Trump signs 4 new executive orders, transforming military

In his first week in office, President Donald Trump has signed a multitude of new executive orders that have the potential to significantly transform the Department of Defense (DOD).

The new orders prevent transgender people from openly serving in the military, approve the process of developing a missile defense shield to protect the U.S., reinstate service members that voluntarily left or were forced out of the military over COVID-19 vaccine mandates, and eliminate every diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) office within the DOD and Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the U.S. Coast Guard. All four were signed on January 27, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first formal day in office.

He also directed Secretary Hegseth to set new military preparedness requirements.

In the executive order banning transgender people from openly serving in the armed forces, Trump said “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”

The new order makes a very broad argument against gender identity.

According to a 2021 DOD Office of People Analytics report on Workplace and Gender Relations of Military Members, which surveyed 98, 690 military members, 0.4% identified as transgender, while 1.2% said their gender at birth did not match their current gender identity.

"Expressing a false 'gender identity' divergent from an individual's sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service," the order reads. "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."

At least one lawsuit against the executive order has already been filed as of January 28.

President Trump also signed an executive order directing the Pentagon to immediately “an Iron Dome for America,” a missile defense system that would protect Americans from potential “ballistic, hypersonic, cruise missiles” and other space-based attacks from “peer, near-peer and rogue adversaries.” It would be modeled after the one that Israel has used during its war with Hamas and other Iran-backed proxies. The project was discussed during the Reagan administration but was never developed.

The president also made good on a campaign promise that he would ensure service members who were either dismissed or left the military after refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine will be reinstated. In his order, Trump ordered that the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to “take all necessary action permitted by law to make reinstatement available to all members of the military (active and reserve) who were discharged solely for refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and who request to be reinstated.”

The order also states that any member wishing to rejoin be allowed to retain their former rank and receive full back pay, benefits, bonus payments or compensation, allowing those members who provide statements that they voluntarily left the service or allowed their service to lapse according to appropriate procedures, rather than be vaccinated under the vaccine mandate, to return to service with no impact on their service status, rank, or pay.

“The vaccine mandate was an unfair, overbroad, and completely unnecessary burden on our service members,” Trump said. “Further, the military unjustly discharged those who refused the vaccine, regardless of the years of service given to our Nation, after failing to grant many of them an exemption that they should have received.”

The executive order banning DEI programs bars the Pentagon, Armed Forces and related educational institutions from promoting or advancing “un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist and irrational theories,” including suggesting the U.S.’s founding documents were “racist,” “sexist,” or pushing “gender ideology.” The order also directs Hegseth to set in motion an “internal review that documents actions taken in pursuit of DEI initiatives, including all instances of race and sex discrimination and activities designed to promote a race- or sex-based preferences system,” which is to be delivered to the Defense chief within 90 days.