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The Pentagon will immediately begin moving as many as 1,000 openly identifying transgender service members out of the United States military and give others 30 days to self-identify, under a new directive.
Buoyed by Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision allowing US President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a ban on transgender individuals in the military, the Defence Department will then begin going through medical records to identify others who haven’t come forward.
Defence secretary Pete Hegseth, who issued the latest memo, made his views clear after the court’s decision.
“No More Trans @ DoD,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X on Thursday. Earlier in the day, before the court acted, Hegseth was more blunt, telling a conference that his department is leaving wokeness and weakness behind.
“No more pronouns,” he told a special operations forces conference in Tampa.
Department officials have said it’s difficult to determine exactly how many transgender service members there are, but medical records will show those who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, who show symptoms or are being treated.
Those troops would then be involuntarily forced out of the service.
The memo released on Thursday mirrors one sent out in February, but any action was stalled at that point by several lawsuits.
Officials have said that, as of 9 December 2024, there were 4,240 troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the active duty, National Guard and Reserve, but they acknowledge the number may be higher.
Transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members.
An executive order signed by Trump shortly after his inauguration said expressing a “gender identity” different from an individual’s sex at birth did not meet military standards.
While the order banned the use of “invented” pronouns in the military, it did not answer basic questions including whether transgender soldiers currently serving in the military would be allowed to stay and, if not, how they would be removed.
During his first term, Trump said he would ban transgender troops from serving in the military. He did not fully follow through with that ban — his administration froze their recruitment while allowing serving personnel to remain.
Former president Joe Biden overturned the decision when he took office in 2021.
When Trump announced his first ban in 2017, he said the military needed to focus on “decisive and overwhelming victory” without being burdened by the “tremendous medical costs and disruption” of having transgender personnel.
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