Pentagon Starts Enforcing Trans Ban

The Pentagon is moving quickly to force out transgender service members after the Supreme Court's Tuesday ruling allowing the Trump administration to enforce the ban while legal challenges are underway. "After a SCOTUS victory for @POTUS, TRANS is out at the DOD," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared in a post on X. According to a directive issued Thursday, some 1,000 troops who self-identified as transgender after a directive earlier this year have 30 days to leave the military, the Guardian reports. The Pentagon says it will be searching medical records to find others diagnosed with gender dysphoria who haven't come forward.

Officials say anyone with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria who hasn't come forward will be forced out of the military, and nobody with the diagnosis will be allowed to enlist, the AP reports. The Pentagon said limited exemptions could be granted on a case-by-case basis. In February, the Pentagon said around 4,200 of America's 2.1 million troops had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, less than a third of previous estimates. "We are leaving wokeness and weakness behind," Hegseth said earlier this week. "No more pronouns, no more climate change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses. We are done with that s---."

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Thursday that troops who have already self-identified "will begin the voluntary separation process" from the military. Rae Timberlake, a spokesperson for the Sparta Pride advocacy group, questioned his use of the term "voluntary," the Guardian reports. Timberlake, who served in the Navy for 17 years, said people who don't take the current offer could lose benefits including severance and pensions. "This is not voluntary. This is a decision that folks are coming to under duress," Timberlake said. "These are 1,000 transgender troops that would be serving if the conditions were not created to force them into making a decision for their own wellbeing, or the wellbeing of their family long-term." (More Pentagon stories.)