President Trump had a busy Monday with a signing spree, dropping four executive orders and one proclamation like a general handing out marching orders. Among them? A directive eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs from the military and a particularly Trumpian declaration against what he called “gender radicalism in the military.”
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump, 78, listed his freshly inked policies, which also included reinstating service members booted over vaccine mandates (a callback to one of his long-standing grievances), greenlighting the development of an “American Iron Dome” (because if Israel has one, why not America?), and commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz—which, let’s be honest, felt like it belonged in a completely different conversation.
While Trump had already nixed Biden’s 2021 order allowing trans service members to serve openly, this new executive order turned the dial up to eleven. Effective immediately, anyone identifying as a gender different from their birth sex would be barred from serving or enlisting under the justification of mental unfitness. In short, the Pentagon’s policy just took a hard turn back to “biology first.”
Trump tasked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with making sure the new rules stuck—meaning no shared bathrooms, barracks, or changing areas for biological men and women, and a swift end to “invented pronouns.” (They/them? Not in this army.)
The official White House release read like a call to arms against woke ideology, declaring that the US military must be “the world’s most lethal and effective fighting force,” and that “accommodating political agendas” only weakens that mission. The order went further, spelling out that “false gender identities” don’t meet the standards of truthfulness and discipline expected from service members. (Translation: Tell us what’s on your birth certificate, or pack your bags.)
Just in case the message wasn’t clear enough, the order also dropped this zinger: “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” (Ouch.)
While exact numbers on trans service members remain elusive, a 2016 Pentagon study estimated around 9,000 active-duty personnel identified as transgender, along with another 5,700 in the reserves. And in case anyone was wondering where taxpayer money was going, the Pentagon has spent $15 million on transgender medical care since 2016—including 243 gender reassignment surgeries.
But as of Monday, all of that was firmly off the table. The Trump administration had already paused military-funded gender transitions once before, and now, with this latest decree, it looks like they’re hitting the permanent delete button.
So there you have it—Monday’s executive order haul: some troops reinstated, others kicked out, a missile defense system greenlit, and a history lesson thrown in for good measure. Just another day in Trump’s second term military reboot.
