Protect Our Defenders Says Pete Hegseth is Running a Military Purge & Calling it Merit
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 10, 2026
Brian Purchia, brian@protectourdefenders.com
If you would like to interview Nancy Parrish, Founder and CEO of Protect Our Defenders, please respond directly or contact brian@protectourdefenders.com.
***STATEMENT***
Women are winning promotions at every level the military controls – and losing them at the one level Secretary Hegseth controls
Washington, DC – Protect Our Defenders (POD) today responded to New York Times reporting that women’s share of nominations to the military’s highest ranks has fallen to four percent – eight women out of 201 candidates, the lowest level in at least 25 years. Over the same period, women received roughly 23 percent of nominations to captain and major, the highest share in the quarter-century of data the New York Times analyzed.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has blocked at least 40 senior promotions from reaching the Senate in recent months, about half of them women and people of color, without disclosing his reasons. If the trend holds, 2026 will be the first year since at least 2001 in which no active-duty Navy woman is promoted to admiral.
Every officer on those lists cleared a selection board, a panel of senior officers conducting an in-depth review of a twenty-year record. The Pentagon says promotions are made solely on the basis of merit. Merit is precisely what those boards already measured, and precisely what is being overruled. Speaking to military leaders last September, Hegseth said the Department had promoted leaders “based on their race, based on gender quotas, based on historic so-called firsts.”
The pattern is familiar to the survivors POD represents. These are women who came up in a force where nearly one in four servicewomen experiences sexual assault during her service. Erasing a spotless record without explanation is retaliation’s signature – and it does more than end individual careers. It reinforces the command culture that has failed survivors for fifty years, and signals to every servicemember watching what an unexplained career death looks like when it comes from the top.
Protect Our Defenders Founder and CEO, Nancy Parrish, released the following statement:
“This is a purge, and Hegseth isn’t really even the one holding the pen – that’s President Trump. Every woman on those lists spent two decades earning her place. He erased them without a word of explanation. You cannot overrule the merit process and still call it merit.
“Every survivor we represent knows this pattern: you do everything right, your record is spotless, and then one day it’s over, and no one will tell you why. The military has never been able to police itself, and it is now blacklisting the most qualified people it has.
“This makes our military weaker. It hurts retention, hurts recruitment, and it’s just wrong.”
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About Protect Our Defenders:
Protect Our Defenders is the pre-eminent national human rights organization dedicated to ending sexual violence, victim retaliation, misogyny, and discrimination in the military, and combating a culture that has allowed abuse to persist. POD provides free, confidential advocacy and legal support to servicemembers, veterans, and civilians while advancing systemic reform.
Learn more at protectourdefenders.com.
