Pete Hegseth Casually Tosses Out a Slur at Iowa State Fair

“It is a day and night difference,” he continued. “Training, lethality, accountability, discipline, readiness—the bedrock of what it means to be an American warrior—is the only focus of our department. Colorblind, gender-neutral, merit-based. That’s it.”

Transgender people have become a constant target of the right’s outrage machine. The Trump administration has made them the focus of much of their cultural attacks in the war on “woke,” casting trans people as an imminent threat to Western values even as they make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. adult population. That political disdain is embodied in perhaps no one more than Hegseth, who casually tosses out slurs and recently introduced mandatory testosterone screening for older soldiers.

Last year, President Trump signed an executive order banning transgender and nonbinary people from the military, calling them purveyors of “radical gender” ideologies that were “not honorable,” “truthful,” or “disciplined.” The Supreme Court upheld the order in May, though legal challenges continue in the lower courts.