Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon is pausing transgender procedures for service members and barring individuals with gender dysphoria from joining the military.
Hegseth is following through on President Donald Trump’s executive order last month paving the way for the Pentagon to bar transgender individuals from serving in the military.
“Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused, and all unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members are paused,” Hegseth said in a memo dated February 7.
Those with gender dysphoria who are serving the United States will be treated with “dignity and respect,” Hegseth promised. He is authorizing the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness to develop guidance for current service members with gender dysphoria or a history of gender dysphoria. The under secretary will be in charge of implementing Hegseth’s directive.
Hegseth’s memo became public as part of a legal challenge from a group of service members fighting Trump’s executive order, which overturned former President Joe Biden’s orders allowing people identifying as transgender to serve and receive medical treatment.
Trump’s new order asserts that transgender identification is detrimental to military readiness and points out that transgender service members will have to undergo medical treatments that limit their physical performance.
The president’s executive action is consistent with Hegseth’s view that the military needs to prioritize readiness over progressive ideology in order to confront America’s adversaries. During his bruising confirmation process, Hegseth emphasized his plan to focus on the needs of the average solider and raise military standards. In the memo, Hegseth argues that efforts to separate troops based on identity groups weakens the armed forces and should not be tolerated.
With that in mind, Trump has also directed Hegseth to remove DEI programs from the Pentagon that give preferences to people of certain races or genders. Before he was confirmed, Hegseth loudly opposed DEI in the military and vowed to remove it entirely.
More broadly, the Trump administration has implemented a series of actions meant to roll back progressive DEI initiatives and harmful transgender medical operations, fulfilling Trump’s campaign promises to do so.
Immediately upon returning to power, Trump restored the gender binary to federal policymaking and set in motion the process for removing DEI employees from the federal government and ending DEI in federal contracting. Trump has also moved to ban irreversible transgender surgical mutilation and chemical interventions for minors, and he signed an order preventing biological males from competing in women’s sports competitions.