Pete Hegseth 'Axed Female and Black Admirals', Then Tried to Fast-Track His Own Aide, Reports Reveal

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally struck at least seven Navy officers, every woman among them, from a list of candidates for admiral before pressing the service to fast-track his own military aide, a New York Times investigation has found.

The reporting, published on 1 June 2026, describes a flag-officer slate reshaped by direct political intervention rather than the recommendations of a sitting promotion board. It arrives amid a broader pattern of dismissals that has fallen heavily on senior women and minorities across the armed forces.

The Pentagon has rejected any suggestion that race or gender shaped a single decision.

A Promotion Slate Stripped of Women

Hegseth blocked the promotions of at least seven officers who had already been selected by a board of senior Navy admirals, according to four current and former defence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. His intervention left a final slate of 22 nominees for one-star rear admiral that included no women at all. That outcome stands against a service in which women make up roughly 21 percent of active-duty personnel.

Only two of the 22 nominees were nonwhite, in a Navy where minorities account for about 38 percent of the ranks. Of the officers removed, at least two were women and two were Black men, alongside three white men, the officials said.

Several had taken part in diversity-related roles or events years, and in some instances decades, before their names were pulled. Senior officers said the finished roster looked nothing like the sailors those admirals would go on to command.

One highly regarded officer, a nuclear-trained surface warfare specialist who had served as aide to a four-star admiral, was reportedly removed soon after her name surfaced on a website that catalogues so-called 'woke' military personnel. Her listed infraction, officials said, was a diversity assignment from many years earlier.

The Aide Hegseth Tried to Elevate

In a move officials described as a break with normal practice, Hegseth urged senior Navy leaders to add Captain William Francis Jr, a Navy SEAL serving as his special assistant, to the same one-star list. Francis lacked the command experience that the board's own rules require, and he was not selected. The attempt sits uneasily beside the secretary's repeated insistence that he rewards merit and nothing else.

Pressed at a House Armed Services Committee budget hearing this spring, Hegseth faced a direct question from Representative Chrissy Houlahan, a Pennsylvania Democrat and Air Force veteran.

She asked whether he had ordered the Navy to add a special operations officer who lacked the necessary command time, and he answered that he was not aware of what she meant. The newspaper described that reply as misleading in light of his documented push for Francis.

The Legal Line Hegseth May Have Crossed

Federal law places strict limits on this kind of meddling. Under Section 629 of Title 10 of the US Code, only the President may remove a name from a promotion list, and he must notify Congress within 30 days when he does so for any reason other than misconduct. Senior officials told the Times that a defence secretary is expected to approve or reject a board's list as a whole, not to delete individuals from it.

Two years ago, Congress wrote into law the longstanding tradition that accessions and promotions rest on individual merit and demonstrated performance. Reed has pointed to that language directly, arguing that ideological purges of board-selected officers cut against the statute as well as the principle behind it.

Senator Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called comparable removals outrageous and potentially illegal, in a statement he issued in March after the Times reported a parallel case involving four Army officers. By his own accounting, close to 60 percent of the senior officers fired or sidelined under Hegseth are female or Black, though that group fills fewer than 20 percent of the general and flag ranks.

The Pentagon's Denial and a Widening Purge

The department has dismissed the account outright. Chief spokesman Sean Parnell said military promotions go to those who have earned them, and the Pentagon has previously maintained that its process is apolitical and unbiased. He did not address the specific decision to strike the named officers.

The contested list still needs Senate confirmation before any promotion takes effect, and the names of one-star nominees are meant to stay confidential until that point. The wider shake-up has already removed General Charles Q Brown Jr, the second Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to command the Navy.

Supporters of the administration cast the overhaul as a long-overdue effort to clear out a leadership culture they see as politicised.

For now, the futures of officers their own peers judged the finest in the fleet hang on a political calculation no promotion board ever endorsed.