After installing noted Christian Nationalist Misogynist Pete Hegseth at the helm of this nation’s Department of Defense, the Trump administration is already making moves to realize Hegseth’s dream of a more “masculinized” military by declaring its intent, via Executive Orders, to make a series of emotional, illogical and counterintuitive decisions about the military’s future. This includes an EO aimed at banning transgender people from the military, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness.”
There are a little over 14,700 transgender troops serving in the U.S military, which in total boasts 2.86 million members, including active-duty troops, reserves and civilians. 73% of currently enlisted trans service members are senior personnel, meaning they’ve served for between 12 and 21 years and thus have amassed some significant expertise. The Palm Center projects that recruiting and training replacements for these service members would cost another $1 billion.
The Executive Order gives Pete Hegseth 60 days to come up with a plan to make Trump’s dreams come true. Hegseth was confirmed as Secretary of Defense last week, with Vice President J.D Vance casting the tie-breaking vote because Hegseth is such an unqualified and abhorrent piece of shit that even three Republican senators summoned the moral fortitude to vote against his appointment.
Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Hegseth’s bigotry, as well as his “concerning stances on the Geneva Conventions, the use of torture, and the potential for the use of the U.S. military against the American people” should have disqualified him from securing this particular job. Unfortunately, it did not! He got the job and here we are.
Trump’s military-focused Executive Orders encompass a few objectives aside from removing trans service members, like ending all of the military’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs and reinstating service members who were previously expelled for refusing to get vaccinated for COVID-19, a virus that is highly transmittable in enclosed spaces such as military bunkers, airplanes, trucks and tents. Reinstated soldiers would also receive back pay.
After wasting all of that money to replace trans service members and back-pay ex-employees for spreading a contagious virus to their friends and neighbors, Trump also Executively Ordered the Defense Department to somehow inspire the military to build a next-generation missile defense system similar to Israel’s, an “Iron Dome” that would guard against a variety of ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missiles.
Why Does Trump Want To Remove Transgender People From the Military?
Kicking trans people out of the military has been an ongoing passion project for Trump. His trans military ban in 2017 was proposed on the grounds that medical care for transgender people was too expensive and disruptive. This is objectively not true. Gender-affirming care for trans people would constitute, at most, .04-.14% of the military’s $6 billion healthcare budget.
This time, medical costs are mentioned but not centered. What is centered is the idea that, in violation of widespread medical consensus, transgender identity is a mental illness reflecting a break from reality. Emboldened by anti-trans rhetoric across the political spectrum, Trump is simply outright declaring trans people both imaginary and insane:
“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life…. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
This focus on an “honorable, truthful and disciplined personal life” is really rich when considering that Pete Hegseth, a military veteran, was pressed during his confirmation hearings and refused to answer for personal life events including “paying off a conservative group staffer who accused him of sexually assaulting her in a hotel room.” Hegseth, who claims their sexual encounter was consensual, was married at the time. He also cheated on his second wife with a Fox news producer, an affair which resulted in the birth of a child.
Also — and this is neither here nor there, I just wanted you to know — he permanently injured a West Point drummer with an axe during an axe-throwing Flag Day segment on Fox News.
What Happened Last Time Trump Tried to Ban Trans People From The Military?
In June of 2016, the U.S military began allowing transgender Americans to serve openly. Then Trump became president and in July of 2017, Trump announced on Twitter that “after consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military.” This apparently was a reaction to Trump’s unhappiness regarding a fight in the House over a spending bill that included amendments to ban military healthcare funding for gender confirmation surgery and treatments for transgender active-duty personnel.
A former service member wrote in this roundtable we did in 2017 with former and current trans service members with a diverse range of experiences in the military: “To have the Commander in Chief get on Twitter and say that trans people are essentially subhuman – well, that’s a disgrace, and it’s dangerous, and it’s certainly not representative of a country that I would have ever put my life on the line for.”
Of course, a tweet is not a law, so nothing actually happened. He followed up his tweet with a memo in August.
All five service chiefs testified that the trans-inclusive policy had been successful thus far and did not harm the military budget or its readiness. 56 generals, admirals and other leaders from every service branch published an open letter condemning Trump’s policies, saying it would “degrade readiness even more than the failed ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.”
This aim was essentially tied up in dozens of court cases for the next many months, while trans people continued to serve openly. In March of 2018, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis unleashed a policy allowing trans troops to remain in the military if they did so in their biological sex, which, as trans service member Vivian Valentine explained in this post, essentially constituted a trans military ban. In March of 2019, following a court lifting the last of the orders preventing that policy from taking effect, the Pentagon signed a directive to implement it.
The ban went into effect on April of 2019, citing “the financial costs of inclusive service as well as a threat to readiness, cohesion, and lethality.”
Research found that the ban, which remained in place until Biden’s executive order reversing it in January of 2021, harmed military readiness.
What Happens Next?
The HRC and Lambda Legal have pledged “quick action.” Lambda Legal called the order “cruel,” noting that “It compromises the safety and security of our country and is particularly dangerous and wrong. As we promised [the first time Trump banned trans people from the military], so do we now: we will sue.”
Rep. Leigh Finke, the first out transgender member of the Minnesota House of Representatives said on CNN: “These are glorified press releases meant to scare people and to create uncertainty, meant to push people towards discrimination of transgender people and will be very difficult to enforce, and will take upwards of a year to figure out if this is even going to be possible. In the meantime it’s going to expose trans folks and make our lives more difficult.”
As we wait to see how and when the ban will be implemented and what legal challenges it will face, these policies encourage stigma and discrimination against trans people in all fields of life, to dehumanize them out of existence and, seemingly, to shame them into returning to presenting as their gender assigned at birth. As journalist Erin Reed writes, the rationale behind this order is not, as it was in 2017, “about faulty arguments laundering falsehoods as science” but instead is a strategic attack on trans people’s “honor and worth as human beings.”
Regardless of how any of us feel about the U.S military in general, military service has long been one of the most available options for employment, stability and education for many U.S. citizens, and a ban would likely constitute the largest mass layoff of transgender people in history. That is a lot of trans people losing their jobs and healthcare amid a government effort to dismantle healthcare and employment protections for trans people.
Monday night was a busy one for Trump, who also issued a sweeping directive to pause federal grants, loans and other forms of financial assistance. Numerous lawsuits were filed in response to the directive, and a judge has temporarily blocked the order from going into effect. Trump’s administration claims the freeze, which interrupted the Medicaid system and Head Start programs for young children amongst other necessary federal programs, was merely following up on its claim to halt “the use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering policies” which he considers “a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.” Fantastic!
“We can and will fight back,” wrote lawyer Chase Strangio today on his instagram, following this order and another aimed at preventing gender-affirming care for transgender youth. “We will hold and guide each other. We will litigate and educate. We will dream and not shrink. We will build on the legacy of our ancestors who survived and thrived and made magic every day.”
As I was writing this, Trump issued another anti-trans Executive Order, this one aimed at health care for transgender youth. We’ll have a piece about that for you as soon as we can.
Trump’s ongoing efforts to exclude trans individuals from the military highlight a troubling disregard for inclusivity and the rights of those willing to serve their country. The military should value capability, dedication, and service above all else, rather than discriminating based on gender identity. Policies like this not only alienate an entire community but also weaken the values of equality and respect that should define any modern institution. It’s crucial to advocate for a society where everyone, regardless of their identity, has the opportunity to contribute and be treated with dignity.
Thank you for breaking this one down, Riese! It feels impossible to keep up with every single EO and know what to take from each of them.