US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has been fired, a US official and a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in another wartime shakeup at the Pentagon coming just weeks after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s top general.
The Pentagon announced his departure in a brief statement, saying he was leaving the administration “effective immediately,” but it did not provide a reason or say whether it was his decision to go.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phelan was dismissed in part because he was moving too slowly to implement reforms to speed up shipbuilding and because he had fallen out with key Pentagon leadership.
Photo: Reuters
One source cited bad relationships with Hegseth, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Steve Feinberg and the Navy’s No. 2 civilian, US Undersecretary of the Navy Hung Cao, who the Pentagon said would take over as acting Navy secretary.
The source also cited an ethics investigation into Phelan’s office.
A billionaire seen as having close ties to US President Donald Trump, Phelan is the first administration-picked service secretary to be fired since Trump came back to office last year.
Phelan was a major donor to Trump’s campaign and had founded the private investment firm Rugger Management LLC.
According to his biography, Phelan’s primary exposure to the military came from an advisory position he held on the Spirit of America, a nonprofit that supported the defense of Taiwan and Ukraine.
His departure fits within a broader context of upheaval at all levels of leadership at the Pentagon under Hegseth’s watch, including the firing last year of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, as well as the chief of naval operations and Air Force vice chief of staff.
Hegseth on April 2 fired Army Chief of Staff Randy George without citing a reason.
Two US officials said the decision was tied to tensions between Hegseth and US Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll.
US Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, called Phelan’s dismissal “troubling.”
“I am concerned it is yet another example of the instability and dysfunction that have come to define the Department of Defense under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth,” Reed said.
The latest departure comes amid a tense ceasefire with Iran, as the US flows more naval assets into the Middle East.
The US military is relying on naval assets to carry out a blockade of Iran, which Trump is hoping would pressure Tehran to negotiate an end to the conflict on his terms.
The Navy is under intense pressure to expand its fleet. China’s shipbuilding industry now dwarfs the US, which was once a global powerhouse.
Cao’s biography includes fleeing Vietnam with his family as a child in the 1970s. In a campaign video for his failed US Senate bid in Virginia in 2024, he compared Vietnam’s communist regime during the Cold War to the administration of former US president Joe Biden.
During a debate with US Senator Tim Kaine, Cao criticized COVID-19 vaccine mandates for service members, as well as the military’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
“When you’re using a drag queen to recruit for the Navy, that’s not the people we want,” Cao said from the debate stage. “What we need is alpha males and alpha females who are going to rip out their own guts, eat them and ask for seconds. Those are the young men and women that are going to win wars.”
Additional reporting by AP
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