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9 incidents
The administration deported US military veterans including Purple Heart recipients wounded in combat, after replacing Biden-era protections that required ICE to consider military service. An estimated 94,000 non-citizen veterans face potential deportation.
The second-term ban was broader and more immediately disruptive than the first-term version. The 2025 executive order directed the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security to implement the policy within 60 days, mandating that transgender service members serve in their birth sex or face discharge. Service members who had been receiving hormone therapy and other gender-affirming medical care under a Biden-era policy would have that care immediately terminated. Legal challenges were filed immediately; courts issued preliminary injunctions in several cases. The policy applied to approximately 15,000 service members.
In February 2020, the Trump administration announced the diversion of an additional $3.8 billion in military construction funds to border wall construction — funds that had been appropriated by Congress for specific military purposes including school construction at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; housing at Guantanamo; and facilities in Germany. Military families were directly affected when promised construction projects were canceled. The GAO had previously found that Trump's withholding of congressionally appropriated Ukraine security assistance violated the Impoundment Control Act; the same statutory framework applied to the Pentagon diversions.
Soleimani was one of the most senior military commanders of a foreign government. His killing — outside declared combat zones, in the territory of a third country (Iraq) — raised significant questions under international law and the U.S. War Powers Resolution. Congressional leaders, including Senate majority leader McConnell, were not briefed in advance. Iran's ballistic missile response struck Al Asad Air Base and injured 110 U.S. service members; Trump initially told the public no one was hurt. The administration's justification for the strike — an 'imminent threat' — was not substantiated with specific intelligence that was shared with Congress.
Mattis had served as Defense Secretary since January 2017. His resignation came after Trump announced — via tweet, without military consultation — that he was withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria, effectively abandoning the Kurdish partners who had done the ground fighting against ISIS. Mattis's resignation letter was unusual in its directness: it stated that he believed Trump had not treated allies with 'respect and seriousness' and had not been 'clear-eyed' about the threats posed by adversaries including Russia and China. Trump, initially describing the departure as planned, later forced Mattis out before the end of his original tenure after the letter's contents became widely circulated.
The four soldiers — Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson, Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright, and Sgt. La David Johnson — were killed in an ambush 12 days before Trump publicly acknowledged their deaths. Trump's delayed response and his disputed call to Johnson's widow — in which witnesses say he told her her husband 'knew what he signed up for' — became a national controversy. Trump denied the account. The incident also exposed the extent of U.S. military operations in Africa that Congress had not been notified about.
Trump's tweet announcing the transgender military ban was not coordinated with military leadership. The Joint Chiefs issued an unusual public statement saying they would not change policy until they received 'formal guidance.' Multiple federal courts issued injunctions blocking the original ban. After losing court cases, the administration issued a modified 'Mattis plan' that imposed restrictions based on gender dysphoria treatment; it was implemented in 2019 and reversed by Biden in 2021. An estimated 14,700 transgender people were serving in the military.
Captain Humayun Khan had received the Bronze Star and was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart for his actions on June 8, 2004, when he was killed stopping a suicide car bomb that would have killed many more soldiers. His parents appeared at the DNC in support of Hillary Clinton and against Trump's Muslim ban, which would have prevented their family's immigration. Trump responded by suggesting Ghazala Khan had been silent at the podium because she was 'not allowed' to speak under Islamic tradition — she said she was too overcome by grief to speak. Trump described himself as having made 'sacrifices' comparable to the Khans' loss.
The four student deferments were legal and widely used by college students of the era. The 1968 bone spurs medical deferment, obtained after Trump's student deferments expired at graduation, came from Dr. Larry Braunstein, a podiatrist in Jamaica, Queens — a building owner named Fred Trump. Braunstein's daughters told the New York Times in 2018 that their father provided the diagnosis as a 'favor' to Fred Trump, the landlord. Trump has described his bone spurs in varying ways over the years, at times saying they had healed on their own and at other times appearing not to remember which foot was affected. He has praised military service at Veterans events while criticizing specific veterans including John McCain for being captured.