Hegseth Personally Nixed Black and Female Officers’ Promotions

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is continuing his discriminatory campaign to remake the U.S. military in his image. Last month, a list of nearly two dozen one-star promotions included no women and only two nonwhite officers. On Monday, The New York Times was able to reveal exactly how that happened.

Hegseth personally intervened to block the promotion of several senior Navy officers, including at least two female officers and two Black male officers, four current and former defense officials told the paper.  

This is not the first time Hegseth has moved to block or delay the promotion of female and Black military officers. He did the same thing to Army officers in March, and has reportedly thwarted the advancements of more than one dozen female and Black officers across the Army, Air Force, Navy, and the Marines. 

The result of Hegseth’s continued intervention is a military leadership that does not reflect its members: 21 percent of active-duty Navy officers are women, and 38 percent are minorities. Women and minorities currently account for less than 20 percent of all generals and admirals in the U.S. military. 

Pentagon rules say that the secretary can only block promotions if there is an issue related to a service member’s fitness to lead—not their identities, or whatever other problem Hegseth seems to have with them. 

This latest reporting is sure to ruffle feathers at the Pentagon, where Hegseth has lashed out at the press and spiraled about leaks. The DOD officially banned journalists from the Pentagon’s press office Monday, declaring it a “classified space.”

People of myriad sexual and gender identities across the U.S. will spend June celebrating Pride Month, a commemoration of the decades-long fight for civil rights for the LGBTQ+ community. But in Arkansas, residents will instead be celebrating a new invention.

Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders bestowed a new name on June, dubbing it “Fidelity Month,” per a new declaration.

The effort is intended to cultivate “fidelity to God, family, community, and country,” and to a “healthy, stable, well-ordered society.” The memo underscores the values of faith, liberty, and patriotism, which Sanders’s office argue are the country’s founding principles, and notes the commemorative month aims to elevate “spiritual and civic institutions” at the core of the state’s “collective identity.”

It’s hard not to see the move as a direct attack on the LGBTQ+ community and everything it’s achieved.

Pride has been the preeminent June celebration since 1970. The protests and parades that take place throughout the month commemorate the history of the Stonewall Uprising, which lasted for six days but began on June 28, 1969, when police raided one of the city’s most popular gay bars, the Stonewall Inn. Incensed by the incursion, New York City’s LGBTQ+ community rebelled, marching through the streets in one of the most significant acts of civil rights disobedience in U.S. history.

At the time, homosexuality was criminalized in every U.S. state save Illinois, which granted individuals the right to express their sexuality in private in 1962.

Sanders’s order comes at a complicated time for gay rights. There are currently 530 anti-LGBTQ+ bills across the country, according to a legislation tracker created by the American Civil Liberties Union. They include attempts to censor school curriculums, redefine sex, create anti-transgender health care barriers, prohibit drag, and force minors out of the closet in school settings.

In Arkansas specifically, state laws do not protect LGBTQ+ people from being fired, evicted, or denied services due to sexual orientation or gender identity. The state Supreme Court ruled against nondiscrimination ordinances in 2017, blocking local, voter-approved referendums to create a more explicitly LGBTQ+ friendly community.

But Arkansas isn’t the only state making an unsubtle jab at gay rights. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee recently signed a similar resolution, marking June as “Nuclear Family Month.” The bill’s text defines the nuclear family as “consisting of one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children” as intended by “God’s design.”

Meanwhile, marriage equality is nationally upheld by the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, a protection that seems increasingly fragile in light of the court’s decision to overturn abortion access via its 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

At the time, Justice Clarence Thomas penned a concurring opinion in Dobbs, arguing that the court “should reconsider” its substantive due process precedents, including its rulings on contraception, same-sex marriage, and even same-sex relationships.

The Trump administration is suspending its $1.776 billion slush fund for alleged MAGA victims of political targeting after internal disagreement.

“The Department of Justice disagrees strongly with the decision on the Anti-Weaponization Fund put forth by the United States District Court Judge in the Eastern District of Virginia, wherein the Court stated that, under no circumstances, may the Department of Justice proceed with the Anti-Weaponization Fund recently established in order to make up for the tremendous abuse, harm, and hate unfairly shown to so many people,” the Justice Department wrote on X Monday afternoon, referring to the fund’s temporary ban last Friday. “This Fund was open to anybody who was so weaponized, targeted, or persecuted, whether they were Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Independent, or otherwise. The Department will abide by the Court’s ruling.”

Last week, a federal judge suspended the administration from proceeding with its slush fund for at least two weeks, scheduling a June 12 hearing to hear arguments.

If Trump has truly given up on his plans, this would be a quick life and death for an enrichment fund that drew criticism from both Democrats and even some Republicans, as both sides decried it as a problematic conflict of interests at best and blatant taxpayer theft at worst. Outrage grew as the administration refused to exclude January 6 rioters convicted of assaulting police officers from getting a payout.

“This has become a distraction,” an administration source told Axios. “The president believes government was weaponized against people—it wasn’t just him. But this isn’t the time and vehicle for it.”

During the second day of the Minnesota GOP’s annual conference in Duluth on Saturday, the state’s Republicans conducted a moment of silence for Derek Chauvin, who is currently serving a prison term of 22 and a half years for the second-degree murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

When asked about the moment of silence on Monday, Minnesota GOP Chair Alex Plechash said the request came from the group’s body, not leadership. (The moment of silence reportedly came at the request of one of the state’s delegates.)

“There are a lot of people, I think, that believe Derek Chauvin was improperly convicted and not treated well, and those people wanted to have a moment of silence and recognition because they felt that way,” he said.

Asked whether he agreed with those members, Plechash declined to comment. “I believe the court system had its verdict and I’m not going to challenge the court,” he said.

Of course, Plechash’s consent to honor Chauvin is all the evidence one needs that party leadership is bowing to an extremist sect that basks in conspiracy theories and celebrates state violence.

It also feels particularly cruel following the more recent killings of two other Minnesotans, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, at the hands of federal law enforcement. The alleged perpetrators, ICE officer Jonathan Ross, Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa, and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez, have yet to face any charges for the killings.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s transgender military ban in a 2–1 decision, stating that the decision was motivated by animus.

The “Commander-in-Chief declared transgender people as categorically unfit for military service explicitly because of their gender identity. To add insult, the President labeled transgender persons as dishonorable, undisciplined, arrogant, selfish liars,” the court wrote in a 107-page opinion, which came on the first day of Pride Month.

The court ruled that Hegseth’s ban can remain in place for future service members, but not for any currently enlisted. However, the greater ban still remains in place as the Supreme Court weighs its merits.

“What has been clearly and repeatedly explained are the foundational premises of the Hegseth Policy: persons with a ‘false gender identity’ are unfit for the military, and persons with a history of gender dysphoria are also unfit because they lack ‘honesty, humility, … and integrity,’” the court wrote. “Those animus-filled reasons were expressly given to justify aspects of the Hegseth Policy. As a result, this is not a case where we are left to speculate why the government drafted such broad, undifferentiated classifications. Unless we are going to fall for the old Groucho Marx line—‘who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?’—we have direct evidence in this case that animus motivated the classifications in the Hegseth Policy.”

The ban was announced via a Trump executive order in the president’s first week in office last year. It stated that “radical gender ideology” had infected the military, and that being transgender wasn’t an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.”

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” it read—equating gender dysphoria with mental illness or a deep moral deficiency.

This story has been updated.