For the last decade, the establishment media have touted advocates’ claims that 15,000 transgender people are serving in the U.S. military.
But this week, President Donald Trump’s Pentagon revealed the transgender population is just 4,240 service members.
That adds up to one transgender person for every 500 service members in the United States military of 2.1 million active and reserve members.
That transgender share is just 0.2 percent, or one-fifth of one percent, of the military.
In football terms, the transgender share is just 8.6 inches on a 120-yard football field.
The media’s much-claimed 15,000 number is almost four times the Pentagon’s 2025 count of 4,240 self-declared transgender service members.
That number was posted as Pentagon officials formally adopted a policy barring any recognition of transgenderism in the U.S. military. The policy does not exclude service members who privately prefer to have been born a member of the opposite sex — but only those service members who insist that other service members treat them as members of the opposite sex.
The policy declares: “The Department only recognizes two sexes: male and female. An individual’s sex is immutable, unchanging during a person’s life.”
The new 4,240 number was reported in just four media outlets by late Friday.
But the inflated estimate of 15,000 has been posted in many media outlets since 2011. The claim was validated by the media because a pro-transgender group claimed in 2011 and 2018 that there were roughly 15,000 transgender service members — and presumably because many reporters and editors sympathize with transgenderism.
In 2021, for example, the Washington Post wrote: “Activists said the Trump-era rules amounted to a ban on transgender personnel in the military, who are believed to number close to 15,000.”
The Los Angeles Times wrote in 2021: “The Pentagon keeps no data on the number of transgender personnel. Outside groups estimate there are 1,300 to 15,000 transgender troops in the military, which has an active-duty force of about 1.3 million.”
Even in 2025, National Public Radio reported on January 28: “An estimated 15,000 military personnel are transgender. That number is based on a survey of active duty military and an estimate of those in the reserves and National Guard.”
On February 9, the New York Times editorial board offered a higher estimate as it slammed President Donald Trump’s plan to exclude transgenderism from the military: “The order called for imposing federally mandated discrimination against the estimated 15,000 to 25,000 Americans who have agreed to put their lives on the line to defend the nation.”
The 2018 survey was performed by the transgender advocacy group, the Palm Center.
It was built on a Pentagon survey which estimated 8,980 transgender members of the population of 1.3 million servicemembers in the active military. The Palm Center then added its estimate of 5,727 additional transgender service members among 780,000 reservists.
The 2018 estimate was very similar to a 2014 study by the Williams Institute, which had merged with the Palm Center in 2011.
Interestingly, the Palm Center estimated that 80 percent of the transgender population were men pretending to be women.
Despite the media’s pro-transgender coverage of the sex vs. gender debate, public support for transgenderism has been dropping since before 2020.
In December 2021 Breitbart News reported:
“Right now, our opposition wins the debate on trans youth in sports against any and all arguments we have tried for our side,” admits a “Messaging Guide” by the California-based Transgender Law Center.
Overall, “we can at best elicit sympathy, a passive and often patronizing attitude that alienates our base [of current supporters] and fails to generate sustained interest from persuadable audiences” of swing voters, said the guide, which is titled “Transgender Youth and the Freedom to Be Ourselves.”
In October, Breitbart News noted:
In a Rasmussen Reports survey of roughly 2,008 likely voters conducted between October 22-24, 2024, 65 percent expressed opposition to transgender men competing in women’s sports. Out of this number, 50 percent expressed that they “strongly oppose” the idea, while 15 percent said they “somewhat oppose” it.
Other polls report an increase in the number of adolescents declaring support for LGBT identities. But that increase is confined to young women and likely reflects pro-transgender propaganda in schools and a rejection of pornography-skewed dating culture in high schools.
