NASA has scrubbed two graphic novels featuring female astronauts from its website, in a move that is in apparent alignment with the Trump administration’s anti-DEI stance.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies are those that generally promote fair treatment of people of all backgrounds. The Trump administration is not a fan of DEI—on the first day of Trump’s second term, the White House called DEI programs “illegal and immoral” and declared that the government is “committed to serving every person with equal dignity and respect.” To that end, it seems that NASA removed graphic novels about a fictional female astronaut named Callie Rodriguez from its website.
As reported by Keith Cowing of NASA Watch, the graphic novels had been online for years. (“Apparently NASA DEI Sanitation Squad is using my postings to help them delete things,” Cowing wrote.) The series titles were “First Woman: NASA’s Promise for Humanity” and “First Woman: Expanding Our Universe.”
The space agency left up releases announcing editions of the graphic novels and updates to the series, but the main landing page—dedicated to Rodriguez’s story as the (fictional) first woman to walk on the Moon—now yields a 404 error. NASA’s Press Secretary Bethany Stevens did not respond to a request for comment.
In January, NASA moved to terminate diversity programs, and last month the agency informed its employees that they could no longer display pronouns in their online profiles, from email signatures to their Microsoft Outlook accounts.
This week alone has been a turbulent one for NASA under the Trump administration—several days ago, the agency terminated $420 million in contracts, according to the the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has slashing headcount at the federal government since its creation by executive order on Trump’s first day in office. It remains to be seen how drastically DOGE, under the leadership of Elon Musk, will alter operations at the nation’s space agency.
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