The Pentagon is halting gender-affirming healthcare for transgender troops as it takes steps to remove them from the US armed forces.

“I am directing you to take the necessary steps to immediately implement this guidance,” Stephen Ferrara, the acting assistant secretary of defence for health affairs, said in a memo.

The Defence Health Agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move was well signposted by an administration that campaigned last year on promises to take a common sense attitude to transgender issues.

In January, soon after taking office, Donald Trump signed an executive order banning transgender people from serving in the armed forces.

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honour this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” runs the order.

‘War on woke’

Then last week Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, issued instructions to the Pentagon to start expelling transgender troops who do not resign by June 6.

It said the department would “initiate involuntary separation processes” for anyone who did not leave voluntarily.

A Pentagon spokesman said about 1,000 troops had self-identified with gender dysphoria and begun the separation process.

It is an illustration of how Mr Hegseth, a former Fox News presenter, has put the “war on woke” at the centre of the way he runs the Pentagon.

He won a green light from the Supreme Court last week, paving the way for a ban to take effect.

“No more trans at the (US) Department of Defence,” he posted after the court issued a brief order granting an emergency request from the Trump administration to lift a nationwide injunction against its policy while other lawsuits make their way through the courts.

Three liberal justices dissented.

More than 4,000 transgender troops

There are 4,240 active-duty and National Guard transgender troops, according to officials, but activists put the number far higher.

In the meantime, public opinion has been hardening against allowing transgender troops in the armed forces.

A Gallup poll published in February found that 58 per cent of Americans were in favour of allowing transgender troops. That number has fallen from 71 per cent six years ago.

Mr Trump targeted transgender troops during his first term. After six months in office he announced he would ban transgender people in the military but then his administration spent two years navigating legal challenges.

It eventually reached a compromise that allowed anyone already serving to stay but barred recruits who were taking hormones or transitioning to another gender.

Two appeals courts continue to weigh the latest policy.

Jennifer Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at Glad Law, wrote in a letter to the Washington DC court of appeals: “The directive restates the unsupported assertion that ‘expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service, further corroborating the district court’s finding that the transgender military ban was motivated by animus against transgender people as a group.”