By The Daily Caller (U.S.) | Created at 2026-08-13 18:46:52 | Updated at 2026-08-13 21:08:04
3 hours ago
Transgender care for U.S. service members and minor dependents exploded under the Biden administration, documents obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation show.
“Gender dysphoria” patient counts jumped roughly 82% during President Joe Biden’s first year in office, according to internal Defense Health Agency (DHA) records. The documents identify 17,596 unique patients in a DHA gender dysphoria dataset from 2014 to 2022, including 3,807 patients under 18.
The documents were originally obtained by the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation and provided to the DCNF. (RELATED: Air Force Doc Appeared To Reassure Medical Staff They Couldn’t Be Sued For Sex Changes On Minors)
Air Force Public Affairs referred to the DHA. The DHA could not provide a comment in time for publication.
“I think there could have been something going on where people may have been joining the Air Force or military in general in order to get this care and then exit,” James Fitzpatrick, the director of CASA, told the DCNF. “I trust that concern is being addressed now, given the new tightening of the rules surrounding this in the military, per the executive orders that came out last year, but yeah, I think it’s concerning, and again it just shows their priority and their ideology almost above anything else … was to you know push this type of medical care and this type of ideology onto our soldiers and military service members.”
The records show that the number of patients diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” nearly doubled after Biden took office, from 2,221 in 2020 to 4,034 in 2021. The number of patients in 2021 is over eight times the number of patients in 2014, the beginning of the data in the records.
“It just shows that the Biden administration was prioritizing this. They were; the numbers seem dramatically increased just immediately as he came in,” Fitzpatrick told the DCNF. “I think this is just something at the top of their list that they prioritized from day one. They weren’t shy about it. They proudly wanted to push trans ideology and trans medical care in our military, and that includes to spouses and to children, and they were not shy about spending government resources.”
“Joe Biden allowed transgender insanity to run rampant in our military; President Trump restored lethality and readiness to our warfighters,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told the DCNF. “The United States Military is the greatest in the world, and President Trump is keeping it that way by focusing on elite readiness standards – not DEI or woke gender ideology.”
The Pentagon declined to comment on the documents, citing ongoing litigation.
President Trump and Secretary Hegseth are right: the U.S. military isn’t a playground for Left-Wing gender bending ideology. Our military is a fighting force that must return to mission-first readiness.
We have already introduced legislation to end taxpayer-funded gender… pic.twitter.com/NIVxES7GmG
An internal Air Force staffing document provides a more direct indication that the service experienced a surge in new patients immediately after President Joe Biden entered office.
“New patients in 2021 exceed previous 3 years’ combined,” other internal emails and documents state. The service sought additional nurses, a social worker, an administrative technician and a licensed vocational nurse in response to the increased workload.
Office of the Air Force Surgeon General and Air Force Medical Service Public Affairs did not respond to a request for comment.
“I think that Secretary Hegseth and President Trump are getting us back to the thought that the military exists to fight and win the nation’s wars, to kill our nation’s enemies, right? To portray power on the world stage and to accomplish our goals in the world, it doesn’t exist to be this experimental lab for those undergoing gender dysphoria and think that they may be of a different gender,” Fitzpatrick told the DCNF.
Biden signed Executive Order 14004 on Jan. 25, 2021, revoking a March 23, 2018 Trump presidential memorandum that had authorized restrictions on transgender military service. Trump revoked Biden’s executive order on Jan. 20, 2025, shortly after returning to office, and signed another executive order on Jan. 27 establishing new military policy on transgender service.
The records also shed light on a specialized Air Force organization created to manage transgender health care. The Transgender Health Medical Evaluation Unit, known as THMEU, traces its origins to an Air Force Surgeon General initiative launched in 2019, according to internal U.S. Air Force emails.
Services similar to THMEU may have existed as early as 2016 as “a continuation of an AFMOA [Air Force Medical Operations Agency] initiative started in 2016 (Medical Multi-disciplinary Team or ‘MMDT’),” according to an internal presentation.
THMEU’s functions included confirming gender dysphoria diagnoses, developing and updating medical treatment plans, overseeing readiness and medical profiling and evaluating whether service members were ready to receive gender-marker changes, according to the documents.
A majority of the 3,807 minor dependent patients were 15 years old or younger. In total, 2,081 were 15 or younger, 833 were 16 and 893 were 17, according to the documents obtained by the DCNF.
Previous internal emails obtained by the DCNF show a Defense Department memorandum addressing potential legal liability repercussions for providing gender-affirming care to minors.
The Department of War (DOW) may even protect civilian employees or service members from legal proceedings regarding sex-change procedures performed on minors, according to the previously obtained emails. The emails even state that the DOW may pay for any “settlement” or “claim” against the DOW staff.
