President Donald Trump signed a long-awaited directive Friday evening that bans transgender people from enlisting in the U.S. military and bans the Department of Defense from providing military treatment to current transgender service members. The directive follows an announcement Trump made on Twitter last month, blindsiding the defense secretary and the public more broadly — and like last time, there Trump was met with a wave of backlash.
A draft of this memorandum was reported on Wednesday, and there has been widespread criticism from trans activists, lawmakers, and current and former members of the military over the last few days.
“When I was bleeding to death in my Black Hawk helicopter after I was shot down, I didn’t care if the American troops risking their lives to save me were gay, straight, transgender, black, white, or brown,” Sen. Tammy Duckwork (D-IL) said in a statement on Wednesday.
“It would be a step in the wrong direction to force currently serving transgender individuals to leave the military solely on the basis of their gender identity rather than medical and readiness standards that should always be at the heart of Department of Defense personnel policy,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) also said in a statement on Wednesday. “The Pentagon’s ongoing study on this issue should be completed before any decisions are made with regard to accession. The Senate Armed Services Committee will continue to conduct oversight on this important issue.”
Chase Strangio, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), shared an essay from his brother on the ban. “This is not about politics,” he wrote. “This is not about military readiness or cost. This is a calculated decision to discriminate against an already vulnerable group of people, one that will have devastating effects for countless Americans.”
Chelsea Manning, perhaps the military’s most famous trans service member, said Trump was “normalizing hate” and questioned its timing.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will have wide discretion on whether transgender service members can continue to serve, and he has six months to develop a plan to implement Trump’s memorandum.
As ThinkProgress reported last month, Trump’s decision to ban transgender service members from the military was about electoral politics, using transgender people as pawns after congressional infighting over funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The military currently spends ten times more on erectile dysfunction as it would on transgender medical care.
This article was originally published at ThinkProgress on August 26, 2017. Reprinted with permission.
About the Authors: Amanda Michelle Gomez is a health policy reporter at ThinkProgress. Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani is a Senior Editor at ThinkProgress. Before joining the team at ThinkProgress, she served as an editor at Muftah Magazine and worked in the Iranian American community. Varkiani received her master of science in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science and her bachelor’s degree in international studies from American University in Washington, D.C.
