flurry of public records requests to expose the censorship-industrial complex.

Patel’s FBI Could Shine Light On Nashville Trans School Shooter’s Manifesto

The Biden FBI blocked the release of a Nashville elementary school schooler's manifesto in the name of identity politics.