President Trump on Monday moved toward pushing openly transgender people out of the military, directed the Pentagon to end diversity programs and ordered the reinstatement of many service members dismissed for refusing the coronavirus vaccine as he sought to reshape America’s armed forces.
The directives, contained in a batch of executive orders, advanced what Mr. Trump and his new defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, have described as an effort to return the military to an unapologetically masculine professional culture, while rejecting the sorts of equitable hiring and staffing practices that Mr. Hegseth has blamed for lowering the military’s standards and warfighting capacity.
In some respects, the orders on Monday mirrored others Mr. Trump signed last week aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government and limiting government recognition of an individual’s gender to their sex at birth.
But the new guidance related to gender went much further by authorizing the Defense Department to potentially bar transgender soldiers by considering identifying as a gender other than the one assigned at birth an impediment to the physical and mental well-being necessary for military service.
“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” the order said. “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 added.