87Score
Current role · Secretary of War · United States
3 tracked promises
ActionOverWords Index tracks 3 promises by Pete Hegseth as Secretary of War, United States: 1 compromise and 2 completed. The AOW Score (0 to 100, based on 3 tracked promises) is 87. 2 of the 3 are listed below with their sources.
1 compromise · 2 completed
2 of 3 are listed on this page; the rest do not yet meet the three-publisher sourcing standard for publication here and appear only in the interactive tracker.
CompromiseGovernment reform
Rename the Department of Defense the "Department of War."
Trump signed an executive order authorizing the secondary name in September 2025, and the department now operates day-to-day under it: its own website is war.gov and Hegseth is formally styled 'Secretary of War.' Making it the department's actual legal name requires an act of Congress. As of mid-2026 a name-change bill had cleared House and Senate committees, with a Congressional Budget Office estimate that formalizing it could cost over $100 million, but it had not yet passed both chambers.
CompletedDefense
Remove diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the military and restore a "warrior ethos."
DoD’s own "Restoring America’s Fighting Force" memorandum, issued days after the January 27, 2025 executive order, directs elimination of DEI offices department-wide and states DEI policies are "incompatible with the values of DoD." The shift was made explicit at the September 2025 Quantico address to hundreds of assembled generals and admirals, where Hegseth told any who disagreed to resign, and reinforced through concrete steps like Pentagon-wide orders to pull library books on diversity and anti-racism topics from military academy shelves. Delivered as stated; the effect on military readiness and on officer retention is contested and tracked separately from whether the promise itself was kept.
How to read this page. Each status is ActionOverWords' assessment based on the sources listed. A listed promise needs sources from at least three distinct publishers, including at least one primary record. The AOW Score averages a person's tracked promises: Completed 100, Compromise 60, In progress 40, Stalled 15, Not started 0, Broken 0.
Full methodology and the
interactive tracker.