Everything was set for the Navy officer to take over a new role that would have capped an already distinguished career— and made her the first woman in a Naval Special Warfare command overseeing Navy SEALs.

Ranked the top officer for promotion in her cohort, she received a Purple Heart after being injured in an IED attack during a combat tour in Iraq. She then became the first woman to serve with SEAL Team Six in the role of troop commander, one of several senior positions within the squadrons that make up the elite naval unit.

A formal ceremony marking her new position was planned for July. Invitations went out two months in advance.

But just two weeks before the ceremony, her command was abruptly canceled with little explanation, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. The decision didn’t come through formal channels but by a series of phone calls from the Pentagon, one of the sources said. The circumstances were unusual and seemed designed to omit a paper trail, according to multiple sources.

Under the Navy’s “up or out” policy, with no command slot to take, the officer’s more than two-decade military career was effectively over.

As the news spread through the tightknit world of Naval Special Warfare, a consensus began to form: The command was likely yanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth because of the officer’s gender.

The command she was set to take over is closely aligned with recruiting for elite operations roles, including the Navy SEALs — and the impression those in the Naval Special Warfare community got from the Pentagon was that Hegseth did not want a woman fronting that role.

“They want to keep it the brotherhood and don’t like that she’s coming in and challenging the status quo,” said a Navy special operations source familiar with the situation.

One defense official familiar with the matter said the change of plans was a result of broader considerations about whether the role was necessary. A Pentagon official familiar with the situation said the command was pulled because the Navy captain wasn’t herself a SEAL, and that Hegseth was not involved.

But multiple people familiar with the dynamics of Navy personnel matters scoffed at those explanations. For one, the Navy doesn’t typically restructure commands by axing an incoming commanding officer days before they are set to take over. On top of that, a broad panel of the most elite Navy SEAL leaders selected her for the new command.

“They can justify it by saying she’s not qualified because she’s not a SEAL,” said one retired SEAL. “But the SEALs thought she was qualified.”

To this person, the revoked command was a clear symptom of Hegseth’s views about women in the military. He said he believes the commander was removed because Hegseth is sexist.

“I’m sure they would repeal the whole women in combat thing [if they could], but this is what they can do,” the retired SEAL added.

CNN is not naming the female Navy captain, who did not respond to requests for comment. The Pentagon did not respond to specific questions from CNN about her situation, including what role, if any, Hegseth played.

Her story encapsulates what many in the military now fear is a culture of misogyny permeating the US armed forces under Hegseth. CNN spoke to more than a dozen active-duty women across the military branches, all of whom expressed a deep and growing alarm that Hegseth’s actions, policies and rhetoric risk pushing out both experienced soldiers and those interested in joining.

Several said they knew of other female servicemembers who had recently been passed over for deserved promotions. Others said they are now considering leaving the military.

CNN asked the Pentagon about Hegseth’s views on women in the military, including claims that women are considering leaving service and feel they are not valued. The Pentagon responded saying women are “excited” to serve under the “strong leadership” of Hegseth and President Donald Trump and claimed military standards “across the board have largely been ignored by leadership of the past.”

Active-duty women spoke to CNN for this story under the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals for speaking candidly. In some cases, pseudonyms are used to describe them. CNN also spoke to multiple senior male servicemembers as well as several retired female servicemembers – some of whom were reluctant to publicly criticize the administration over fears that their veterans’ benefits could be taken away.

‘All you women are getting out now’

Hegseth has already removed several women from prominent leadership roles, including firing Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the highest-ranking officer in the US Navy and the first woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That currently leaves the US without a female four-star general, the military’s highest rank.

Two years ago, there were four.

He also scrapped the advisory panel Tutalo was part of: the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, which recommended best practices to support women in uniform including securing properly fitting body armor and appropriate health care.

And he’s vowed to take away the ability to file anonymous whistleblower complaints, a key tool for reporting allegations of sexual assault.

In a speech to generals in Quantico, Virginia, in September, Hegseth announced his vision for rolling back policies aimed at promoting diversity or accommodating troops.

Among these were fitness standards that he claimed were eased in recent years to make it possible for women to serve in combat roles. In his speech, Hegseth vowed to implement fitness tests that would be judged to “the highest male standard.”

“If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it,” Hegseth said.

But men and women alike who spoke to CNN said that Hegseth’s claims are flatly false, and that physical standards are gender-neutral for combat positions — a sentiment that is borne out by the experiences of numerous women in combat roles.

For the Navy captain whose command orders were revoked, she met every physical standard, multiple sources familiar with her qualifications said. That included being able to perform 25 lb weighted pull-ups.

According to a retired senior enlisted Navy SEAL who served with her at SEAL Team Six, there was never any question about her qualifications for the role, particularly amid the debate of diversity hires.

“She was the best man for the job. There is absolutely no DEI ,” the retired SEAL told CNN, adding that the captain spent her spare time competing in IRONMAN races.

She would have overseen bomb disposal technicians and divers in addition to Navy SEALs, three communities in which she had worked. “She’s a badass, and also extremely smart and capable,” the retired SEAL said.

For Hailey Gibbons, an Army veteran who was among the first women to graduate from Ranger School after it was opened to women a decade ago, the idea that women aren’t meeting the same standards as men is “laughable.” Her initial physical test at Ranger School – a grueling two-month training course – was the same as her male comrades, she said: 49 pushups, 59 sit-ups, and a five-mile run in under 40 minutes, plus six chin-ups.

Hegseth is making it okay for others in the military to say, “women can’t do this,” said Gibbons, who served in the Army’s elite 75th Ranger Regiment.

Another woman in the Army who spoke to CNN – an enlisted soldier in a combat arms unit – said that she is already feeling real-life effects of Hegseth’s September speech.

Following the secretary’s remarks, she said a male noncommissioned officer in her unit told her: “All you women are getting out now.”

“I want nothing to do with the military after this,” she said.

With Hegseth at the helm, many who spoke to CNN felt women are no longer wanted in uniform— a potentially seismic shift since they make up roughly 18% of the US military.

“To be quite honest, I am fearful for women in uniform right now,” said Patti J. Tutalo, a retired Coast Guard commander who served on a decades-old advisory group for women in the military before it was shut down this year.

“I definitely think there will be a retention issue for women,” Tutalo added. “I also think that you’re going to see an increase in assaults, increase in harassment, increase in bullying, hazing, and I think there’ll be a lack of accountability for those things.”

In a statement to CNN, Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said women “are excited to serve under the strong leadership of Secretary Hegseth and President Trump.”

“Our standards for combat arms positions will be elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn’t care if you’re a man or a woman,” Wilson said.

When CNN asked to be provided provide specific examples of standards being lowered for women, the Pentagon did not provide any.

‘They didn’t treat me special. They treated me worse’

The US military first opened combat roles to women during the Obama administration. When then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced the change in 2015, Kate was elated.

For Kate, a pseudonym CNN is using to protect her identity, the announcement meant being able to continue a family legacy. She had grown up wanting to follow in her father’s footsteps and serve in the Marines, the last branch to officially integrate women into combat roles. She headed to Marines basic training in 2017, finished with some of the highest fitness marks after boot camp and listed a combat role as her first choice.

“I was really proud to be part of that first wave of women serving in a combat arms job,” said Kate, now a Marine Corps officer.

When she underwent specialized training for her job, Kate was the only woman in the group. And “everything was the same” for her as it was for men, she said, including completing 6-mile swims in rough shores and going for weeks without a shower.

And in some ways, it felt harder, Kate said, because she was made to feel unwelcome.

“They didn’t treat me special,” she said. “They treated me worse. I had a target on my back, and I was always looked at as not like everybody else.”

After Kate was promoted to a commander, she asked the officer she was replacing how his Marines felt about her.

“He said they were absolutely distraught and upset,” Kate said. He told her: “They’re not excited about it at all, and they don’t want a female platoon commander.”

“It was an uphill battle from the start. I wasn’t welcomed, and I wasn’t wanted there,” Kate said. “I had to go above and beyond the standard because I had way stricter eyeballs on me than a lot of my male counterparts.”

Demoralizing changes, dangerous futures

Hegseth’s views on women were well-known before he took over the Pentagon. He repeatedly denigrated women in military leadership, for example calling Franchetti, the admiral he fired earlier this year, a “DEI hire” in his 2024 book on military culture, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”

“The gender integration of the military is a huge part of our modern confusion about the goals of war,” Hegseth wrote. And: “[W]e need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”

Those views toward women are particularly popular among many in the special operations community, several female servicemembers said.

“A lot of people in special operations like [Hegseth] because he’s getting back to a place where physical toughness is the most important thing,” said the Navy special operations source. “But I think they’re missing the bigger picture. They don’t need a SEAL to do every job.”

Women in other branches said the services had become a more welcoming place in recent years, but many are now questioning if policy changes are reversing that trend.

They feared that Hegseth’s remarks and deeds could embolden more mistreatment of women from commanders throughout the ranks.

One woman, an experienced Air Force officer whom CNN is referring to as Anne, has served with specialized units and deployed on multiple combat tours.

She loves her work and is proud of her service, but lately, Hegseth’s rhetoric “has impacted how I see myself in the military,” Anne said.

It is hard not to feel scrutinized, she said, pointing out that “almost every woman I know in the military has deleted their social media presence.”

Smaller changes clearly aimed at women are also demoralizing colleagues she knows, Anne said. She pointed to new grooming standards that further restrict the muted colors of nail polish women can wear, and ban false eyelashes.

“For women, getting your nails done was just a small way to relax and still, within regulations, be able to have something that looked both professional and made them feel confident,” Anne said.

Kate, the Marine Corps officer, who is Black, said the new grooming regulations requiring women to gel back baby hairs and for all men to be clean-shaven unfairly target people of color, particularly Black men who disproportionately suffer from a skin condition that causes painful razor bumps and scarring. She and others questioned how these new rules improve force readiness.

Anne and other female servicemembers who spoke to CNN said they are particularly concerned that policies Hegseth has vowed to enact could make the military a dangerous place.

Hegseth railed against anonymous and repeat complaints to the military’s equal opportunity and inspector general offices, vowing to take away a tool that allows soldiers and defense personnel to file whistleblower complaints, report leadership or point out discrimination.

Many of the women who spoke to CNN voiced concerns that anonymous reporting of sexual assault could be impacted. Anonymous complaints for sexual assault – called restricted reports – made up over a third of sexual assault reports in the military in fiscal year 2024. Without an avenue for a servicemember to make them, several women said, men and women alike could decide not to report at all.

Though it is unclear when this change to the reporting process will occur, women who spoke to CNN said the mechanisms to investigate misconduct inside the military are already flawed, and Hegseth’s new edict would make things worse.

Adding more complicated reporting systems and mixed messaging risks discouraging soldiers from reporting sexual assaults and harassment, said Anne.

“Women might get the idea, ‘Maybe it’s not that bad, maybe no one’s going to take me seriously,’” she said, referring to potential reasoning to diminish what could be serious transgressions. “All of those barriers come back, and we have tried very hard to get rid of those barriers.”

‘Who will take my place?’

A veteran-turned-Defense Department civilian who CNN is identifying as Mary, a pseudonym, said that joining the armed forces 20 years ago was “the best thing” she’s ever done.

But now, despite her teenage daughter’s participation in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program, Mary said she wouldn’t want her child to join.

“I do not feel confident that there is a new era and a new generation of leaders who are going to make a significant cultural change, where she will not be subjected to sexism or sexual harassment or even potential for sexual assault,” Mary said.

In recent months, the Pentagon has hailed recruitment of women as a bright spot: According to the Defense Department, nearly 24,000 women shipped to basic training enlisted in the 2025 fiscal year to August —up from 16,700 the previous year. But many of those women would have actually signed up to serve six months to a year before that, putting them as having joined in 2024, explained Ky Hunter, PhD, a Marine Corps veteran and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

That means the impacts of the current policies and rhetoric on recruitment may not be fully known until this time next year, Hunter added.

Several active-duty women who spoke to CNN said they fear that the current culture shift and rhetoric could have an outsized impact on the recruitment of young women to the military well into the future.

“Women are going to feel that they don’t have a place in the military anymore,” Hunter said.

The messaging is “causing people to have question marks around women in the Army” and this could start to show up in declining recruitment numbers in the next six to 12 months, said former Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, the first woman to hold the title.

Purely by the numbers, both Hunter and Wormuth said, the military needs women to function, particularly as the US braces for potential future conflicts and combat roles change with the rise of technological warfare.

While some women told CNN they feel women are getting pushed out by this administration, others said they now feel more compelled to stay and improve things.

“I wrestle with it,” said one Army officer with more than 10 years of service. “Part of me doesn’t want to leave, because if I do, who will take my place?”

For the Navy captain whose change of command was canceled she’s now unexpectedly winding down a trailblazing career in the Navy.

It makes her former SEAL Team Six teammate furious.

“It’s f**kin’ bullshit. That’s horse shit,” the former senior enlisted SEAL said.

He voted for and supports Trump, but says he thinks Secretary Hegseth’s personal views are blinding him from retaining obvious talent at the expense of some of the military’s most elite warfighters.

“I think my job is to protect women and children but occasionally there’s badass [women] out there, and we should capitalize and not limit ourselves,” he said.

The Navy special operations source familiar with the matter lamented that one of the captain’s passions had been recruiting women to special operations roles. Now pulling the woman’s command could cut off access for other female servicemembers, the person said.

“It pisses me off because it is clearly someone who is capable and has done extraordinary things and is being punished because of — and I hate that I have to say it this way — weak-ass men,” they said. (CNN)