Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll directed West Point on Wednesday to terminate the job offer given to a former Biden-era official for a high-profile position.
Jen Easterly, who previously served as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the Biden administration, had agreed to serve as the Robert F. McDermott Distinguished Chair in the social science department at West Point.
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Driscoll, in a memo dated Wednesday, described the service agreement West Point had with Easterly as “gratuitous,” but did not provide a clear explanation for why he decided to rescind the offer.
The academy announced Easterly, who served in the Army for 20 years, had been named as the next official to hold the position on Tuesday, and within hours, she had come under fire from MAGA-adjacent Laura Loomer, who said Easterly had “brought in Biden’s notorious disinformation czar Nina Jankowicz, who served as the Executive Director of the Disinformation Governance Board of the United States.”
Loomer has criticized numerous officials, alleging they are Biden loyalists who would not be committed to supporting the president’s agenda.
Top Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said, “We’re not turning cadets into censorship activists. We’re turning them into warriors & leaders. We’re in the business of warfighting. Our future officers will get the most elite training so that America can continue to dominate on the battlefield.”
Driscoll also directed the academy to pause “non-governmental and outside groups from selecting employees of the Academy,” and called on the head of the West Point Board of Visitors, Rep. Steve Womack (AK-R), to conduct a complete review of the academy’s hiring practices.
“The Secretary of the Army took immediate action to direct West Point to terminate the service agreement with Jen Easterly, pause outside groups from selecting Academy employees or instructors, and has requested a review of West Point’s hiring practices,” an Army spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “Ahead of the upcoming academic year, we are crafting a deliberate approach to ensure that our future officers are best prepared to meet the demands of the modern battlefield.”
Easterly publicly criticized the Trump administration’s decision to fire Air Force General Timothy Haugh, who served as the director of the National Security Agency and head of U.S. Cyber Command, and Chris Krebs, her predecessor as CISA director.
“What’s happening now is not a policy disagreement, but something dark: the targeting and removal of non-partisan public servants at the normalization of loyalty oaths to something other than our Constitution,” Easterly wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “And if we — who aim to protect critical systems — can’t defend the humans who manage and maintain them, what exactly are we securing?”
The administration fired Haugh after Loomer, who advocated for his dismissal, met with the president in the White House.
HEAD OF GOLDEN DOME OFFICE STRESSES THREATS POSED BY CHINA AND RUSSIA
Since the start of the Trump administration, the president and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have sought to transform the military by ending diversity and inclusion efforts, including taking books out of military academies as well. They have scrubbed mentions of DEI from its websites and social media accounts, and the senior political leaders have seemingly targeted military leaders who embraced those orders from the previous administration.
Hegseth and Trump have fired several senior officers with little explanation, including Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the former chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff; Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the former chief of naval operations; and Adm. Lisa Fagan, the former commandant of the United States Coast Guard, (which actually falls under the Department of Homeland Security).