Court blocks Pete Hegseth servicemember ban that is 'soaked in animus'

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Hegseth is a bigoted asshole who hates transexuals and homosexuals. This policy is horrible.

Court blocks Pete Hegseth servicemember ban that is 'soaked in animus' #RawStory

— #TuckFrump (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2026-06-01T17:40:23.000Z

https://www.rawstory.com/court-blocks-hegseth-transgender-policy/

A federal appeals court on Monday blocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's ban on transgender servicemembers, ruling the policy is driven by unconstitutional animus — and torching the government's legal strategy along the way.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed a preliminary injunction protecting currently serving troops from the Hegseth Policy — the February 2025 Pentagon directive implementing President Trump's executive order barring from service anyone with a history of gender dysphoria. The court vacated the injunction for prospective recruits.

Writing for the majority, Circuit Judge Wilkins found the policy "both arbitrary and based upon animus" — driven by what he called a "bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group." The government, he noted, never contested that the plaintiff servicemembers — who have collectively served 130 years and earned more than 80 commendations — "served honorably" and "satisfied the rigorous standards" required of them.

The majority were withering in their criticism of the government's courtroom performance. Rather than defend the policy on its merits, the administration's "strategy seems to be one of willful ignorance," the court wrote, deflecting from the executive order's explicit language targeting people who express a "false gender identity." In the majority's plain-language summary of what that order actually proclaims, Trump "labeled transgender persons as dishonorable, undisciplined, arrogant, selfish liars." The government offered no evidence to back that up.

The ruling echoed District Judge Ana Reyes' original March 2025 finding that the ban is "soaked in animus and dripping with pretext" — and called it an "unadulterated expression of animus."

[Bayard]

1. Another judge for trump to declare war on

[Justice matters.]

2. And to lose it like the pathetic loser con-man he is.

But a very, very dangerous loser.

[slightlv]

3. The magas won't comprehend

The ruling..animus is too alien a word for them

[CaptainTruth]

5. Soaked in animals?

[Just Jerome]

4. Wait...

Soaked in what?

[Grokenstein]

6. "the administration's 'strategy seems to be one of willful ignorance'"

Bingo. That's the cult's entire personality.

[Martin Eden]

7. Some guardrails are holding

But we have to win elections, or those guardrails against fascism will ultimately be removed.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

8. Hegseth and Stephen Miller.. worthless pos

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. Hegseth axed women and minorities from Navy promotions --and tried to slip in his own aide

Hegseth is a racist sexist asshole

Hegseth axed women and minorities from Navy promotions —and tried to slip in his own aide #RawStory

— #TuckFrump (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2026-06-01T18:08:39.000Z

https://www.rawstory.com/pete-hegseth-military-promotion/

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blocked the promotions of at least seven Navy officers hand-picked by a board of senior admirals, removing all women and most minority candidates from the list of nominees for promotions.

The intervention left a slate of 22 one-star admiral nominees that includes no women, despite females making up roughly 21 percent of the active-duty Navy, and only two nonwhite officers, despite racial minorities accounting for approximately 38 percent of the force, reported the New York Times.

At least two of the removed officers are women, two are Black men, and three are white men.

Four current and former defense officials, speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive personnel matters, said Hegseth's actions are highly unusual and appear to breach Pentagon rules, which permit the defense secretary to remove officers from promotion lists only when new information raises specific questions about their fitness to serve — not on ideological grounds.

Internal records suggest some officers were targeted because their names appeared on a website devoted to identifying "woke" military personnel, with infractions as minor as having served as a diversity liaison officer two decades ago. One highly regarded officer — a nuclear-trained surface warfare officer and former aide to a four-star admiral — was pulled from the list shortly after her name surfaced on the site for that decades-old role.

Hegseth also pushed senior Navy officials to place Capt. William Francis Jr., a Navy SEAL who serves as Hegseth’s special assistant, on the one-star list, but his lack of command experience made him ineligible for promotion and he was not selected, according to current and former Navy officials.