Can We Fire Hegseth Yet?

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is on a warpath against a lot of things, but one of them is women. Just this week, the New York Times reported that the percentage of high-ranking officer nominations going to women is at its lowest level in at least 25 years. As obsessed as Hegseth is with firing–and intervening in the promotions of–qualified officers in the name of making the U.S. military the most lethal force in the world, Hegseth continues to offer grounds for his own dismissal. Perhaps the firing of all these women is simply a symptom of Hegseth’s infection of the Pentagon.

Female service members did have it tough before Hegseth. Women already saw a separation rate 28% higher than men, largely attributed to sexual assault. In states with abortion bans, the uniform offers no protection against healthcare deserts created by Dobbs; the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs have left women with less access to care than they would have in a federal prison. Perhaps most harrowing of all: women are more likely to be killed or raped by a fellow soldier than killed by the enemy. But President Trump, a sex offender, appointed Hegseth, an accused sex offender, to take the helm.

Hegseth’s war on women comes as no surprise. Given he said back on Fox News, “I’m straight up saying we should not have women in combat roles,” it was not a shock when he told the military’s top officers in Quantico last September that women could meet the male standard for combat roles or get cut, even though that was already the policy. Nor was it a shock when in January, the Pentagon planned a six-month review of women in ground combat jobs, despite an Army study, running from 2018 to 2023, showing women in ground combat units performed as well as men, and in some cases better.

For over seventy years, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services gave servicewomen a direct line to report on assignments, equipment, health, and the policies that shaped their service, giving the Secretary recommendations on recruiting and retention. It was a readiness program. Of course, Hegseth shut it down, calling it “a divisive feminist agenda that hurts combat readiness.”

He closed every DEI office in the department. He invited Christian nationalist Pastor Doug Wilson into the Pentagon to speak. Wilson openly believes that women should not have the right to vote.

Hegseth fired the first woman ever to serve as Chief of Naval Operations without offering any explanation. He similarly removed Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, the U.S. military representative to NATO. Since then, he has interfered with promotions for senior women across every branch and blocked two Army officers from pinning on their first star. Firing and blocking at this scale is unprecedented. On May 22, he announced 22 Navy captains selected for promotion to rear admiral, lower half. Not one was a woman. This year, only eight of 201 candidates (4%) for high-ranking posts have been women. That’s less than half the average of the past 10 years.

Thinning the ranks of qualified people during a war does not make a force stronger. What it does is feed doubt, among civilians and the troops themselves, about whether the institution is still fair and still insulated from politics. Confidence in the military relies on exactly that belief. So where is the lethality? The war in Iran drags on while Hegseth seeks victories against the women serving this country.

There is likely a motive to whittle the military down to loyalists–but the misogyny is a feature, not a bug. Take one of Hegseth’s favorite Admirals, now Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Caudle, and his not-so-merit-based launch to power. As the New York Times recently reported, Caudle once told sailors he thought the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response program needed to focus more on helping troops avoid risky behavior. At least one sailor believed Admiral Caudle was blaming assault victims for provoking their attacks. Hegseth has gone out of his way to block the promotions of women, but this is the guy he went out of his way to promote.

As a veteran, I find Secretary Hegseth to be a disgrace to the military. In the midst of an ever-extending war with Iran, he is distracted by attacking the Boy Scouts, creating new mandatory testosterone testing policies, and cutting education access for the troops to world-class schools. Hegseth has breached basic security protocol and spent a record $93 billion in a single month (with $9 million going to king crab and lobster tails and $15 million to ribeye steaks). He also gutted civilian harm mitigation programs by 90 percent, leading to the most devastating single military error in modern history when the U.S. fired a Tomahawk missile into a school, killing at least 168 children. He let our missile arsenal be depleted, according to “treasonous statements” that Trump denied while threatening to hunt down whoever leaked them. Mr. President, if you are so worried about preserving the perception of a strong American military, then maybe you should just finally fire the guy leading it.

Several of the officers who had their promotions blocked by Hegseth had formerly spoken about the importance of diversity, the sort of thing that may have inspired Hegseth’s animus towards them. Meanwhile, Hegseth has been displaying gross incompetence while committing war crimes around the globe and somehow is keeping his job. As a country, are we really okay defining lethality in such a way where we’d rather our military leaders be war criminals than ever advocate for DEI? I do not believe the American people have consented to that.

It is not strategic to keep the most qualified women in our ranks from leadership roles just because of their gender, nor is it strategic to keep Pete Hegseth in a leadership role at all. The longer he lasts, the more it says about our comfort, as a country, with the degradation of women and the elevation of the men who degrade them. In the meantime, his incompetence is weakening our military, literally, and in the eyes of the world. It’s time to fire the incompetent, so proven leaders can take command. If our government can’t handle that task, then as citizens, we can send a message as constituents and voters. We must.

Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.