Pete Hegseth has been blocking promotions in the military, and many of the officers affected are minorities and women. The pattern follows his takeover of the Department of Defense in January 2025 and raises a straightforward personnel question: who gets to lead when the people who usually fill the pipeline are held back?
Hegseth also called “Our diversity is our strength” the “single dumbest phrase in military history” and said Black History Month was “dead.” Within days of taking charge, he fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown, the military’s highest-ranking Black officer. A little more than a year later, more Black officers have been let go or walked off the job, and the promotion blocks have widened the pressure on that same officer corps.
Charles Q and the officer corps
Clint Smith said the damage reaches beyond any one officer. “Decimating the officer infrastructure, these folks who have been in the military for a long time, who often serve as mentors to many of the younger service members, it’s going to have a profound impact on the long-term landscape of what the military looks like,” he said on What Next with Mary Harris. His point is operational, not abstract: promotions are how the military keeps experienced leaders in place long enough to teach the next group.
That is why the personnel freeze matters most for Black officers and women, who are already named among those affected. The issue is not only whether a single promotion gets delayed. It is whether the chain of advancement that builds future commanders is being narrowed at the same time Hegseth is cutting into the ranks that feed it.
What Next and Mary Harris
Smith said some service members are already weighing whether to stay or leave. He said some Black service members believe leadership is trying to reconstitute Jim Crow within the military, a view that shows how quickly promotion decisions can become a signal about who belongs and who does not.
He also described what some people said they would do if deployed to a U.S. city to quash a protest: “If I’m deployed to a U.S. city to quash a protest, I will leave. I will not do it.” Others, he said, would stay and try to act carefully: “If I am deployed to a U.S. city, I’ll try to do it in a way that is respectful of people rather than trying to bash skulls.” Those responses point to the same fault line now running through the promotion decisions.
Which specific promotions Hegseth blocked, and how many officers were affected, is not stated. What is clear is that the block sits inside a broader personnel shift that has already removed Brown, thinned the Black officer ranks, and left minorities and women carrying more of the uncertainty about who moves up next.
