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Donald Trump Officially Ordered the Military to Ban Transgender Recruits

On Friday night President Donald Trump issued a directive banning transgender recruits from the military. It comes two days after news broke that a White House memo along these lines was being finalized to send to the Department of Defense. Along with the ban, the directive also bars funds for sex reassignment surgeries unless the transgender service member is already in treatment. What’s unclear from Friday’s official order, however, is whether transgender troops currently serving will be allowed to continue.

Trump’s order also applies to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard. According to the New York Times, it falls largely to Defense Secretary James Mattis to come up with how to implement Trump’s order—and to decide whether transgender troops can stay. Mattis’ decision, according to a press briefing about the memo reported by NPR, will be based on how their “continued service affects military effectiveness, lethality, resources and unit cohesion.” He has six months to come up with his proposal, according to the Times.

Trump’s ban marks an end to an initiative from President Obama’s administration that allowed the military to recruit transgender people into the armed forces. The current president had first announced his proposal in a series of tweets in July, saying, “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming … victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”

Trump’s tweets caused an uproar, with people accusing Trump of discrimination when it came to his arguments about why trans people shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military. Case in point: the military actually spends more on Viagra than it does for trans health care—so the President’s point about medical costs being the issue is pretty weak.

When asked at Friday’s briefing if the President’s announcement was discriminatory, a White House official responded, “The president is the president for all Americans, and during last year’s campaign he was the first GOP nominee to talk about LGBTQ issues at the GOP convention, but he also was critical of the Obama administration’s change in that longstanding DOD policy.” He went on to say, “He’s going to continue to ensure that the rights of the LGBTQ community, as well as all Americans, is protected. This policy is based on a series of national security considerations.

Many people, including Senator Tammy Duckworth who served in the army in Iraq, have spoken out against Trump’s ban by arguing that gender identity has nothing to do with the ability to serve the country. If someone is able to do the job, that’s all that matters.

On Saturday morning, the ACLU announced that they’d be filing a lawsuit against Trump on Monday.

https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/901447543275610112

https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/901459023878377473

We’ll keep you posted with where this goes.

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Nearly a month after Donald Trump tweeted that transgender men and women would no longer be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, the White House is reportedly preparing to send guidance to the Department of Defense and give the Pentagon the formal power to implement the President’s policy.

As The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday (via CNN), the administration is finalizing a memo that will give Defense Secretary James Mattis six months to implement the stipulations of the ban. Among them: The military will no longer be allowed to recruit transgender people and medical treatment regimens for current transgender troops will no longer be paid for by Pentagon. Further, it would give Mattis the authority to expel transgender service members by setting new standards for deployment.

Though the memo has not been finalized, a source familiar with the document confirmed that it will likely be handed down within the “coming days.” In a statement released Wednesday evening, the Pentagon said that it “has not received formal guidance from the White House as a follow-up to the Commander-in-Chief’s announcement on military service by transgender personnel.”

“The Department continues to focus on our mission of defending our nation and ongoing operations against our foes, while ensuring all service members are treated with respect,” the statement read.

As noted by The New York Times, Trump’s “order-by-social media” in late July “caught senior military officials by surprise and short-circuited the customary interagency policy process that attends such sweeping decisions.” The Pentagon was unclear as to how such a ban would be implemented but the White House assured the Defense Department that they would work with them to develop a plan that matched the President’s tweets. (White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to comment to the Times about any forthcoming memo.)

Like Trump’s initial tweets, the latest development in the transgender military ban is drawing plenty of public ire. A statement from Ashley Broadway-Mack, the president of the American Military Partner Association President (the country’s largest organization for families, partners, and spouses of LGBT service members), slammed the reported memo saying, “[The President’s] foolhardy assertion that transgender service members are not able to deploy is simply not rooted in fact.

“Transgender service members are just as deployable as any other service member. These brave men and women are already risking their lives for this country around the world,” Broadway-Mack added. “They have earned their right to appropriate medical care, and President Trump’s attempt to rip that away is beyond unconscionable.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also condemned Trump’s policy, tweeting Wednesday night: “This is NOT how you keep America safe. Period. #ProtectTransTroops.”

https://twitter.com/NancyPelosi/status/900525999028305920

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