Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bypassed the military's established merit-based promotion process, imposing new criteria that disproportionately disqualified women and people of color who had already been cleared for advancement, according to three military officials. A senior official told MS NOW that Hegseth's office orchestrated a deliberate screening process, compiling paper-only dossiers of internet search results that the affected officers could not review. Instructions about the new criteria were communicated by phone rather than in writing, leaving no written record of the directives. "I was like 'you gotta be kidding me,'" the official said.