By Mariane Angela
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said Friday the Pentagon is launching a sweeping crackdown on a little-known federal contracting program he said has become a breeding ground for waste, fraud, and race-based preferences.
Hegseth took to social media to announce a sweeping overhaul of the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program, saying that the initiative has drifted from its original purpose and now siphons defense funds into what he described as corrupt diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) schemes. He said the move follows through on promises he made after President Donald Trump appointed him to lead the Department of War, including redirecting taxpayer funds toward building a more lethal military.
“When President Trump appointed me as your Secretary of War, I made you a series of promises. I promised that every single one of your taxpayer dollars would go toward one thing, and one thing only. Building the most lethal fighting force on the planet,” Hegseth said. “And I promised we would gut the corruptive, unconstitutional, non-merit based DEI programs that have weakened our military and distracted us from our primary mission.”
Hegseth identified the 8(a) program as a prime target, describing it as the oldest DEI program in the federal government and one largely unknown outside Washington.
“We’re actually taking a sledgehammer to the oldest DEI program in the federal government. A program few people outside of Washington have ever heard of that I hadn’t heard of. It’s called the 8A program… 8A refers to the Small Business Administration’s program to assist, quote, small disadvantaged businesses owned by a socially disadvantaged individual or tribe. Providing these small businesses with opportunities is a laudable goal, but over the decades, as it happens, the 8A program has morphed into swamp code words for DEI race-based contracting.” Hegseth said. “In many, many instances, these socially disadvantaged businesses, they don’t even do work. They take a 10%, 20%, sometimes 50% fee off the top and then pass the contract off to a giant consulting firm, commonly known as Beltway Bandits.”
Hegseth said the Pentagon alone sends out enormous sole-source contracts through the program with little oversight or competition.
“In the Pentagon, $100 million sole source contracts go out our door to these 8A firms almost every day, without any competition or opportunity for anyone else to bid,” Hegseth said. “So, effective immediately, I’m ordering a line-by-line review of every small business sole source 8A contract that is over $20 million, and we’ll look at everything smaller than that, too.”
The 8A program has led to costly lawsuits against the government over its racial set-asides, lawsuits by public-interest law firms such as the Center for Individual Rights and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. The lawsuits allege that the racial set-asides contained in the 8A program violate the Supreme Court’s decisions restricting race-based programs in Adarand Constructors v. Pena (1995) and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023).
Hegseth said the Pentagon’s review will follow a simple test, whether a contract makes the military more lethal.
“First, if a contract doesn’t make us more lethal, it’s gone. We have no room in our budget for wasteful DEI contracts that don’t help us win wars, period. Full stop,” Hegseth said. “We’ll make sure that every small business getting a contract is the one actually doing the work, and not just some shell company funneling your money to a giant consulting firm.”
On his first day of taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to dismantle DEI initiatives he described as extreme and costly, along with race-based decision-making. He followed it with another order aimed at ending what the administration calls unlawful discrimination tied to those policies and reestablishing merit-driven standards nationwide. (RELATED: Here’s How Trump Has Put ‘Radical’ DEI In The ‘Dustbin’ Throughout 2025)
The Department of War has reviewed and rolled back diversity-related initiatives throughout 2025 in response to Trump’s executive actions. Hegseth said in an April 18 social media post that DEI no longer operates within the Pentagon.
The Trump administration spent 2025 dismantling diversity initiatives that expanded across government and corporate America under the previous administration. A series of executive actions from President Donald Trump has pressured agencies, schools, and companies to retreat from those policies, with analysts telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that many businesses now see DEI as a liability rather than an asset.
