A CNN report says that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's policies are pushing qualified women out of the military, including the first woman in a Naval Special Warfare command overseeing Navy SEALs.
"Ranked the top captain in her cohort, she received a Purple Heart after being injured in an IED attack during a combat tour in Iraq," CNN writes.
"She then became the first woman to serve with SEAL Team Six in the role of troop commander, one of several senior positions within the squadrons that make up the elite naval unit," they add.
But two weeks before a ceremony to commemorate her new position was scheduled to occur, "her command was abruptly canceled with little explanation," they report.
According to a source, the decision came through a series of phone calls from the Pentagon designed to "omit a paper trail."
"As the news spread through the tightknit world of Naval Special Warfare, a consensus began to form: The command was likely yanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth because of the officer’s gender," CNN reports.
It was clear, they report, that "Hegseth did not want a woman fronting that role."
“They want to keep it the brotherhood and don’t like that she’s coming in and challenging the status quo,” a Navy special operations source familiar with the situation tells CNN.
Despite defense officials offering other reasons, such as one that "said the command was pulled because the Navy captain wasn’t herself a SEAL," insiders cry foul.
“They can justify it by saying she’s not qualified because she’s not a SEAL,” one retired SEAL tells CNN. “But the SEALs thought she was qualified.”
That same SEAL says Hegseth is a sexist who, according to CNN, "has already removed several women from prominent leadership roles, including firing Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the highest-ranking officer in the US Navy and the first woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That currently leaves the US without a female four-star general, the military’s highest rank."
“I’m sure they would repeal the whole women in combat thing [if they could], but this is what they can do,” the retired SEAL adds.
“She was the best man for the job. There is absolutely no DEI ,” the retired SEAL tells CNN, adding that the captain spent her spare time competing in IRONMAN races.
CNN, which has not named the woman, says "her story encapsulates what many in the military now fear is a culture of misogyny permeating the US armed forces under Hegseth."
The news outlet spoke to over a dozen women for the story, "all of whom expressed a deep and growing alarm that Hegseth’s actions, policiesand rhetoric risk pushing out both experienced soldiers and those interested in joining."
“To be quite honest, I am fearful for women in uniform right now,” says Patti J. Tutalo, a retired Coast Guard commander.
“I definitely think there will be a retention issue for women,” Tutalo adds. “I also think that you’re going to see an increase in assaults, increase in harassment, increase in bullying, hazing, and I think there’ll be a lack of accountability for those things.”
Hailey Gibbons, who served in the Army’s elite 75th Ranger Regiment, tells CNN that Hegseth is making it okay for others in the military to say, “women can’t do this."
Another woman in the Army tells CNN that following Hegseth's blustery remarks at Quantico, a male noncommissioned officer in her unit told her: “All you women are getting out now.”
“I want nothing to do with the military after this,” she says.
A veteran-turned-Defense Department civilian tells CNN that all the progress the military has made with integrating women into the service is gone.
“I do not feel confident that there is a new era and a new generation of leaders who are going to make a significant cultural change, where she will not be subjected to sexism or sexual harassment or even potential for sexual assault,” she says.
Ky Hunter, PhD, a Marine Corps veteran and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, agrees, saying, "Women are going to feel that they don’t have a place in the military anymore."
Colleagues of the Navy captain whose change of command was canceled are furious.
“It’s f—— bullshit. That’s horse s——,” her former male SEAL Team Six teammate says. "It pisses me off because it is clearly someone who is capable and has done extraordinary things and is being punished because of — and I hate that I have to say it this way — weak-ass men."