President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly planning to remove transgender soldiers from the military.
The Executive Order would lead to currently serving transgender individuals being medically discharged and would lead to a ban on trans people joining the military, The Sunday Times reported.
It is unclear how many transgender individuals are currently in the armed services. Estimates vary, with some putting the number as low as a couple thousand and others as high as 25,000 across branches.
However, the total population of active duty service members is 1.3 million. This would indicate that even by the most generous estimates, the transgender population in the military is not more than 2%.
Transgender people were banned from the armed services until 2016 when President Barack Obama’s administration reversed the policy. Trump quickly announced the re-installation of the policy upon taking office. President Joe Biden then reversed Trump and reinstalled the Obama-era policy once he assumed the president’s executive order power.
The Trump-era policy would come, as the British publications pointed out, after decades of declining military recruitment numbers and as 77% of young adults in the U.S. are deemed unqualified to serve.
Documents obtained by Military.com reveal that there is considerable expense to transgender troops. The outlet reported that from 2016 to 2021, the military spent $15 million to treat 1,892 transgender troops, with $11.5 million for psychotherapy and $3.1 million for surgeries.
It is unclear what the next Trump-era policy would entail, and the British publications did not elucidate the details.
Trump’s then-Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, introduced a policy that forbade individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria from serving, with exceptions, in 2018. It also said that transgender persons who didn’t have gender dysphoria but claimed to be transgender could serve but only in their birth gender. No indication was reported that would clarify if the next proposed policy would merely be a resurrection of something from the first Trump Administration.
Various lawsuits challenged the validity of this policy. However, the Supreme Court eventually affirmed the ban’s legality in 2019.
“As always, we treat all transgender persons with respect and dignity. (The Department of Defense’s) proposed policy is NOT a ban on service by transgender persons. It is critical that DoD be permitted to implement personnel policies that it determines are necessary to ensure the most lethal and combat effective fighting force in the world. DoD’s proposed policy is based on professional military judgment and will ensure that the U.S. Armed Forces remain the most lethal and combat effective fighting force in the world,” Lt. Col. Carla Gleason, a Pentagon spokesperson, told CNN immediately after the ruling.
Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi posted on X an opposition view that the policy was “purpose-built to humiliate brave men & women seeking to serve their country.”
“Deeply concerning that #SCOTUS is allowing his ban to proceed for now,” she added.
The Sunday Times was the first to report on the executive order that is allegedly currently being prepared and set to be issued shortly after Trump takes office on January 20, 2025.
Other British publications such as The Independent and The Telegraph subsequently picked up the story, as did publications in the British commonwealth such as The Times of India.
American publications have not covered the story at this time.
This proposed action comes as there has been a national debate over transgender individuals in federal accommodations. Republican Congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina recently received death threats after she introduced bills in Congress that would ban transgender individuals from using bathrooms that do not conform with their biological sex on the Capitol grounds and other federal buildings, respectively. This action came after Delaware elected Sarah McBride, a man who claimed to be a woman, to Congress.