U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gives a thumbs up as U.S. President Donald Trump address a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 04, 2025 in Washington, DC.
A group of 14 Senate Democrats sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanding to know if the Department of Defense (DOD) is following court injunctions blocking the president’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
The April 22 letter notes that U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes and U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Hale Settle both issued national injunctions against the president’s trans military ban in March, days before the DOD said it would start dismissing trans soldiers.
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“These injunctions were timely, as the [Defense] Department was scheduled to begin implementing the ban on March 28, 2025, despite several military experts and former leaders characterizing this rapid timeframe as ‘rushed,’ ‘alarming’ and ‘brutal,’” the letter states.
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The letter’s signatories asked Hegseth how much taxpayer money will be spent to implement the ban, how much has been spent on legally defending it, and how much has been spent training the trans soldiers that the president and Hegseth now want to kick out.
The senators also asked whether any trans military members were prematurely dismissed, whether the military made any efforts to help reintegrate these people into civilian life, and what the DOD is doing to help trans military members harmed by the president’s order.
The letter also notes that nearly 20% of the trans community are current military servicemembers or veterans, a significantly higher rate than the approximately 7% of all U.S. adults fitting these categories. It also notes that approximately 0.4% of American people choose to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces.
“In return for this patriotism, the administration denies transgender servicemembers not only the ability to serve, but also the resulting benefits they have earned,” the leter states. “Given the unwillingness or inability of 99.6% of the U.S. population to serve in our military, the last thing our Nation should be doing is rejecting patriotic Americans who are ready and willing to serve our country in uniform and bravely accept the risk of making the ultimate sacrifice.”
The letter then criticized the current administration’s “repeated attacks on the transgender community” which “reveal an ideological obsession rooted in a poor understanding of science.”
“This EO [executive order] establishes a dangerous precedent, allowing the President to arbitrarily decide that an entire group of people is harmful to an undefined ideal of ‘unit cohesion’ and purge them from the Joint Force—without producing any meaningful evidence,” the letter states. Then, poking at Hegseth’s former work as a Fox News contributor, the letter says, “Fox News television personalities—not military units —are the ones bothered by transgender people faithfully serving their country.”
The senators state that the military benefits from choosing members from the widest pool of applicants, adding, “arbitrarily restricting eligibility on a discriminatory basis betrays the very concept of meritocracy.”
“Contrary to the low opinion you and the President seem to have of our servicemembers’ professionalism and commitment to mission accomplishment, we believe that our troops can serve together cohesively in pursuit of military effectiveness and excellence, regardless of their differences in identity,” the letter continues. “Transgender identities are valid, and respecting someone’s gender identity while minding your own business harms no one.”
The letter was signed by Democratic Senators Tammy Baldwin (WI), Cory Booker (NJ), Tammy Duckworth (IL), John Fetterman (PA), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Mazie Hirono (HI), Andy Kim (NJ), Ed Markey (MA), Jeff Merkley (OR), Brian Schatz (HI), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Elizabeth Warren (MA), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), and Ron Wyden (OR).
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