Pete Hegseth has blocked the promotion of female senior Navy officers without explaining his rationale.
Hegseth, the Fox News host turned Defense Secretary, literally wrote the book on cracking down on diversity in the Armed Forces, raging in his 2024 volume, The War on Warriors, that the woke mob “will not stop until trans-lesbian Black females run everything!”
Indeed, five of the people he has blocked from achieving two-star admiral rank are women or people of color, The New York Times reported, citing Pentagon sources. This is the first time in a decade that no active-duty female Navy officers are likely to be promoted to admiral.
The Times stated that Hegseth, in a “highly unusual move,” defied the recommendation of a promotion board comprised of senior admirals. They put forward a list of 22 candidates, and Hegseth shot down seven, five of whom are women or people of color.
Rear Adm. Amy Bauernschmidt was reportedly one of those knocked back. Bauernschmidt has more than 30 years of service, rising from a Naval Academy graduate to commanding some of the military’s largest and most complex forces. She flew more than 3,000 hours as a helicopter pilot, commanded two warships—including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln with a crew of about 5,000—and now leads an entire carrier strike group.
But Hegseth, who served as an Army National Guard infantry officer, thinks she does not merit promotion to a higher rank. The Times, citing insiders, said that Hegseth did not explain his decision to block the promotions of Bauernschmidt and the others.
Hegseth has purged or sidelined more than two dozen generals and admirals, including Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy, whom he fired last year. He has also blocked around 40 senior officers—previously cleared for promotion by military review boards—from moving up the ranks. More than half of the officers he has fired or removed from promotion lists have been women or Black, though at least one female Navy Reserve officer was nominated for promotion to brigadier admiral earlier this summer.
In a July 6 letter, a group of Democratic senators demanded answers from Hegseth over reports that he personally removed qualified military officers from promotion lists after they had already been approved through the military’s standard review process. The lawmakers asked him to provide evidence supporting his claim that years of “gender and demographic engineering” had weakened the military.
Hegseth did not respond, but he has made his feelings clear in the past. In The War on Warriors, he argued: “Dads take us to push risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes. We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”
In December, under his leadership, the Pentagon commissioned a six-month review of female servicemembers, in a bid to test their effectiveness.
Ironically, Hegseth regularly gets a failing grade for his own tenure. In March last year, for example, Paul Eaton, a retired brigadier general with 33 years of service, wrote in a Guardian article that Hegseth’s leadership is focused on all the wrong things.
“What we’re seeing is nibbling around the edges of a culture with a dominant theme that does nothing to prepare the armed forces of the United States to meet its next peer or near peer opponent,” Eaton wrote.
The Daily Beast approached the Pentagon for comment, and acting press secretary Joel Valdez said, “The New York Times has a toxic obsession with race and identity. This failing outlet hallucinates racism and sexism where none exists, reducing our heroic service members to nothing more than checkboxes for race and gender. That kind of disrespect is shameful.”
