OPINION:
President Trump vowed to make our military great again. That’s why, in January, the president ordered an end to social experimentation and a restoration of the “warrior ethos” throughout the service branches.
Warriors don’t have pronouns in their bios. They aren’t men who think they’re women, or women who think they’re men. Personnel obsessed with such thoughts are distracted from achieving the military’s mission of winning battles.
Regardless of one’s opinion of the connection between transgenderism and mental illness, there can be no justification for sticking American taxpayers with the bill for cosmetic surgeries unrelated to combat injury.
It was President Barack Obama’s radical 2016 order that opened the public purse to pay for transition procedures. When Mr. Trump became the 45th president, he restored the status quo.
Then President Joe Biden reversed Mr. Trump’s reversal. Thanks to November’s election result, we’re back once again to the original, sane policy. This back-and-forth is appropriate among commanders in chief elected to implement an agenda.
It’s not appropriate when unelected jurists like Ana Reyes insert themselves into the democratic process. Mr. Biden cast her in the role of U.S. district judge two years ago. She was a left-wing activist on the board of the “Center for Gender and Refugee Studies” who checked the key demographic boxes of being a Hispanic and a lesbian.
Last week, her honor issued a nationwide decree restoring the Biden-era policies voters just rejected. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mocked the decision on X, pointing out the judge’s lack of competence to make such a judgment.
“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.
Mr. Hegseth, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was especially snarky with Judge Reyes given her inappropriate behavior on the bench. The Justice Department filed a complaint with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals over her “hostile and egregious misconduct” when she demeaned Jason Lynch, a University of Virginia graduate, who was defending the Pentagon’s position.
According to the transcript, she said: “I made a change to my standing order when I was in the back. My new standing order says that no one who has graduated from UVA Law School can appear before me. So, I need you to sit down.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi expressed her frustration on Fox News: “Judge Reyes made personal attacks on Pete Hegseth in court, and she’s trying to control military readiness. You can’t do this.”
The Defense Department is following the administration’s legal strategy of complying with the letter of these lawless court orders while searching for other avenues to achieve the same outcome. Pentagon officials prepared a memo on Friday directing a review of medical records for evidence of gender dysphoria so that personnel exhibiting such symptoms can be separated from the military.
It also directs soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines to “abide by the standards of their biological sex” when it comes to grooming, fitness and use of shower facilities. The memo is currently on hold, but it announces what will be expected “when the court order is modified or lifted.”
The assumption is either a higher court or Congress will soon step in to relieve Ms. Reyes of her command.
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