Cosplay Commando Pete Hegseth Is Purging the Navy of Women Who Outrank Him

There is not a single woman on the U.S. Navy’s new list of nominees for one-star admiral — in a force that is about 21 percent women. According to The New York Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth personally struck nine officers from a promotion list selected by a board of senior Navy admirals: three women, two Black men, and four white men. Under Pentagon rules, a defense secretary is supposed to remove names only for narrow concerns about an officer’s fitness to serve.One of the women removed had completed the Navy’s advanced nuclear power school and was selected to aide a four-star admiral; her name had surfaced on a website targeting “woke” officers because she served as a diversity liaison two decades ago. Hegseth has already fired the first woman to lead the Navy and the second Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and nearly 60 percent of the senior officers he has removed are women or Black, according to Senator Jack Reed.Hegseth also pushed to add his own special assistant, a SEAL who was ineligible under the board’s rules, to the promotion list, and told a member of Congress he was “not aware” of it when asked directly.Separately, on the same week, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled his transgender troop policy unconstitutional, with the court describing it as driven by animus, though the ruling was narrowed to currently serving members and is on hold pending further appeal.Sources:https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/us/politics/hegseth-navy-promotion-list.htmlhttps://www.notus.org/donald-trump/circuit-court-strikes-down-pentagon-hegseth-policy-transgender-active-military Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe