Today is the deadline for the estimated 4,200 active duty transgender military members to accept what the Defense Department calls voluntary separation.

Those who volunteer to leave may be eligible for separation pay.

Transgender troops who don't leave voluntarily will be kicked out, and whether they get separation pay remains to be seen.

Earlier this week, Nick Schifrin spoke to two transgender servicemen about the choice they face,

to leave the service or stay and fight it out in the courts.

In one of President Trump's first executive actions, he declared that transgender service members

corrode military effectiveness,

and, quote, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual sex conflicts with a

soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle. Now, following legal battles,

the Defense Department is moving forward to expel service members, quote, with a current

diagnosis or history of or exhibiting symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria, which is

officially defined as six months of marked incongruence between a person's experience and assigned

gender. Last month, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeseth put the ban this way, criticizing what he

calls previous policies that undermine military readiness. We are leaving wokeness and weakness

behind. No more pronouns, no more climate change obsession, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes

in dresses.

We're done with that shit.

For a perspective, we turn to Chief Petty Officer Ryan Godell, who has been in the Navy

since 2011 and is an intelligence analyst.

He's choosing to leave the military ahead of the deadline.

And second lieutenant, Nick Talbot, is a platoon leader of a military police unit in the Army

Reserve. He joined the Army a little over a year ago and is suing the government over its policy

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