Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked the promotions of four Army officers \u2014 two Black men and two women \u2014 to the rank of brigadier general, the New York Times reported Friday.<\/p>\n
Hegseth\u2019s actions are in line with the broader Trump administration\u2019s attacks on efforts across the federal government to support and promote the concerns of minority populations \u2014 what President Donald Trump and Hegseth have derided as \u201cDEI,\u201d which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion.<\/p>\n
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell disputed the Times\u2019 reporting, telling the Guardian, \u201cUnder Secretary Hegseth, military promotions are given to those who have earned them. Meritocracy, which reigns in this Department, is apolitical and unbiased.\u201d <\/p>\n
Neither the Defense Department nor the White House has offered an explanation based on the officers\u2019 performance or record for Hegseth\u2019s decision. About three dozen officers remain on the promotion list, according to the Times; the majority are white men. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis moment should not be separated from a broader, documented pattern<\/a>,\u201d Jose Vasquez, executive director of Common Defense and an Army veteran, said in a statement. \u201cSince taking office, Hegseth has fired generals, renamed ships, and systematically targeted women and people of color in uniform. He is not making our military more lethal. He is making it more loyal to him and that is the true threat to national security and military readiness.\u201d<\/p>\n The names of the four officers have not yet been released, but they include a Black armor officer who was singled out for having written a paper about Black officers\u2019 choices to serve in support roles rather than front-line combat, according to the Times. One of the women targeted for exclusion from the promotion list was struck because she served during the U.S. military\u2019s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the outlet reported. It is not clear why the other two officers were removed from the list. <\/p>\n Under retired four-star Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the first Black defense secretary, the Department of Defense made efforts<\/a> to promote women and minorities into visible positions of power. Austin\u2019s tenure<\/a> during the Biden administration saw the elevation of Navy Adm. Lisa Franchetti to chief of naval operations, the first woman to serve as the Navy\u2019s top officer and the first to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Air Force Gen. CQ Brown to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the second Black man to hold that position. <\/p>\n \u201cFor too long, we\u2019ve promoted too many uniform leaders for the wrong reasons \u2014 based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,\u201d Hegseth said in a speech to high-ranking officers in November. <\/p>\n Brown and Franchetti, among other top military officers, were fired by Trump in February 2025. That decision left no women in the top ranks of military leadership. In July, Hegseth reassigned Vice Adm. Yvette Davids<\/a>, the first female head of the U.S. Naval Academy, and fired Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield <\/a>from her position as the U.S. military\u2019s envoy to NATO\u2019s military committee last April, according to the Guardian. He also dismissed Air Force Lt. Gen. Jennifer Short <\/a>from her job as senior military assistant to the defense secretary in early 2025.<\/p>\n \u201cThe depth of Secretary Hegseth\u2019s prejudice is only overshadowed by the breadth of his incompetence,\u201d said Richard Brookshire, co-founder and co-CEO of the Black Veterans Project. \u201cThe Trump administration is intent on instituting a caste system across our military, whereby anyone who isn\u2019t white, male, straight and Christian is deemed less capable and deserving of leading our troops. Americans must all reject his bigoted, nonsensical and dangerous beliefs.\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear whether Hegseth overstepped his authority by removing the names of the four from the promotion list himself, according to the Times. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and other Army leadership reportedly refused to remove the names when Hegseth requested they do so. Ordinarily, promotion lists are either accepted or denied in full by the defense secretary, then sent to the president for review before heading to the Senate for confirmation, according to the Times. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has blocked the promotions of four Army officers \u2014 two Black men and two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":549785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,244762,4426,26711,29908,4427,29909,124974,244761,29910,19721,3,5472,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-549784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-brigadier-general","tag-circulated-air-force-times","tag-circulated-army-times","tag-circulated-marine-corps-times","tag-circulated-military-times","tag-circulated-navy-times","tag-hegseth","tag-military-promotions","tag-military-times","tag-new-york-times","tag-news","tag-pentagon","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/549785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}