AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been talking about diversity in the military since before he took office. He called the U.S. military woke and suggested that Black and female generals had not earned their rank. The Trump administration has acted on that sentiment, firing, without explanation, the head of the Joint Chiefs, who is Black, and the only female four-star admiral in the military. And now, Hegseth has intervened to stop the promotions of four army colonels and two colonels from another service who were on track to become one-star generals. Here with more is Quil Lawrence from NPR's national security team. Hi, Quil.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: Hey. OK, so this was first reported in The New York Times - that Hegseth was blocking these promotions. What more can you tell us about what's going on here?
LAWRENCE: NPR has confirmed with two U.S. officials who are not authorized to speak publicly that Hegseth, in what's a highly unusual and possibly even illegal move, has stepped in to cross out four names off the list of army colonels who'd been recommended for promotion to one-star general. There were two Black men and two women.
We've also learned - NPR has learned that two other colonels from a different branch - one Black and one female - were also taken off the promotion list. And it's not just race and gender. One official told us that Hegseth has been weeding out senior officers who were deemed ideologically incompatible with the Trump administration, which, honestly, isn't that surprising. I mean, here's a line that Hegseth often repeats.
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PETE HEGSETH: I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is our diversity is our strength. I think our strength is our unity.
LAWRENCE: He said that at a gathering of flag officers last year, and it fits into this pattern where Hegseth has been focused on waging what one official told us is kind of a culture war within the Pentagon.
CHANG: You used the word pattern. Say more about that pattern, like, and the ramifications of that.
LAWRENCE: Well, yeah, like you said before, that, you know, when he came into office, the sitting chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was an Air Force general, C.Q. Brown, highly respected former combat pilot who's Black - fired without explanation. Several high-ranking women - like Navy Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to serve among the Joint Chiefs - fired with no cause. Also, thousands of transgender troops being pushed out.
And Hegseth says, without evidence, that minorities have been promoted as a kind of affirmative action. The military is over 40% nonwhite. Female recruitment has been surging. I spoke with retired Major General Paul Eaton about this. He said that Hegseth's policies could affect retention and recruitment.
PAUL EATON: So the bottom line is, for recruitment purposes, women are looking at all this. They're looking at what happened to Admiral Franchetti. They're looking at, you know, the other women that Hegseth has fired. And when you fire a guy like C.Q. Brown, what are young Black Americans thinking when they really might want to come into the military?
LAWRENCE: And Eaton was saying that the chipping away of this institution, the promotion boards - he and other military officers have always been proud to say they'd been free of politics in the past. And he was afraid there could be a chilling effect where, you know, promising young officers see that, and they either shut up, or they leave the military, or they get weeded out if they say the wrong thing.
CHANG: Sure. Well, what has the Pentagon said in response to all the reporting on this?
LAWRENCE: In a statement to NPR, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell called the reporting, quote, "fake news from anonymous sources" and said that under Secretary Hegseth, military promotions are given to those who've earned them. Meritocracy, which reigns at this department, is apolitical and unbiased.
And I should say, you know, NPR - we're hearing from a lot of current and former military officials about this, but they are probably a self-selecting bunch who are bothered by this. The military officers who agree with what's going on aren't reaching out to us to complain.
CHANG: That is NPR's Quil Lawrence. Thank you so much, Quil.
LAWRENCE: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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