Navy and Marine Corps separation boards are repeatedly voting to keep transgender service members despite Pentagon rules that leave them almost no choice but to recommend discharge, according to a new report.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the policy in blunt terms during a September “State of the Force” address at Marine Corps Base Quantico.
“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” Hegseth told the audience, describing the people he said had no place in the military under the Trump administration’s push for higher standards and the end of woke ideology.
.@SECWAR “It’s worth saying again so that the fake news understands it.
We are no longer the woke department or the weak department… no fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdoes, no wimps, no radicals—JUST WARRIORS.” https://t.co/6pGxRUK47r
— DOW Rapid Response (@DOWResponse) September 30, 2026
The boards were created to process remaining cases after President Donald Trump’s executive order and Hegseth’s guidance barred service by those with “gender dysphoria” or related treatments.
Many of the roughly 4,200 openly transgender troops identified by the Pentagon accepted separation payments and left, but some stayed and demanded the peer-review process.
The boards, staffed by everyday uniformed personnel and given instructions that any evidence of transgender status requires dismissal regardless of performance, have not followed orders in most Navy and Marine cases.
The New York Times found these boards voted to retain the member in nine of 12 proceedings.
Outsiders, including spouses, are barred from the proceedings, and the Pentagon has not released official tallies.
The figures came from interviews with participants and lawyers.
New York Times military correspondent Dave Philipps described the process to CNN.
“So what’s interesting is these boards are set up sort of like jury duty to pull every day Marines and sailors and have them apply the rules, and kick trans service members out. And these rules are written so narrowly that they’re really left with no choice,” he said.
“If anyone has any sign of being transgender, even if they’re a decorated war hero or a really needed highly-trained technician, the juries have no leeway. If transgender, then you must throw them out. But that’s not what these boards are doing.”
Philipps continued, “All of a sudden, they are looking at these rules, realizing that they’re given no choice, and then they’ve been voting over and over — about three out of every four times — to keep these transgender soldiers and sailors and Marines in uniform, which is basically them quietly defying orders.”
“I think what the boards are doing is saying, ‘Look, we’re being presented with someone who is good at their job, has never broken any rules, and in some cases, is a highly-valued member of the military. And we’re being told to throw them out,’ and they’re just saying, ‘No.’ In fact, in some cases, in the Marine Corps, I saw paperwork where they actually scratched out the instructions on their paperwork that said, ‘You must discharge this person.’ And instead they just voted to keep them.”
Those votes are only recommendations. Branch secretaries appointed by the administration review them and can reverse the outcome.
Philipps noted the pattern is not uniform.
The Army, the first service to begin hearings, initially discharged nearly everyone, around 95 percent or higher, though more retention recommendations have appeared later.
Air Force boards have “overwhelmingly” voted for separation in the known cases reviewed so far.
One retained Marine, Staff Sgt. Damien Contreras, a supply and logistics specialist with three overseas deployments and a decade of service, told the Times that board members were simply “war fighters looking at war fighters.”
“I was shocked at first, but when you come down to it, it makes sense,” Sergeant Contreras told the NYT. “You have war fighters looking at war fighters,” he said. “They see I’ve always done my job, I’ve deployed, I’ve mentored other Marines, followed the rules. They say, ‘Hey, this is a good Marine, why wouldn’t we retain him?’”
The administration has already limited the boards’ independence. An October 2025 Pentagon memo obtained by the Associated Press allows commanders to override a board’s recommendation to retain a transgender member, breaking with longstanding practice that boards act independently.
Service members appearing before boards have also been required to meet uniform and grooming standards corresponding to their sex assigned at birth, and refusal can be held against them.
About a quarter of the identified transgender troops took voluntary separation payments rather than face the process.
Legal challenges to the transgender troop ban continue, but the Supreme Court has allowed it to remain in effect while litigation proceeds.
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