Transgender Army master sergeant dares Pete Hegseth: Say your anti-trans slurs to my face

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has spent more than a year broadcasting his contempt for transgender troops from behind microphones and across social media. On Tuesday, one of the soldiers he is trying to force out invited him to try it face to face.

“Words are only words if you give them power,” Army Master Sgt. Amiah Sale told MS NOW’s Peter Alexander. “I don’t think that it’s something that he would say to our faces.”

“If so, I’m in South Korea,” she added. “I hope to see you soon.”

Sale was responding to Alexander’s question about Hegseth’s repeated use of anti-transgender slurs, including his description of transgender troops as “dudes in dresses.” The defense secretary has paired that language with a policy designed to remove transgender people from military service regardless of their performance, experience, or commanders’ support.

Related: Trans troops ask judge to protect everyone targeted by Pete Hegseth's military ban

Sale called the ban “bigoted and based on a culture war.”

“It not only hurts myself or my family. It hurts my unit,” she said. “The millions of dollars that it took to make me a trained and proficient leader are just thrown away when we say, ‘Oh, we don’t want them anymore. They’re the wrong kind of American.’”

Sale is among the named plaintiffs in Talbott v. United States, one of the central legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s second attempt to drive transgender people from the armed forces. She appeared alongside Michael Haley, an attorney with GLAD Law who represents the service members challenging the policy along with attorneys from the National Center for LGBTQ+ Rights.

The Justice Department’s August 28 petition to the Supreme Court identifies Sale as one of the service members now defending a lower court order protecting currently serving plaintiffs from discharge.

She remains on active duty in South Korea. Her career has not formally ended. Its fate is suspended between an Army separation decision and a court order preventing the military from carrying it out.

As The Advocate reported in March, Sale had been ordered to appear before a military separation board on March 24. She told MS NOW that three senior officers met behind closed doors to decide her future while she watched through a grainy video feed from down the hall. “I felt really ostracized,” Sale said. In nearly two decades in uniform, she said, she had never heard of someone being denied the chance to enter the room and make their own case.

Related: Judge in trans military ban case demands Pentagon explain Hegseth’s testosterone double standard

Sale had assembled 25 character references, along with her evaluations, awards, and service record. The officers returned with a decision in roughly 20 minutes.

“Twenty years of stellar service, and you’re going to come back in 20 minutes without even looking me in the face and say, ‘Oh no, you’re not a patriot. You’re not a soldier anymore. We’re going to separate you,’” she said.

Haley said Sale’s exclusion violated basic due process. Service members accused of crimes are allowed to attend their boards and defend themselves, he noted. Sale was facing the end of her career because of a policy directed at who she is, yet she was denied that opportunity.

“People like Amiah, who have given almost 20 years of their lives in service to the country and are being separated simply because of who they are and because the administration doesn’t like that, they’re not being given that opportunity,” Haley said. “We think that’s a violation of their due process rights.”

Sale reaches 20 years of military service next month, the customary threshold for regular retirement eligibility. She said she does not know whether the Army will retire her, administratively separate her, or allow her to remain once the courts resolve the case.

“I hope that I get my pension,” she said. “If they choose to administratively separate me, though, I don’t believe that I’m eligible for my pension.”

Sale enlisted at age 20 and has served as a radio operator and recruiter. According to court filings, she has received two Meritorious Service Medals, seven Army Commendation Medals and six Army Achievement Medals. She is also a member of the Sergeant Audie Murphy Club, which recognizes distinguished noncommissioned officers.

None of that record has shielded her from a policy that evaluates transgender troops as a category instead of as soldiers. Sale said her units had never shown her anything other than support, including when she served as a company first sergeant.

“I received nothing but love and support from my units,” she said. “I think that this attack on us is really an attack on America. It’s an attack on our national defense.”

Trump issued an executive order in January 2025 portraying transgender identity as incompatible with military honesty, discipline, and readiness. Hegseth followed with a policy broadly disqualifying service members with a current or previous diagnosis of gender dysphoria or a history of transition-related care.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes blocked the policy in March 2025, finding that it was likely unconstitutional and “soaked in animus and dripping with pretext.” As The Advocate previously reported, government attorneys conceded that the active duty plaintiffs were honorable, disciplined, medically fit, and had made the country safer.

Related: Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon has started kicking trans troops out of the military, DOJ says

A divided D.C. Circuit panel in June preserved protections for the currently serving Talbott plaintiffs, including Sale, while allowing the Pentagon to continue barring new transgender recruits. The majority concluded that the policy appeared driven by “the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group.”

Haley said the appellate court reached the same essential conclusion as the district court. The administration had not grounded the ban in national security needs. “This is based on the administration’s animus toward transgender people broadly,” he said. “We’re hopeful the Supreme Court will also reach that same conclusion.”

The Trump administration is asking the justices to review and reverse the D.C. Circuit’s decision before a trial scheduled for January 4. The Supreme Court has not decided whether it will hear the case. At the district court level, the plaintiffs are seeking class certification so that an ultimate judgment could protect transgender service members beyond those named in the lawsuit.

Haley said the military’s treatment of Sale reflects a rejection of the institution’s stated commitment to advancement based on service and ability.

Related: Pete Hegseth’s crusade drove a transgender veteran from military service and into homelessness

“The military is meant to be a meritocracy,” he said. “It’s meant to be a place where people like Amiah, who has put in 20 years, met and exceeded all standards, can continue to serve and continue to make the country safer.”

The ban, he said, tells troops that advancement “is not about merit” but about “who’s a popular group among the administration.”

“That’s a bad message,” Haley added, “not just for transgender folks, but for anybody who’s in the military thinking about joining the military.”

For Sale, the legal briefs, separation boards and constitutional arguments all orbit a much simpler fact: She wants to keep doing the job she has done for nearly half her life.

“I’m a proficient leader. I’m a soldier. I’m a tactician,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what administration is in office. I’ve served under this administration before. I just want to serve so that America is safer.”

Watch Master Sergeant Amiah Sale’s interview on MS NOW below.

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