Ryan Bort
Contact Ryan Bort on X View all posts by Ryan Bort March 27, 2026
Donald Trump, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, and Maj. Gen. Trevor Bredenkamp participate in a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on May 26, 2025 in Arlington, Va. Getty Images Donald Trump is known to muse about how the military men he interacts with as president are straight out of “central casting.” He doesn’t seem to want his movie to include any Black women, according to a report released Friday by The New York Times.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently blocked the promotion of four Army officers to become single-star generals, the Times reports. Two of the officers Hegseth took off the list are Black, and the other two are women. Hegseth has been on a crusade to eradicate “woke” diversity initiatives from the military, and since taking over the Pentagon has made a series of unusual moves targeting people of color and women. Hegseth had reportedly been pressuring Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll to remove the four names from the promotion list, but Driscoll refused, defending the officers as qualified.
The Times highlights another incident last summer, in which Hegseth’s chief of staff, Ricky Buria, was upset that Driscoll tapped Maj. Gen. Antoinette Gant, a Black woman, to lead the Military District of Washington. The promotion meant Grant would stand near Trump during ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery. Buria reportedly told Driscoll that Trump wouldn’t want to stand next to a Black female officer at military events, with the Times citing three current and former officials familiar with the exchange.
Driscoll was taken aback, and raised the issue with a senior White House official, who agreed that Trump wouldn’t want to stand next to a Black woman.
Buria denied the exchange took place, calling the allegation “fake Washington gossip” in a text to the Times.
Hegseth nixing the promotion of Black and female officers isn’t surprising given how he has long railed against DEI in the military, and in the past said that women should not serve in combat roles. Shortly after Trump was elected, Hegseth called for the firing of then-Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Charles Brown, who is Black, saying that anyone “involved in any of that DEI woke shit has got to go.” Trump fired Brown shortly after taking office a few months later.
