Hegseth Blocks Navy Admirals in Shift Away From Diversity Mandates

The blocked list includes Rear Adm. Amy Bauernschmidt, the first woman to command a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Officials familiar with the internal deliberations confirm that five of the seven sidelined officers are women or people of color. Hegseth has offered no formal justification for these specific removals, though his past writings advocate for ending what he describes as affirmative action-driven personnel policies. In his book, The War on Warriors, he explicitly criticized the prioritization of diversity benchmarks over traditional merit-based selection.

Since assuming office, Hegseth has removed or terminated over 40 senior officers, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy. With women representing 21 percent of the active-duty force but only 7 percent of the admiral rank, the current freeze carries significant weight for the service's leadership demographics. A group of seven Democratic senators has challenged the move, citing concerns that the exclusions disregard decades of professional achievement and may violate established Pentagon protocols, which limit removal from promotion lists to strictly defined issues of conduct or professional capability.