Army Corps made veteran in Kansas City scrub agency’s ‘DEI’ content. Then she was fired
Before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fired Cynthia Clark, the Kansas City resident and Navy veteran knew she wanted out.
After President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Clark began receiving guidance about words and concepts no longer allowed on the Army Corps’ online presence. At the time a public affairs specialist in the Corps’ Kansas City District, she helped scrub its social media presence to comply with new rules targeting past diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, material.
“After that, I was like ‘I’m not doing this. I can’t – I can’t do this with a clear heart,’” said Clark, who was fired last week.
During an interview with The Star, Clark offered a window into the Army Corps’ Kansas City workforce as it scrambles to adjust to the new realities of the Trump administration. The Army Corps work across the region is vital, but anticipated future job cuts and tasks like removing DEI content have created an atmosphere of uncertainty and concern among some workers.
By its own account, the Army Corps Kansas City District employs some 1,000 civil servants who manage 500 miles of the Missouri River, 18 dams and reservoirs, two hydropower plants and issue thousands of regulatory permits a year across several states. The district occupies a significant portion of the downtown Richard Bolling Federal Building, which the General Services Administration last week placed on a list of buildings for possible sale.
“It’s heartbreaking because most of the people in that building are veterans,” Clark said. “And most of them, this was their way, again, of serving.”
Army Corps workers are among the many federal employees in the Kansas City area bracing for significant changes under the Trump administration. Some 30,000 people across the metro work for the federal government.
The Internal Revenue Service last month fired about 100 probationary employees at its Kansas City campus. Other agencies have also fired probationary employees, though no reliable total figure exists. Local IRS and Social Security Administration workers expect more job cuts are coming.
Clark said she had sought the deferred resignation, or “Fork in the Road,” offer promoted by billionaire Elon Musk as part of his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, initiative. She was instead fired, she said, three business days before the end of her one-year probationary employment period.
The Army Corps cited poor performance, Clark said, and her termination wasn’t part of a mass firing. Still, she voiced doubt she would have been let go if Trump hadn’t won.
“I don’t honestly think that is something that would have happened if something different happened on Nov. 5,” Clark said.
The Army Corps Kansas City District said on Tuesday it is “committed to maintaining a respectful and productive work environment for all employees.” In a statement, Diana McCoy, the district’s chief of public affairs, said “we do not comment on internal personnel matters.”
“As of March 11, we can verify that no employee of the Kansas City District has been terminated due to DOGE cuts,” McCoy said.
The Army is still processing applications for the deferred resignation program, McCoy said, “so we are unable to confirm the number of people who were approved.”
“There have been no impacts to the services we provide the public,” McCoy said. “Our staff remain focused on performing their mission of managing our nation’s water resources and providing engineering expertise.”
Scrubbing DEI material
The Army Corps Kansas City District was a great place to work, Clark said. It had an “awesome” culture, she said, emphasizing that leaders in Washington, D.C., not Kansas City, are driving many of the changes.
“But then it just got to the point where everybody was just walking on egg shells and wondering if, when they came into work that day, they would have a job the next day or they would have a job by the end of the day,” Clark said.
The Army Corps, like many federal agencies, expects to cut jobs in the weeks and months ahead. Effectively the engineering arm of the Army, it employs about 37,000 people globally; nearly all are civilians.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the Department of Defense to cut about $50 billion in “nonlethal programs” from the current budget. Locally, Army Corps officials are waiting for direction.
“The Kansas City District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is aware of the workforce reduction initiative, but has not received notification to release employees at this time,” the district said in an unsigned statement on Monday. “Our commitment to serving the nation and her citizens remains as unwavering as it has for the past 250 years.”
Clark, 48, spent more than 18 years in the Navy, retiring as an enlisted E6, or petty officer first class. She was a mass communications specialist first class; Clark called herself a Navy journalist.
Evidence of Clark’s Navy days remains online. One 2013 photo shows her interviewing Tulsi Gabbard, then a congresswoman, in Hawaii about a Women’s History Month event. Gabbard is now the U.S. director of national intelligence.
Clark said it was the best job to have in the military. “You got to tell the Navy’s story by experiencing everybody else’s jobs,” she said.
Clark had grown up in New Jersey as part of a military family. Her dad served in the Air Force in Vietnam, her grandfather was in the Army during World War II. An uncle was in the Navy; she had cousins in the Coast Guard.
At 19 she joined the Navy, where she met her husband, who was from the Kansas City area. After she left the Navy, the family moved to Kansas City in 2014 from Hawaii. Her two children were 13 and 14 at the time and had spent most of their lives in Hawaii.
When Clark joined the Army Corps as a public affairs specialist, the position bore similarities to her time as a Navy journalist. She wrote press releases, stories and social media posts about the Kansas City District’s work.
One of her favorite moments on the job was spending time on a barge last year as it floated down the Missouri River. She also enjoyed traveling to lake projects and meeting the employees at the locations.
“It was a perfect way to continue the service to my country by keep telling stories,” Clark said.
Then came the Trump administration.
In the opening days of his second term, Trump signed an executive order, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” that took aim at the military’s DEI efforts. The order prohibited the Department of Defense from promoting what it termed “divisive concepts” and “gender ideology.” Hegseth quickly created a task force to carry out the order.
“The Department of Defense has an obligation to the American public to ensure their sons and daughters serve under the best leadership we can provide them,” Hegseth said in a statement.
“Doing so is a national security imperative. A foundational tenet of the DOD must always be that the most qualified individuals are placed in positions of responsibility in accordance with merit-based, color-blind policies.”
Clark and others at the Army Corps were instructed to go through social media posts to scrub words and ideals “that I have been taught my whole entire career were important and is what the Navy and made our country stronger.”
Clark provided a list of more than 60 words and phrases that she said were targeted. They included terms such as “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” and “Critical Race Theory” – but also more anodyne words like “dignity,” “equal opportunity,” and “respect.”
Some of the bravest people Clark has served with, she said, were gay, transgender, Black or Hispanic.
“I have a conscience and I am an ally and a champion for things that I was told to scrub,” Clark said.
McCoy, the public affairs chief in the Army Corps Kansas City District, said: “We removed and archived content promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), per the Department of Defense requirements.”
A feeling of relief
When Clark was called into her boss’s office and fired last week, she said she felt relieved. She said she had expected to find herself in this position once Trump won.
As part of her job, she read news coverage voraciously. She knew about Project 2025 – a Heritage Foundation document that outlined how Trump could move quickly to remake the federal government – and said she warned people she encountered that federal workers would be in trouble if Trump won.
Clark said she plans to take a couple of weeks to decompress. A big Kansas City Current fan, she hopes to attend a match soon as the season begins and also looks forward to the St. Patrick’s Day parade before getting her resume in order.
But many others at the Army Corps continue their work, Clark said, “plugging away” and doing jobs she called very important.
“Pretty much everybody’s going through the stages of grief because we don’t know what’s coming,” Clark said. “That’s the hardest part.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
