Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office kept secret paper files of internet search printouts on Navy officers, then used them to pull names off a promotion list a merit board had already approved. Officers could not see the files. According to a senior Pentagon official who spoke to MS NOW, which first reported the account Tuesday, every woman and every minority officer on the list but one was removed.
The arithmetic: a board selected 31 officers for one-star rank. About 15 had reports compiled against them. Nine were withheld, which the official described as the most names withheld in Navy history. The official’s reaction to the criteria, as MS NOW quoted it: “I was like ‘you gotta be kidding me.'”
The files, MS NOW and Military.com report, flagged four things: involvement in diversity initiatives, a role in the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, work on the Afghanistan evacuation, and ties to retired Gen. Mark Milley. The printouts showed officers at Pride Month events, with rainbow flags, on diversity committees, giving heritage-month speeches and photographed encouraging vaccination. Staff passed the criteria along by phone, the reports say, not in writing.
For Black officers, the stakes are plain. Serving as a diversity liaison or speaking at a heritage celebration is the kind of thing the services have long asked senior officers of color to do. Under these criteria, doing it became a mark against a star. The New York Times counted at least 45 officers removed from promotion lists this year after boards had picked them, more than half of them women or Black. In March, NPR reported that Hegseth had struck two Black and two female Army officers from a list of one-star selections.
A military defense attorney, Cody Harnish, a former Army judge advocate general, told MS NOW the intervention was illegal. Federal law, 10 U.S.C. 618, requires that officers be told of information the board never reviewed and be given a chance to respond. Harnish said: “If ‘professionally unqualified’ can mean ‘executed a lawful program the current Secretary opposes,’ the promotion system and law has no function left.”
The Pentagon did not dispute that the promotions were withheld. Spokesperson Sean Parnell said Hegseth is “reviving the warrior ethos” and “has acted and will continue to act within his authority.” The department also says “all advancement is merit-based.”
A merit system does not run on files the candidate is never allowed to read. Officers were passed over for carrying out lawful programs the Pentagon itself ran, and the ones who paid were disproportionately the women and people of color those programs were meant to open doors for. Hegseth already faces an impeachment push from Democrats and at least one Republican. A December 2025 law requires him to notify congressional committees within 30 days when he removes names from board reports. Whether he did, for these nine, is the question the next oversight hearing should open with.
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