The U.S. Army on Friday said it was no longer allowing transgender people to join its ranks and would stop “performing or facilitating” sex change operations.
The announcement came days after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth instituted a ban on transgender people joining the military.
“Effective immediately, all new accessions for individuals with a history of gender dysphoria are paused, and all unscheduled, scheduled, or planned medical procedures associated with affirming or facilitating a gender transition for Service members are paused,” an Army post on X states.
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The military branch also said individuals with “gender dysphoria have volunteered to serve our country and will be treated with dignity and respect.”
Hegseth’s order is part of an effort to reform the military by ending diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and focusing on readiness and lethality.
“Our strength is our shared purpose, regardless of our background, regardless of how we grew up, regardless of our gender, regardless of our race,” he said during a town hall last week. “In this department, we will treat everyone equally, we will treat everyone with respect and we will judge you as an individual by your merit and by your commitment to the team and the mission.”
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In response to the military ban, 20 state attorneys general filed a “friend of the court” brief to support a lawsuit aiming to block the implementation of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
“This administration’s continuous attacks on our very small percentage of transgender Americans, an increasingly vulnerable population, is cruel and wrong,” said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. “I greatly respect anyone, including our trans service members, who puts their life on the line to protect us and our country.
“This latest attack on trans service members flies in the face of the administration’s so-called respect for our military, our veterans and their service.”
The coalition includes the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
In a separate post on X, the Army said “DEI is dead” within the organization and that soldiers forced to leave for refusing to get a COVID vaccine were welcome back with back pay.
Upon taking office, Trump signed an executive order that said identifying with a sex not assigned at birth is “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
There are an estimated 9,000 to 14,000 transgender service members. Exact figures are not publicly available.
Between Jan. 1, 2016, and May 14, 2021, the Department of Defense reportedly spent approximately $15 million on providing transgender treatments — surgical and nonsurgical — to 1,892 active-duty service members, according to the Congressional Research Service.
