The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee sharply criticized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday for blocking the promotion of four Army officers — two Black men and two women — to be one-star generals.
Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island said Mr. Hegseth’s intervention in an Army promotion matter violated rules that promotions in the military services should be based on “individual merit and demonstrated performance.”
After a service board approves a list of colonels to be promoted to general, the defense secretary is not supposed to intervene, military officials say.
The New York Times reported on Friday that for months, Mr. Hegseth pressed senior Army leaders, including Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, to remove the four names from the list of about three dozen officers, most of whom are white men.
But Mr. Driscoll refused, citing the officers’ decades-long records of exemplary service. Earlier this month, Mr. Hegseth broke the logjam by unilaterally striking the names of the four officers from the list, though it remains unclear whether he has the legal authority to do so.
On Friday, Mr. Hegseth announced that President Trump had approved his new list of 29 Army colonels to be promoted.
“If these reports are accurate, Secretary Hegseth’s decision to remove four decorated officers from a promotion list after having been selected by their peers for their merit and performance is not only outrageous, it would be illegal,” Mr. Reed said in a statement. “Denying the promotions of individual officers based on their race or gender would betray every principle of merit-based service military officers uphold throughout their careers.”
Mr. Hegseth’s decision also drew harsh criticism from the leaders of the Democratic Women’s Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus.
“We’ve long known that Pete Hegseth is an unfit and unqualified secretary of defense appointed by Trump. So it is absurd, ironic and beyond inappropriate that he of all people would deny these promotions to officers with records of exemplary service,” Representative Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico, the chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, and Representative Yvette D. Clarke of New York, the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in a joint statement. “America’s service members deserve so much better.”
The battle highlights the bitter rifts opened by Mr. Hegseth’s campaign to reverse policies that he says are prejudiced against white officers.
Mr. Hegseth has said repeatedly that he is determined to change a culture corrupted by “foolish,” “reckless” and “woke” leaders from previous administrations. But his heavy scrutiny, especially of female and minority officers, is eroding confidence in a promotion system that is supposed to be apolitical and merit-based, his critics have said.
Today, about 43 percent of the 1.3 million troops on active duty are people of color. But those leading the military are overwhelmingly white and male. Mr. Hegseth’s recent predecessors, including Lloyd J. Austin III and Mark T. Esper, pressed promotion boards to look deeper into ranks to ensure that qualified women and minorities were considered for senior positions.
But since Mr. Hegseth came to office last year, he has sought to return senior Pentagon leadership to its factory settings of predominantly white and male. He has fired or sidelined at least two-dozen generals and admirals, including Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second Black man to serve as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy as chief of naval operations.
Currently, the chairman and the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all five service chiefs and nine of the military’s 10 combatant commanders are white men.
The latest moves “fit a pattern when it comes to this secretary,” Mr. Reed said.
“These officers have given decades of exemplary service to this nation,” he added. “They deserve better, and so do the American people. I am looking into this matter to ensure that the law is followed.”
Congressional aides said the House Armed Services Committee was also looking into the issue.
Mr. Hegseth’s actions also drew condemnation from Common Defense, a left-leaning veterans organization.
“Military standards are not the issue here,” said Jose Vasquez, the group’s executive director and an Army veteran. “This is clearly about Hegseth imposing his political and ideological agenda on the people who have actually earned their rank.”
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent for The Times. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent.
The post Hegseth Criticized for Removing Four Officers From Promotion List appeared first on New York Times.
