Updated September 08, 2025 at 05:01 AM ET
Eight years ago — under President Trump's first term — Air Force Master Sgt. Logan Ireland needed a doctor's note diagnosing him with gender dysphoria to continue serving his country.
Now, that same doctor's note is the reason why he's being kicked out of service.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon included gender dysphoria as one of the medical conditions that disqualify people from military service.
This policy goes further than Trump's first term and is now leaving thousands of openly trans service members, including Ireland, with no due process to save their jobs … and in some cases, without the benefits they were promised.
Reverse course
Before 2016, trans service members were not eligible for promotion and their colleagues were required to refer to them by their gender assigned at birth. People who transitioned before trying to enlist were considered unfit for service.
But on June 30, 2016, that changed.
President Obama's Defense Secretary Ash Carter lifted a ban on transgender service members, saying they could now serve openly.
The reasoning was that "the Defense Department and the military need to avail ourselves of all talent possible in order to remain what we are now — the finest fighting force the world has ever known," Carter said.
Researchers at RAND, Carter told reporters at the time, estimate that "about 2,500 people out of approximately 825,000 reserve service members are transgender, with the upper end of their range of estimates of around 7,000 in the active component and 4,000 in the reserves."
"You know, we're service members first. We all raise our right hand. We wear the same uniform. We deploy all over the world. We not only meet but exceed the standards. The only difference is we just happen to be transgender," Ireland said.
Then in 2017, Trump announced that the government will not allow transgender people to serve in the U.S. military.
Under the first Trump administration, if a trans person were already in the armed forces, they had two options: leave or get an official medical diagnosis for gender dysphoria, defined as the marked incongruence between a person's experienced gender and their gender assigned at birth. As long as they had that documented, trans service members could stay.
So, Ireland made an appointment with a doctor, even though he says it felt a little awkward.
"I've never felt necessarily dysphoric about who I am," Ireland, who works in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, says. "You know, I'm — I'm Logan. I happen to be born female, but I transitioned to male. And I'm just here living my life and doing my job."
In 2021, former President Biden repealed the ban. And Ireland figured the whole thing was settled.
Even when Trump was reelected a few years later and the ban was re-enacted, Ireland still thought he was safe.
"I figured all the things would just happen like last time — that I would be grandfathered [in] and we could still serve," Ireland said.
But the medical diagnosis he was required to get to continue serving was now being used against him.
And thanks to all of those doctor's appointments back in 2017, the Pentagon had a list now. It was all documented.
"It doesn't seem real. It's been a feeling of being kicked down, being betrayed," Ireland said.
A predetermined outcome
"It's going to be a completely unfair process," says Priya Rashid, legal director of the National Institute of Military Justice Transgender Representation Project.
Rashid says a few of her clients even made appointments after Trump's re-election to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis so they could be grandfathered in before the second ban took place.
"So, we have clients that said, 'I wouldn't have come out. I only came out because I thought that the ban was going to be the same.'"
Rashid has been helping her clients navigate an early exit from military service. She says the ban has already been traumatic for them. But recent moves by the Air Force have added insult to injury — starting with the separation pay.
In early August, the Air Force said it would deny transgender troops early retirement benefits and was moving to revoke requests already approved. Service members who have served between 15 and 18 years ordinarily would qualify for the benefits automatically.
Now, the transgender service members will be faced with the choice of either taking a lump-sum separation payment offered to junior troops or be removed from the service.
Meaning, if they try to stay and fight the ban, they get nothing.
And what's more, says Rashid, is that the payment comes with conditions.
"Pay means that you're being paid and you don't have to return it. What these people are actually getting is a zero interest early loan on their disability and their accrued entitlements. So, when they get older and they're this older veteran who needs medical and financial support, they are not going to get their accrued benefits because ten years ago, when we kicked them out, we said 'here's your lump sum.'"
On top of the benefits being revoked, the Air Force also recently announced that transgender airmen will no longer have the chance to argue before a board of their peers for the right to continue serving.
The separation boards, which are supposed to be independent, "must recommend separation of the member" if the airman has a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, according to an August 12 memo.
"We had no idea that when we opened that document that they were going to fundamentally change the rules of the way they conduct long standing boards for everyone," says Rashid. "And that is not something I have ever seen before. That is not something that the other services have ever done before. This document really showcased that the rules are not going to apply to these people. They will not be given a fair trial. The outcome will be predetermined based on the diagnosis of gender dysphoria."
The new rules also prohibit any recordings of the hearings or the use of court reporters.
Rashid says that's illegal.
"In the Administrative Procedure Act, they are required to provide appeals," she says. "The transcript is the mechanism of appeal. So, like that's a First Amendment and a Fifth Amendment right of the public."
NPR reached out to the Air Force for comment but they have not responded.
A broken deal
Mick Wagoner, founder and executive director of Veterans Legal Support Network, says denying benefits after years of service sets a bad precedent.
"You know, it is a fundamental break with the quid pro quo promise of, you know, you serve, there's some there's some benefits on the end of that. And that's just a fundamental breaking of that social contract, if you will, that the military has."
Wagoner points out that, even for those who don't qualify for early retirement, there's still plenty at stake. Joining the military to pay for college is a common incentive. And if a servicemember is pushed out before a certain year of enlistment, they'll end up having to pay back that tuition.
Overall, Wagoner says the cumbersome effort to identify and remove transgender troops hurts mission readiness — the priority named in the executive action that banned them. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has listed "lethality, meritocracy, warfighting, accountability and readiness" as his top priorities for the armed forces. But Wagoner says this effort is counterproductive to those values.
"I think you just cut your nose to spite your face. You've got this expertise in so many fields. I've got a friend of mine. She is a lieutenant colonel in the Marines. She was enlisted. She transitioned. She fought in Fallujah. So, you know, when you talk about war fighters, people who actually fought. And she did."
Ireland, meanwhile, is trying to plan his future without his longtime career or the retirement pay he was counting on. He served in the Air Force for 15 years, met his wife there, served in Afghanistan and moved his family many times. It was his life.
"I look around my house, I look at the tattoos on my arms and my heart just breaks," he says. "It breaks because I gave so much of my life to the service. It's a core part of who I am."
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