Was the service history of Colonel Ruby Bradley, an American nurse captured in the Philippines during World War II, removed from official military websites on orders of U.S. President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or DOGE? As of this writing, some pages describing her life were still available on government online resources. Yet, in at least two instances, those articles were not accessible. Here is what we know so far.
The statement in question appeared in a post (archived here) published on Facebook on May 4, 2025. It opened:
President Trump called the woman pictured below a 'loser' for being captured. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and DOGE ordered her service history to be deleted from the Department of Defense archives because she was 'DEI' and 'woke.'
Ruby Bradley was serving as an Amy nurse in the Philippines when she was taken prisoner just weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Ruby was sent to the Santo Tomas internment camp in Manilla, where she provided medical attention to other prisoners and smuggled food to those who needed it.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot by Lead Stories)
Neither the post reviewed in this article (nor other entries on Facebook that closely repeated the same language) elaborated on the source of information or specified what materials were allegedly removed and from what specific website.
Ruby Bradley was a nurse and a U.S. veteran of WWII and the Korean War. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, she spent 37 months in captivity. Bradley died in 2002 at the age of 94 (archived here).
The statement being fact checked invokes the controversies over Donald Trump's comments about veterans.
In 2015, then-candidate Trump made a remark (archived here) attacking the late Senator John McCain who had been held prisoner for years during the Vietnam War (archived here) and who would die in 2018 at the age of 81 (archived here). As seen in the C-SPAN video at the 5:45 mark, Trump first talked about McCain losing the 2008 presidential campaign to Democratic candidate Barack Obama, adding, "I don't like losers." Then, Trump continued: "He's not a war hero. He is a war hero 'cause he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."
The notion that Donald Trump referred to veterans as "losers" appeared in an article (archived here) published by The Atlantic on September 3, 2020, as his first term was coming to an end. It described the events of 2018 around a canceled visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France. The article did not say that the comment in question was a reference specifically to Ruby Bradley or more broadly to those who became prisoners of war -- the magazine wrote that it was said in the context of visiting the graves of the deceased service members.
The Atlantic article did not name sources and Trump denied (archived here) he had made those comments. People who worked for him during his first presidency issued public denials (archived here) as well, and the list included his former national security advisor John Bolton (archived here) who then parted ways with Trump and published a book critical of his presidency.
In October 2023, however, John Kelly, once the White House Chief of Staff for Trump, went on record to confirm the 2020 Atlantic story (archived here).
While Lead Stories did not witness the exchange in question to confirm or refute its existence, Lead Stories did not find any credible sources outside the social media ecosystem saying that Trump ever publicly referred to Ruby Bradley as a "loser".
The archive of his posts on Truth Social (archived here) showed no matches, either:
(Source: Trumpstruth.org screenshot by Lead Stories)
During the first day of his second presidency in 2025, Trump issued an executive order (archived here) aiming at ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, also known as DEI, at the federal level, and that included the military.
In March 2025, the AP reported (archived here) that 26,000 images were flagged to be removed from the military resources. The agency wrote that many of them showed women and minorities but one example depicted "Enola Gay" -- an aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. Yet, the database later published by the AP did not include Ruby Bradley:
(Source: AP screenshot by Lead Stories)
Furthermore, a Google search for news reports published by credible media organizations using the keywords seen here did not produce a straightforward confirmation there had been a specific order to remove the service history of Ruby Bradley.
On May 5, 2025, the U.S. Army Medical Department Museum website showed a disclaimer announcing that its content is being "reviewed and removed to align with the President's executive orders and DoD priorities." However, the information about Ruby Bradley was still accessible via a live page (archived here).
Additionally, her name appeared on several other government websites belonging to the U.S. military (archived here). That included the Holloman Airforce Base (archived here) and Arlington National Cemetery (archived here).
However, some materials that appeared to be live on the page with Google search results were not available, as of this writing.
One article disappeared from the Military Health System website (archived here):
(Source: Google screenshot by Lead Stories)
(Source: Health.mil screenshot by Lead Stories)
An attempt to access a 2019 article on the website of the U.S. Army led to an error message, too:
(Source: Google screenshot by Lead Stories)
(Source: U.S. Army screenshot by Lead Stories)
At the same time, another article mentioning Bradley -- from 2013 (archived here) -- was still available on the U.S. Army website via the internal search tool, although that too came with the following disclaimer:
(Source: U.S. Army screenshot by Lead Stories)
As of this writing, the National Archives still displayed (archived here) a Clinton-era transcript (archived here) describing Bradley's biography and the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs website showed the 2022 tribute to her (archived here).
Lead Stories contacted the Department of Defense for comments but did not receive an immediate response.
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