President-elect Donald Trump reportedly plans to issue an executive order banning transgender members of the military on his “first day in office.”
The controversial order would result in 15,000 active-duty military personnel being “medically discharged” as they were deemed unfit to serve. according to The Sunday Times.
Trump is seeking to issue the executive action on Jan. 20, 2025, or Day 1 of his term, the Times said, which would prevent transgender people from joining the military as all branches continue to struggle with recruitment.
The 78-year-old former president has nominated former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Defense Department and has promised to purge all government agencies of “woke” policies.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Trump spokespeople for comment.
This is not the first time that Trump has tried to ban transgender people from serving. In 2017, then-President Trump announced in a series of tweets that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military.
The White House said detaining troops with a history or diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” — those who may require substantial medical treatment — “poses a significant risk to military effectiveness and lethality.”
Trump first announced plans to ban transgender people from the military in a series of tweets that surprised Pentagon leadership in 2017. He declared he would reverse an Obama-era plan to allow transgender people to serve openly.
Trump is preparing to fulfill campaign promises against the ‘woke’ policy
The controversial order would result in 15,000 active-duty military personnel being “medically discharged,” making them deemed unfit to serve. Pictured: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks with Ian Brown (pictured right), a transgender military major who has transitioned
Trump said on Twitter at the time that the military “cannot be burdened with the enormous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
The Obama administration changed long-standing policy and declared that troops could serve openly as transgender individuals.
Biden reversed the policy on his fifth day in office in January 2021.
In May, it was revealed that the Pentagon has spent more than $26 million on treating transgender troops since 2020, official data shows.
The number of U.S. military personnel with gender dysphoria has doubled in that time — from about 1,800 to 3,700, according to DoD data from DailyMail.com.
In the past three years, $17.5 million in taxpayer money was spent on psychotherapy for transgender people and $1.5 million on hormone medications.
Another $7.6 million financed gender confirmation surgeriesincluding facial modifications to make a recruit more masculine or feminine, and the removal or creation of breasts and genitals.
The U.S. military health care system spends approximately $50 billion annually on care for 9.6 million active-duty military personnel, retirees and their families through its TRICARE health plans.
Barack Obama pictured with transgender Staff Sergeant Logan Ireland after the then-president lifted regulations on transgender services in 2016
According to the website, TRICARE generally does not cover surgeries to treat gender dysphoria, but active duty members “may apply for a waiver for medically necessary gender-affirming surgeries.”
The total number of transgender people within the armed forces is unknown, as it is likely that not all have sought treatment.
But last month, 3,700 active-duty military personnel were diagnosed and treated for gender dysphoria, according to DHA spokesman Peter Graves.
This includes 1,240 Army soldiers, 1,046 Navy soldiers, 1,024 Air Force airmen and 278 Marine Corps.
They account for 0.3 percent of military personnel, which is lower than the 0.6 percent of transgender people in the United States American population more broadly.
As of 2020, 1,892 service members had been diagnosed and treated for gender dysphoria, including 726 Army soldiers, 576 Navy sailors, 449 Air Force airmen and 141 Marines.
At the time, this accounted for 0.1 percent of the 1,333,822 active duty military personnel.
The increase in gender dysphoria diagnoses is out of balance with the increase in transgender people in the general population, which is attributed to growing acceptance in society.
Since 2020, a range of different gender-affirming procedures have been performed on military personnel, but the most popular has been facial reconstruction surgery.
These are designed to make people look more feminine or masculine and include reshaping the forehead and forehead, jaw and chin contours and removing or creating an Adam’s apple.
The next most popular surgery was a mastectomy, or breast removal, with 192 performed since 2021.
Rarer surgeries include a vaginectomy, an operation to remove all or part of the vagina, a clitoroplasty, a procedure to create a clitoris, and a scrotoplasty – the rearrangement of the labia to create a scrotum.
According to Mayo Clinic, three individuals also completed gender-affirming voice training in 2022, which helps transgender people tailor their voices to communication patterns that match their gender identity.
Two unclassified operations also took place between 2022 and 2023.
Individuals must be at least 17 years old to join the U.S. military.