Following President Donald Trump’s recent attacks on transgender rights, including the right to serve in the U.S. military, a new poll suggests that the administration is out of step with a majority of the country.
Last Monday, Gallup released the results of a recent poll taken as Trump rolled out an executive order reinstating his ban on out trans men and women and nonbinary people serving in the military in any capacity.
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“A lot of red-blooded, alpha-male, patriotic American men are actually too scared to join the military.”
The poll found that while the number has continued to decline from a 71 percent high in 2019, 58 percent of U.S. adults still favor allowing trans people to serve.
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According to Gallup, “The overall drop in support for transgender military service is driven by Republicans and, to a lesser degree, independents.”
Support among Republicans remained steady at 43 percent in 2019 and 2021. But according to the 2025 poll, that support dropped by nearly half, with only 23 percent of Republican respondents saying they support trans inclusion in the armed forces. Among independent voters, 62 percent voiced their support, down from 78 percent in 2019 and 66 percent in 2021.
Democrats still overwhelmingly support allowing trans men and women to serve openly at 84 percent. But even that is down slightly from 88 percent in 2019 and 87 percent in 2021.
In late January, Trump signed an executive order banning transgender people from the military. The order falsely characterizes trans identity as a mental disorder and trans people as selfish, dishonorable, deceitful, and undisciplined. It gave the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth 60 days to implement its directives and will affect an estimated 8,000 to 15,000 trans soldiers.
Trans people were first allowed to serve openly in the military in 2016 when the Obama administration ended the Pentagon’s decades-long ban on out trans servicemembers. In 2017, during his first term in office, Trump reinstated the ban, which was upheld by the Supreme Court upheld it on procedural grounds. Trump’s first ban was lifted by former President Joe Biden in 2021.
Earlier this month, Hegseth sent a memo to senior military leaders directing them to stop recruiting transgender people and to suspend any gender-affirming medical treatments for current servicemembers diagnosed with gender dysphoria as part of his implementation of Trump’s second ban.
Two federal lawsuits have been filed to stop Trump’s military ban. LGBTQ+ organizations GLAD Law and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed a lawsuit in late January on behalf of six active servicemembers and two people who want to join the military. Another, filed by Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) a day before Hegseth’s February 7 memo, challenges the trans military ban on behalf of six more active servicemembers and one person who wants to enlist.
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