Newly disclosed emails show Shawn Skelly, then the Pentagon official responsible for advising on military readiness, offered to assist the Biden White House with Transgender Day of Visibility and Pride Month activities in 2023 as the armed services struggled with a major recruiting shortfall.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
A senior Biden administration Pentagon official whose portfolio centered on preparing U.S. forces to train, deploy and conduct military operations offered the White House assistance with transgender-related events and initiatives in 2023, according to emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Shawn Skelly, who was serving as assistant secretary of defense for readiness and was the Pentagon’s highest-ranking openly transgender official, contacted White House staffer Hannah Bristol on March 1, 2023, as the administration prepared for Transgender Day of Visibility and Pride Month, according to records provided to the Washington Examiner.
Skelly made clear in the email that the offer extended to virtually any role the White House believed would be useful.
”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 wrote, according to the emails. ”I simply cannot sit this year out.”
Bristol responded the next day that White House officials were completing plans for Transgender Day of Visibility and would ”love for you to plug in.”
She also asked Skelly to provide ideas about other steps the administration could take to support ”the community,” according to the report.
The correspondence was obtained by the Center for Advancing Security in America, a conservative watchdog organization, after it submitted a Freedom of Information Act request in April 2024.
CASA later filed a lawsuit against the War Department after saying the requested material had not been produced.
Skelly’s interest in becoming more involved in the White House initiatives came while serving in a Pentagon job directly connected to the preparedness of America’s armed forces.
Confirmed by the Senate in 2021, Skelly was responsible for advising senior Defense Department leadership on whether military personnel and units were adequately prepared to train, deploy and execute warfighting missions, according to the department.
Skelly described serving in the position as ”the absolute honor of my professional life,” but the emails show a parallel concern about becoming more personally involved in LGBT advocacy.
According to the records, Skelly wrote of being ”bothered” by not doing ”anything specific” to assist LGBT people.
Skelly also characterized the political environment facing LGBT Americans as ”very, very scary,” particularly for transgender people, saying it was ”most especially trans folks” who faced those concerns.
The official offered to contribute outside ordinary working hours if necessary.
The exchange took place during a period when the U.S. military was experiencing significant difficulty meeting recruiting targets.
The Army, Navy and Air Force ultimately fell short of their combined fiscal 2023 recruiting objectives by approximately 41,000 recruits, according to Pentagon figures.
Biden administration officials attributed the recruiting difficulties to several factors, including competition from private-sector employers, declining public interest in military service and lingering disruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Republican lawmakers and other critics offered a different explanation, arguing that the Pentagon’s emphasis on diversity, gender and inclusion policies was diverting attention from recruiting, combat effectiveness and the military’s core warfighting responsibilities.
James Fitzpatrick, director of CASA and an Army veteran, questioned whether a senior Pentagon readiness official should have been seeking an active role in promoting the White House’s transgender initiatives at a time when the services were struggling to attract enough recruits.
”This was a senior leader,” Fitzpatrick told the 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?”
The emails emerged against the backdrop of a broader shift in military personnel policy under President Joe Biden.
Soon after entering office, the Biden administration reversed restrictions on transgender military service that had been put in place during President Donald Trump’s first administration.
Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin defended the administration’s approach to diversity during a 2021 briefing.
The department ”will be diverse, it will be inclusive and we’re going to look like the country that we support and defend,” Austin said.
Two years later, the Biden White House publicly highlighted Skelly in its March 31, 2023, Transgender Day of Visibility fact sheet.
The newly disclosed correspondence shows that Skelly had personally sought an opportunity to participate in the administration’s efforts weeks before that fact sheet was released.
The available records, however, do not establish whether Skelly ultimately volunteered at or formally participated in a White House Transgender Day of Visibility event, according to the Examiner.
The documents therefore establish the outreach and the White House’s favorable response, but do not show what specific role, if any, Skelly ultimately performed.
The disclosure has renewed scrutiny of how senior Pentagon officials balanced broader administration priorities with their military responsibilities during a period of significant recruiting challenges.
For critics such as CASA, the correspondence is evidence that ideological and social initiatives received attention from officials occupying positions directly connected to military readiness.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, consistently maintained that diversity and inclusion were compatible with — rather than obstacles to — building an effective military force.
What the emails make clear is that Skelly, while serving as one of the Pentagon’s senior readiness officials, personally sought a role in the White House’s 2023 transgender initiatives and told administration officials that ”nothing’s too big or too small” when it came to helping with those efforts.
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