Fort Carson Sgt. Mason Benavides is leaving an Army that no longer wants him.

He is one of about 1,000 military service members voluntarily leaving, the Department of Defense announced Thursday after a Supreme Court order that said the Trump administration’s ban on transgender soldiers could be enforced.

The Supreme Court order allows the military to discharge transgender troops until the legal merits of the case are decided.

Previously, District Court Judge Ana Reyes had blocked the enforcement of the ban in March, writing that it violated the legal right to equal protection under the law based on the premise that all people are created equal.

After the Supreme Court issued its decision, the plaintiffs in the case called it discriminatory.

“We remain steadfast in our belief that this ban violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and will ultimately be struck down,” Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation said in a statement.

The fight over transgender troops in the military was reignited when President Donald Trump’s executive order on transgender troops came down in January.

After nearly six years in the Army, Benavides found it insulting. He’s previously received positive feedback from his leadership team, who have told him he is a valuable asset as a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist.

“It said I was unfit to serve with integrity,” he said. Later that day, he hit a new personal record lifting weights because he was so mad.

The order impacts less than 1% of the 1% of adults in the U.S. who serve in the active duty, a tiny group among those who put on the uniform, he said.

“They are willing to serve. They are willing to do the job that not a lot of people want,” Benavides said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered all military service academies to no longer consider race, ethnicity or sex for admissions, according to a memo released Friday.

The move appears to not only effectively end affirmative action efforts at the three military service academies, which were spared from a Supreme Court ruling on race-based admissions two years ago, but goes even further by including ethnicity and sex.

Hegseth's memo goes on to say that admission to the academies will be based "exclusively on merit," because "selecting anyone but the best erodes lethality, our warfighting readiness, and undercuts the culture of excellence in our armed forces."

It is not clear why Hegseth felt the need to issue the directive now.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that aims to create a center for homeless veterans in Los Angeles and to improve medical care across the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The order calls for constructing a National Center for Warrior Independence on the campus of the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center that would provide housing and services to 3,000 homeless veterans currently in Los Angeles, with a goal to eventually home 6,000 veterans.

The West Los Angeles campus includes a 388-acre tract that was donated in 1888 to house disabled veterans. Its future was embroiled in ongoing litigation between advocates for homeless veterans and the federal government, which earns revenue from the property by leasing a portion of it to the UCLA baseball team, a private school and other private companies.

In the executive order, Trump said the property should have facilities to "help our veterans earn back their self-sufficiency," providing housing, substance abuse or addiction treatment and opportunities to "return to productive work and community engagement."

Trump required that a plan for the center be drafted within 120 days and that the center be able to house up to 6,000 veterans by Jan. 1, 2028.