EXCLUSIVE: US Navy Tried Censoring Commander Online After He Called Out Admirals

The U.S. Navy reported an active duty commander’s account to X staff after he called for the resignation of naval admirals due to poor recruitment numbers under the Biden administration, internal U.S. Navy emails show.

The Navy reported Cmdr. Rob Green’s account to X support staff in July 2024 after he criticized a “failing” U.S. Navy recruitment program, according to internal Navy emails in documents exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Shortly after Green’s criticism of the recruitment program, multiple U.S. Navy accounts on X blocked Green’s account, the emails reveal.

“The Biden Administration went to great lengths to transform our military through woke policy and weak action on the world stage,” the director of the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA), James Fitzpatrick, told the DCNF. “This most recent example, which CASA uncovered through aggressive FOIA litigation, shows Biden Navy officials acted quickly to silence online opposition to their woke madness.”

The U.S. Navy was so disorganized when attacking Green’s account that it did not even have a solid record of who blocked the account, or when, an internal Navy email from July 15, 2024, shows.

“It looks like we can’t find the exact post or date on which @RobGreen1010 was blocked, but we can say that we follow the community guidelines policy of X and would have only blocked him for something that falls under that,” an internal Navy email from July 15, 2024, says.

Green’s X account is still active to this day. X apparently never took action against his account.

“We have also contacted X but can only file a case for their support team to investigate,” the email from July 15, 2024, says.

Green was an active duty commander on the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) aircraft carrier at the time. He indicated in a March 2026 post that he’s still assigned to duties under the secretary of the Navy.

Green’s First Amendment rights may have been violated when the Navy blocked his X account, legal experts told the DCNF.

“Official government accounts cannot block citizens’ accounts or delete comments in the comments sections,” Professor Brenner Fissell, the vice president of the National Institute of Military Justice, told the DCNF. “Many federal courts have held this. So, the Navy violated the First Amendment when it blocked Green, and yes, the technical term is that it engaged in viewpoint discrimination.”

Green, Navy Recruiting Command Public Affairs, Rear Adm. James Waters and the Chief of Naval Personnel Public Affairs did not respond to requests for comment.

“The First Amendment prohibits the government from blocking users from official social media accounts because their comments are critical or otherwise express a viewpoint the government dislikes,” Aaron Terr, the director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) told the DCNF. “It’s easy enough to determine that an account is official when it’s a government agency’s account. Whether an individual official’s account is personal or an extension of his officer can be a trickier question. The Supreme Court established the governing framework in Lindke v. Freed. The test is whether the official has authority to speak on the government’s behalf and purports to exercise that authority when speaking on social media. If so, First Amendment limits apply.”

‘We Don’t Have A Recorded Reason’

Green’s dispute with Navy officials unfolded amid a broader conservative backlash against the Biden administration’s military personnel and cultural policies.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a force-wide stand-down to address right-wing extremism in 2021, restored policies permitting transgender Americans to serve openly and mandated COVID-19 vaccination for service members. Austin was a political appointee under former President Joe Biden.

During the Biden administration, the Department of Defense rolled back restrictions on transgender military personnel. In Executive Order 14183, the Trump administration cracked down on the LGBT policies favored in the Biden era.

Green’s posts were primarily aimed at the Navy Recruiting Command’s Every Sailor a Recruiter program, which aims to boost U.S. Navy recruitment, Jose Madrigal, the commander of Navy Recruiting Command, wrote on the Digital Visual Information Distribution System on May 15, 2023. The program aimed to improve recruitment numbers by rewarding junior sailors who successfully scouted recruits.

Recruitment continued to falter under the Biden administration, but figures began to turn around under the Trump administration, Adm. James W. Kilby, vice chief of naval operations, told the House Armed Services Committee.

“Since May 2025, recruiting successes and strategically targeted personnel distribution reduced gaps at sea by more than 300 per month. We began FY25 with a shortfall of approximately 23,000 Sailors and have driven down gaps at sea to 18,000 as of February 2026,” Kilby said during the committee hearing. “We are on track to reduce gaps at sea to 13,000 by the end of FY26.”

The Navy announced on July 2, 2026, that it had contracted 45,000 future sailors, reaching its full fiscal year 2026 recruiting objective nearly three months before the fiscal year ends; however, the branch still has significant gaps to fill on ships at sea.

Green even called for the resignation of admirals in the U.S. Navy due to their management of the recruitment situation, according to multiple X posts.

The U.S. Navy apparently did not “have a recorded reason for blocking this account,” according to an internal Navy email from July 15, 2024.

“We can also unblock the account if necessary, since we don’t have a recorded reason for blocking this account,” an internal Navy email from July 15, 2024, says. “All future blocking of accounts will be logged by what community guideline they have broken. We need to establish this policy in our new social media instruction as well for all platforms.”

Green pointed out in his posts that the burden of recruitment should fall on leadership, not on junior sailors.

“This program is failing. We have over 21,000 manning gaps and ESaR [Every Sailor a Recruiter] resulted in only 202 contracts,” Green wrote in an X post on April 25, 2024. “You place the recruiting burden-of-recovery on junior sailors. I have a better idea. Every Admiral a Recruiter. Your only job? Resign. That would rebuild trust faster.”

Some analysts told the DCNF that Green’s active duty status changes the situation.

“As an active duty naval officer, he shouldn’t be using public social media to criticize senior military officers — there are other channels, and hence blocking his account is copacetic,” Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Rachel VanLandingham, a professor of law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, told the DCNF. “He can resign and then post all of this as a civilian.“

Not all experts said that active duty status changes the application of the First Amendment.

“The Navy violated the First Amendment by engaging in the viewpoint discrimination, regardless of who the target was. However, his status as active duty does change what he is free to say,” Fissell told the DCNF. “If he had violated any rules, the appropriate (lawful) response is the military’s disciplinary process and not to simply block his account.”

“Active-duty service members retain First Amendment rights. It’s true that First Amendment standards are somewhat relaxed when the military disciplines active-duty service members for speech. But that’s a separate question from how the government manages an official public-facing social media account,” Terr told the DCNF. “If the government cut off a citizen’s access to an official account based on his views, I see no reason why general First Amendment principles wouldn’t apply, even if the citizen happens to be a service member.”

Green had been blocked by the MyNavyHR account, Navy Recruiting Command’s account and “CNP’s personal X acc,” seemingly referring to the personal account of then-Chief of Naval Personnel Vice Adm. Rick Cheeseman, according to internal Navy correspondence dated July 17, 2024.

The DCNF attempted to contact Cheeseman through the Chief of Naval Personnel Public Affairs but did not receive a response in time for publication. MyNavyHR didn’t respond.

“The government can’t strip persistent criticism of constitutional protection simply by relabeling it as spam, harassment, or defamation,” Terr told the DCNF. “Speech about government affairs lies at the heart of the First Amendment, which protects a great deal of charged and even insulting criticism of public officials. Repeated criticism, standing alone, is not harassment. And whether a statement is defamatory is a legal question for courts and juries. A public official can’t unilaterally declare criticism defamatory and suppress it on that basis. Allowing them to do so would open the door to officials silencing any criticism just by claiming it’s false.”