Hegseth Removes Black, Female Officers from General Promotion List

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed four Army officers from a one-star general promotion list without clear legal authority to do so. Two of the officers are Black and two are women from a list of approximately three dozen officers, predominantly white men. Hegseth had pressured Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll for months to strike the names, but Driscoll repeatedly refused based on the officers’ exemplary service records until Hegseth unilaterally removed them this month.

One Black officer was targeted for writing a paper nearly 15 years ago analyzing why African American officers historically pursued support roles over combat positions. A female logistics officer faced removal after serving in Afghanistan during the 2021 withdrawal, which Hegseth has condemned as “disastrous and embarrassing.” The reasons for removing the other two officers, a logistics officer and finance specialist, remain unclear. A fifth officer, Colonel Dave Butler, a white male spokesman for former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, resigned in February after repeated demands from Hegseth’s office for his removal.

Hegseth’s chief of staff, Ricky Buria, told Driscoll that President Trump would not want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events, according to three officials familiar with the exchange. Buria denied the account, calling it “completely false” and “made up.” Army Secretary Driscoll responded by telling Buria that Trump is “not a racist or sexist” and raised the issue with a White House official who agreed with his assessment, prompting Hegseth’s office to retreat on that particular case.

Hegseth’s personnel overhaul includes dismantling merit-based promotion safeguards, including shuttering the Command Assessment Program that used peer reviews and double-blind interviews to ensure all officers regardless of race or gender could compete fairly. Senior military officials question whether the officers are being singled out because of their race or gender, eroding confidence in a promotion system designed to be apolitical and merit-based. Military lawyers have debated whether Hegseth possesses legal authority to strike individual names from the list, as regulations allow him only to reject or accept the entire list.

Hegseth has fired or sidelined at least two dozen generals and admirals since taking office, including General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second African American chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy. Currently, the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, all five service chiefs, and nine of the military’s ten combatant commanders are white men, reversing years of diversification efforts under former Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III.

(Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/us/hegseth-promotion-list.html)