White House Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Ensures Military Excellence and Readiness

PRIORITIZING SERVICEMEMBER INTEGRITY, LETHALITY, AND HEALTH: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order directing the Department of Defense to update its guidance regarding trans-identifying medical standards for military service and to rescind guidance inconsistent with military readiness.

• The Executive Order will require the Secretary of Defense to do the following:
  • Update all Department of Defense medical standards to ensure they prioritize readiness and lethality.
  • Take action to end the use of invented and identification-based pronouns in the Department of Defense.

• The Executive Order also prohibits males from using or sharing sleeping, changing, or bathing in facilities designated for females.

• The provisions in the Executive Order also apply to the Coast Guard.

• The Executive Order revokes Biden Administration Executive Order 14004 and all policies, directives, and guidance pursuant to that order.
  • Executive Order 14004 called for accommodating "gender identity" in the military—to the detriment of military readiness and unit cohesion.

RESTORING SANITY IN OUR MILITARY: During the Biden Administration, the Department of Defense allowed gender insanity to pervade our military organizations, family, and culture. This included not only permitting the military to increase the number of individuals not physically or mentally prepared to serve, but also ordering the Department of Defense to pay for servicemembers' transition surgeries, as well as those of their dependent children—at a cost of millions of dollars to the American taxpayer.

• The United States imposes rigorous standards on all military servicemembers to ensure they are prepared to take on the challenges required of them.
  • Fitness, health, welfare, and readiness standards must ensure that our military members are able to deploy, fight, and win.
  • On the battlefield there can be no accommodation for anything less than resilience, strength, and the ability to withstand extraordinary physical demands.
  • Individuals who are unable to meet these requirements are unable to serve in the military. This has been the case for decades.

• Unit cohesion requires high levels of integrity and stability among servicemembers.
  • It can take a minimum of 12 months for an individual to complete treatments after transition surgery, which often involves the use of heavy narcotics.
  • During this period, they are not physically capable of meeting military readiness requirements and require ongoing medical care. This is not conducive for deployment or other readiness requirements.

A LETHAL FIGHTING FORCE: President Trump's priority to have a ready, able, and lethal military will remain a core tenant of his second term.

• During his first term in 2018, President Trump's Department of Defense took action to ensure trans-identifying servicemembers did not serve in capacities that undermined unit cohesion and lethality.