Shelly Bloomrose, one of thousands of transgender U.S. military members whose life was upended by the Trump administration’s ban on transgender troops last year, sat down with the co-hosts of MS NOW’s“The Weekend: Primetime” to discuss her legal challenge to the Pentagon’s purge and why she believes that under President Donald Trump, the military is “no longer a welcoming environment.”
In 2025, after 20 years of service, the Navy commander was forced into retirement due to the ban.
“It was not my choice,” Bloomrose said Saturday. “It’s changed my life dramatically.”
“The military came to me and they said, ‘Well, you can retire, or we can put you through involuntary separation processing,’ which would have been a huge risk to my family in particular, who have earned benefits over my 20 years of service. So there was a pension on the line, health care, the GI bill for my son to go to college — all of those things we just could not afford to lose. So even though I did not want to retire, I had to,” she explained.
Bloomrose said the administration’s decision to ban service members such as herself from the U.S. armed forces had nothing to do with performance or qualifications.
“It’s simply because they’re transgender,” she said.
In May, the Supreme Court allowed the military to implement the ban while litigation continues.
Asked about the Pentagon’s animus toward her community, Bloomrose told MS NOW she did not want to speculate.
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“Why does the secretary of defense hate me? I don’t know. He definitely seems to,” she said of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “He’s never met me.”
Bloomrose said allegations that transgender service members are “causing a disruption” could not be “further from the truth,” adding that members have been “serving openly since 2016” and “there has been no effect on mission readiness. There has been no effect on unit cohesion.”
“This is not an issue. Why they have chosen to make it one, I don’t know,” she continued. “They seem to hate us.”
Despite once feeling accepted by her peers, Bloomrose told MS NOW the military is “no longer a welcoming environment” under the administration’s new policies.
“There are still transgender service members on active duty, and those people who are continuing trying to serve, they’re having to hide who they are, and they’re constantly afraid of being discovered,” she said. “And that’s just no way to go through life.”
You can watch Bloomrose’s full interview in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”