Coast Guard won’t ‘break faith’ with its transgender personnel

The head of the Coast Guard said Tuesday he would not “break faith” with transgender personnel under his command, despite President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that he was going to ban the small pool of service members from serving.

Adm. Paul Zukunft’s remarks came during an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday, less than a week after the president said on Twitter that the U.S. government “will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.”

Zukunft said that following the tweets, he had his office contact the 13 service members in the Coast Guard who identified as transgender, including Lt. Taylor Miller, the branch’s first openly transitioning officer.

“I reached out personally to Lt. Taylor Miller, who was featured on the cover of The Washington Post last week,” Zukunft said. “Now if you read that story, Taylor’s family has disowned her. Her family is the United States Coast Guard. And I told Taylor, ‘I will not turn my back. We have made an investment in you, and you have made an investment in the Coast Guard, and I will not break faith.’”

“That is the commitment to our people right now,” he said. “Very small numbers, but all of them are doing meaningful Coast Guard work today.”

With the Pentagon awaiting direction from a White House that has provided little clarity beyond the president’s three tweets last week, Zukunft’s pledge could easily be construed as the opening salvo in a military-led push to prevent a total rollback of the 2016 decision that allowed transgender troops to serve openly.

Following Trump’s announcement, Zukunft said he called then-Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and that Kelly, a retired Marine general who has since been tapped to serve as White House chief of staff, contacted Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

While Mattis has yet to make any public remarks on the proposed ban, Zunkuft alluded that the Coast Guard, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, already had tasked a “tiger team” of legal officers to help contend with the impending policy shift.