WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boasted on social media Tuesday that he had dismantled a program supporting women on security teams — and may not have realized the program he tried to break was not a “woke” Biden-era initiative but instead a celebrated program signed into law by his boss, President Donald Trump.
Hegseth in an agitated post on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, called the “Women, Peace & Security” program at the Department of Defense “a UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists. Politicians fawn over it; troops HATE it.”
It was, in fact, bipartisan legislation that Trump signed into law in 2017 that recognized the role women have in achieving security objectives, especially in situations overseas where their male counterparts may not for cultural reasons be able to question or would not for religious reasons have direct access to women. Trump’s own Cabinet officials supported the program when it was working its way through the legislative process.
This month, Gen. Dan Caine, the new Joint Chiefs Chairman, told Congress that the program had helped troops in battle.
“When we would go out into the field after concluding an assault, we would have female members who would speak with those women and children who were on the objective and they would help us to understand the human terrain in a new and novel way,” Caine said during his April confirmation hearing. Trump met and became endeared to Caine when he was serving in Iraq, which was part of the reason Trump nominated him to the chairmanship.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who at the time represented South Dakota in the House, wrote the House version of the 2017 Women, Peace and Security Act alongside Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois. And as recently as this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who as a senator co-sponsored the Senate version of the bill, said that it was “the first law passed by any country in the world focused on protecting women and promoting their participation in society.”
That proposal stemmed from a U.N. resolution unanimously endorsed by the Security Council, the most powerful U.N. body, in October 2000, aimed at including women in peacebuilding efforts, as women and girls have historically borne the brunt of global conflict.
“It’s no secret that women remain, largely on the periphery of formal peace processes and decision making, which is not good for the cause of peace,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in response to Hegseth’s comments Tuesday.
Dujarric added that “one of the real-life impacts of the Women Peace and Security program has been the increasing number of women peacekeepers who serve in U.N. missions, which has had a very clear, measurable and positive impact on the protection of civilians in conflict zones.”
Hegseth’s tweet drew immediate fire from Senate Democrats who are continuing to question Hegseth’s qualifications for the job amid the continuing fallout from his use of the commercial app Signal to share sensitive military operations on an unsecured channel with other officials, his wife and brother.
“Hegseth has absolutely no idea what he’s doing,” said New Hampshire Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.
“That tweet contains some glaring inaccuracies that are far beneath the standard we should expect from the Department of Defense,” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said as he read the tweet aloud during a Congressional hearing Tuesday.
A spokesman for Hegseth did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the secretary’s tweet.
While Hegseth in his post called the program “yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops” and pledged to do the bare minimum required by Congress to maintain it while working to eliminate it altogether, the program has been celebrated by Trump, his administration and his family.
It became a heralded part of the first Trump administration’s accomplishments for women, and in 2019, Ivanka Trump celebrated that the WPS program was starting a new partnership to help train female police cadets in Colombia.
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Sagar Meghani contributed from Washington.
