Transgenderism Not ‘Honorable, Truthful’ or Compatible with Military Service: Trump EO
President Donald Trump has signed two executive orders reorienting the U.S. military away from liberal indoctrination by banning extreme gender ideology —including transgender pronouns — and DEI policies aimed at advancing critical race theory. The actions brand transgender ideology a “falsehood” that prevents its adherents from living an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
President Trump’s new policy will “end invented and identification-based pronoun usage” and stop members of one sex from using the opposite sex’s “sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities” except under “extraordinary operational necessity,” such as in war zones. It classifies “gender ideology” and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as “radical, extremist, and irrational theories” and will set about “abolishing the DEI bureaucracy.”
Transgender Identity Shows Dishonor ‘Even in One’s Personal Life’
President Trump signed an executive order “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” on Monday night.
“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” the transgender executive order states. “This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”
Anyone “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” states the executive order. “Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. 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.”
The order cites existing military policy (DoD Instruction (DoDI) 6130.03) that enlistees must be “[f]ree of medical conditions or physical defects that may reasonably be expected to require excessive time lost from duty for necessary treatment or hospitalization.” It notes this would apply to “conditions that require substantial medication or medical treatment to bipolar and related disorders, eating disorders, suicidality, and prior psychiatric hospitalization” — comorbidities which tend to occur in greater preponderance among people who identify as transgender.
Transgender procedures took trans-identifying soldiers out of readiness about half the year, according to a comprehensive report authorized in the first Trump administration. The memorandum found the nation’s 994 active duty servicemembers who identify as transgender accounted for more than 30,000 mental health visits. In all, “transitioning Service members in the Army and Air Force have averaged 167 and 159 days of limited duty, respectively, over a one-year period,” constituting a “readiness risk.”
The new policy builds on a previous executive order which rescinded 78 Biden executive orders — including his transgender military service order: Executive Order 14004 of January 25, 2021 (“Enabling All Qualified Americans To Serve Their Country in Uniform”) — on day one.
Executive Order 2: Abolishing DEI in the Military
President Trump’s second executive order, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” refocuses the military on excellence, lethality, and deterrence rather than DEI.
“Unfortunately, in recent years civilian and uniformed leadership alike have implemented Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs and their attendant race and sex preferences within the Armed Forces. These actions undermine leadership, merit, and unit cohesion, thereby eroding lethality and force readiness,” says the order. With his latest action, Trump will wipe out “any vestiges of DEI offices, such as sub-offices, programs, elements, or initiatives established to promote a race-based preferences system that subverts meritocracy, perpetuates unconstitutional discrimination, and promotes divisive concepts or gender ideology.”
The move furthers his policy of rooting out “race-based and sex-based discrimination” throughout the government, including within the U.S. military. “No individual or group within our Armed Forces should be preferred or disadvantaged on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, color, or creed,” states the order. With this action, the federal government will no longer “violate Americans’ consciences by engaging in invidious race and sex discrimination.” The secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security will issue guidance for implementing this order within 30 days, then document their progress in carrying it out within six months. DEI programs cost the military $114.7 million in 2024 alone.
Trump Actions ‘Return the Military to Lethality’: Congressman
Conservatives and veterans praised the president’s decision to bleed social experimentation out of the military. “This is absolutely necessary. It was perfect tone by the president. We will return the military to lethality, to deterring our adversaries across the world,” said Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), a retired Army lieutenant colonel who sits on the Veterans Affairs Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee, on “Washington Watch” Tuesday. “This will help with recruiting. This will help with training. This will help with morale. This is the way it’s done.”
“Leadership makes a difference in the military. And our commander in chief demonstrated that leadership yesterday with these executive orders,” Self added.
“I was thrilled to see that he went back to the same policy that he enacted” in his first term, “one that we worked with him to get done, and that was to return our military to focusing on its mission to fight and win our wars, not modeling the latest cross-dressing camouflage,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a Marine veteran.
“Wokeism, which comes in many forms, takes progressivism to extremes and imposes it with coercion, even if it hurts the institution,” Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, told The Washington Stand.
The move should prove popular with others who have served, as well. A YouGov poll found an overwhelming 94% of veterans oppose racial and gender preferences in military promotions.
But some decried the policy, which reverses secular progressive political grains. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who chairs a congressional caucus dedicated to advancing LGBTQ radicalism, called the Trump policy “beyond shameful.”
Undoing Nine Years of Democratic Social Tinkering
Former President Barack Obama paved the way for the military crisis by allowing individuals with active gender dysphoria to join the military. He added “gender identity” as a protected class in the military’s non-discrimination policies. President Donald Trump authorized a report on the issue in August 2017. The 45th president ultimately adopted the February 2018 memorandum declaring gender dysphoria incompatible with military service, but grandfathering in those who began receiving transgender injections since Obama’s order or who had been “stable” for 36 months and could be deployed.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders Law (which sometimes brands itself “Glad Law”) filed a lawsuit, Jane Doe 2 v. Trump, but lost the judgment from Judge Stephen F. Williams, a Reagan appointee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “[T]here is no constitutional right for, say, biological males who identify as female to live, sleep, shower, and train with biological females. Whether allowing such flexibility in military service is a good idea or not is of no concern to the courts; that is a question for the people acting through their elected representatives,” ruled the late judge. The case never came before the Supreme Court before the Biden-Harris administration restored and expanded the Obama-Biden administration’s policies.
NCLR and Glad Law filed a new lawsuit on Tuesday asserting the military readiness policy is not “based on any legitimate governmental purpose.” Instead, “the ban reflects animosity toward transgender people.”
Additional Executive Orders Reinstate Soldiers Who Refused the COVID-19 Shot, Establish Missile Defense
Trump also signed an executive order reinstating all soldiers whom Joe Biden dismissed or left the U.S. armed services for refusing to take the COVID-19 shot. The more than 8,000 soldiers will “revert to their former rank and receive full back pay, benefits, bonus payments, or compensation.” The president’s action includes not only those forcibly removed from service but also those who voluntarily left the military rather than obey Biden’s order to take the controversial shot, which has been tied to heart problems, strokes, neurological disorders, and an as-yet-unnamed condition that mimics the symptoms of long COVID.
An inspector general’s report found Biden-Harris administration bureaucrats denied religious exemptions en masse to all but those already scheduled to retire or leave the services, spending just 12 minutes analyzing requests. Some 70% of the early servicemembers removed from service over the shot received the lower “general discharge,” rather than an “honorable discharge.”
President Trump’s new order gives the Defense and DHS secretaries 60 days to show they have followed through.
Trump also signed an executive order Tuesday authorizing the establishment of “The Iron Dome for America,” a missile defense system. “The United States will provide for the common defense of its citizens and the [n]ation by deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield,” states the order.
The executive order states the U.S. military will try to provide or enhance missile defense capabilities for U.S. allies. The executive order calls into question the Trump administration’s commitment to a non-interventionist foreign policy, stating it will “[i]mprove theater missile defenses of forward-deployed United States troops and allied [foreign] territories, troops, and populations.”
The policy captured public imagination thanks to Ronald Reagan’s televised address on Strategic Defense Initiative on March 23, 1983. Over stiff Democratic opposition and diplomatic pressure from the Soviet Union, the U.S. developed a limited missile-defense system in fits and starts over the next four decades. President Bill Clinton slow-walked the advancement of national missile defense, deferring it altogether late in his administration. In December 2001, President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and enhanced missile defense research.
AUTHOR
Ben Johnson
Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.
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