Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday said the judge who ruled that the Pentagon must allow transgender troops should report to military bases since she is “now a top military planner.”
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary injunction last week blocking the Pentagon from enforcing President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
Trump’s Jan. 27 order said “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service” and instructed the Department of Defense to update its medical standards for military service and pronoun policies.
The president’s order said that “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.”
In her ruling, the judge said Trump’s order contains language that is “unabashedly demeaning,” adding that the policy “stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit.”
Hegseth responded to the ruling on the social media platform X.
“Since ‘Judge’ Reyes is now a top military planner, she/they can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute High Value Target Raids…after that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare,” he wrote.
The judge delayed her order until Friday morning to allow time for the Trump administration to appeal, which it said it would do.
Reyes said in her decision that the executive order likely poses constitutional rights violations.
“The court knows that this opinion will lead to heated public debate and appeals. In a healthy democracy, both are positive outcomes,” Reyes wrote. “We should all agree, however, that every person who has answered the call to serve deserves our gratitude and respect.”
“Indeed, the cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed – some risking their lives – to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them,” the judge added, noting that the defendants, on the other hand, “have not shown they will be burdened by continuing the status quo pending this litigation, and avoiding constitutional violations is always in the public interest.”
