EO Highlights Hegseth’s Hypocrisy and Mirrors Project 2025
Delray Beach, FL – Truth Wins Out criticized a new Trump Administration Executive Order targeting transgender service members as hypocritical, bigoted and harmful for America’s military readiness. Truth Wins Out cross-referenced the EO’s language with Project 2025, a right-wing totalitarian plot to remake America, and concluded that Trump’s military directive was heavily influenced by this extremist document.
Considering the personal ethical failures of new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Truth Wins Out also marveled at the hypocrisy of an Executive Order that proclaimed, “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.”
“The LGBTQ community doesn’t need haughty lectures about honor, truth and discipline from the morally deficient Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,” said Truth Wins Out’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “It’s rich that the expected purge of honorable transgender service members would be carried out by an alleged abuser of women, serial adulterer and stumbling drunkard. This Project 2025-influenced directive is about appeasing right wing ideologues, not strengthening our military.”
The absurd EO doesn’t immediately exclude transgender people from serving, but it appears to set the table for a purge. The Pentagon now has 60 days to update its policy on medical standards and 30 days to present revised guidance on how to implement the order.
The EO’s language is an ideology-based directive that has no basis in fact. The EO states, “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the order added.
“This is a religious statement directly from Project 2025 and in direct contravention of modern medical science which acknowledges the existence of transgender people,” added TWO’s Besen. “This discriminatory sermon, disguised as a government document, flies in the face of the incontrovertible reality that transgender members of the military are serving this nation with honor and distinction. Sadly, the extremists promoting this purge love their backward ideology more than America’s national security.”
The Executive Order states:
“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. 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.”
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
The Executive Order is in line with the objectives outlined in Project 2025, a primarily fundamentalist Christian initiative led by The Heritage Foundation and 113 other right-wing organizations. Truth Wins Out’s research found that these groups collectively have an annual budget of more than $1.2 billion. If right-wing universities, that are part of Project 2025, are included, the annual budget reaches approximately $3.3 billion.
Project 2025 aims to implement policies that restrict the recognition of transgender identities and roll back protections for LGBTQ individuals. A TIME analysis found that nearly two-thirds of the executive actions Trump has issued mirror or partially mirror proposals from Project 2025.
“During the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump claimed he knew virtually nothing about Project 2025 or who was behind the document,” added TWO’s Besen. “He brazenly lied to the American people and now we are living in an Orwellian Project 2025 world.”
About Truth Wins Out
Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit organization that works to advance liberty and democracy, protect the rights of LGBTQ people and other minorities, combat religious extremism and fight against the spread of disinformation. We strive to build an enlightened and free world through education, advocacy, and public policy work.
