President Donald Trump's Department of Defense remains under fire for its most recent scandal, with The Hill reporting that several former military officials have spoken out to slam the administration for blocking promotions for women and minority officers.
The Pentagon has recently come under renewed criticism after reports emerged that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth worked to block admiral promotions for several officers, a "disproportionate number" of whom were women or minorities, fitting a long-running trend of the Trump administration firing or stifling the careers of officers who are not white men. Now, former military leaders are speaking out, accusing the secretary of "a corrosive abuse of his power" with these "unprecedented" moves.
According to a New York Times report, Hegseth targeted nine officers who had already been approved for the one-star admiral promotion lists. Three of these officers were women and two were black men, with a common thread among all of the officers being past participation in pro-diversity initiatives.
"While Hegseth’s allies contended that the Pentagon does not consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor, perceptions of bias have been fueled by the Pentagon chief’s parallel war against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies within the military," The Hill explained. "Several former defense officials also expressed worries about the impact on officers deciding to stay in the military when their career progress is throttled."
“There seems to be an assumption that if you were a minority or a woman and you were promoted, that it was because of your identity and not because you’re good at what you do,” Frank Kendall, who served as Air Force secretary during the Biden administration. “That’s sending a really negative message to everybody who’s not a white male, and I’m afraid this is pervasive right now in our military. I’ve talked to a number of people from those categories, and they are really pretty upset about this, so yes, it is very negative.”
He also added: "This is in my experience, unprecedented. In my three and a half years running the Air Force and Space Force, I did not ever have a general officer list changed by the Secretary of Defense, and I never tried to change a list myself."
One anonymous former senior defense official called the move from Hegseth "outrageous," given that a little over a fifth of active-duty Navy personnel are women.
“That’s kind of outrageous to think for the size of the Navy,” the official told The Hill. “What level of meritocracy is even there? What are you able to judge, but how are you judging it? Because there’s got to be at least one qualified somewhere.”
Hunter Stires, a former Maritime Strategist under Biden-era Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, further ripped into Hegseth, saying that he “talks merit and walks chauvinism."
“Hegseth doesn’t care about merit. He cares about creating a flag officer wardrobe that looks like him,” Stires told The Hill. “The message to the force is extremely corrosive, because the message is that merit doesn’t matter.”
