WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from military service on Tuesday, the latest in a string of legal setbacks for his sweeping agenda.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, D.C., ruled that Trump's order to exclude transgender troops from military service likely violates their constitutional rights. She was the second judge of the day to rule against the administration, and both rulings came within hours of an extraordinary conflict as Trump called for impeaching a third judge who temporarily blocked deportation flights, drawing a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.
Reyes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, delayed her order until Friday morning to give the administration time to appeal.
"The court knows that this opinion will lead to heated public debate and appeals. In a healthy democracy, both are positive outcomes,” Reyes wrote. “We should all agree, however, that every person who has answered the call to serve deserves our gratitude and respect.”
Army Reserves 2nd Lt. Nicolas Talbott, one of 14 transgender active-duty servicemembers named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said he was holding his breath as he waited to find out if he would be separated from the military next week.
“This is such a sigh of relief,” he said. “This is all I’ve ever wanted to do. This is my dream job, and I finally have it. And I was so terrified that I was about to lose it.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, posted about the ruling on social media, writing, “District court judges have now decided they are in command of the Armed Forces…is there no end to this madness?”
The judge issued a preliminary injunction requested by attorneys who also represent others seeking to join the military.
On Jan. 27, Trump signed an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members "conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness.
In response to the order, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy that presumptively disqualifies people with gender dysphoria from military service. Gender dysphoria is the distress that a person feels because their assigned gender and gender identity don’t match. The medical condition has been linked to depression and suicidal thoughts.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys contend Trump’s order violates transgender people’s rights to equal protection under the Fifth Amendment.
Government lawyers argue that military officials have broad discretion to decide how to assign and deploy servicemembers without judicial interference.
Reyes said she did not take lightly her decision to issue an injunction blocking Trump’s order, noting that “Judicial overreach is no less pernicious than executive overreach.” But, she said, it was also the responsibility of each branch of government to provide checks and balances for the others, and the court “therefore must act to uphold the equal protection rights that the military defends every day.”
Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1% of the total number of active-duty service members.
In 2016, a Defense Department policy permitted transgender people to serve openly in the military. During Trump’s first term in the White House, the Republican issued a directive to ban transgender service members. The Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, scrapped it when he took office.
Hegseth’s Feb. 26 policy says service members or applicants for military service who have “a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are incompatible with the high mental and physical standards necessary for military service.”
The plaintiffs who sued to block Trump’s order include an Army Reserves platoon leader from Pennsylvania, an Army major who was awarded a Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan and a Sailor of the Year award winner serving in the Navy.
“The cruel irony is that thousands of transgender servicemembers have sacrificed—some risking their lives—to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the military ban seeks to deny them," Reyes wrote.
Their attorneys, from the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law, said transgender troops “seek nothing more than the opportunity to continue dedicating their lives to defending the Nation.”
“Yet these accomplished servicemembers are now subject to an order that says they must be separated from the military based on a characteristic that has no bearing on their proven ability to do the job,” plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote. “This is a stark and reckless reversal of policy that denigrates honorable transgender servicemembers, disrupts unit cohesion, and weakens our military.”
Government attorneys said the Defense Department has a history of disqualifying people from military service if they have physical or emotional impairments, including mental health conditions.
“In any context other than the one at issue in this case, DoD’s professional military judgment about the risks of allowing individuals with physical or emotional impairments to serve in the military would be virtually unquestionable,” they wrote.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys say Trump’s order fits his administration’s pattern of discriminating against transgender people.
Federal judges in Seattle and Baltimore separately paused Trump’s executive order halting federal support for gender-affirming care for transgender youth under 19. Last month, a judge blocked prison officials from transferring three incarcerated transgender women to men’s facilities and terminating their access to hormone therapy under another Trump order.
Trump also signed orders that set up new rules about how schools can teach about gender and that intend to ban transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
“From its first days, this administration has moved to strip protections from transgender people across multiple domains — including housing, social services, schools, sports, healthcare, employment, international travel, and family life,” plaintiffs’ lawyers wrote.
Talbott, 31, of Akron, Ohio, enlisted in March 2024 as an openly trans person after fighting for roughly nine years to join the service. He said his fellow soldiers gave him some good-natured flak for being so much older than other recruits, but never treated him differently for being trans. Talbott anticipates that his colleagues will be “pretty excited that I get to stay.”
“Now I can go back to focusing on what’s really important, which is the mission,” said Talbott, a platoon leader for a military policing unit.
Associated Press writers Lindsay Whitehurst and Gene Johnson contributed to this story.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, March 14, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
DEIR-AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel’s Cabinet has approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s request to fire the head of the country’s Shin Bet internal security service.
The late-night decision to sack Ronen Bar deepens a power struggle focused largely over who bears responsibility for the Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza.
It also could set the stage for a crisis over the country’s division of powers. Israel’s attorney general has ruled that the Cabinet has no legal basis to dismiss Bar.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
DEIR-AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israeli strikes killed at least 85 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip overnight and into Thursday, according to local health officials. Hours later, Hamas fired three rockets at Israel without causing casualties, in the first such attack since Israel broke their ceasefire.
Israel resumed heavy strikes across Gaza on Tuesday, shattering the truce that had facilitated the release of more than two dozen hostages and brought relative calm since late January. Israeli bombardments in the past three days have killed at least 592 people, said Zaher al-Waheidi, the head of the records department at the Gaza Health Ministry.
The Israeli military said it was again enforcing a blockade on northern Gaza, including Gaza City. Palestinians were not being ordered to leave northern Gaza but can no longer enter, the military said, and are only allowed to move south on foot using the coastal road. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had returned to what remains of their homes in the north during the ceasefire.
Israeli ground forces are also pushing into Gaza near the northern town of Beit Lahiya and the southern border city of Rafah, the military said Thursday. The operations come a day after Israel moved to split Gaza in two by retaking the strategic Netzarim corridor that divides Gaza's north from south.
The military ordered Palestinians to evacuate an area in central Gaza near the city of Khan Younis, saying it would operate there in response to Thursday’s rocket fire from Hamas. The Palestinian militant group said it targeted Tel Aviv. One rocket was intercepted and two fell in open areas, according to the army.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels also launched two missiles at Israel, one early Thursday morning and another in the evening, the military said. Both were intercepted before reaching Israeli airspace, according to the army, and no injuries were reported. Air raid sirens rang out and exploding interceptor rockets were heard in Jerusalem. There have been three such attacks since the United States began a new campaign of airstrikes against the Houthis earlier this week.
Gaza’s Health Ministry said overnight Israeli strikes killed at least 85 people, mostly women and children. The ministry's records do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
The Indonesian Hospital said it received 19 bodies after strikes in Beit Lahiya, near Gaza's northern border, which was heavily destroyed and largely depopulated earlier in the war.
“It was a bloody night for the people of Beit Lahiya,” said Fares Awad, head of the Health Ministry’s emergency service in northern Gaza, adding that rescuers were still searching the rubble. “The situation is catastrophic.”
Israel’s military said Thursday its airstrikes in Gaza had killed the head of Hamas’ internal security apparatus and two other militant commanders. Israel has said it only targets militants and blames civilian deaths on Hamas because it operates in densely populated areas. A United Nations-backed group of human rights experts accused Israel last week of “disproportionate violence against women and children” during the war in Gaza.
One of the strikes early Thursday hit the Abu Daqa family’s home in Abasan al-Kabira, a village outside Khan Younis near the border with Israel. It was in an area the Israeli military ordered evacuated earlier this week, encompassing most of eastern Gaza.
The strike killed at least 16 people, mostly women and children, according to the nearby European Hospital, which received the dead. Those killed included a father and his seven children, as well as the parents and brother of a month-old baby who survived along with her grandparents.
“Another tough night,” said Hani Awad, who was helping rescuers search for more survivors in the rubble. “The house collapsed over the people’s heads.”
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration reiterated its support for Israel, with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying, “The president made it very clear to Hamas that if they did not release all of the hostages there would be all hell to pay.”
Israel, which cut off the supply of food, fuel and humanitarian aid to Gaza's roughly 2 million Palestinians, has vowed to intensify its operations until Hamas releases the 59 hostages it holds — 24 of whom are believed alive — and gives up control of the territory.
Hamas says it will only release the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as called for in the ceasefire agreement mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
Hamas says it's willing to hand over power to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority or a committee of political independents but will not lay down its arms until Israel ends its decades-long occupation of lands the Palestinians want for a future state.
The breakdown of the ceasefire has been met with anger in Israel, where many support the plight of the hostage families to free their loved ones.
Hundreds of Israelis gathered Thursday outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem to protest his handling of the hostage crisis and his plan to fire the country’s head of internal security. Netanyahu’s Cabinet met late Thursday to vote on the firing, a move that many view as undermining the balance of powers in Israel.
“Instead of firing the head of the Shin Bet, just to avoid an investigation, I think that the prime minister should be involved in rescuing the last hostages there are left in Gaza to die,” said Michal Halperin, a protester.
Police used a water canon to disperse the crowd after protesters tried to break through police barricades.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage. Most of the hostages have been freed in ceasefire agreements or other deals. Israeli forces have rescued eight living hostages and recovered the bodies of dozens more.
Israel's retaliatory offensive, among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history, has killed more than 49,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. It does not say how many were militants, but says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The war at its height displaced around 90% of Gaza's population and has caused vast destruction across the territory.
Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Buildings destroyed during the Israeli attack are seen in the Gaza Strip during the sunset as seen from southern Israel, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Buildings destroyed during the Israeli attack are seen in the Gaza Strip from southern Israel, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Displaced Palestinians, carrying their belongings, move away from the areas where the Israeli army is operating after Israel's renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip, on the outskirts of Beit Lahia, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Displaced Palestinians, carrying their belongings, move away from the areas where the Israeli army is operating after Israel's renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip, on the outskirts of Beit Lahia, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Ella Osama Abu Dagga, 25 days old, is held by her great-aunt Suad Abu Dagga, after she was pulled from the rubble earlier following an Israeli army airstrike that killed her parents and brother, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana )
The bodies of victims of an Israeli army airstrike are prepared for burial at Indonesia Hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Displaced Palestinians, carrying their belongings, move away from the areas where the Israeli army is operating after Israel's renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip, on the outskirts of Beit Lahia, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
People walking surrounded by buildings destroyed during the Israeli air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip are seen from southern Israel, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Buildings destroyed during the Israeli air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Neighbours watch as volunteers and rescue workers search for survivors among the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli army airstrike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Dagga)
People walking surrounded by buildings destroyed during the Israeli air and ground offensive in the Gaza Strip are seen from southern Israel, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Volunteers and rescue workers use a bulldozer as to remove the rubble of a building hit by an Israeli army airstrike in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Dagga)
Displaced Palestinians, carrying their belongings traveling from Beit Hanoun to Jabaliya, a day after Israel's renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Displaced Palestinians, carrying their belongings traveling from Beit Hanoun to Jabaliya, a day after Israel's renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Displaced Palestinians, carrying their belongings traveling from Beit Hanoun to Jabaliya, a day after Israel's renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
An Israeli tank maneuvers on the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
An Israeli tank takes position on the Gaza Strip border in southern Israel, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Displaced Palestinians, carrying their belongings traveling from Beit Hanoun to Jabaliya, a day after Israel's renewed offensive in the Gaza Strip, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
Smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
