Trump's ban leaves transgender troops in limbo, and his White House and Pentagon scrambling

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – President Trump's hair-trigger decision Wednesday to ban transgender troops in three tweets upended a policy more than a year in the making and sent White House and Pentagon staffers scrambling to devise and enact his Twitter edict.

Trump made his decision Tuesday, informed vacationing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis later that day, and announced to the world on Twitter Wednesday morning that transgender troops were no longer welcome in the U.S. military in any capacity. Trump reasoned that the military could no longer be burdened by the disruption caused by transgender troops.

Instead, it was the Pentagon, White House, Congress and as many as 6,600 transgender troops left in limbo Wednesday.

As progressive, civil liberties, and LGBTQ groups quickly railed against the decision, the tweets set off a day of confusion in Washington about whether the commander-in-chief was actually enacting U.S. policy in 140-character spurts – or if the missives were just opinions about a preferred course of action for the military.

Trump's tweet that the Pentagon would not "will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military" caught White House and Pentagon staffers by surprise, three officials said under condition of anonymity.

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The Pentagon referred all questions to the White House, where spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters that Trump's announcement was "based on a military decision.”

How the new policy will actually affect transgender troops is unclear. First, it will have to be drafted by the National Security Council and sent to Mattis and the Pentagon for implementation.

Yet Sanders could not answer any detailed questions, including whether transgender service members would be immediately thrown out of the military – or sent home if they are currently deployed to conflict zones such as Afghanistan. “Implementation policy is going to be something that the White House and the Department of Defense have to work together to lawfully determine,” she said, “and I would imagine the Department of Defense will be the lead on that.”

Pressed about why the Trump administration did not work out these details beforehand, Sanders said: “Look, I think sometimes you have to make decisions. And once he made a decision, he didn't feel it was necessary to hold that decision.”

Yet Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Trump's tweets confused rather than clarified a major policy issue.

“The President’s tweet this morning regarding transgender Americans in the military is yet another example of why major policy announcements should not be made via Twitter," McCain said in a statement. "The statement was unclear. The Department of Defense has already decided to allow currently-serving transgender individuals to stay in the military, and many are serving honorably today."

Two administration officials said amendments to the Defense Department's spending bill in the House, which contained language that would eliminate spending on treating transgender troops, focused Trump's attention on the issue. They believe that Trump quickly decided to take a public position on the issue, in the interest of moving the spending bill forward.

Prior to the decision last year under the Obama administration to allow transgender troops to serve openly, those service members could have been discharged for medical reasons. That ended in July 2016 when then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter repealed the ban and outlined a plan to allow transgender troops to receive treatment that ranges from counseling to hormone treatment to gender reassignment surgery.

Trump appears to have changed all that on Wednesday.

"What happened is the commander in chief ordered a purge of transgender troops," said Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a non-profit organization that advocates for transgender troops. "We're not sure how he's going to manage that purge."

One transgender service member, Madison Holderegger, 23, a transgender woman currently serving in the Wyoming Army National Guard, said she was blindsided by the tweet.

Holderegger said she was stunned by Trump’s reasoning, as she — along with a few others she knows in the National Guard who are transitioning — has been paying for her transition without help from the military.

“It’s a big blow. It hurts a lot,” Holderegger said. “Personally, me and a few other of the transgender people I know in the National Guard, we’re paying for our transition out of pocket, and to hear that we’re being kicked out due to budget issues, it’s pretty disheartening.”

“I’ve served for four and a half years and I have never been an issue, and now I am for this?” Holderegger said.

Explaining his rationale, Trump said Wednesday that the U.S. 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."

Yet any saving Trump hoped to achieve by denying transgender troops medical care will be dwarfed by the cost of replacing them.

Hundreds of troops have identified themselves as transgender in order to receive medical treatment, including about 150 sailors in the Navy, according to two U.S. officials who were not authorized to speak publicly about medical issues.

The RAND Corp., a non-partisan think tank commissioned by the Pentagon to study the issue, found that only a few hundred of the estimated 6,600 transgender troops would seek medical treatment in any year.

RAND found those costs would total no more than $8 million per year.

Replacing those 6,600 transgender troops would likely be far more costly. The Army, for example, is spending $300 million this year on bonuses and ads to recruit 6,000 soldiers. That does not include the money needed to train, equip and pay them.

About the only thing that is certain about Trump's new policy-by-tweet is a legal challenge.

"We will fight it," vowed Joshua Block, a lead attorney on the issue for the American Civil Liberties Union.

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