The Trump administration updated language regarding an old Confederate memorial that was erected over a century ago in Arlington National Cemetery, changing wording that officials regarded as “woke.” 

In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson presided over the opening of the 32-foot Confederate Memorial in memory of 482 Confederate graves located in Section 16 of the military cemetery. The statue commemorating the Civil War was removed in 2023, after a commission created by Congress said it painted a “nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.” The move provoked backlash from the Trump administration, with War Secretary Pete Hegseth vowing to restore it after arguing it was taken down by “woke lemmings” who believe in “erasing American history.”