Shoshana Chatfield, a U.S. Navy vice admiral, was fired this week “due to a loss of confidence in her ability to lead,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced.
Chatfield, a three-star naval officer and former helicopter pilot, was assigned to a NATO military committee when she learned she had been terminated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Chatfield’s name was included in a political hit list of 20 military leaders drawn up by the American Accountability Foundation, a conservative research group. With a stated mission of rooting out anti-Trump idealogues in Washington, AAF sent a letter in December to Hegseth that said the attached names are “woke ideologues” who deserved to be removed from the Department of Defense for their obsessed focus on DEI ideology.
“As global tensions rise, with Iran on the march, Russia at war, and China in midst of a massive military buildup, we cannot afford to have a military distracted and demoralized by leftist ideology,” Thomas Jones, the AAF president, wrote.
Hegseth himself had vowed months earlier, on the popular Shawn Ryan podcast, that any general or admiral involved in “any of the DEI woke [profanity] has to go.”
According to a related Fox News story, Chatfield made the AAF list for several reasons. One reason was a 2015 speech for “Women’s Equality Day” in which she complained that 80% of lawmakers on Capitol Hill are men. That is why most bills they introduce only benefit men, she argued.
She was also quoted at that meeting saying “diversity is our strength,” which has become something of a mantra from DEI proponents.
Hegseth, however, has publicly ridiculed that motto. "I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is our diversity is our strength," the then-new defense secretary bluntly told a Pentagon gathering in February.
His criticism was a 180-degree turn from the Pentagon's previous "diversity" focus. It spent $86 million on DEI-related matters in 2023 and requested $114 million for the 2024 fiscal year.
President Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order to find and remove any DEI-related programs and spending in the federal government.
Another bullet point by AAF said Chatfield attended two DEI-themed military summits in 2022, then updated her LinkedIn profile to document her participation.
Kirk Lippold, a retired U.S. Navy commander, tells AFN the obsession with DEI weakens our military but he has questions if a single letter led to Chatfield's firing.
“There had to have been an established pattern that Secretary Hegseth looked at which made him do what he did,” he reasons. “I have every faith that Secretary Hegseth took a look at a cross-section of material before he would make a decision, especially to relieve a three-star admiral."
