By Gene Nichol

I know it has become impossible to keep up. But last week, a federal court enjoined yet another core Trump initiative — Executive Order 14183 — declaring that military service by transgender persons is “inconsistent” with the “requisite warrior ethos” needed to achieve “military excellence.” Accordingly, Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth issued a new policy (Dkt. 63-1) disqualifying “transgender troops from service without an exemption.”

Hegseth announced that being transgender violates the “high standards for service member readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity and integrity.” Transgender persons cannot maintain “an honorable, truthful, disciplined lifestyle.” Their expression of sexual identity “is not consistent with humility and selflessness.”

Read that again, if you can imagine anyone being lectured on honesty, humility, selflessness and integrity by Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth. Take a minute. Take a breath.

The plaintiffs challenging the exclusion order included service members deployed across the globe, some in combat missions and on battleships, having received over 80 commendations including the bronze star, global war on terrorism service medals, war on terrorism expeditionary service medals, an array of meritorious service awards and the like. During the hearing, the judge got Hegseth’s lawyers to concede that the plaintiffs have “served honorably,” have “satisfied the rigorous standards demanded of them” in every instance, and have “made America safer.” Still.

It gets worse.

The judge pressed on. She said Hegseth had “pronounced that transgender persons are not honorable, truthful or disciplined,” but defense counsel “concedes these assertions are pure conjecture.”

The court: Is saying transgender people’s identity is inconsistent with an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, is that demeaning to them?

Defense counsel: I don’t have a characterization for that, Your Honor.

The court: And if I asked about all the other words in the military ban would you have the same answer?

Defense counsel: Yes, Your Honor.

The court: There’s nothing supporting these assertions in the studies, right?

Defense counsel: That says those same things, no, not that I know of.

The court: No study says anything close to those things, correct?

Defense counsel: Not that I know of, Your Honor.

Really.

Unsurprisingly, the court concluded the Trump/Hegseth ban “at bottom, (merely) invokes derogatory language to target a vulnerable group in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”

The angered judge summarized with a flourish: “The court’s opinion is long, but its premise is simple. In the self-evident truth that “all people are created equal, all means all. Nothing more. And certainly nothing less.”

That’s where we are. A federal court has had to tell the president and the secretary of defense that in the United States mere hatefulness is not enough. Mere malice, mere name calling, mere lying, mere vicious perjury won’t do. Calumny is not sufficient.

It may be how Trump and Hegseth behave, and succeed, in every other aspect of their political lives, but it won’t work in court. It may please, even thrill, your base, particularly the reportedly Christian ones, but it won’t justify destroying the lives, careers, reputations and future prospects of your fellow Americans. Not to mention those who seek only to serve their nation and selflessly and courageously protect their sisters and brothers.

We will, I hope, desperately, fight our way out of this darkness. But dark, way dark, it is.

Gene Nichol is a professor of law teaching courses in the constitution and federal courts at the University of North Carolina School of Law.