Hegseth

Democratic lawmakers and military families are pressing the Pentagon for answers after reports emerged that thousands of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln have endured food shortages, plumbing failures and severe fatigue during deployment that has stretched more than 260 days.

The roughly 5,000-person crew, which left San Diego in November and has been stationed in the Middle East to support the U.S. war against Iran, has spent a record amount of uninterrupted time at sea. Now, families of those on board have begun speaking out publicly, describing concerns about mental health and supply issues aboard the aircraft carrier.

Since those reports — which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth characterized as “completely misrepresented” — the U.S. military announced plans to send the USS George Washington, a Pacific-based aircraft carrier, to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln.

But when asked Friday for a reaction, Trump downplayed families’ concerns and characterized the length of the deployment as “not nearly long enough.”

The president’s remarks stand in contrast to the concerns raised by lawmakers and military families, including reports by the Military Times and the Stars and Stripes that sailors tried to jump overboard as the deployment kept going.

“The plans in the works to relieve the USS Lincoln are not enough,” Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Diego) wrote in a letter to Hegseth on Thursday. “We need clear and honest information from the Department of Defense about the operational failures that led to the problems aboard the USS Lincoln to ensure this never happens again.”

Morale aboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier already is difficult to maintain without a record-breaking stint, said Julie Roland, a retired veteran Navy lieutenant commander who worked briefly on the USS Lincoln.

Between the lack of sun below deck for some nonpilot personnel and rooms packed with triple-bunk beds, the conditions on vessels like the Lincoln can be difficult to bear. Although service members expect such difficulties, the situation on the USS Lincoln raises additional concern among sailors, Roland said.

“I know what months at sea does to a person even when the ship has hot chow and working plumbing,” Roland said. “The warrior ethos shouldn’t have to include bravely facing water contamination. … Even warfighters need basic care.”

Roland added that she was not surprised to hear complaints of poor living conditions from sailors on board, given that their few days of reprieve for port call constantly were being delayed. She said she received videos showing trash being tossed overboard because of broken incinerators, heard stories of a lack of proper medical supplies and kept in touch with one sailor who detailed his mental health deterioration as days dragged on aboard the Lincoln.

“The magnitude of difference between official information from the Department of Defense and firsthand reports from the crew should be troubling, and may have serious implications about what else the Pentagon may be withholding regarding the conflict in Iran,” Roland added.

In his letter to Hegseth, Levin said the Trump administration needs to answer concerns from military families and loves ones about the conditions aboard. He said he heard concerns about moldy showers, broken toilets, lack of hot water, lack of access to fresh produce and supply shortages.

Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-San Diego), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, also demanded answers from U.S. military leaders on what she called “horrific” reports of the conditions aboard the ship.

Tensions over the situation also prompted military leaders to hold in-person and virtual meetings last week with the families of the sailors and Marines. Both meetings were combative, according to a recording obtained by MS NOW.

During the in-person meeting at the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, Navy leaders were unable to tell families when their loves ones would be relieved from duty. Spouses, in turn, asked what was being done to address issues of mental health and exhaustion, MS NOW reported.

Concerns about mental health deteriorating on these types of deployments are well-founded.

A study of nearly 1,000 sailors published in the journal Military Medicine in January 2025 found that service members aboard Navy ships suffer the highest rates of “serious psychological distress” compared to other branches of the U.S. military. Among the reasons are “unique stressors, such as poor habitability, noise and demanding scheduled that leave inadequate time for sleep and rest,” the study found.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the USS Abraham Lincoln was not an “isolated case” and demanded an inquiry.

“Recent carrier deployments have repeatedly stretched beyond their original anticipated duration, suggesting that extended deployments may be becoming a feature rather than an exception of the Navy’s force-generation model,” Blumenthal wrote.

Hegseth told reporters on Thursday that “some deployments are longer than others.”

“What they do in those high seas and those austere conditions with less port calls, it’s incredible. And Americans don’t understand what it’s like to do that,” he said, while adding that he wants “folks rotated as quickly as possible.”

In a message to the crew aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, Hegseth said: “We’re going to do everything we can for you. We are so grateful for the dedication of that crew and others.”

July 21 (UPI) — U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told a Senate committee Tuesday that the financial cost of the Iran war has now reached about $37.5 billion according to Defense Department estimates.

Lawmakers questioned Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine during a Senate Appropriations Committee meeting as the Pentagon and President Donald Trump are seeking up to $70 billion in emergency military funds.

This is in addition to the $1.5 trillion the Pentagon has requested in the upcoming defense budget. Trump has also asked for about $18 billion more in emergency funds for unrelated programs, including $11 billion for agriculture. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was also present at the hearing, although the focus remained on military spending.

Some Senate lawmakers, both Democrats and some Republicans, questioned the need for the money on top of the defense request and the roughly $150 billion in additional funding the military received through Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the committee’s top Democrat, said the request for emergency funds “may be better understood as an attempt toskirt the normal appropriations process.”

“The problem is not a lack of money, but poor planning,”Murray said. “So I’ll be blunt. The truth is, your request does not make a lotof sense.”

Hegseth, in response, blamed “gross negligence and neglect”by the Biden administration.

Some asked about Iran’s military capabilities and theobjectives of the war, as Hegseth and Trump have both previously said that the war had been won. The defense secretary also said in the early days of the war that Iran’s military had already been “destroyed and made combat-ineffective.”

Hegseth said that he never meant that Iran would be unable to launch any attack. He said he meant Iran “can lob missiles, but it’s not an effective military.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Ala., asked Hegseth if the Trump administration believes it does not need authorization from Congress to continue the war. Hegseth replied that the administration believes it already has the authority it needs.

The hearing lasted more than three hours and ended in a shouting match between Hegseth and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who questioned the war’s objectives, called Hegseth a “failure” and said the Trump administration has created another “forever war.”

Hegseth responded by telling Peters “shame on you” and saying he has “Trump derangement syndrome.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration urged Congress on Tuesday to approve roughly $70 billion in emergency defense funding to sustain U.S. military capabilities amid its escalating war against Iran, warning that without it the Pentagon could face “critical shortfalls” disrupting its readiness.

The request comes as the United States and Iran have traded strikes for 10 consecutive days in a renewed conflict, deepening concerns in Washington over an expanding war that could inflame the global economy and trap the president in a quagmire.

The collapse of a ceasefire agreement and the sudden resumption of war have raised alarms within the Pentagon over its ability to protect U.S. forces and assets in the Middle East over a prolonged conflict, with defensive munitions in dangerously short supply, two Defense Department officials told The Times.

Yet the administration is facing bipartisan skepticism from lawmakers over the continuation of a war unpopular with a vast majority of Americans, over which they have had little oversight, and that in recent days has led to deaths of U.S. soldiers.

Those tensions became clear as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee to make their case for the tens of billions of dollars and offer their first in-depth public remarks about the war since May.

Hegseth told senators the United States is at a “moment where we cannot afford inaction,” while Caine argued the funding request is coming to Congress “while time is still on our side.”

“It is critical that we stay ahead of our adversaries and we must have the funds before we are out of time,” Caine said.

Hegseth said the war is now expected to cost Americans $37.5 billion, up from a $29-billion estimate from early May. The war, initially projected by President Trump to last four to five weeks, is now entering its fifth month.

With no end in sight, senators from both parties signaled frustrations with the administration’s plans.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said Democrats will not support more funding for the war.

“This administration’s refusal to explain what it is doing, or how this war is protecting Americans, its refusal to seek authorization from Congress, and its expectations that Americans will just pay for it all without any explanation or transparency is disrespectful,” she said.

Republican lawmakers also confronted Hegseth and Caine on several fronts.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told the Pentagon leaders that lawmakers “need some proper answers and some straight talk” about the administration’s plans to ensure Iran does not choke traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

Asked whether Iran would impose tolls on merchant vessels passing through the vital waterway, Caine said it was a “hypothetical” scenario — a response Kennedy rejected.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also put pressure on Hegseth, as she asked him whether the administration was still taking the position that it needed no authorization from Congress to continue hostilities against Iran.

“Senator, I know there’s a long-standing legal debate on this particular topic, but we certainly at the department share the position with the White House that we have all the necessary authorities at this moment,” Hegseth said.

Murkowski’s remarks come just weeks after Republicans joined Democrats in both the House and Senate in voting to reassert Congress’ constitutional role over the war, underscoring the simmering tensions over Trump’s decision to sideline Congress in the matter.

Hours before the hearing, Trump downplayed concerns over the war’s effect on the midterm elections and further threats in the war, as Houthis, the Iran-backed militia in Yemen, declared a maritime blockade Monday on Saudi Arabia.

“So far, it hasn’t happened. It might happen but we take care of things, if something like that happens,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump maintained that Iranian leaders are “desperately” trying to reach a deal to end the war but said he has no interest in meeting with them until he is convinced the talks will be “meaningful.”

“If we left right now, it would take Iran 20 to 25 years to rebuild. We are not finished at all,” Trump said. “We are not leaving right now.”

A protester interrupts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as he testifies at Tuesday’s hearing.

(Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press)

Asked if he thought Iran was trying to have an effect on the midterm elections by threatening the Strait of Hormuz, Trump said, “probably.”

“It won’t have any impact on me,” he said. “The election, I can’t think about that having to do with this.”

An agreement reached in June between the United States and Iran proposed an end to a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and to U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports in exchange for Tehran allowing unfettered commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. But the agreement fell apart, with Iran firing on commercial vessels and pursuing a toll system for transit that had not existed before the war started.

The deal was supposed to set up a structure for more detailed negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, a prime target of the U.S. campaign launched in February in partnership with Israel.

Much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was degraded in a U.S. strike conducted last year that targeted three major facilities. But the fissile material required to build nuclear weapons remains in the country, under the watch of U.S. satellite surveillance. Iran has vowed to continue pursuing civilian nuclear work.

“How about these people? They’re in this because of nuclear weapons, and they’re trying to possibly reconstitute a site? We’ll hit that site. Any site where they’re even thinking about nuclear — we’ll be hitting it very, very powerfully,” Trump said.

As the war expands, there’s been heightened concern about the infrastructure that civilians in neighboring countries rely on for water and power.

Iranian officials said U.S. strikes hit the Bunji desalination plant on Iran’s southeastern coast, leaving 20 villages — where some 10,000 people reside — without water, according to reports from Iran’s semi-official news agency Tasnim.

Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti government said its power plants and desalination plants were struck by Iran on Monday — the fourth consecutive day of attacks on a key source of drinking water for the small desert nation.

The attacks spurred the Kuwaiti government over the weekend to launch an ad campaign calling on residents to reduce their water and power usage, especially during peak hours between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m.

A concerted campaign targeting desalination plants would be devastating both for Iran and the Persian Gulf nations it has peppered with drones and missiles since the start of the war.

Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia are among the world’s eight most water-stressed countries. Israel ranks 9th, while Iran is 14th, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Water Resources Institute.

All of them suffer from “absolute water scarcity,” according to metrics used by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture organization.

Times staff writer Nabih Bulos in Beirut contributed to this report.

Latest cost comes as Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Caine ask for $1.5 trillion budget, including $70bn for Iran war.

United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has put the latest official price tag on the US-Israel war on Iran at $37.5bn.

Hegseth confirmed the figure during a hearing before the Senate appropriations committee on Tuesday, in which he and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine were questioned about their request for a $1.5 trillion US defence budget, including nearly $70bn for the war with Iran.

Still, the number is significantly lower than other estimates, especially those that include knock-on expenses for US consumers. For instance, Moody’s Analytics has estimated the domestic cost of the war to be up to $150bn, accounting for factors such as higher US energy prices.

“The estimate we have as of today is $37.5bn,” Hegseth said upon questioning from Democratic Senator Dick Durbin.

Hegseth added that the price includes some operations and maintenance costs extending through the end of September, but did not provide specifics.

The latest quote is about $8bn higher than the previous figure released by the administration of President Donald Trump of $29bn in May.

Hegseth appeared before the committee as fighting between the US and Iran continued to rage, after a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that had seen a halt in attacks since June 17 collapsed last week.

On Monday, ahead of the 10th consecutive night of US strikes, Trump said Iran would “pay” after two more US soldiers were killed over the weekend.

Over the last week, Trump has threatened to target energy plants and bridges in Iran; send ground forces to seize Iran’s Kharg Island; and bomb a deep-underground nuclear-linked site known as Pickaxe Mountain.

Attacks have so far targeted sites Iran uses to assert influence over the Strait of Hormuz, its key point of leverage in the conflict.

Iran, meanwhile, has pledged to continue to strike US assets in the region. The latest round of strikes saw desalination and power plants set ablaze in Kuwait, as well as other sites hit in Bahrain and Jordan. The Houthis in Yemen, close allies of Iran, have also declared a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia.

During his opening statements, Hegseth referenced strains on the US weapons stockpile from the war, which the US and Israel launched on February 28.

He said funding was needed “to expand production lines and accelerate delivery of high-demand munitions. We’re talking about solid rocket motors, JDAMs [Joint Direct Attack Munition], hypersonics, and counter-drone capabilities”.

The Pentagon chief also pointed to a pending budget crunch amid the war, saying that “training in the future would have to be curtailed if we do not get our budget needs met and met urgently, and yes, some of that has to do with the current budget cycle and how things come together”.

Democratic Senator Patty Murray questioned the sprawling budget request, which also included funding requests for the National Guard deployment in Washington, DC, US operations against alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean, and military patrols of the US border.

“So I’ll be blunt,” she said. “The truth is, your request does not make a lot of sense.”

July 16 (UPI) — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has announced that all service members aged 30 and older will undergo mandatory screening for testosterone deficiency during their annual health assessments, as the Trump administration continues to emphasize traditional masculine ideals in its public presentation of the U.S. military.

The former Fox News host announced the new policy in an online video statement, saying the new testosterone-screening program is to ensure all U.S. soldiers “have the right testosterone levels to operate at your absolute best.”

“We owe our warriors the absolute best medical care in the world, and this program delivers on that obligation,” he said.

According to a Department of Defense statement, while mandatory for all active-duty and reserve personnel over the age of 30, younger service members may also request screening during their periodic health assessments.

Hegseth said if treatment for a deficiency is recommended, it is up to the service member to decide whether to undergo testosterone replacement therapy.

“This initiative — it’s not about artificial enhancement. It’s about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities, protecting your longevity and ensuring you have the biological foundation required to sustain the fight,” he said.

Testosterone is produced in the testicles and helps maintain men’s bone density, fat distribution and muscle strength and mass, among other functions, according to the Mayo Clinic, which said that after the age of 30 or 40, men’s testosterone levels decline at a rate of about 1% a year.

Testosterone replacement therapy seeks to alleviate issues caused by low levels of the hormone, though the Mayo Clinic states that its unclear if such treatment would benefit older men who are otherwise healthy.

The announcement comes as testosterone and testosterone-replacement therapy has been a focus of the Trump administration.

Last month, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it had requested to remove labeling from testosterone-replacement therapy that stated the safety and effectives of the treatment in men with age-related have not been established.

It also comes as Hegseth has sought to cultivate a more traditionally masculine image and culture within the U.S. military, implementing President Donald Trump‘s ban on transgender services members and imposing male physical standards for combat positions, a move critics say could reduce the number of women serving in those roles.

He has also sought to instill a “warrior ethos” in the military and routinely refers to service members as warriors. The Trump administration also refers to the Department of Defense as the “Department of War,” though a permanent change to the department’s name requires congressional approval.

Some Democrats were quick to point out that testosterone-replacement therapy is a form of gender-affirming care, which the Trump administration and Republicans have sought to restrict and ban.

“This, by the way, is gender-affirming care,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said during a congressional hearing held shortly after Hegseth’s announcement.

“And, by the way, male members of this committee, watch what you vote for. Do you really want the government getting into your business, taking your testosterone levels and determine whether or not you have enough testosterone? Are you male enough to be in Congress?” she said, mocking the policy.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has told senators it needs roughly $80 billion, mostly to cover the cost of the U.S. war against Iran, adding to what is already a sizable military spending boost being sought by President Trump.

Meanwhile, the Senate for the first time approved a war powers resolution Tuesday seeking to block U.S. military action against Iran, as lawmakers warily watch President Trump’s efforts to resolve a conflict that the administration launched on its own and now needs Congress to fund.

It was the 10th time the Senate has tried to stop the war, and the outcome, on a vote of 50-48, was a stunning turnaround from past efforts. Although the resolution is largely symbolic, and does not fully carry the force of law, it reflects the growing concerns from a number of Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate over the war and the deal Trump struck with Iran to end it. The House approved the resolution earlier this month.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has yet to make a formal request to Congress for more money for the war. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill, including Monday evening. A top deputy Defense secretary told senators about the Iran funding request last week, according to two people familiar with the situation but not authorized to discuss it publicly.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the developments.

The push for billions of dollars in Iran war funding comes at a fraught political moment. Lawmakers are not only skeptical of the deal Trump struck with Iran to bring an end to the war, but also wary of next steps. The White House has requested a remarkable $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon — a nearly 50% increase over the current fiscal year’s funding levels.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he’s expecting a supplemental spending request from the administration for the war, and when it arrives, “we’ll work through it and see where the votes are.”

“We need to make sure we’re doing everything we can to replenish, resupply a lot our munitions that have been depleted — not only just with what’s happening with Iran, but prior to that,” said Thune (R-S.D.).

Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg spoke to several senators about the proposal in calls last week and he notified congressional committees that the $80-billion request had been sent to the Office of Management and Budget. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

However, the funding package will almost certainly run into trouble from lawmakers who refuse to support Trump’s decision to go to war and are reluctant to give the Pentagon more money at a time of high costs of living for Americans at home.

“You’re spending families’ hard-earned tax dollars on a war that many strongly oppose,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington told Hegseth in a hearing last month.

In addition to the Iran funding, Republicans hope to secure about $1.1 trillion through the regular appropriations process, which typically requires support from both parties for approval. Then, they hope to secure an additional $350 billion through a mostly party-line vote later this summer.

The amount being sought by the Pentagon is far higher than the $29-billion estimate of war costs that Hegseth gave Congress during his testimony last month. The bulk of that amount was related to replacing munitions and repairing equipment but also included operational costs to keep forces deployed. That estimate did not include the cost to repair or rebuild U.S. military sites damaged in the region.

It’s also far lower than the initial $200 billion the Pentagon floated as the costs at the start of the war. An early estimate put the cost of the first week of the war at $11.3 billion.

Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a member of Democratic party leadership, said he expects the actual price tag could be much higher than the $80 billion being proposed.

Schatz said he hasn’t done any counting of Democrats about whether there is support for an Iran-focused bill, “but I haven’t found anyone who wants to do this.”

But Republican Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana said, “To me it’s less about the war, it’s more about the stockpiles.”

Banks said, “I would sell it to my state as an investment in our defense industrial base, reshoring defense production to Indiana.”

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said funding for an Iran supplemental can’t be done in isolation. It has to be done after lawmakers from both parties have agreed to a total spending amount for both defense and non-defense programs, “then the rest of this would follow pretty quickly,” Reed said.

And Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, a member of the Appropriations subcommittee on Defense, said he has been working with the administration to broaden the package to include funds for disaster aid for California, Hawaii and other states hard hit by fires and weather problems, as well as agricultural aid for farmers.

“I think that’s the kind of combination that could pass,” Hoeven said.

Hegseth declined to answer questions from reporters late Monday as he strode around the Capitol.

But on the issue of the cost of the war, Hegseth responded rhetorically during a Senate hearing last month, asking, “What is the cost of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon?”

He acknowledged the president’s decision to confront the threat of a nuclear Iran “comes with cost — and we recognize that.”

Freking and Mascaro write for the Associated Press. AP writers Konstantin Toropin and Ben Finley contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cut nine Navy officers, including all the women, from a promotion list, several female officers say they see the unusual intervention as a sign that their careers now have a ceiling and worry for the future generation of female military leaders.

The Navy had selected 31 sailors to promote from the rank of captain to one-star admiral, but Hegseth recently intervened to strike nine people from the list, including three women and two Black men, according to a Defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information not permitted to be released publicly.

As a result, the Navy is not promoting a single woman to the one-star admiral rank this year even though women make up about one-quarter of all Navy officers and nearly one-third of the sea service’s midgrade ranks, according to military data from 2024.

The Associated Press spoke with eight female Navy officers of varying ranks and time in service after Hegseth’s cuts, which were reported earlier by the New York Times, became public. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from their superiors.

The more junior officers said they saw the development as a sign that their careers would become politicized if they rose too far in the ranks, and some said they felt they now had a limit on how far they could be promoted. Some said it made them feel less valued within the military and wondered whether that wasn’t part of the intent.

The Pentagon has not offered any rationale on why the women, or any of the other six people, were removed from the promotion list.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, said on social media last week that “military promotions are given to those who have earned them” and that the Pentagon “will never consider the color of a service member’s skin or their gender as a factor in promotions.” The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request seeking further comment.

The Navy’s process for choosing which officers to promote to the one-star rank has been relatively constant and transparent over the years. The service convenes a group of officers, called a promotion board, that examines the records of eligible officers and chooses those deemed to be the most qualified.

The board that selected the initial slate of 31 officers for promotion was directed by then-Navy Secretary John Phelan, an appointee of President Trump, to “recommend for promotion the best qualified officers within their respective competitive category.”

The order from Phelan, who abruptly departed his post in April, said the board should consider an officer’s performance, competence and character, among other traits, as part of those qualifications.

It also said that given China’s prominence in the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy, “special consideration shall be given to officers who have excelled in their knowledge of the political military affairs and U.S. strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific region, and operational contingency planning for Indo-Pacific war plans.”

Hegseth has long argued, without offering evidence, that women in the military benefit from preferential treatment and are not suited for combat roles.

“For too long, we’ve promoted too many uniformed leaders for the wrong reasons based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts,” Hegseth told hundreds of military leaders in September.

The approach, he asserted, made the Pentagon “less capable and less lethal.”

‘A break from tradition’

Phelan’s order said the Navy cannot discriminate based on criteria such as race and sex, and it specifically noted that “this guidance shall not be interpreted as requiring or permitting preferential treatment of any officer or group of officers on the grounds of race, religion, color, sex.”

The full list of 31 people to be promoted was approved by Phelan, other Navy leaders and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, before it reached Hegseth, who chose to make the changes, the Defense official said.

While Hegseth is within his rights to intervene in the list, “it’s just not the norm” and is “a break from tradition,” said Katherine Kuzminski, a researcher specializing in military recruiting and retention at the Center for New American Security think tank. She said that promotions historically have been seen as “the services’ business.”

Kuzminski noted that “this is a decision that’s not being made by the Navy — it’s being made by the secretary of Defense,” and she said Hegseth’s growing interference in operational aspects of the military services such as promotions is creating “tension” about what “normal” will look like going forward.

Some of the more senior Navy officers who spoke with the AP expressed concerns about the message it sends to the next generation of young sailors.

In addition to pulling the recent promotions of three women to admiral, Hegseth shortly after he took office fired Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the service’s top officer and the first woman to hold the job. He never explained his rationale.

Since then, he also has fired two other female three-star admirals without explanation.

Some of the officers who spoke to the AP said that while they were encouraging female sailors to stick with the Navy, they acknowledged that message is coming at a difficult time.

Kuzminski said the rhetoric and actions surrounding women in the military “affects individual service member decision-making and it also affects family unit decision-making,” including whether people make a career of the military.

Kuzminski said that following the months-long hold on military promotions by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) during the Biden administration, surveys showed that partisan politics spilling into the day-to-day lives of troops affected their decision-making.

One officer said this impact was not confined to women.

In conversations with other sailors in her unit, she said that male sailors were hesitant to deal with what appears to be a growing politicization of simply following the orders of previous administrations.

Toropin writes for the Associated Press.

PARIS — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a D-day anniversary speech Saturday that appeared to link immigration by sea to the wartime liberation of Europe, warning that the freedom won by Allied troops could prove temporary if leaders failed to defend it against today’s “invasion.”

Hegseth, speaking at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer overlooking Omaha Beach in northwestern France during commemorations for the 82nd anniversary of the June 6, 1944, landings, said that today, “different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies.”

“Beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive,” he said.

“When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?” he added. “I pray not, and I believe not.”

Hegseth did not use the word “immigration,” but his remarks echoed broader Trump administration criticism of Europe over migration, borders and what U.S. officials have described as censorship of nationalist and far-right voices.

On Saturday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office condemned Vice President JD Vance’s remarks blaming immigration for the killing of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old British student stabbed to death in Southampton, even though both Nowak and his killer were British.

In December, the Trump administration’s national security strategy warned that Europe faced the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and could become “unrecognizable” within 20 years.

May 23 (UPI) — Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered a graduation speech to graduating West Point cadets Saturday, and told them they are “ready” for war.

“West Point is set apart. It’s special. It’s above politics,” Hegseth said at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., Saturday. “Success here is based on merit. It’s how you perform that matters.”

He accused former “foolish and feckless leaders” of pushing identity politics on the academy.

“The battlefield does not grade on a curve, and you can’t throw your pronouns at the enemy,” The Hill reported Hegseth said. “Combat is the ultimate test, and our best Americans must ace it.”

He said previous “woke and weak leaders” tried to transform the school into “woke Princeton.” Hegseth got a bachelor’s degree from Princeton.

“They embraced the [diversity, equity and inclusion] craze and tried to introduce diversity and inclusion studies,” Hegseth said. “They hired professors who advocated for anti-American ideologies right here in these halls, but no more.

“You are fit, not fat. You are disciplined, not distracted,” Hegseth told the cadets.

While he didn’t mention the war in Iran, he told the graduates that they “are stepping into the arena at a time when the stakes could not be higher.”

“We’re sending you to lead, we’re sending you to forge warriors, and we are sending you, perhaps, to war, and you are ready,” he said.

On stage were also Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and other military officials.

Last year, President Donald Trump delivered the graduation speech.