President Trump signed the FY2026 NDAA, barring transgender athletes at military academies and ending Pentagon DEI offices

On December 18, 2025, President Donald Trump signed S.1071, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, into law as Public Law 119-60. Alongside the annual defense-spending authorization, the enacted act carries two provisions directed at gender identity and diversity programs. The first bars individuals "whose sex is male" from competing on female-designated sports teams at the U.S. military service academies, defining eligibility by reproductive biology and genetics at birth and extending the restriction to visiting students who compete against academy teams. The second prohibits the Department of Defense from maintaining any diversity, equity, and inclusion office or DEI plan and from recognizing employee resource groups organized around characteristics including race, color, ethnicity, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

The Senate passed the conference version of the bill 75-22 and the House passed it 312-112 before the signing. A broader provision that would have barred military health-insurance coverage of gender-affirming care, which the House had passed, was removed during the House-Senate conference and is not in the enacted text.

The measure extends to the federal level a pattern of DEI bans and transgender-sports restrictions already enacted across numerous states. By writing exclusion based on gender identity into the statute governing the armed forces, and by dismantling the diversity offices and affinity groups that had operated within the Defense Department, the law establishes those restrictions as national defense policy.