Judge 'chews out' DOJ lawyer for not reading report justifying new military move: report

Judge Ana C. Reyes began the Wednesday hearing over President Donald Trump's ban on transgender people in the military by asking specific questions about the report cited as justification by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

According to Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney, who live posted the hearing on Blue Sky, Reyes began by reading the ban language: "Transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption."

The Justice Department lawyer said Hegseth was using a kind of "shorthand" and didn't quite mean the ban as written.

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Reyes didn't buy it, asking, "Explain to me why I should ignore that?"

But things got contentious when the judge learned the DOJ lawyer hadn't even read the report materials used to support the ban.

Cheney said Reyes was "chewing out [the] DOJ lawyer" because Hegseth "egregiously misquoted" those reports to justify the ban. She couldn't "fathom that [a] DOJ lawyer hasn't read them."

She was annoyed enough to take a 30-minute recess so that the lawyer could read the reports and compare the quotes in the report to the transgender ban policy.

"Then she wants to hear DOJ's position on whether she should rely on Hegseth's representation of those reports," wrote Cheney.

Trump attempted to move all transgender soldiers out of the women's barracks just a few weeks into his second term. One soldier quickly filed a lawsuit and the administration backed down. About a week later, the policy was changed, saying that all transgender troops must be removed from all branches of service unless they get a waiver.

Wednesday wasn't the first time Judge Reyes clashed with the administration over the matter. On Feb. 18, Reyes challenged the DOJ lawyers on whether simply using transgender soldiers' preferred gender pronouns would materially impact the military's ability to fight and win wars.

"Can we agree that the greatest fighting force... is not going to be impacted in any way by less than one percent of the soldiers using a different pronoun than others might want to call them?" she asked.

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