Today, Explained - A white, male military

Episode Date: July 7, 2026

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been blocking military promotions — especially if you're a woman, Black, or perceived as disloyal. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks at Meridian Hill Park in Washington, DC. Photo by Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on his election night. Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What can we say about President Trump's efforts to commemorate our country's 250th birthday? The reflecting pool grew algae, the ice cream melted, the speakers fell from the stage, but it wasn't all bad, the fireworks slapped, and Trump repaired the glorious fountain at Malcolm X. Park in D.C. Pete Hegsett showed up to speak at the park last week and was met by protesters. It's the sound of ingrace, of gratitude, of people who are... So blinded by ideology. Locals showed up to demand the National Guard get out of D.C. Law and order is something all Americans deserve.

Black, white, rich, poor man or woman from D.C. or far-flung places in this country. Kind of curious, Pete decided to go Rainbow Coalition on him because over at the Pentagon, he's been firing generals and blocking promotions, and a lot of the people losing out are women and or black. What year is it coming up on today, explained from Box? This is today explained. I'm Tom Bowman, NPR's Pentagon reporter in exile. In exile? What does that mean? Well, you may have remembered that reporters from the Pentagon walked out and turned in our press badge in last October.

Tom Bowman, NPR's Pentagon correspondent, is handing in his press pass. Now, that does not mean he will stop doing the job. And the reason is because they wanted us to sign this document. basically saying you can't solicit information from anyone in the Pentagon. You have to wait until the Pentagon releases information and only then can you report on it. And a month after this happened, I was at this reception for military attachés in Washington from all over the world. And this guy walks up, introduces himself. He was a Chinese military attache, perfect English, his second tour in Washington. So we had this great chat. And then he says, tell me about this new Pentagon.

on press policy. And it explains it just like I did to you that we can't solicit information from anybody. We have to wait until the government hands us something. And only then can we report on it. He said, oh, just like us. Oh, no. Yeah. That's a grim story. Very grim. What kinds of stories do you think the Department of Defense doesn't want people like you reporting on right now? I think what's going on in Secretary Hegseth's office, there's been a lot of turmoil, a lot of firings. When Heggseth first came in, he almost immediately fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and

Staff, General CQ Brown. Not the right man for the moment. And also Admiral Lisa Franketti, who was the top officer in the Navy. CQ Brown was the second African American to hold the job as a chairman after Colin Powell. And Lisa Franketti was the first woman to run the Navy. Democrats have labeled the Pentagon slashings as the Friday night massacre. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth once called Brown a DEI hire. The rationale for me has been straightforward.

It's nearly impossible to change a culture with the same people who helped create or even benefited from that culture. Can you give us a sense of just how many black and or women officers have been either fired or had their promotions denied? We don't have the total number. I would say it's for both black officers and women. It's probably several dozen, maybe even more, from all the services. So from the Marine Corps, the Navy, the Air Force, the Army, they've been either fired again or denied promotions. Again, no reason given. But what we do know is Secretary Hegseth, in his writings, has questioned whether, you know, women officers or black officers got their jobs because of the of their color, their skin, or their gender. We need moms, but not in the military, especially in combat units. Chapter 8. Supporting DEI means soldiers die. He's been talking about that really for years. And is there any evidence that that's the case?

Not that I've seen, and I've gone through the, I have eight names of some of those who were fired. and you look through their records, and clearly they're pretty stellar individuals. One of these officers comes from a military family, his brother also was an officer, and his other brother is a senior officer. So you're looking at this, you look at his record, you look at the records of this guy and several others. There's nothing in there that would indicate that, well, this person doesn't deserve this. They all rose up the ranks, either commanding ships and then carrier groups,

or, you know, company command and the army and rising up to, you know, colonel and responsible jobs. So there is really no reason given. So Heggseth is doing this thing where he thinks that, you know, there have been DEI hires in the upper ranks of the U.S. Armed Forces. And so he's trying to perhaps undo that. We don't really know a lot because he doesn't have to say much about it. And he's kicking out reporters from the Pentagon. But there's also a lot of controversy over suppressions of promotions or firings of, you know, white men. Like a guy named Chris Donahue, what's going on there?

Chris Donahue is a highly respected officer. One of the things that hasn't ever changed in combat is your adversary is going to change. He worked with Delta Force, a secret of army unit. He worked with the CIA. He was commander of the 82nd Airborne. division, and also as the top Army General in Europe, he worked very closely with Ukraine. What are their defensive needs? How much more equipment and money do they need? So, again, very highly respected.

At just 56, General Donahue, a former Delta Force commander, had been expected to serve for years to come. He was widely considered an Army rising star, the potential candidate for Army Chief of Staff. I think people came to know him because he was the last officer. out of Afghanistan. There's this grainy, greenish picture of him getting on the helicopter. And what we do know is the Pentagon is investigating that disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, Kabul fell, and everybody was at the airport. It was pandemonium. So they're doing an investigation. It's expected to come out sometime next month on the anniversary of the withdrawal some five years ago.

And the sense is that, you know, C.D. Donahue may, they may find fault with him in that investigation. And so as a result of, you know, do you want this guy you found fault with to have another four-star job? But again, we're not getting any reasons why these people are either fired or not given another job. Pete Hagsath obviously answers to the president of the United States, but is kind of. Congress noticing these firings and taking any action? Yeah, I think they are. And I think when the Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, was fired. That really royal Congress, I think, but both Democrats and Republicans thought he was doing a really good job.

General George, let's talk about a guy who's a patriot, somebody who every single person here in this dais and down there in that audience and out there in this world has huge admiration for. Why did he get fired? Secretary Hakesh, I respect you. I do want you to know. I disagree with the firing general George. And now there's a push on Capitol Hill and the defense bill to put language in that basically says, listen, if you fire a senior officer or pull someone off the promotion list, you have to give a reason, a written reason exactly why you're doing that. So keep an eye in that. I know the House member is putting that into the defense bill will likely have language in the Senate to. So that could change things.

It could force Hegset to explain why he is doing some of these firings and pulling people off to promotion lists. It sounds like the kinds of positions that aren't being filled by people of color, by women, by established white men are very important. So if he's not promoting the people that he's firing or suppressing, who's getting these jobs? Because surely we want people to have these jobs. Well, you know, there's still very talented officers who are getting these jobs. But I think one of the things HECSeth is looking for is loyalty. We all serve at the pleasure of the president every single day. Nobody questioning me. Just do what you're told, right? Maybe not offer your best military advice.

So there is a concern that people getting these jobs may have less experience or may, you know, their one attribute may be I'm loyal to. Secretary Hegseth. And that's not the way it's supposed to be, right? You're supposed to be independent. You're supposed to be given your best military advice to either Secretary of Defense or the president. So there is a concern among the military leaders retired and though still on active duty, that the people getting these jobs will have less experience than, let's say, a Randy George or particularly C.D. Donahue, less experience and either loyal to Secretary Hagseth or afraid to give their BISP military advice or afraid to push back. That's the concern. And one officer I spoke was said, you know, it may take a generation to make this thing better,

to bring some of these people up who really deserve the job as opposed to just some loyalty test. And it's not only, I hear it within the active duty military, but even the retired military, they're pretty upset. about it. And some are speaking out. Some are reluctant to speak out because they don't want to be brought back in active duty and court-martialed. There's this one senior officer. I was doing a story last year with a couple of colleagues. And I called this retired guy up. I found out he was involved in this policy in the Biden administration. I said, hey, you know, come on over to NPR. We'll talk about what's going on. He said, Tom, there's no way I'm going over to NPR. somebody may see me walking in.

Wow. So he had to come to my house in Alexandria, sit around my dining room table and talk about some of these issues. He's retired. A retired guy who's not afraid to speak up when today explains back. Support for TAY If you run a business, chances are it's a struggle to separate your personal life and your career, especially when your phone rings.

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This is good. Today is explained. Today is plain. This is today's playing. Captain John Cordell served for three decades in the Navy, and he's openly upset about how Secretary Pete Hegseth is meddling with the promotions process. in the U.S. Armed Forces. So I've sat a few of these boards and talked to people that have,

and it's a fairly, it's a very robust process and very well-established process for decades. So here's what happens. First of all, you figure out who has to go before the board. These are Navy captains. These are folks who have been in the Navy for 24 to 28 years. They have done an 05 command tour at sea. They've done an 06 command tour at sea.

They've done a Pentagon tour. They've done a joint tour. they've really done the hard jobs to get promoted. And to be eligible, those are things you have to do to get in the room. To really have a chance of promotion, you have to been the best, right? You have to have combat experience. You have to be number one of a peer group. And so, you know, that's who these people, it's merit, right?

We talk about merit-based. Well, there is no more merit-based process in the board process. Now, the Secretary of the Navy signs out a letter called a precepts letter. And in that letter, there's an interesting paragraph. He says, you are building the future of the Navy. are choosing the leadership of the Navy, I handpicked you to do this job, and your one criteria is pick the most qualified officers. And then there's a bit of boilerplate stuff in there, but at the end of the day, that's what this is about. And so these admirals, these flag

officers handpicked a dozen of them or so, go to Millington, Tennessee. They're sequestered for about a week. They study the records. They start voting. And then they just call down the list from probably 150 down to 70 to an eventual list of 30, 31, I believe, in this case. And they send that up to the Secretary of the Navy via the Chief of Naval operations, the four-star admiral, and that goes from the Secretary of the Navy to the Secretary of Defense, and then it goes over to Congress. And so, I mean, this is an extremely rigorous process where they've handpicked everybody involved. And so at that point is kind of where the wheels came off when it went from the Navy to the Secretary of Defense.

And how do people in the military feel about the Secretary of Defense sort of bypassing this rigorous process that you're describing? The hardest part about this is the lack of transparency, right? So there's a lot of speculation. And even what I said is somewhat, I'm just extrapolating other data points into the idea, which has not been refuted that he did remove those names. Of course, he hasn't shared the reason that he moved them,

so you have to kind of look at other data from the other boards and things. So, no, the things I'm hearing from service members are, first of all, they're disappointed, they're discouraged, they feel disenfranchised. One said, I think, very compelling, she says, you know, it doesn't matter how hard I work, how good I am, what paper I get, whether my captain gives me a good fitness report, whether I'm the number one officer, I'm going to have my name removed from the list anyway because I'm a woman. One black officer, a friend of mine said, look, I've told my two sons that now's not a good time to join the Navy. One female officer said it's a dangerous time to be in the military. And one sent me a note that she had been ordered by her senior flag officer not to speak about this to anyone. And so there's fear.

I think that's probably the number one thing that's out there. But there's a sense of hopelessness and a sense of helplessness that it's, you know, should I really do the sacrifice, the hard jobs that are out there that's necessary to advance when it doesn't matter. I think a great quote that I got from one was my genes and my chromosomes seemed to matter more than my performance and my achievements. And to me, that's the antithesis of merit, right? That's the challenge that we have right now is people are confused, right? And I think, you know, I had some other ones. Senior officers have told me that they have been pulled aside and said, look, your name was on this website. You have no more operability.

And so, you know, this has repercussions to go far beyond just this board. I mean, you talk about people feeling demoralized. It feels comparable to how people in the National Guard who, I don't know, are harassing unhoused people in D.C. might feel. Or people who work for the Centers for Disease Control might feel. What to you is different about demoralizing our armed forces? When you're in the military, that becomes your identity, right? I think for a lot of folks. And you're invested in loyalty to the organization.

Loyalty to the Navy, loyalty to the country. And so you have to be pushed pretty hard to sort of decide that that's not the place for me anymore. And a lot of folks are looking at this, and I've talked to a lot that say, look, it's tough. But, I mean, we've had ancestors that were tougher. Senator Stennis prevented black people from coming into the Naval Academy for years, right, like decades. There used to be complete segregation in the military. So, I mean, we've come a long, long way. And there's some hope, you know, I just keep my head down for a couple of years.

maybe this will change. But the other thing is, I mean, we're fighting war, right? I mean, the very women and minorities who are being questioned for their loyalty, integrity, and capability are captains of warships. They're flying airplanes. They're getting shot down in Iraq. And so that's where their focus is. You know, when you, someone said to me, well, the junior folks don't care about this. Well, they probably don't because they have to keep the motors running and the guns firing.

The captain of a ship has to focus on war fighting. They're not watching, you know, CNN or, or, you know, NPR every night to see what the latest development is and the, you know, are these flag officers going to get promoted or not? But the long-term repercussions are, are pretty significant. So does that mean that you don't think that things will just return to normal in 2028 when, you know, John Ossif becomes president or whatever happened? Well, I think, I think this is just my opinion, regardless of what administration comes in, I think the rudder will swing back a little bit because this is really driven by one person.

You know, and so if that person changes, then everything else will change, right? So I think, yes, I believe there's a chance. I think my fear is that we're setting a precedent now that there'll be another purge if another, you know, if a Democratic administration comes in. This is, oh, you know, you fired everybody for following the rules in the last administration, so now we're going to fire everybody for following. Now it becomes the apolitical military. It's never completely apolitical, but it's pretty darned at 30 years. I've had four, I think, six administrations. three Democrat, three Republican. I didn't care. I did my job, and I was fine. And I think that

that's the dangerous precedent. The other thing is the Admiral G-Corps is already 95% white male. You know, four-stars is 10 of 10. And so it's not going to be long until there are no female admirals in the Navy by the end of this administration. And that sets up a precedent where the leadership of the military is different than the people that they're leading. And to me, that's a very dangerous place to be. Pete Higg said might not be advertising that he doesn't want to promote women and black people in the military, but he's certainly talking about how he thinks DEI is ruining the military. It's just, I guess, a question of what words he's using. Is there any evidence that, like, diversity has harmed our lethality, the thing?

he cares about most seemingly? Oh, absolutely not. I mean, they've been studies done, but, you know, how do you compare that? Because there is no all-male force or all-white force to compare their performance with what we have. Whether you like it or not, we have a diverse force. And look at what we're doing. I mean, strategically, we can talk differently.

But what's going on in Iran right now? The Navy's kicking butt, right? I mean, we're knocking down missiles left and right. We're doing amazing things. Those sailors are out there for a year at a time. We are a lethal force right now, and we were when I was in, and we have been the whole time. And so the sad thing is it's really so unnecessary, right? You could have a lethal force and be inclusive.

You spent 30 years in the Navy. I believe that's more time than Pete Hegseth served his country. Was this something that everyone was always talking about? Like, hey, did you hear that woman got promoted? Did you hear that black captain got promoted? Was this something that was irking your fellow service members? You know, the pendulum swings back and forth. You know, there was affirmative action in the day.

There was Admiral Zunwald. I don't know if you're familiar with Bud Zunwald, but he did a lot to bring in. He brought back beards. He brought back sideburns. He brought back ponytails because he said, you know, we have to stop minimizing and marginalizing minorities and women. Every time that happens, there's a backlash.

There's a backlash to the fact that Obama was president, right? Very long backlash, it feels like. Thanks, Obama. You see these waves, and so, and every time that there's a, there's some folks that look like me that feel that if you get ahead, then I get behind. I don't feel that way, and I never have, but I think that feeling is out there. And sure, there were those, I've talked to people this week, they were like, hey, I was up for this promotion and a black person got it, and we all, and, you know, we all know why. Well, maybe, but I don't know what that person's qualifications were. I don't really know what went on inside the room.

So I, no, there's always going to be a backlash, I think, when you try to lift one group up. It's always seen, well, now you're putting somebody else down. There's certainly people that feel that way, but I think we've come a long way in the service over the years. And I think we were making a lot of progress. And it's kind of heartbreaking to see that sort of being ripped apart. But do you think it gets put back together? I think so. you know, we've been around 250 years.

We're pretty darn resilient. We've been through civil wars and civil rights. And, you know, one of my friends who's in his 80s, he said, you know, this is nothing compared to what I've seen. Right. And so, yeah, I think the ship will ride itself. I think, you know, what did Martin, you know, justice bends, the history bends towards justice or something like that. And so, no, I think this will write itself. I think there's enough good people in the Navy that will wear the, they'll stick around.

weather the storm and come out the other end. We're focused on war fighting. We're not focused on this. If the Navy can, if the military can stay less political and just do their job, then I think we'll be fine. Captain Cortle wrote an op-ed for the military times about Heggsets, firings, and meddling with promotions. You can find it at military times.com.

You can find and support Tom Bowman's work at NPR.org. Miles Brian produced our show today. Amin al-Ala-Sati edited Gabriel. was on facts, David Tadishore and Patrick Boyd were on the mix. I'm Sean Ramos for him and this is today explained.