Five Takeaways on Trump’s order on transgender military service
President Trump on Monday signed an executive order effectively barring transgender people from serving openly in the military, renewing a policy he first began implementing in 2017 during his first term.
The order, which does not immediately ban transgender troops, is an extension of recent efforts to unravel transgender rights and diversity initiatives instituted by former President Biden that Trump and Republicans have said went too far.
Here are five takeaways from Trump’s order on transgender military service.
It fulfills a Trump campaign promise
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to once again prevent transgender people from serving openly in the military if he were to retake the White House in 2024.
He told an audience in New Hampshire in August 2023 that he would both restore the original policy and bar the Department of Veterans Affairs from covering the cost of gender-affirming care for transgender veterans as president.
“Those precious taxpayer dollars should be going to care for our veterans in need, not to refund radical gender experiments for the communist left,” Trump said at the time. The VA covers nearly all transition-related care for veterans, except for surgery.
At a Turning Point USA gathering in December, Trump said he would “get transgender out of the military” with “the stroke of my pen” on his first day in office. He also pledged to put a stop to what he and his administration have called “transgender lunacy” by signing separate executive orders to ban gender-affirming care for minors and bar transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams.
Another executive order, he said, would “get transgender ... out of our........
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