Oh, boy… the schadenfreude is immaculate.
You know all about the transgender military ban, which I have been writing about for something like ten thousand thousand generations. It’s been a long, winding road, starting with an impotent Executive Order and Pete Hegseth asking, “How high, Mr. President?” and ending with… well, of course it hasn’t ended yet—and it probably won’t until the Supreme Court gins up the willpower to make an official rubber stamp ruling—but something particularly juicy may be right around the corner if we’re all very lucky.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, one of the federal judges central to the lawsuits filed over the military ban, has (more than once) made it clear that she believes there is no way the decision to ban trans Americans from the military is motivated by anything but malice. Lawyers from Trump’s Justice Department have failed spectacularly to persuade almost anybody that the ban isn’t, at its core, unconstitutional discrimination… besides, of course, the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, who think it’s perfectly legitimate to greenlight discrimination and sort it out in the courts many months or years later, after irreparable harm has been suffered.
Per The Advocate, on Wednesday—after receiving a request from the Justice Department for summary judgment without a trial—Judge Reyes decided that she would very much like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, of quietly walked back free testosterone policy fame, to explain in his own words how this ban isn’t motivated by naked animus.
“I am very aware that he is the secretary of defense and has a lot of constraints on his time, but he has time to tweet, and he has time to put out videos, and he has time to speak to the generals,” Reyes remarked. When Justice Department attorney Jared Littman suggested that Hegseth’s personal statements about trans people weren’t relevant, Reyes added, “That’s not the case for an animus finding. We know that.”
Referring to a specific Quantico meeting Hegseth attended, she said, aloud, “I think one of the things he said was, ‘No [T-slur]s.’ I understand ‘[T-slur]’ to be a derisive term for trans individuals.”
Okay! Say it with your chest, woman, goodness. What a “she’s a li’l confused, but she’s got the spirit” moment, huh? You know what… I forgive her. I have the authority, as a trans woman, to generate T-slur passes, and so I absolve Judge Reyes of her inappropriate use of the T-slur. That said, if she could please stop saying it now, that would be awesome!
“The government got up here and told me that when he tweeted transgender people are excluded from the military, he did not mean transgender people are excluded from the military,” Reyes pointed out, referencing a social media snafu where Hegseth reposted a Pentagon tweet (don’t you think reality feels like a fever dream sometimes?) declaring that trans people were now barred from military service without any exemptions.
Social media chicanery like this, Judge Reyes argues, warrants an explanation from Hegseth, one of the masterminds behind the ban.
Judge Reyes also pointed out that Hegseth’s brief free testosterone for troops campaign, which was silently ended shortly after it was announced (probably because somebody realized this exact thing would happen as a result), calls into question the Justice Department’s insistence that paying for trans troops’ medical transitions would be too costly for the Department of Defense.
Never mind however many trillions of dollars Uncle Sam shells out annually for vital dick hardening medicine that our impotent war dogs crave.
The end result is that the plaintiffs, the trans troops impacted by this ban who are suing the state, are allowed to ask Hegseth ten questions regarding the ban. Judge Reyes acknowledged that forcing a cabinet member to sit for a deposition could be problematic, but made it very clear that if Hegseth’s verified responses are vague or evasive, she will happily force him to sit for a proper deposition.
I’m eager to hear what that sniveling worm has to say for himself, and I desperately hope he tries to wriggle his way out of it and gets hit with a subpoena and forced to give an oral deposition about his and Trump’s evil plans. Hegseth’s responses are due by November 5, and Judge Reyes has scheduled trial proceedings for January of next year.
