When the Navy’s one-star admiral promotion list was publicly released last month, one thing stood out immediately: There were no women on it.

Anyone familiar with the normal results of the service’s promotion boards knew that was unusual. Qualified women had not suddenly disappeared from the Navy’s bench.

The explanation came soon enough. According to the New York Times, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had personally intervened to block the promotions of nine Navy officers selected by a board of senior admirals, including three women and two Black men. What at first appeared to be an odd list soon looked instead like direct political interference in a system meant to elevate the Navy’s best.

Hegseth has previously intervened in Army promotions, removing four Army colonels — two Black men and two women — from the brigadier general promotion list in March. According to Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, those officers had long records of exemplary service and had done nothing wrong.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George tried to raise concerns directly with Hegseth about the interference in early April. In response, Hegseth fired him. The message to the rest of the force was unmistakable: defending the integrity of the system will cost you your career.

This is not simply a personnel controversy. The Defense secretary is canceling the results of merit-based promotion boards to suit his politics. That tells the force that professional judgment can be overruled by ideological preference and that the promotion system’s formal constraints can be bent to political ends.

This may sound like a niche military issue, but it matters to every American. Hegseth is injecting his own prejudices into who is trusted to lead the military Americans fund and depend on to defend the nation. When the leadership of that force is shaped by politics rather than excellence, the damage goes far beyond unfairness. The military is weaker, and the country is less safe.

Hegseth talks constantly about merit and standards. He has claimed “real toxic leadership” means promoting people for reasons other than merit. But merit would mean letting disciplined professional selection boards identify and advance the best officers to lead. Standards would mean applying the same rules consistently rather than bending them around politics and personal preference.

By those measures, the secretary’s own conduct is damning. The same reporting that says he stopped the promotions of officers who met the Navy’s standards also says Hegseth pressed Navy leaders to add his military assistant to the promotion list even though that officer lacked the command experience required to qualify.

Military promotion boards are not bureaucratic trivia. They are one of the clearest ways the institution signals what it values. They are disciplined, rules-based and designed to ensure that the best officers rise to lead. In my experience, they are as merit-based a process as human beings can build. When the Defense secretary overrides those judgments for reasons that appear tied to personal prejudice, politics, race or gender, he damages confidence in the process itself.

Under Pentagon rules, officers can be removed from promotion lists for moral, mental, physical or professional failings that raise questions about fitness to lead. That is a serious safeguard and its use is rare. It is not intended as a political editing tool. It exists to preserve confidence that the process remains apolitical and performance-based.

A visible pattern of removing women and minority officers from promotion lists sends a message far beyond the officers directly affected. It tells service members that performance is not enough if they do not fit the profile the secretary appears to prefer. Policies and rhetoric like this do not just settle political scores. They shape who raises a hand to join, who chooses to stay and who sees a future in the military.

The doubt this pattern creates is not confined to one list. It spreads through the force, from officers competing for promotion to service members expected to follow those selected, and to their families who trust the institution to put the right people in charge.

Hegseth has not only hurt the officers he removed. He has tarnished the officers he left on the list. Even if they were the best officers for those roles, it is now reasonable for members of the military to ask whether they were chosen because they earned it or because they were more aligned with his politics, preferences or the kind of fealty this administration rewards. That may be unfair to officers who have earned their place entirely on merit, but Hegseth owns that unfairness.

The military is strengthened by promoting capable women and Black officers with exemplary records. It is weakened when trust in merit is replaced by suspicion, when professionalism is subordinated to political signaling and when the institution’s own judgments no longer command confidence. In an all-volunteer force, that kind of doubt is poison.

Service members do not just volunteer to serve. They volunteer to place their lives in the hands of others and to trust that the institution will reward excellence and elevate the best available leaders. Hegseth has left them to wonder whether the people who lead them were chosen because they were the best prepared to think, fight and lead, or because they were more politically acceptable to the administration now in charge.

The man shouting loudest about merit has corrupted it in favor of his own politics and prejudices.

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Jon Duffy is a retired Navy captain. He writes about leadership and democracy.

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