The Department of Defense is giving the military branches 30 days to identify service members who identify as transgender in order to remove them from the armed forces.
Pentagon senior leadership were notified in a Wednesday memo that they must begin setting up mechanisms for finding troops with gender dysphoria by March 26th to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender-identifying people from the military.
“The medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service,” defense undersecretary for personnel Darin Selnick said in the memo.
The Pentagon memo became public as part of litigation challenging President Trump’s executive action. Plaintiffs in the case have argued that the Trump directive is openly hostile to transgender-identifying people and puts them on unequal footing in the military and the public as a whole.
The Department of Defense recognizes the two sexes, male and female, and will only allow service members to be subject to standards based on their biological sex. Pronoun usage and access to facilities will be determined by biological sex, ensuring that males will not be allowed into female spaces for sleeping, changing, or bathing, the memo clarifies.
The memo lists two exceptions: Cases in which transgender-identifying personnel can show that they directly support war fighting activities, and cases in which an active service member who fills a specific war fighting need was diagnosed with gender dysphoria but never attempted to transition and has become stable in their biological sex. The memo is contradicted by the Pentagon’s online rapid response account, which said on X that there are no exemptions for the ban on transgender military personnel.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth moved quickly to begin implementing Trump’s order by pausing transgender procedures for military members earlier this month. Hegseth argued that transgender medical operations compromise military readiness because they limit physical performance. Military readiness is a top priority for Hegseth, who has promised to get progressive ideology out of the armed forces and reorient the Department of Defense’s focus onto the ordinary war fighter.
Transgender-identifying troops make up 0.2 percent of the armed forces, or 4,240 of the entire military. The military spent an estimated $52 million on transgender medical procedures from 2015 to 2024, a senior defense official told the Associated Press. The number of troops who identify as transgender could be higher because of health privacy laws and the possibility of service members joining after attempting to transition their gender.
In his first term, President Trump attempted to prohibit people who purport to be transgender from military service but faced significant legal setbacks. Former President Joe Biden overturned Trump’s policy at the beginning of his term consistent with his administration’s support for transgenderism.
This time around, Trump acted immediately to root gender ideology out of the federal government and ban biological males from competing in women’s sports. Trump has also moved to ban irreversible transgender operations on mentally unwell minors, an action that is currently facing legal hurdles.