Jo Yurcaba

A federal judge Tuesday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from enlisting or serving in the military. 

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes of Washington, D.C., ruled that the ban violates the equal protection clause because it discriminates based on transgender status and sex. 

Reyes said the ban “is soaked in animus.”

“Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact,” she wrote.

She added, “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.”

Reyes delayed the effect of her preliminary injunction until Friday to give the administration time to appeal it. She added in her order that the government “could have crafted a policy that balances the Nation’s need for a prepared military and Americans’ right to equal protection.”

“They still can,” she said. “The Military Ban, however, is not that policy. The Court therefore must act to uphold the equal protection rights that the military defends every day.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice called Reyes’ order “the latest example of an activist judge attempting to seize power at the expense of the American people who overwhelmingly voted to elect President Trump.” 

“The Department of Justice has vigorously defended President Trump’s executive actions, including the Defending Women Executive Order, and will continue to do so,” the spokesperson said in an email. 

Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is representing several trans service members and trans people who want to enlist in a lawsuit, said Reyes acted quickly “to shield our troops from the harmful effects of this irrational ban.” 

“The ban’s harmful impact and rushed implementation show that it was motivated by prejudice,” Minter said in a statement. “Our plaintiffs include lifelong military personnel who served in combat in Afghanistan, come from multi-generation military families, and have received honors like the Bronze Star. This ban is unjustifiable and attacks brave servicemembers, recruits, and families who sacrifice so much for our country.” 

Trump’s order goes much further than a similar policy he issued during his first term, which prohibited trans people from enlisting and allowed those already serving to continue doing so in a manner consistent with their gender identities and continue receiving transition-related medical care if they came out before the ban. Service members who came out after it were not allowed to receive such medical care and had to continue serving in a manner consistent with their assigned sexes at birth. 

The new policy prohibits trans people from enlisting and requires the military to identify all trans service members who have “a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria,” which is the medical term for the severe emotional distress caused by the misalignment between one’s gender identity and birth sex, according to a memo the Defense Department filed in the lawsuit last week. 

Those identified by the Pentagon will be disqualified from service and must be removed from their jobs. They will receive honorable separations unless their records reflect otherwise, according to the memo.

In January, two national LGBTQ legal organizations, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders and the the National Center for Lesbian Rights, filed suit against Trump’s executive order on behalf of six active-duty trans service members and two trans people seeking to enlist. They argued that the ban discriminates against trans people and “reflects animosity toward transgender people because of their transgender status.”

The order, the lawsuit said, declared that being trans fundamentally “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

The order said, “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” 

Reyes pushed Justice Department attorney Jason C. Lynch on that language during preliminary hearings last month, asking repeatedly whether he believed it showed animus against the trans community. 

“Would it be fair to say that excluding a group of people from military service based on unsupported assertions that they are liars, immodest, lack integrity, are undisciplined and are dishonorable, would you agree with me that — particularly where there’s no support for any of those assertions — that that is animated by animus?” Reyes asked Lynch, who declined to answer. 

Multiple Defense Department memos also say enlisted service members will be required to use pronouns and salutations, such as “sir” and “ma’am,” that align with their birth sexes. Reyes pressed Lynch about how pronoun usage affects military readiness. 

“I don’t —” Lynch said, before the judge interrupted him.

“Because it doesn’t,” Reyes said. “Because any commonsense rational human being understands that it doesn’t.”

Transgender veterans will no longer be provided hormone therapy through the Department of Veterans Affairs, unless they were already receiving such care through the department or the military, the VA announced Monday.

The reversal of the decade-old policy comes just days after the VA rescinded a 2018 directive that required the department to treat trans veterans “with respect and dignity.” The directive required coverage of mental health care, hormone therapy, pre-surgery evaluation and care after surgery as medically necessary. The VA has never covered gender-affirming surgery for veterans. 

The rescinded directive also required health care providers to address veterans by their gender identity, which included using their requested pronouns and preferred name.

According to Monday’s announcement, trans veterans who weren’t already receiving treatment for gender dysphoria, which is the medical term for the severe emotional distress caused by the misalignment between one’s gender identity and birth sex, will not be able to access it through the VA. 

“I mean no disrespect to anyone, but VA should not be focused on helping Veterans attempt to change their sex,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement Monday, adding that the “vast majority” of veterans and Americans agree, though he did not point to any data that supports that claim.

“All eligible Veterans — including trans-identified Veterans — will always be welcome at VA and will always receive the benefits and services they’ve earned under the law,” Collins said. “But if Veterans want to attempt to change their sex, they can do so on their own dime.” 

Any money saved by curtailing treatments for gender dysphoria “will be redirected to help severely injured VA beneficiaries — such as paralyzed Veterans and amputees — regain their independence,” the VA said.

In addition to ending coverage of hormone therapy for veterans who weren’t already receiving it, the VA will also no longer provide gender-affirming prosthetics, wigs or letters of support for veterans to access transition-related surgery outside of the VA.

Veterans who receive care in VA facilities will also be required to use “intimate spaces,” such as bathrooms and locker rooms, in accordance with their birth sex, the VA announced.

Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, condemned the VA’s announcement. 

“Transgender veterans share the same commitment and the same love of country as all other veterans,” she said in a statement. “They made the same sacrifices and are owed the same respect and care after their service. Despite this, the VA has decided to turn its back on transgender veterans who committed their lives to serving in our armed forces—complying with an Administration hellbent on harming and scapegoating the transgender community.”

The policy change was brought on by President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that there are only two, unchangeable sexes, the VA said. The executive order has resulted in sweeping changes regarding trans people across the federal government, from government web pages that mention trans people to passport policies. 

The VA has been providing treatment for gender dysphoria for more than a decade, according to the department’s announcement, which added that the Veterans Health Administration estimates indicate that less than one-tenth of 1% of the 9.1 million veterans enrolled in VA health care are trans, which would be about 9,100 veterans. That number is far lower than previous research has found. The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law estimated in 2014 that about 134,300 trans people are veterans or are retired from the Guard or Reserve, though it’s unclear if they would all be eligible for VA health care. 

Trump also issued an executive order prohibiting trans people from serving or enlisting in the military. The policy requires all trans people who are currently serving to be separated from the military by next month. Several trans service members and trans people who planned to enlist filed a lawsuit in January to block the policy, and a judge is expected to issue a decision in the case this week.

A majority of Americans, 58%, favor allowing openly trans people to serve in the military, though support has declined, from 66% in 2021 and 71% in 2019, according to Gallup data released last month. The drop was driven primarily by Republican survey respondents, Gallup found. 

In recent years, Republicans have increasingly supported policies that target transgender people, particularly trans youth, by prohibiting trans students from playing school sports on the teams that align with their gender identities and barring them from accessing transition-related health care. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton declared Friday that state court orders to change the sex markers on Texas birth certificates, driver’s licenses and other state-issued IDs are no longer valid.

State agencies have already prohibited transgender people from changing the sex markers on their birth certificates and driver’s licenses through internal policy changes last year. Paxton’s new directive requires them to go further and revert back any sex marker changes that were the result of court orders. The directive is the first of its kind nationwide and marks yet another escalation in the state’s nearly decadelong effort to restrict the rights of trans people. 

“There are only two sexes, and that is determined not by feelings or ‘gender theory’ but by biology at conception,” Paxton said in a statement Friday. “Radical left-wing judges do not have jurisdiction to order agencies to violate the law nor do they have the authority to overrule reality. In Texas, we will follow common sense and restore any documents that were wrongfully changed to be consistent with biology.”

Paxton’s directive came via a nonbinding legal opinion in response to a request from Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), in September. McCraw asked the attorney general whether Texas courts have the authority to order state agencies to change a person’s sex designation on government documents. If they don’t, McCraw continued, do agencies like DPS have the authority to revert back sex markers for trans Texans whose documents were changed by court orders?

McCraw said in his request that there has been a “years-long and state-wide effort to alter government records to reflect gender identity.” He added that judges who approve sex-marker changes on documents “may do so with no scrutiny whatsoever,” citing local news reports about lawyers helping trans clients update their Texas documents.  

Transgender advocates say IDs that accurately reflect a trans person’s gender identity are critical to their safety. Documents that show their birth sex and not their lived gender, they say, can cause problems while going through airport security and traveling, starting a new job — where their ID could out them as trans to an employer — voting in elections or interacting with law enforcement. 

However, McCraw said state documents are required to reflect sex, which he defined as “a binary and fixed biological fact” referring to the presence of two X chromosomes or the presence of a Y chromosome, and that accurate identification “has obvious implications for public safety.” Conservative officials have often cited a similar definition of sex, even though scientists estimate that 1.7% of people are born intersex, meaning they have sex characteristics that don’t fit typical definitions of male or female. 

Ash Hall, an LGBTQ policy and advocacy strategist for the ACLU of Texas, said nonbinding legal opinions, like Paxton’s, cannot supersede court orders.

“State agencies have no authority to retroactively change anyone’s valid legal documents,” Hall said in a statement. “If state agencies attempt to implement this non-binding opinion, it would be an unlawful waste of resources that will not hold up in court nor stand the test of time. We should all have identity documents that match who we are as a matter of basic safety and Paxton cannot erase transgender Texans’ right to exist.”

McCraw’s letter and Paxton’s legal opinion are the latest efforts from Texas officials to roll back the rights of trans Texans. 

In 2023, the state enacted legislation that prohibits transition-related care for minors and barred trans student athletes from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities. 

Many of the state’s policy changes targeting trans people have circumvented the legislature, by agencies choosing to change their policies internally or by Paxton issuing legal directives for them to do so. In March 2022, after state lawmakers failed to pass a bill restricting transition-related care for minors, Paxton issued a legal opinion and directive that resulted in the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services opening child abuse investigations into parents who were suspected of having provided such care to their minor children, though the directive was later blocked by a judge.

The Texas Department of Public Safety and Department of State Health Services also both quietly prohibited trans people from updating the sex markers on their driver’s licenses and birth certificates in August and September. The state justified those changes earlier this year citing an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that declares the federal government will recognize only two, unchangeable sexes. 

So far this year, Texas lawmakers have introduced nearly 200 bills targeting LGBTQ people, according to Equality Texas, a state LGBTQ advocacy group. 

Last week, Republican state Rep. Tom Oliverson filed a bill that could charge trans people with a state jail felony — punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000 — if they identify their birth sex incorrectly on state documents or to employers. The bill doesn’t have any other sponsors and is unlikely to pass, but it’s the first of its kind in the nation. 

Texas isn’t alone in its efforts to restrict IDs for trans people. Florida agencies rolled out similar policies last year, and, as a result, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has started invalidating drivers licenses it issued to trans people with updated sex markers and issuing them new licenses showing their birth sex.

A Texas state bill could charge transgender people with “gender identity fraud,” making it illegal to identify as trans on official documents and potentially leading to jail time. 

The bill, which was filed last week by Republican state Rep. Tom Oliverson, would make it a state jail felony if a person “knowingly makes a false or misleading verbal or written statement” by identifying their sex assigned at birth incorrectly to a governmental entity or to their employer. State jail felonies in Texas are punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.

Oliverson did not immediately return a request for comment. So far, the bill has no other co-sponsors, making it unlikely to pass, the Houston Chronicle reported. However, the bill is among the first of its kind nationally and is an example of how legislation targeting trans people has become more clear in its intent and more extreme in recent years, particularly in Texas. 

Last month, Texas state Rep. Brent Money, a Republican, filed a bill that would make it illegal for a health care provider to treat any patient, including adults, with puberty-suppressing medication, hormone therapy or surgeries if the purpose of the treatment is to affirm the patient’s gender identity. 

Money’s bill is a replica of a law enacted in 2023 that prohibits such treatments for minors. The text of the new bill shows the word “child” struck out and replaced with “person” to apply to adults. The bill would also prohibit medical institutions from receiving public funds if they provide any such treatments.  

Money did not immediately return a request for comment. After filing the bill, he said on X that the measure is intended to expand the law restricting care for minors.

“I want to make it clear that my heart goes out to those struggling with gender dysphoria,” he said, referring to the medical term for the severe emotional distress caused by the misalignment between one’s gender identity and birth sex. “These individuals deserve compassion, support, and real solutions to address their pain — not irreversible procedures that leave them scarred for life. This legislation isn’t about judgment; it’s about accountability.” 

He added that the bill targets doctors and “medical profiteers” who “exploit vulnerable people, pushing costly surgeries and lifetime pharmaceuticals for financial gain rather than offering genuine care.”

However, most, if not all, major medical associations in the U.S. — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association — support transition-related care for both minors and adults, and oppose restrictions on it. 

Multiple studies have found that access to transition-related care, including surgeries for adults, improves mental health outcomes. Last year, the National Center for Transgender Equality, which is now called Advocates for Trans Equality, released the largest nationwide survey of the trans community, with more than 90,000 respondents, and found that 94% reported that they were at least a little more satisfied with their lives. 

Texas has provided a blueprint over the last decade for states that have sought to restrict trans rights, becoming in 2017 one of the first states, alongside North Carolina, to consider a “bathroom bill,” which would’ve barred trans people from using the restrooms that align with their gender identities. 

The bill didn’t pass, but the state has enacted other measures targeting trans people. In March 2022, after failing to pass a bill restricting transition-related care for minors, the state’s attorney general issued a legal opinion that resulted in the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services opening child abuse investigations into parents who were suspected of having provided such care to their minor children.

The state went on to pass a transition-related care restriction, and it has also enacted a measure barring trans student athletes from playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities, among others. Additionally, the state recently announced that an executive order signed by President Donald Trump bars it from allowing trans people to update the gender marker on their Texas birth certificates, state IDs and driver’s licenses. 

So far this year, Texas lawmakers have introduced nearly 170 state bills targeting LGBTQ people, according to Equality Texas, a state LGBTQ advocacy group. These include a new bathroom bill supported by a majority of the Texas House.

owa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill Friday that strikes gender identity from the state’s civil rights law, making Iowa the first state to remove civil rights from a previously protected class.

The bill passed the Republican-majority state Senate, 33-15, along party lines Thursday. Less than an hour later, the House passed its version of the bill, 60-36, with five Republicans joining Democrats to vote against it. 

Reynolds, a Republican, said in a statement Friday that the bill “safeguards the rights of women and girls.” She said the civil rights code’s protections against discrimination based on gender identity “blurred the biological lines between the sexes,” and “forced Iowa taxpayers to pay for gender-reassignment surgeries.”

“We all agree that every Iowan, without exception, deserves respect and dignity,” she said. “What this bill does accomplish is to strengthen protections for women and girls, and I believe that it is the right thing to do.”

The Iowa Civil Rights Act broadly prohibits discrimination in many areas of life, including employment, housing, education and credit. In 2007, the state Legislature, which was then controlled by Democrats, passed a bill that extended those protections to LGBTQ people, adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected classes. 

The new law removes gender identity from the code. It also requires that birth certificates reflect a person’s sex assigned at birth and removes a clause that previously allowed a trans person to update the sex marker on their birth certificate if they had a notarized affidavit from a doctor and surgeon attesting that they had medically transitioned. 

The law also revises a measure Reynolds signed in 2023 that prohibits the instruction of sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through sixth grade to change “gender identity” to “gender theory,” which it defines as the concept that someone can have “an internal sense of gender that is incongruent with the individual’s sex” assigned at birth. Critics have called the measure a “don’t say gay” law.

Democratic Iowa state Rep. Aime Wichtendahl, the first trans person elected to the state’s General Assembly, said during the House debate Thursday that the bill “revokes protections to our homes and our ability to access credit. In other words, it deprives us of our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”

Wichtendahl added, through tears, that transitioning saved her life. 

“The sum total of every anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bill is to make our existence illegal, to force us back into the closet,” she said.

Republican state Sen. Jason Schultz, who introduced the Senate’s version of the bill, noted that the state’s civil rights code has been cited in some lawsuits and court decisions in favor of trans rights, including a 2023 decision that requires the state’s Medicaid program to cover transition-related care, the Des-Moines Register reported.

He also said that the code’s protections for trans people could be used against the state’s law prohibiting trans student athletes from participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identities and another law barring transition-related care for minors. 

“All these legal protections are at risk due to the inclusion of the words ‘gender identity’ in our code,” Schultz said Thursday.

More than 2,000 people rallied to protest the Senate vote Thursday, according to local reports and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa, with signs that read “Trans rights are human rights.” The crowd also booed and yelled at senators following their vote, the Des-Moines Register reported. 

Prior to signing the bill, Reynolds said it was meant to bring Iowa in line with federal law and the laws of most states. However, federal law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity following the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County.

State and local protections from discrimination based on gender identity vary, with 23 states explicitly prohibiting such discrimination in employment, 22 states prohibiting it in housing and 27 states prohibiting gender identity discrimination in public accommodations, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ think tank.

After Reynolds signed the bill Friday, Wichtendahl told NBC News it felt like a “gut punch,” and that she’s heard from trans constituents who are scared for their lives. She said her message to them is to stand together.

“Refuse to give in to despair, because the greatest act of rebellion that you can do in these dystopian times is to live your life unafraid and be happy,” she said. “And I know after yesterday, that’s a new level of challenge, but it’s the greatest act of rebellion, and the greatest thing that you can do for yourself right now is show the world that you are unafraid to live your life.”

A New York City doctor said he will continue providing gender-affirming treatments to his patients younger than 19 despite President Donald Trump’s executive order aiming to ban such care, because, the doctor said, these patients’ lives depend on it.

“Until somebody calls me away, I’m just going to keep doing it,” said Dr. Jeffrey Birnbaum, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist. He doesn’t think that will happen, he added, noting that New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a statement Monday telling doctors that state law requires them to continue providing such care.

However, as a result of the order and the decision by several hospitals to voluntarily cancel appointments for individuals 18 and younger, Birnbaum said his patients are scared. He said about 20 of his patients could be affected by the order.

“They’re terrified that their treatment is going to be interrupted, and they’re going to lose their treatment, plain and simple,” he said. “And for them, it’s life-sustaining.”

Trump’s order, “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” aims to prohibit federal funding from being used for transition-related care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery — for trans people under 19 years old. It also states that medical schools and hospitals receiving federal research or education grants have to “end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”

The White House announced Monday, about a week after Trump signed the order, that hospitals in New York City, Colorado, Virginia, Illinois, Pennsylvaniaand Washington, D.C., have either suspended or announced that they are reviewing their transition care programs for minors. On Tuesday, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles also announced that it was pausing the initiation of hormone therapy for gender-affirming care patients under 19.

Birnbaum said Trump’s executive order seeking to restrict care, along with another that describes the idea that someone can be trans as “gender ideology,” denies the realities of the people he treats every day.

“If somebody says the sky is green, just because they say it, doesn’t make the sky green,” Birnbaum said. “I’m looking at the medical literature, research that’s been done. I’m looking at real people in front of me. I’m not looking at some right-wing, religious ideologue who is referring to this as ‘gender ideology.’ It’s no ideology. They have the ideology. I’m dealing with science and medicine.”

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Trump’s executive order seeking to restrict trans care for those under 19 argues that the country has an obligation to protect children from “irreversible medical interventions.”

“Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding,” the order states, using inflammatory language to describe transition-related care.

Research shows that only a tiny percentage of minors in the U.S. access gender-affirming treatments. A study published in JAMA Pediatrics in January found that less than 0.1% of adolescents with private insurance are trans or gender-diverse and are prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy.

One of Birnbaum’s patients, Akoni Drysdale-Ash, a trans 17-year-old living in Brooklyn, said starting testosterone nearly three years ago has dramatically improved his quality of life. He said he felt a misalignment between his birth sex and gender identity around seventh grade, when he started having periods that made him feel “totally dissociated” from his body.

He compared not being able to access testosterone to trying to run a car on something other than gas. The idea of losing that access is scary, he said, even though he feels like his care is relatively protected in New York.

“It does leave you with fear, because it’s like you’re taking away my visibility,” Drysdale-Ash said. “You’re taking away my care when all I want to do is live. Sometimes getting that care is all people need to live, being themselves. If I can’t be myself, who else can I be?”

His mother, Jasmine Aldridge, added that her son hasn’t received any irreversible treatments. If he stops taking testosterone, for example, he will experience the puberty associated with his birth sex, undoing many of the changes brought on by testosterone.

In response to people who ask why trans minors can’t wait until they’re adults to receive transition care, Aldridge said, “There’s that reality of your child might not even be here to see 19 if you don’t support them.”

Standards of care developed by medical organizations, including WPATH, a nonprofit association dedicated to transgender medical care that develops guidance that is widely used by health care professionals, recommend that trans minors are treated on a case-by-case basis. 

The standards don’t recommend any medical transition prior to puberty. 

At the onset of puberty, minors can begin puberty blockers if they have persistent gender dysphoria, which is the severe emotional distress caused by the misalignment between one’s gender identity and birth sex. Teenagers might start hormone therapy, and, in rare cases, some teens may receive a double mastectomy, where both breasts are removed.

Most major medical associations, such as the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, support access to transition care for minors and oppose restrictions on it.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ legal advocacy group, filed a lawsuit to block Trump’s orders regarding trans care and “gender ideology” last week on behalf of two transgender young adults and five families of trans minors. Three Democratic states also sued Friday to block the transition care order. New York’s Letitia James and 12 other attorneys general issued a statement Wednesday reaffirming their commitment to protecting access to such care for minors.

The Department of Justice and White House did not immediately return requests for comment regarding the lawsuits.

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and health care strategist for Lambda Legal, noted that Trump signed a flurry of executive orders targeting trans rights during his first weeks in office — including a ban on trans people serving and enlisting in the military — which he said is proof that the order restricting care for minors is not actually about protecting children.

“They’re attacking adults as well,” he said, adding that the other executive orders targeting trans rights all “speak to gender identity being considered a false belief — that a person having a gender identity inconsistent or incongruent with your sex assigned at birth is something that is dishonorable, even in one’s private life. That’s the language of these executive orders, and the disdain, the cruelty just drips out of the page.”

As the legal battle begins to play out, Birnbaum said he’s shared the same message with many of his patients.

“I’m saying that this is also a safe space. We’re going to protect them,” he said. “We’re not going to interrupt their care, and we’re going to help sustain who they are as human beings, plain and simple.”

When Alivia Stehlik, an Army major, came out as a transgender woman in the spring of 2017, she said she was nervous about how her colleagues and other soldiers would react, especially because she’s a physical therapist.

“You have to physically touch most of your patients, and I had some nerves initially that folks would be uncomfortable,” she said. However, in the eight years since she came out, she said she’s been “overwhelmingly, pleasantly surprised at every single turn.” 

“My bosses, the people that I’ve worked with, the people who’ve worked for me, my patients — nobody cares that I’m trans,” she added. “They just see me as Major Stehlik or Dr. Stehlik. That’s it.”

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday barring trans people from serving openly and enlisting in the military. The policy argues that the medical and mental health care that some trans people need to treat gender dysphoria — the medical term for the distress caused by a misalignment between one’s gender identity and sex at birth — is inconsistent with the military’s high standards for  “troop readiness, lethality and cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity and integrity.” 

It’s unclear exactly how the order will affect the thousands of trans service members like Stehlik. Unlike a similar policy Trump issued in 2017 during his first term, this order says being trans fundamentally “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the order states. 

NBC News spoke to trans service members who could be affected by the order, and they all communicated a similar plan of action: They will continue doing their jobs, and they plan to fight the order.

“I’m just resolved,” said Stehlik, who is stationed at Fort Campbell on the border of Kentucky and Tennessee, when asked how she’s felt since Trump signed the order Monday. Stehlik was commissioned as an officer after graduating from West Point in 2008.

In the summer of 2018, just after she came out, Stehlik was deployed to treat soldiers in Afghanistan for nine months. She said that experience, combined with patches she wears on her uniform that show she went to specialized combat training schools, helps her patients trust her and make her good at her job.

“Trans folks are every bit as ready and every bit as deployable as anyone else,” she said. “We have to meet the same physical fitness standards, the same medical standards to be deployable. And even as we speak, there are trans service members deployed all around the world in harm’s way, having already met those standards to deploy.”

Six trans service members and two trans people who want to enlist sued the Trump administration Tuesday over the executive order.

Nicolas Talbott, a second lieutenant who has served in the Army Reserves for almost a year, said he joined the lawsuit because he fears the worst-case scenario: that Trump’s executive order will force all trans service members out of the military completely. 

“That’s going to have a huge impact, not only on myself personally — where I would be facing losing my job, losing my future career, losing all of the benefits that come with being a member of the military, which includes my health insurance — but this would be a huge impact on the United States military itself,” he said, adding that removing thousands of trans service members would hurt readiness overall. 

Talbott was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the 2017 Trump ban, which prevented Talbott from enlisting then. He said he decided to join the suit filed Tuesday because “it’s the right thing to do.”

“The ultimate goal is that we don’t want trans people or any other minority member of the military to have to face this every single time a new politician is elected into office,” he said. “Our service should not be contingent on who holds political power at the time.”

Like Talbott, this isn’t Navy Cmdr. Emily Shilling’s first go-round with a trans military ban. Shilling — who emphasized she was not speaking on behalf of the Navy or the Pentagon  — came out in 2019, two days after the first Trump ban took effect. As a result of the ban, she told NBC News in 2021, she was forced to live a double life: She was living as a trans woman in her personal life, but at work she had to continue serving as her birth sex. 

After Biden signed an executive order in 2021 allowing trans people to serve openly, she began to thrive, she said. She was promoted to commander, and she fought for and won her medical clearance to fly high-performance jets again, which she said set a precedent that allowed other trans service members to do the same. 

Since Monday, she said, she’s felt like she’s on a mission. In addition to serving for nearly two decades, she is also the president of Sparta, an advocacy organization for trans members of the military and veterans. She said she would like to have conversations with officials at the Pentagon or the White House about what real trans Americans and service members look like. 

“We’ve served openly for nearly a decade, and we’ve been able to show that all of the original arguments for why transgender service should not be made open are all just false,” she said. “Our medical costs are minimal. Our time being down is minimal, and the effect on unit cohesion, morale, it’s nonexistent.” 

Since last week, Trump has issued a number of executive orders targeting trans rights. Hours after his inauguration, he signed an order declaring that the U.S. government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and that “these sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality,” resulting in the State Department freezing all passport applications requesting a sex-marker change.