U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took a page out of his boss’s playbook when he took to social media late Saturday to hurl insults at a sitting judge who granted an indefinite injunction against President Donald Trump’s attempted ban on transgender volunteers and service members in the military.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes issued an injunction against the ban, writing in her 75-page decision, “The Military Ban is soaked in animus and dripping with pretext. Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact.”
Trump attempted to force the ban through in a Jan. 27 executive order, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness‚” which stated that “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
Infuriated by Judge Reyes’ injunction, Hegseth lashed out on X to criticize the decision, writing, “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.”
Hegseth’s post seems to indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of the role the judiciary plays in a healthy democracy (judges are not required to demonstrate experience in every field they may potentially hear cases in). It’s also being criticized as transphobic, because Hegseth is suggesting that Judge Reyes could only have arrived at her decision because of a personal bias born from her own identity and not because of her legal expertise. In 2023, Reyes, a lesbian, became the first openly LGBTQ person to serve as a district court judge, but she does not use she/they pronouns.
Hegseth had already posted a response to the decision earlier in the week, writing simply, “We are appealing this decision, and we will win.”
