Now that most pieces of the new Trump administration are falling into place, something is going to have to grab headlines for the next several weeks until President-elect Trump is sworn into office. Speculation has begun in earnest over what he will do on his first day of office.
As RedState’s Ward Clark reported earlier this month, some of the things that might be on the agenda on January 20th include sealing the border, starting mass deportations, ending the war in Ukraine and sending the Biden administration’s electric vehicle mandate into the incinerator. Bringing home the American hostages in Gaza is likely another priority.
That’s a heaping plateful of Day One business.
According to the Trump transition team, however, one thing that may not be happening, at least right away, will be the removal of transgender service members from the U.S. military. Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that those reporting on a transgender military ban “are speculating and have no idea what they are actually talking about.”
Leavitt continued:
“No decisions on this issue have been made. No policy should ever be deemed official unless it comes directly from President Trump or his authorized spokespeople,” she said.
The denial was issued after a report in The Times that a ban could be a day-one priority for the incoming administration. Madeline Leesman at our sister site Townhall had all the details on that report:
Defense sources who spoke to the outlet reportedly said that the order could come on Trump’s first day back in the White House (via The Times):
There are believed to be about 15,000 active service personnel who are transgender. They would be medically discharged, which would determine that they were unfit to serve.
[…]
The ban is expected to be wider ranging than a similar order made during his first term in office, when Trump prevented transgender people joining the armed forces, but allowed those already serving to keep their jobs. President Biden rescinded the order, but this time even those with decades of service will be removed from their posts, according to several sources.
[…]
According to the Pentagon, privacy policies make it difficult to measure the number of active duty trans people, but about 2,200 service members had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2021, when Trump’s first ban was lifted. There are about 1.3 million active duty personnel in the military.
One source who spoke to The Times said, “These people will be forced out at a time when the military can’t recruit enough people.”
Transgenders in the military became a campaign issue in the 2024 presidential election after comments made by Kamala Harris in support of taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for military members came to light. In what is widely seen as one of the most effective campaign ads in recent history, the Trump campaign released a video called “I Don’t Want,” in which his campaign concluded, “Kamala Harris is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you.”
Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of Defense, has been a vocal critic of the DEI measures recently embraced by military leaders, so odds are good there will be a reckoning coming for the military.
