The Administration Wants Military Women to Know Their Place

Tom Nichols

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.

The Naval Academy was founded in 1845, but didn’t admit its first class of women until 1976. The head of the school is known as the superintendent, and Annapolis would not get its first female admiral in that position until 2024. 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. (A short tenure can be a sign of some sort of problem; for what it’s worth, the secretary of the Navy, John Phelan—who has never served in the Navy and has no background in national-defense issues—offered rote praise when announcing her de facto firing as the supe.)

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.