How the military is dealing with Hegseth's order to remove transgender troops

WASHINGTON — The military services scrambled Friday to nail down details and put together new guidance to start removing transgender troops from the force.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a memo released late Thursday, reinstated orders issued earlier this year that said ''expressing a false gender identity divergent from an individual's sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service."

His new order gives active duty troops until June 6 to identify themselves as transgender and voluntarily begin to leave the service. National Guard and Reserve troops have until July 7.

Army Maj. Alivia Stehlik, who served in the infantry and is now a physical therapist, will be eligible to retire in three years but doesn't want to be forced out for being a transgender service member.

''I still have a job to do,'' she said. ''My command expects me to show up and be an officer and do my job because I'm the only person at my unit who can do what I do.''

The military services were rushing to put out new guidance to help commanders work through the process, including what to do in more complex situations, such as if any of the troops are deployed, at sea or may require special orders or funding to meet the deadlines.

Here's a look at the issue and what happens next:

What is going on with banning transgender troops?

In 2015, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter broached the idea of lifting the ban on transgender troops and allowing them to serve openly, which raised concerns among military leaders. He set up a study, and in June 2016 announced the ban was over.

Reinstating that ban has long been a goal for President Donald Trump.

Six months into his first term, Trump announced he was not going to allow transgender people to serve in the military ''in any capacity.'' That set off a roughly two-year struggle to hammer out the complex details of how that would work, even as legal challenges poured in.

The Pentagon eventually laid out a policy that allowed those currently serving to stay and continue with plans for hormone treatments and gender transition if they had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. But it barred new enlistments of anyone with gender dysphoria who was taking hormones or had transitioned to another gender.

Gender dysphoria occurs when a person's biological sex does not match up with their gender identity.

That ban was overturned by then-President Joe Biden. When Trump took office again this year, he directed Hegseth to revise the Pentagon's policy on transgender troops.

In late February, Pentagon leaders ordered the services to set up procedures to identify troops diagnosed with or being treated for gender dysphoria by March 26. And it gave them 30 days to begin removing those troops from service.

A flurry of lawsuits stalled the ban. But on Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration could enforce the ban, while other legal challenges proceed.

How many transgender troops are there?

There are about 2.1 million active duty, Guard and Reserve troops.

According to the Defense Department, about 1,000 service members have voluntarily identified themselves as transgender and will now begin the process of leaving the military. And while the totals are early estimates, as many as 500 of those are Army soldiers, hundreds are in the Navy and at least 50 are Marines.

Defense officials say troops began to self-identify after the February order, going to their commanders and filing out forms. That process stopped in late March due to the lawsuits, but officials said Friday they were dusting off those files and figuring out how to proceed.

Still, exactly how many troops may be affected is complicated, and the military services are grappling with how to identify and remove them all.

Defense officials have said that 4,240 troops currently serving in active duty, the National Guard and Reserve have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria And they contend that, as of late last year, about 3,200 service members had received gender-affirming hormone therapy from 2015 to 2024, and about 1,000 received gender-affirming surgery.

Previously, however, estimates of transgender troops have hovered between 9,000 and 12,000. And they could range from people who haven't been officially diagnosed or aren't taking medication to those who are taking medication, have undergone surgery or are in the process of transitioning to their preferred gender.

In March 2018, then-Defense Secretary James Mattis released a memo with unprecedented details on the data. It said, at that time, there were 8,980 service members who identified themselves as transgender and 937 had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Is military separation voluntary or not?

Hegseth's latest memo sets up two distinct processes, but the details remained a bit uncertain.

Service members who voluntarily identify themselves to commanders would likely be able to receive some type of separation pay, which could include cashing out leave time that hasn't been used or bonuses that haven't yet been paid.

After June 6, the department will go through medical records to find any other troops who have been diagnosed with or treated for gender dysphoria and force them to leave the service. Those troops may not qualify for some of that additional pay.

The Pentagon policy, as written earlier this year, would allow for limited exemptions.

That includes transgender personnel seeking to enlist who can prove on a case-by-case basis that they directly support warfighting activities, or if an existing service member diagnosed with gender dysphoria can prove they support a specific warfighting need, never transitioned to the gender they identify with and proves over 36 months they are stable in their biological sex ''without clinically significant distress.''

If a waiver is issued, the applicant would still face a situation where only their biological sex was recognized for bathroom facilities, sleeping quarters and even in official recognition, such as being called ''Sir'' or ''Ma'am.''

What will it mean?

Over the years, transgender troops have been serving effectively in all of the services, according to military leaders, who told Congress they were not seeing any problems. They have ranged from rank-and-file enlisted members to elite special operations forces.

The troops and activist groups argue that removing transgender service members also hurts their units and military readiness more broadly.

Stehlik, who has been in the military since she went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2004, transitioned in 2017, while serving in the Army. She said that for her and others who haven't hit their 20-year retirement milestone, being kicked out would mean a major loss of benefits, including a pension and health insurance.

Sarah Klimm, a transgender Marine who served for 23 years, retired just as the end of the ban was announced in 2016, so was never able to serve openly.

Now a policy analyst for Minority Veterans of America, she said that in the past nine years, there haven't been any of the unit cohesion problems that some feared.

Klimm said ousting members is going to hurt military readiness. ''Senior enlisted side and senior officer ranks — that's a lot of time and money put into them,'' she said. ''You don't just backfill it.''

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Associated Press writer Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, contributed to this report.