For the third time since 2025, the Navy is bypassing the board that has long selected an admiral for its top spokesperson — a break that has sidelined a field heavy with women and officers of color, according to internal Pentagon documents reviewed by MS NOW. 

This time, the service is replacing the board with a Pentagon-run process that widens the candidate pool to include reservists and Marine Corps officers and, critics say, gives leadership more leeway to install whom it wants.

Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao changed the process for selecting the Navy’s top spokesperson, known as the U.S. Navy Chief of Information, or CHINFO, from a statutory board to an administrative board, according to a July 27 email from current Chief of Information Rear Adm. John Robinson.

The new administrative board will take place on Aug. 19 and, for the first time, both active-duty and reserve Navy captains will be considered for the position, in addition to Marines Corps colonels in the public affairs field, the email states. The chief of information selectee will also be a colonel or captain, and not promoted to the rank of rear admiral.

That means the Navy’s selection board process will install a top spokesperson who will be a captain or colonel and not a higher-ranking admiral, for the first time in decades. 

“I know there are many questions regarding how the board’s process may differ from previous years, so I want to share the details here now,” Robinson wrote in the email.

One U.S. official granted anonymity to describe internal discussions told MS NOW that the process was changed to open up the candidate pool in order to make it easier for Navy leadership to hand-select who they wanted for the job. 

The move has raised concerns inside the Navy that the promotion will not be based on merit, but rather on ideology, according to the U.S. official and seven current and former military officers who spoke to MS NOW on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.

“Forgoing the statutory board conducted objectively by career senior officers who understand Navy records to instead hold an administrative board in the Pentagon is an ominous choice,” a former senior military officer familiar with the process told MS NOW.   

“You combine that with their decision to open it up to groups that have not been training toward this specific position for two decades and it is sending a signal that this administration would rather hand-pick who they want based on ideology fit than true qualifications for the role,” the former officer said.

Traditionally, the Navy’s chief of information was a position held by an active-duty Navy rear admiral, and typically only captains in public affairs with at least three years of experience in that rank could be considered for the job and promotion. There are 13 active-duty captains who would have been eligible if the Navy executed its usual selection process. Six of the 13 captains are women, three are Black and five are white men (one of the women is Black), according to the internal public affairs roster reviewed by MS NOW.

A senior Navy official at the Pentagon confirmed that there are no plans to hold a statutory board for the CHINFO position at this time, but added that this decision does not signify a permanent downgrade of the position from a rear admiral job to a role held by a captain or colonel. 

When asked why the process was changed, the senior Navy official said, “We have traditionally restricted eligibility to active-duty Navy captains, but in doing so we have been limiting ourselves from evaluating the full pool of excellent 06-level officers in the Department of the Navy. We are expanding eligibility in this instance to include reservists and Marines so the best of the best across the whole Department will have an opportunity to compete for the position.”

The official emphasized that the process will be merit-based. “This is not a political position, but the person occupying it must be ready, willing, and able to support the Secretary of the Navy’s vision and communication goals.” 

Historically, military public affairs officers are expected to be nonpartisan and communicate timely and accurate information to the public, not to advance political agendas. 

Like all service members, regardless of their jobs, public affairs officers take an oath to the Constitution, not to a political party or politician, and their roles are deliberately kept separate from those designed to shape attitudes, such as psychological operations.

Legal policy codified in a Pentagon directive also forbids active-duty service members from engaging in many political activities. 

 “They’re talking not to the individuals they work for, but to the American people. They are not putting out propaganda, they are putting out information, and if you start skewing that information, then the American people lose trust in their military — and that’s playing with life and death situations,” said retired Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, a national security analyst for MS NOW.

Hertling pointed to questions about the Pentagon’s recent changes in Iran war casualty counts as another example of why the military needs to protect its trust with the American public and the families of service members.

Changing the promotion process

The change in the promotion process is significant, former officers said. They said that changing from a statutory board to an administrative board will give Navy political leadership more control. 

A statutory board is a selection board established by law and convened by the secretary of the Navy, where a guidance document is issued that sets the rules that the board must follow to make their selections. The board is made up of a group of officers who must meet certain grade, designator and experience requirements as outlined in the Secretary of the Navy’s instructions. Officers who want to be promoted are considered based on the time they have spent in their current rank and do not need to apply.

Administrative boards, on the other hand, are not prescribed by law and consideration is based on an application package. 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has repeatedly said he is reforming the military’s promotion process to make it more based on merit. But the statutory selection process is designed to be merit-based and without political interference.

Rear Adm. John Kirby, who served as the Navy’s chief of information from 2013 to 2014, said, “There is no more important time than now for military public affairs positions to be staffed by the best and most competent communicators we’ve got,” adding that the statutory selection process “remains the best and most legitimate way to make sure that happens.”

“I confess that I do not understand the administrative process being proposed or its eventual goal, but I hope that for the good of the Navy Department, the public affairs community, and for the American people the Trump administration will continue to honor the long-standing apolitical and merit-based promotion process that has served us so well,” said Kirby, who later served during the Biden administration as the White House national security communications adviser from 2022 to 2025.

Sidelining women and people of color

This is the third time this administration has foregone the board selection process for the top Navy spokesperson officer role. 

The first time was when Jereal Dorsey was confirmed to be promoted from captain to the rank of rear admiral in July 2025. There is typically only one active-duty rear admiral in the Navy public affairs community and that person has historically always become chief of information. 

But instead of putting Dorsey in that job, he was sidelined to another part of the Pentagon. If given the role he was selected for, Rear Adm. Dorsey would have been the first ever African American chief of information. 

Instead of placing Dorsey in the role, the Navy activated the reserve vice chief of information, Rear Adm. John Robinson, a white man. The following year in 2026, the Navy canceled the board to select Robinson’s replacement and instead extended Robinson’s orders so he could remain in the job. 

Current and former military officials familiar with the list told MS NOW that many of the top qualified candidates in line for the role at the time were women or people of color.

MS NOW reached out to Dorsey about his selection process, but he declined to comment.  

Since taking office, Hegseth has forced out almost 25 senior military officers in what has been called the “Pentagon Purge” by critics. The New York Times has also reported that he has blocked the promotions of almost 40 others.

Many of the people pushed out and blocked for promotion have been women, people of color, judge advocate generals or military lawyers. 

In May 2025, Hegseth outlined the policy in a memo to senior Pentagon leadership saying that he wanted to slash the number of general and flag officers to “streamline leadership.”

But some of those senior officers have told MS NOW that they believe they were forced out for questioning Hegseth’s policies and were replaced by loyalists who would not raise concerns about his agenda. 

The Times also recently reported that for the first time in a decade, no woman will likely be promoted to the rank of admiral in the active-duty Navy this year. 

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