Pentagon spent more on lobster in one month than it did on trans health care all year

The U.S. military spent millions of dollars under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s watch on lobster, steak, luxury furnishings, and a grand piano during a late-year spending surge, even as the Trump administration has argued in federal court that providing medical care to transgender service members is an undue financial burden on the armed forces.

Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter.

A new analysis by the government watchdog group Open the Books found that the Department of Defense spent $93.4 billion on grants and contracts in September 2025 alone, the final month of the fiscal year. The figure marks the largest single-month spending total ever recorded by a federal agency, according to the group.

Federal budgeting requires agencies to spend appropriated funds before the fiscal year ends or risk losing them. The practice, often described as “use it or lose it,” has long drawn criticism for encouraging last-minute spending.

Related: Attorneys urge appeals court to see Trump’s trans military ban is rooted in bigotry, not national security

Related: Legal team tells D.C. appeals court Hegseth’s words show Trump’s trans military ban is about hate, not policy

Among the purchases identified in the report were $6.9 million spent on lobster, $2 million on Alaskan king crab, and $15.1 million on ribeye steak in September alone. The spending also included 272 orders of doughnuts totaling $139,224, and $124,000 for ice cream machines.

The Pentagon also spent heavily on furnishings and specialty items. Records show $225.6 million was spent on furniture, including $60,719 on high-end office chairs, $12,540 on decorative fruit basket stands, and $111,497 on footrests.

Musical instruments accounted for $1.8 million in spending, including a $98,329 Steinway grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s residence, along with a $26,000 violin and a $21,750 custom flute.

The Pentagon did not respond to The Advocate’s request for comment.

Critics point to the Pentagon’s spending splurge as an example of hypocrisy and bad-faith arguments the administration is presenting as it proceeds with efforts to remove transgender people from military service.

Related: Pete Hegseth is trying to force this transgender soldier out of the military. He won't leave voluntarily

Related: Why is the Army recommending training for this transgender officer that the Pentagon plans to oust?

President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order directs the armed forces to separate troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria and to block transgender people’s enlistment. Administration lawyers have defended the policy by claiming, without credible evidence, that skyrocketing medical costs and logistical complications are associated with treating gender dysphoria in the military.

Kara Corcoran, executive director of SPARTA Pride, an organization representing transgender people who serve or have served in the U.S. military, told The Advocate that the government’s financial argument collapses when compared with the Pentagon’s broader spending.

“The DOJ’s claim in courts that transgender service members represent a meaningful cost burden to the Department of Defense doesn’t withstand scrutiny,” Corcoran said in a statement. “The Pentagon’s own data shows that care for these service members has averaged about $5.2 million per year — a mere drop in the bucket within a defense budget measured in hundreds of billions.”

“To put that in perspective, just look at the recent watchdog reporting that the DoD spent $6.9 million on lobster, $2 million on Alaskan king crab, and $15.1 million on ribeye steak in a single month,” Corcoran said.

Corcoran, an infantry officer, said the comparison highlights the scale of the spending gap. “If the price of ‘steak and lobster night’ before battle is acceptable to taxpayers, there should especially be no issue with the cost of retaining and caring for thousands of qualified service members willing to die for this country,” Corcoran said.

“Transgender Americans have already been serving openly across the force for the past decade, meeting the same standards and accepting the same risks as their peers,” Corcoran added. “Retaining them costs nothing extra.”

Related: Mark Kelly defiant as ‘most unqualified Secretary of Defense’ Pete Hegseth targets senator’s retirement pay

Related: Sen. Mark Kelly sues Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon after Trump administration moved to punish him for his speech

Pentagon data introduced in court show that roughly 4,240 active-duty service members have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, though the total number of transgender troops may be higher.

Between 2015 and 2024, the military spent about $52 million total on psychotherapy, hormone therapy, surgeries, and related treatment for transgender service members, according to the government. That works out to roughly $5.2 million per year.

Compared to the Pentagon’s more than $1 trillion annual budget, the spending is negligible.

In Talbott v. Trump, a lawsuit filed by transgender service members and prospective recruits, plaintiffs argue that the administration’s policy violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and targets troops who are otherwise qualified to serve.

During arguments before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in January, a Justice Department lawyer told judges that service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria generate significantly higher health care spending than the average troop, with per service member medical costs roughly three times higher and a substantially greater number of clinical visits.

Yet the financial evidence surrounding transgender service members tells a far more modest story than the government’s courtroom argument suggests. Pentagon data shows that, in practical terms, the cumulative cost amounts to less than one-tenth of one percent of a single year’s military health spending.

Jennifer L. Levi, senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law, who represents the plaintiffs in Talbott v. Trump alongside Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ+ Rights, said the administration’s reliance on cost arguments does not withstand scrutiny given the scale of the Pentagon’s overall budget.

“The government’s cost argument is impossible to take seriously,” Levi said. “The Pentagon spends enormous sums across the Defense Department every day, yet it is asking the court to focus on a tiny sliver of health care spending, barely a rounding error, to justify excluding highly accomplished transgender service members. It is deeply cynical to invoke cost this way while seeking to remove people who have already demonstrated their fitness, skill, and commitment to serve.”

Independent research commissioned by the Defense Department reached similar conclusions. A frequently cited 2016 RAND Corporation study, conducted for the Pentagon, estimated that transition-related care would increase overall military health care spending by no more than 0.13 percent annually. The study also found that fewer than 0.1 percent of service members would require treatments that might temporarily affect deployability.

More recent scholarship has reinforced those findings. A new review of 58 peer-reviewed studies published in the International Journal of Transgender Health concluded that transgender service members have minimal impact on military readiness and that the available evidence does not support claims that they impose disproportionate financial costs.

The discrepancy between the research record and the government’s legal argument has also drawn scrutiny from the bench. In reviewing the medical literature cited by the administration, a federal judge concluded that the studies “contradict, rather than support” the policy’s justification. Plaintiffs’ attorneys later noted in court filings that the government ultimately presented no witnesses or additional evidence to substantiate its claims about the financial burden of transgender medical care.

As the plaintiffs await word on whether the appeals court will allow a temporary pause on the Trump administration’s ability to kick out trans troops, the case continues to move forward in Washington, D.C. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes recently ordered the Justice Department to respond to a scheduling motion filed by the plaintiffs by Friday of this week.

Earlier this month, Trump sidelined Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after controversy surrounding a $220 million government advertising campaign promoting the administration’s border policies. During congressional testimony, Noem said the campaign had been approved by the president. Trump later told Reuters he had not signed off on the spending and publicly distanced himself from the program.

The dispute quickly became one of several controversies surrounding Noem’s tenure and contributed to her removal from the post and reassignment to another role in the administration.