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U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks to reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington, DC.
New enlistments for transgender people are stopped, care for existing service members paused and promotions held up, according to the defense secretary’s latest memo.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has enacted one of the most sweeping anti-LGBTQ+ military policies in recent history, ordering an immediate halt to gender-affirming medical care for transgender service members and banning new enlistments of individuals with a history of gender dysphoria. This move, a direct assault on the rights of transgender Americans in uniform, follows President Donald Trump’s January 27 executive order dismantling the inclusive policies that had allowed transgender people to serve openly.
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A February 7 memo from Hegseth to senior Pentagon officials and military leadership, obtained by ABC News, mandates the immediate cessation of all scheduled and planned gender-affirming medical procedures for service members and bars promotions for those with a history of gender dysphoria. “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,” the memo declared.
Related: Donald Trump signs new executive order affecting transgender military members
Hegseth, a staunch opponent of LGBTQ+ inclusion in the military, echoed Trump’s executive order, dehumanizing transgender service members by calling their identities “a falsehood” and claiming that gender diversity is “incompatible with active duty.” ABC News reports that he accused inclusive policies of “split[ting] our troops along lines of identity” and warned that such measures “weaken our force and make us vulnerable. Such efforts must not be tolerated or accommodated.”
On the first day of Trump’s second term, hours after the January 20 inauguration, Trump issued an executive order essentially erasing transgender and nonbinary people from federal rules. The order states that the U.S. government only recognizes two genders, male and female and that those are based on one’s sex at birth.
This latest attack aligns with Hegseth’s long-documented hostility toward transgender service members. In his 2024 book, The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free, he explicitly wrote, “Transgender people should never be allowed to serve. It’s that simple.” The Nation reports that while he has stopped short of calling for the expulsion of gay and lesbian service members, he has voiced support for returning to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which forced them to hide their identities. He described the repeal of DADT as “the breach in the wire—the foothold—the Left needed to push much more extreme ideology through the gap.”
Related: Donald Trump’s government declares that transgender and nonbinary people don’t exist
The legal battle against this discriminatory policy has begun. Advocacy organizations, including Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign, have filed lawsuits challenging the ban. A complaint filed in federal court in Washington state last week argues that Hegseth’s directives violate the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and infringe upon the free speech rights of transgender service members. “By categorically excluding transgender people, the 2025 Military Ban and related federal policy and directives lack any legitimate or rational justification, let alone the compelling and exceedingly persuasive ones required,” the lawsuit asserts.
GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a separate legal challenge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last week on behalf of six active-duty transgender service members.
