EXCLUSIVE — A senior Biden administration Pentagon official responsible for military readiness asked the White House for opportunities to help promote Transgender Day of Visibility and Pride Month in 2023 as the armed forces struggled with a historic recruiting shortfall, according to emails shared with the Washington Examiner.
Shawn G. Skelly, then the assistant secretary of defense for readiness, wrote White House staffer Hannah Bristol on March 1, 2023, saying Skelly wanted to support the administration’s efforts on behalf of the LGBT community. The emails were shared with the Washington Examiner by the Center for Advancing Security in America, a conservative watchdog group, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request on April 11, 2024, and sued the then-Defense Department in August that year after the group said it had not received the requested records.
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“I do windows. I’ll pitch in on anything that would assist the White House’s efforts, nothing’s too big or too small,” Skelly, a biological man who identifies as a woman, wrote after mentioning the upcoming Transgender Day of Visibility and Pride Month at the time. “I simply cannot sit this year out.”
Bristol replied the next day that the White House was finalizing plans for Transgender Day of Visibility and would “love for you to plug in.” Bristol also invited Skelly to suggest other ways the White House could support “the community.” At the time of the email exchange, the military faced a dramatic deficit of more than 40,000 needed recruits compared to its standard averages.
Skelly called the readiness appointment “the absolute honor of my professional life” but wrote in the email about still feeling “bothered” by not doing “anything specific” to assist LGBT people. Skelly said the offer to help promote LGBT issues extended beyond normal work hours, whether at the Pentagon, visiting service members and civilian workers at the Pentagon, or at home on a “day off.”
Skelly also described the political climate at the time as “very, very scary” for LGBT people, “most especially trans folks,” and raised concern about perceived threats to children, young adults, families, and loved ones.
But far from taking a hands-off approach to LGBT issues, the Biden administration reversed Trump-era restrictions on transgender military service within days of taking office, and the White House touted Skelly as a landmark appointment. Those moves also reinforced a broader perception at the time that the Biden Pentagon had devoted outsize attention to social issues rather than effective military strategies. Those priorities stretched to the top of its leadership, as even Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said during a July 2021 briefing that the department “will be diverse, it will be inclusive and, you know, we’re going to look like the country that we support and defend.”
Skelly served as the assistant secretary of defense for readiness, a position that advised Pentagon leadership on the military’s ability to train, deploy, and carry out warfighting missions. Skelly was confirmed in 2021 as the Pentagon’s highest-ranking openly transgender official, as the Washington Examiner previously reported.
“This was a senior leader,” James Fitzpatrick, an Army veteran and director of CASA, told the Washington Examiner. “For a senior leader to be putting themselves out there and saying, in effect, ‘I’ll do anything. Just tell me where to go, the time and place to promote your Trans Day of Visibility,’ is that really going to help our military be ready to fight, to deploy, to train?”
Former President Joe Biden‘s White House highlighted Skelly later that month in a March 31, 2023, fact sheet. Under a section titled “Supporting transgender public servants,” the administration touted Skelly and Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine as its first openly transgender Senate-confirmed officials.
The former administration’s Pride Month programming also drew criticism for more revealing conduct at the time. Rose Montoya, a transgender model and activist, was among hundreds invited to a June 10 White House Pride event. Montoya later posted a video standing topless on the White House lawn with her hands covering her nipples. The influencer was condemned by the White House at the time and banned from returning.
Fitzpatrick said CASA sought Pentagon communications related to the term “Transgender Day of Visibility.” The Skelly exchange stood out because it involved a senior official whose portfolio centered on readiness, Fitzpatrick said. Beyond the emails, there is no official record of whether Skelly was assigned to volunteer for the White House event.
Still, the exchange came during a difficult period for military recruiting. The Army, Navy, and Air Force collectively missed their fiscal 2023 recruiting goals by about 41,000 recruits, according to the Department of War. Pentagon officials attributed the shortfall at the time to factors including private-sector competition, a declining propensity to serve, and disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. Critics, however, questioned whether the ideological agenda of the Biden administration had disrupted military culture and driven away prospective recruits.
The recruiting picture has improved substantially since then. The Army met its fiscal 2026 active-duty recruiting goal in May, signing contracts with more than 61,500 future soldiers four months before the fiscal year ended. The Air Force and Space Force said in April that both services had reached annual recruiting goals five months early, with 32,000 new active-duty airmen and guardians under contract. The Navy met its fiscal 2026 recruiting objective of 45,000 contracts in July.
The Marine Corps, which has regularly met its recruiting targets, said in February it was on track to meet its fiscal 2026 recruiting goal. The service had already met its fiscal 2026 retention goal during the first month of the fiscal year.
Skelly argued in an April 2023 Politico interview that “ostracizing anybody” would hurt military readiness. Republicans, however, argued that the Biden administration’s emphasis on diversity and gender issues distracted the Pentagon from its core mission, including the recruiting crisis.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth credited the rebound to a broader cultural shift under President Donald Trump. “We want you to be warriors. We’re not doing this politically correct garbage anymore. We’re doing war fighting,” Hegseth said in an interview with Fox & Friends earlier this month.
