U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono from Hawaii strongly criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday. She said Hegseth is weakening the military by putting discrimination before qualifications when choosing officers for promotions.
Hirono posted on social media that Hegseth is making the military weaker by giving preference to prejudice and sexism instead of skill, experience, and hard work.
She called this behavior pathetic, dangerous, and a bad use of power. She shared a report from the New York Times that explained how Hegseth got involved in Army promotions.
According to the New York Times, Hegseth stopped four Army officers—two Black men and two women—from being promoted to the rank of brigadier general.
Hegseth spent several months trying to get military officials, including Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, to remove these officers from the promotion list. But they resisted. Eventually, Hegseth removed their names from the list on his own, even though he didn’t have the legal right to do so.
Army Secretary Driscoll first refused to take the officers off the list.
But after Hegseth pushed, he ended up removing their names. Sources told Fox News Digital about this.
There are worries that Hegseth might be targeting certain officers because of their race, gender, or political views.
A U.S. official confirmed that Hegseth has been removing senior officers who are seen as not agreeing with his views. NPR also reported that a Black colonel and a female colonel from another branch of the military were taken off the promotion list, bringing the total number of blocked promotions to at least six.
Military promotions are meant to be based on merit, showing years of service and leadership.
Senior military officials say they have never seen a defense secretary remove specific officers from a carefully chosen promotion list before. This is different from the usual way things work and shows how political influence is affecting the system.
The situation also involved a disagreement between Hegseth’s chief of staff, Ricky Buria, and Driscoll over a promotion for Maj. Gen. Antoinette Gant, a combat engineer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Buria told Driscoll that President Trump wouldn’t want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events. Driscoll was surprised and said the president isn’t racist or sexist. He then talked to a senior White House official who agreed with him.
Gant was already serving in her new role and was promoted to two-star general earlier this month.
Buria denied the story and said it was false.
He claimed the person who told the story was trying to create division within the military and the administration. He said it would not work when the department is led by leaders focused on the mission and not on politics.
The tension reached a peak when the New York Times reported the conflict over the promotion list.
Hegseth and his team suspected that General George, the Army’s chief of staff, had leaked the story and asked him to resign. Hegseth called George to fire him on April 2nd, while Driscoll was in North Carolina with his family.
Driscoll told lawmakers on Thursday that he was out of town when Hegseth fired George.
He said George was a transformational leader and that he was in North Carolina with his family when he heard the news. When he drove home, he went directly to George’s house. “We walked right in and all gave him a hug,” Driscoll said. “He was an amazing, transformational leader.”
Since Hegseth took over, nearly two dozen top military officers have been fired or put on the side.
Many of these officers are women or people from minority groups, and there have been no explanations for these sudden changes.
A Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said that under Hegseth, promotions are given to those who have earned them.
“Meritocracy, which rules in this department, is political and bias-free,” Parnell said.
Senator Jack Reed from Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that if the reports are true, Hegseth’s decision to take four decorated officers off the promotion list—after they had been picked by their peers for their hard work and ability—is not only shocking, but also illegal.
In the current Trump administration, the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all five service chiefs, and nine of the military’s 10 combatant commanders are white men.
Hirono, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been openly criticizing Hegseth since he was confirmed.
She said Hegseth’s review of women in combat roles was an attack on women and that it made it harder for female service members—many of whom have already met strict standards and served in combat with honor—to have equal opportunities.
During a previous hearing, Hirono told Hegseth, “After only months on the job, our concerns about you have proven true.
Instead of making the country safer, you’ve turned the Pentagon into a dysfunctional mess.”
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