09/05/2026
Sadly, this is a true story😣
Every time it seems Pete Hegseth has found the most trivial possible reason to block a talented officer's promotion, he manages to find a pettier one. The latest, according to a new report: one of the Army's best combat commanders, denied his first star because his unit once ran a mentorship group for female paratroopers and held an all-female jump to celebrate Women's History Month.
This is what Hegseth's tenure has looked like: firing or blocking the promotions of more than 80 generals and admirals, roughly one in ten of the military's most senior officers, in a purge that has nothing to do with their competence and everything to do with what they look like -- or for standing with the 'wrong' people. More than half of those pushed out have been women or people of color.
They were his first targets, but Hegseth's purge has not stopped there. As the paratrooper commander's case shows, it could be enough merely to have supported a women's mentorship group to have a decorated career derailed.
The recklessness of this is hard to overstate. As the Trump administration has plunged the country into another ruinously expensive Middle Eastern quagmire, Hegseth is hollowing out the very leadership the military needs to fight it. Just this week, Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who had originally voted for his confirmation, called for Hegseth's firing over his “inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country."
"[Hegseth] is intimidated by competence and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and well-being of our fighting force,” Tillis wrote on Wednesday.
The officer Hegseth just blocked is a case in point. According to The New York Times, which first reported his removal, he commanded the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the Army's rapid-response force in Europe, and led paratroopers into combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He holds two master's degrees from Columbia. Fellow officers, the Times reported, described him as "one of the best combat leaders in the infantry" -- precisely the kind of soldier the Army spends decades identifying and grooming for its highest ranks.
He was struck from the promotion list, Army officials told the Times, because Hegseth's office wrongly believed he had allowed a mentorship group for female paratroopers to exist in his unit, and to carry out an all-women's airborne jump.
That jump was real. In March 2024, more than 100 female paratroopers from six battalions of the 173rd Airborne Brigade gathered at Aviano Air Base and jumped from two Air Force C-130s over the fields of northern Italy -- the brigade's first all-female airborne operation, flown by an all-female jump team, in honor of Women's History Month. The Army organized it, photographed it, and celebrated it.
All-female jumps are a long-standing tradition across the Army's airborne units -- the 82nd Airborne, the 11th Airborne in Alaska, the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, which holds one nearly every year. Women have been earning their airborne wings since 1973; all-female military flight crews date back at least to 1988, when the Air Force sent one across the Atlantic to mark Women's History Month. The 173rd's jump was one more entry in a tradition the American military spent half a century building and honoring -- until, under Hegseth, it suddenly became grounds to deny a general's star.
That was the reason he was pulled from the promotion list, according to Army officials. Not a failure of command. Not a lapse in judgment or character. Not any deficiency a single one of the officers who served with him could name. A mentorship group for women, and a jump.
Then there is the detail that turns the absurd into farce: it wasn't even true. The group predated his command -- he had not created it. And rather than defy Hegseth's ban on so-called affinity groups, he had already brought it into compliance, renaming it and opening it to men. None of that mattered. He was removed anyway, for something he had not even done -- and that would have been indefensible to punish him for even if he had. In Hegseth's Pentagon, the facts are optional. Only the ideology is sacred.
Asked to justify why such highly qualified officers were stripped from the promotion list, the Pentagon has refused. Its spokesman, Sean Parnell, dodged the question, calling the reporting "fake news" and accusing the New York Times of "a toxic obsession with race and identity."
That accusation lands better aimed the other way. For generations, the American military has advanced its leaders on competence: their command records, their performance under fire, their ability to train soldiers and win battles. Hegseth has traded that standard for a different one. A decorated infantry commander is blocked over a women's mentorship group.
Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead the Navy, is fired outright, with no reason given. Admiral Amy Bauernschmidt, the first woman to command an aircraft carrier, is pulled from promotion despite senior admirals, including a four-star, vouching for her. Vice Admiral Sara Joyner, the first woman to lead a carrier air wing, is passed over -- reportedly because Hegseth was irritated by a recruiting ad that featured her.
The obsession with race and identity is real, but it belongs to the man running the Pentagon -- and the Trump administration at large -- not the reporters describing what he does. And nowhere is it plainer than in an exchange the Times recounted between Hegseth's chief of staff and the Army secretary over a different promotion -- that of a Black female general nominated to lead the Military District of Washington. The chief of staff, officials said, explained the problem directly: the president "would not want to stand next to a Black female officer" at military events.
The pattern of who Hegseth is purging is unmistakable. More than half of the officers he has fired or blocked have been women or people of color, in a senior corps that is already overwhelmingly white and male. This year, according to a New York Times analysis, the share of women nominated to the rank of general or admiral fell to its lowest level in at least 25 years.
For the first time in more than a decade, no woman is expected to be nominated to admiral at all. The result, by design, is a top tier of American military leadership that will be whiter and more male than it has been in a generation.
There is a deeper absurdity beneath all of it. The man passing judgment on the qualifications of America's military leaders is, by the near-unanimous assessment of the people who study the job, the least qualified person ever to hold his own -- a former Fox News weekend host and National Guard major who never held senior command. When Trump nominated him, NPR called him "the least experienced defense secretary in the history of the republic."
And then there is the contradiction at the heart of it all: Hegseth has banned "affinity groups" from the military -- the very charge that helped sink the paratrooper commander. But in purging women and people of color from command, and punishing the officers who supported them, he is assembling the largest affinity group the modern military has ever had: a leadership corps sorted, deliberately, by race and s*x. The ban was never about ending identity as a qualification for advancement. It was about deciding which identity would qualify -- the one that looks like him.
All of this is unfolding while the country is at war. The Army is in its deadliest stretch since Iraq and Afghanistan, its air-defense soldiers standing between American troops and Iranian missiles, its commanders racing to catch up to Russia and China in drone warfare. And Hegseth is busy firing or blocking the promotions of more than 80 generals and admirals -- roughly 1 in 10 of the military's most senior officers -- on ideological grounds.
It was in the middle of this that Daniel Driscoll, the Army secretary, resigned this week -- telling the president, according to officials, that Hegseth had fired some of the Army's most combat-tested leaders and gutted the morale of the force. Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, has called the removals "illegal." An Army veteran who leads the advocacy group Common Defense put it most plainly: Hegseth "is not making our military more lethal. He is making it more loyal to him."
That is the true cost of a purge conducted for loyalty and ideology rather than merit. It does not only end careers and betray the promise of a force built on merit. It weakens the military itself, at the exact moment the country is asking that military to fight. And it sends a message -- to every talented woman and every officer of color now serving, and to every girl who might once have imagined leading someday -- about how high they will be allowed to rise, and how easily the door can be pulled shut again.
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For a children's book that gives groundbreaking women in the military, past and present, the respect they deserve, we highly recommend "Heroism Begins With Her: Inspiring Stories of Bold, Brave, and Gutsy Women in the U.S. Military" for ages 9 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/heroism-begins-with-her
For more books for young readers that honor the service of women in the military, visit our blog post "The Price of Peace: A Mighty Girl Recognizes Veterans" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12356
For books for children and teens about the importance of standing up for truth, decency, and justice, even in dark times, visit our blog post, "Dissent Is Patriotic: 50 Books About Women Who Fought for Change," at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=14364
To stay connected with A Mighty Girl, you can sign-up for our free email newsletter at https://www.amightygirl.com/forms/newsletter
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- For the reporting this piece is based on -- the paratrooper commander's removal, the blocked and fired officers, and the scale of the purge -- see The New York Times's investigation at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/us/hegseth-purge-army-officers.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-lA.i99y.JYtpN4sejtpJ&smid=url-share
- To read more about how women's share of top military promotions have fallen due to Hegseth blocking nominees, visit https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/06/upshot/military-promotions-women-hegseth.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-lA.qoaJ.9J8zway3TD9V&smid=url-share
- To read about the 173rd Airborne Brigade's first all-female jump -- the celebrated event that helped trigger the officer's removal -- see Stars and Stripes at https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2024-03-15/female-paratrooper-airborne-operation-13317049.html
