Trump says transgender people should be barred from military
WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump said Wednesday he wants transgender people barred from serving in the U.S. military “in any capacity,” citing “tremendous medical costs and disruption.”
Trump’s announcement on Twitter would reverse the effort under President Barack Obama to open the armed services to transgender people. He did not say what would happen to transgender troops already in the military.
The president tweeted that he was making his announcement after consulting with “generals and military experts,” but he did not name any. He said the 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.”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions.
At the Pentagon, members of the staff of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis appeared to have been caught unaware by Trump’s tweets. A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, referred questions to the White House.
In a brief written statement, Davis said the Pentagon is working with the White House to “address” what he called “the new guidance” from the president. He said the Pentagon will provide revised guidance to Defense Department officials “in the near future.”
Transgender service members have been able to serve openly in the military since last year, when former Defense Secretary Ash Carter ended the ban. Since last Oct. 1, they have been able to receive medical care and start formally changing their gender identifications in the Pentagon’s personnel system.
Carter also gave the services until July 1 to develop policies to allow people already identifying as transgender to newly join the military. Mattis announced earlier this month that he was giving military chiefs another six months to conduct a review to determine if allowing transgender individuals to enlist in the armed services would affect the “readiness or lethality” of the force.
Already, there are as many as 250 service members in the process of transitioning to their preferred genders or who have been approved to formally change gender within the Pentagon’s personnel system, according to several defense officials.
The Pentagon has refused to release any data on the number of transgender troops currently serving. A Rand Corp. study estimated that there are between 2,500 and 7,000 service members on active duty who self-identify as transgender and an additional 1,500 to 4,000 in the reserves. There are about 1.3 million troops in the military.
Trump’s decision drew swift outrage from LGBT groups and supporters.
New Jersey Assemblymen Tim Eustace (D-Bergen/Passaic) and Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer/Hunterdon), who are both openly gay, issued a joint statement about the ban on Wednesday, calling it “spiteful and counterintuitive.”
“Transgender individuals who are willing to give their lives to protect their fellow Americans have far more patriotism and courage than President Trump — who deferred military service five times while the nation was at war with Vietnam — has ever displayed in his lifetime,” the legislators said. “This goes far beyond the scope of the armed forces. The commander-in-chief’s assertion that trans- men and women are a ‘disruption’ is the height of discrimination, which, sadly, has been a defining characteristic for his administration. With fatal violence against the transgender community at the highest level ever recorded, the president’s implicit support of such hatred has the potential to engender an increase in these attacks. Coupled with the Department of Justice’s forthcoming effort to roll back LGBT workplace protections, the president’s announcement is a significant step back for equality in this country.”