Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted on Tuesday that he had “proudly” canceled a program that seeks to encourage more women to take part in national security issues.
The Women, Peace and Security Act was signed into law back in 2017 by none other than the man who is Mr. Hegseth’s boss today, President Trump. The program looks to increase the role of women in preventing and resolving conflicts all over the world.
Mr. Hegseth, in a post on the social media platform X, called the program “yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops — distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING.”
As defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth does not have the authority to rewrite or overturn laws, but he said that from here on in, the Pentagon would carry out the minimum requirements of the program and work to end it.
He added, “Good riddance, WPS.”
The U.S. military services have tried to carry out the program’s goals in different ways. The Air Force, for instance, has asked commanders to recognize that men, women, boys, girls and various groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, all are “affected by conflict in different ways.” The Air Force set up working groups to consider how different populations are affected by military policies.
Aides to Mr. Hegseth said that he had spent the past week trying to draw attention away from negative articles in multiple news outlets about chaos at the Pentagon. Besides the public focus on — and an inspector general review into — his disclosures on the commercial chat app Signal of flight sequencing of American fighter jets in Yemen strikes, Mr. Hegseth has seen the dissolution of his inner circle of close advisers. Four members of the team he brought to the Pentagon have left the department, three of them accused of leaking information and escorted from the building. A fifth — his chief of staff — has also departed his post.
Mr. Hegseth has refused to acknowledge that he did anything wrong in disclosing the Yemen strike details on Signal.
On Tuesday, as he has done during much of his tenure as defense secretary, Mr. Hegseth was again taking aim at diversity and inclusion programs. When Mr. Trump signed the Women, Peace and Security Act into law in 2017, it was backed by a number of present-day Trump officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was a senator at the time, and the current national security adviser, Mike Waltz.
