Within a week of taking office in January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that called for transgender individuals to be forced out of the military.

A report published this week revealed that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has developed a plan aimed at effecting their removal. 

Financial incentive offered

The Associated Press cited an unnamed senior Defense Department (DOD) official who explained that commanders will be told to identify transgender personnel.

Those individuals will then be ordered to report for medical checks, after which they are to be discharged from military service.

Active-duty transgender troops will have until June 6 to voluntarily come forward while those in the National guard face a July 7 deadline. Those who take advantage of the offer will receive twice the separation pay which they would normally be entitled to.

Another DOD figure who spoke on the condition of anonymity stated that an earlier plan to comb through the health records of personnel has been scrapped.

Hegseth takes hard line

The Associated Press noted that Hegseth highlighted the Trump administration's pivot away from left-wing policies during a speech in Tampa, Florida earlier this month.

"No more dude in dresses, we’re done with that s--t," Hegseth said on May 6 while addressing attendees at the Special Operations Forces Week 2025.

"Everything starts and ends with warriors, from training to the battlefield," he declared. " “We are leaving wokeness and weakness behind."

"No more pronouns. No more climate change obsession. No more emergency vaccine mandates," the secretary of Defense added.

Supreme Court lifts injunction on ban

Hegseth's remarks came the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a lower court's injunction which prevented Trump's transgender military ban from going into effect.

Supreme Court rules Trump trans in military ban to proceedhttps://t.co/511u13SXNT

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) May 6, 2025

"The government’s arguments are not persuasive, and it is not an especially close question on this record," Fox News quoted U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle as writing in support of his now-scuttled injunction.

While Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson wished to uphold Settle's order, all six Republican-appointed members of America's highest judicial body disagreed.