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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blocked the promotions of at least seven Navy officers hand-picked by a board of senior admirals, removing all women and most minority candidates from the list of nominees for promotions.

The intervention left a slate of 22 one-star admiral nominees that includes no women, despite females making up roughly 21 percent of the active-duty Navy, and only two nonwhite officers, despite racial minorities accounting for approximately 38 percent of the force, reported the New York Times.

At least two of the removed officers are women, two are Black men, and three are white men.

Four current and former defense officials, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive personnel matters, said Hegseth's actions are highly unusual and appear to breach Pentagon rules, which permit the defense secretary to remove officers from promotion lists only when new information raises specific questions about their fitness to serve — not on ideological grounds.

Internal records suggest some officers were targeted because their names appeared on a website devoted to identifying "woke" military personnel, with infractions as minor as having served as a diversity liaison officer two decades ago. One highly regarded officer — a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer and former aide to a four-star admiral — was pulled from the list shortly after her name surfaced on the site for that decades-old role.

Hegseth also pushed senior Navy officials to place Capt. William Francis Jr., a Navy SEAL who serves as Hegseth’s special assistant, on the one-star list, but his lack of command experience made him ineligible for promotion and he was not selected, according to current and former Navy officials.

Since taking office, Hegseth has fired or sidelined nearly three dozen senior officers. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, noted in recent Senate testimony that nearly 60 percent of the senior officers Hegseth has dismissed are female or Black — a group that currently makes up fewer than 20 percent of all generals and admirals.

Among those previously pushed out were General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the second African American to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman ever to lead the Navy.

Hegseth has repeatedly declined to explain individual dismissals or removals, telling lawmakers he does not discuss such matters "out of respect for those officers" while speaking broadly of correcting years of what he called "gender and demographic engineering."

The Pentagon denied that race or gender played any role in promotion decisions, and the Navy declined to comment.

A Justice Department lawyer astonished onlookers by arguing in federal court that the Trump administration could "bulldoze" the Statue of Liberty if they moved too quickly to be stopped.

The lawyer appeared Friday morning for oral arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit over President Donald Trump's controversial White House ballroom project, which is under construction on the site of East Wing he ordered demolished last year without warning, and Judge Patricia Millett pressed the attorney on the matter.

"If the government decides very quickly to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty, the people whose ancestors — that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the govt moved too fast — nothing can be done?" she asked, according to Politico's Kyle Cheney, who was in the courtroom.

"I think that's right, yes," agreed the attorney, who was not identified by the reporter.

The courtroom exchange stunned social media users.

"They’re out of their minds," marveled Fox News contributor Jessica Tarlov.

"There is nothing left of the Justice Department I worked at," lamented former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance.

"We voted to make him God Emperor of the United States," quipped HuffPost's S.V. Dáte.

"I honestly thought this was a joke," offered The Bulwark's Cathy Young.

"The Trump Admin talking about bulldozing the Statue of Liberty … sick, sick stuff," muttered California Gov. Gavin Newsom's official account.

"Feels like we should have the 'You Can't Just Bulldoze the Statue of Liberty Act' introduced and passed rather quickly now, right Congress?" suggested political strategist Thomas C. Bowen.

"I don't think this is going to help the DOJ," commented attorney Kevin Baum.

"Under Lujan itself, the lawyer’s answer is almost certainly wrong," opined law professor Michael Morley. "A tourist, or even better an art or architecture specialist, who had bought a ticket to fly to New York at a particular time to go look at or study the statue would almost certainly have standing to challenge its destruction. The destruction of the statute would be a tragedy and should absolutely never occur and there should be some way to stop it. It’s not clear that aesthetic injury *should* be sufficient to satisfy article III? Standing doesn’t even seem to be the biggest hurdle under currently doctrine here? I’m not sure who would have a cause of action to challenge the destruction?"

The Texas Senate race has officially been set, between notoriously scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton on the Republican side and Presbyterian minister and state legislator James Talarico on the Democratic side.

But already, Texas Republicans are sounding off a message of fear, NBC News reported, because of the impending money problems the race will cause for them.

"Paxton, with Trump’s endorsement, handily defeated four-term Sen. John Cornyn in the runoff. Democrats largely viewed Paxton as the weaker candidate because of his many controversies. But his fundraising struggles are also raising alarm bells among Republicans," said the report. "'Economically, it’s a disaster. Texas is extremely expensive,' said a GOP consultant working on Senate races, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about party resources."

Republicans already spent over $100 million in the primary, with much of it going to the unsuccessful attempt to prop up Cornyn — but that's just the beginning, the report said.

"So far, Paxton’s fundraising has paled in comparison with that of the Democratic nominee, state Rep. James Talarico, who has raised more than $40 million — though he spent most of it in a hotly contested primary. But Talarico is expected to raise millions more; he pulled in $600,000 in just two hours following Paxton’s win, according to Talarico’s campaign. The haul was first reported by Politico," said the report. "Paxton has raised $7.6 million, and his campaign had $2.3 million left to spend as of May 6."

A deeply expensive contest in Texas could further strain resources on the National Republican Senatorial Committee and GOP megadonors, who might otherwise put that funding toward more obvious tossup races like Georgia and Maine.

"George Seay, one of Cornyn’s longtime friends and donors, declined to comment when NBC News asked him whether he would also donate to boost Paxton," noted the report. "But he said that Paxton as the nominee meant the state was now 'definitely in play' and a tougher climb for Republicans to win. 'Is Paxton going to raise a lot of money? Probably not,' Seay said, though he said that wasn’t necessarily a death knell."