The Official "Damned Trump" Thread: Phase II

[awty]

The Administration Wants Military Women to Know Their Place

---

President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seem to be on a mission to erase women from the top ranks of the U.S. armed forces. Last week, they took another step along this path by removing the first female head of the United States Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland.

Now the first woman to serve as the “supe” has been reassigned and replaced by a man, and for the first time in the academy’s history, the role went to a Marine. Last week, the Navy removed Vice Admiral Yvette Davids from her post and replaced her with Lieutenant General Michael Borgschulte. (Maybe Hegseth thinks Marines are more lethal, to use his favorite Pentagon worship word.) Davids has been sent to the Pentagon, where she will be a deputy chief of naval operations, a senior—but relatively invisible—position.

No reason was given for reassigning Davids. Superintendents typically serve for three to five years, but Davids was pulled from the job after 18 months.

Trump and Hegseth have been on a firing spree throughout the military, especially when it comes to removing women from senior positions. This past winter, the administration fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female chief of naval operations; Admiral Linda Fagan, the first female Coast Guard commandant; and Lieutenant General Jennifer Short, who was serving as the senior military assistant to the secretary of defense, all within weeks of one another. I taught for many years at the U.S. Naval War College, where I worked under its first female president, Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield. In 2023, she became the U.S. military representative to the NATO Military Committee—and then she was fired in April, apparently in part because of a presentation she gave on Women’s Equality Day 10 years ago.

At this point, women have been cleared out of all of the military’s top jobs. They are not likely to be replaced by other women: Of the three dozen four-star officers on active duty in the U.S. armed forces, none is female, and none of the administration’s pending appointments for senior jobs even at the three-star level is a woman.

Hegseth’s antipathy toward women in the armed forces was well documented back in 2024 by none other than Hegseth himself. In his book The War on Warriors, Hegseth decried what he believed was “social engineering” by the American left: “While the American people had always rejected the radical-feminist so-called ‘Equal Rights Amendment,’ Team Obama could fast-track their social engineering through the military’s top-down chain of command.” (This is probably why Hegseth also fired the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C. Q. Brown, who is a Black man; Brown was let go for ostensibly being too interested in promoting diversity in the armed forces.)

Hegseth seems to be implying that many women in today’s military might have had their fitness reports massaged “in a counterproductive way” to meet some sort of “woke” quota. And that, you see, is why the U.S. military’s most-senior female officers had to be removed: They were clearly part of some affirmative-action scheme.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...ip/683631/ 

---

Hegseth couldn't lead a platoon to the latrine if they had amoebic dysentery. The effects of his racist/sexist views, and his actions taken to enforce them, will be felt long after he's gone, because women and minorities will likely be shy about offering their talents to our country's defense. He should be ashamed for putting inequality ahead of national security.

As a person of the female persuasion who has also been in the military, I can tell you that this crap is not new.  I served under a first sgt. who did any and everything he could to get rid of women in his unit.  He was so bad that one day when I was escorting a soldier to get their luggage out of storage, the first sgt stated for all to hear that he commanded that I could not get pregnant without him being involved personally.  Did anyone care about this kind of harassment?  Not that I found.  Then my first husband died leaving me with two kids to raise on my own.  First Sgt. made sure I was slated to go to Honduras for six months or the duration of the mission, whichever came last.  Leaving me with no option but to apply for a hardship discharge in order to have the girls taken care of.

For a while things were on the down low but they were never gone.  Much like the hatred that the MAGAts have done with making the quiet things loud and proud.

No surprise from me.