Standing before the Board of Visitors in May, Vice Adm. Yvette Davids explained how the infamous Naval Academy book ban unfolded.

A local newspaper reported in March that the academy would not remove books under President Donald Trump’s directive to get diversity, equity and inclusion out of K-12 schools run by the Pentagon for service members’ kids.

There was no reason it would. The order didn’t apply to the academy, the four-year college that turns out Navy and Marine Corps officers. But the March headline — as headlines often do — made “will not” sound defiant.

Someone in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office, Davids said, saw it and called, ordering books dealing with gender, equity, race, diversity and inclusiveness removed before the secretary’s visit the following Monday.

The book ban was on.

Two months later, Davids is out and the academy is about to get its first Marine Corps superintendent.

Midshipmen, alumni, members of Congress and others are all asking: What just happened?

The Trump administration has strong views on who should serve and who should lead. The first woman to command the Coast Guard was fired on Day 1, and the second Black man to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was out a month later.

The surprise isn’t that Davids met the same fate but that Hegseth and his top aides didn’t make it happen sooner.

Davids’ explanation in May, given politely and with plenty of deference to her superiors, would turn out to be one of the final acts in her brief tenure as the first woman superintendent.

There’s a long tradition of conservatives criticizing the colleges and universities they attended becoming weaker, lesser or, in today’s language, too woke.

For the Naval Academy, some of that is anchored in change — any change. It was there when Wesley Brown became the first Black man to graduate in 1949.

It was there on July 6, 1976, when the Navy admitted the first 81 women. It grew strident during the COVID pandemic when Vice Adm. Sean Buck was superintendent.

And President Joe Biden’s decision to appoint the first woman and Hispanic sailor to the top job did nothing to squelch it.

Yet Davids, even after her appointment was delayed by an Alabama football-coach-turned-senator playing games in Washington, presented the model of an officer following orders.

“I think the message is fairly clear,” she said in April, during the annual St. John’s-Navy croquet game. “We’re going to follow our leadership, and we’re going to be in line with the executive order.”

Conservatives attacking the Naval Academy are some of the same ones focused on the wider military, and Trump’s return empowered them to ban transgender people in service, end shaving exemptions for Black men who suffer skin problems and attack what midshipmen and cadets learn.

There was no one recognizable from Hegseth’s inner circle at that May meeting in Annapolis.

Days later, most of the books removed from the academy library were restored, and even the order on school libraries run by the Pentagon was blunted by protests by families serving overseas.

It wouldn’t have been unusual, though, for Hegseth or someone on his staff to hear about it from the board, remade by Trump in February to include more loyalists. Its job is oversight.

Hegseth is a former Army Reserve major and ex-Fox News host who has said that generals and admirals, women and trans service members make America weaker.

Maybe Davids’ explanation didn’t ring true in an administration interested in ideological purity.

There’s no indication that Lt. Gen. Michael Borgschulte, the Marine named to replace Davids, is less than fully qualified to be superintendent, or what his politics are.

The general graduated from the Naval Academy in 1991 and flew attack helicopters in Iraq before scaling the upper ranks.

The first Marine superintendent is as much a point of pride for some as the first woman was for others.

So why not make history by canceling history?

The change is likely to happen quickly. The Senate recesses in August and will have to move fast if it wants Borgschulte in Annapolis before midshipmen return for fall classes. Davids will reportedly remain superintendent until she and her successor are confirmed for their new roles.

With Republicans in charge in Washington, no congressional hearings on the sudden change seem likely.

The Navy is describing this as a lateral move, and praise for her is flowing from a lot of top figures. It’s possible Davids asked for the change, but that seems far-fetched.

Just 18 months after she took command in Annapolis, she is being transferred to a Pentagon job. It is a face-saving gesture for an administration not known for grace.

Davids’ own connections might explain that. She’s a highly regarded officer who didn’t get this job because she is a woman but because of her many accomplishments at sea and on shore.

She is also married to Rear Adm. Keith Davids, a former commander of the Navy SEALS. He served as director of the White House Military Office in the first Trump administration, a nonpolitical job that would have put him in frequent contact with the president.

The move will allow Vice Adm. Davids to retire with three stars starting in February, a significant cap to a historic career.

Five months after that, there is unlikely to be much celebration of the 50th anniversary of women being admitted to the academy.

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth made certain that no woman will be in command when that day comes.