President Trump Announces on Twitter: No Transgender People in U.S. Military

Wednesday morning President Trump announced on Twitter that transgender people, those who wish to be treated as the opposite sex, will not be allowed to serve in the military.

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

Despite the whirlwind of breaking news stories and outcry this announcement has generated, the policy is back to what it was for the majority of the Obama presidency. Ash Carter, the Secretary of Defense under Obama, changed the policy in 2016, but allowed for a one-year review process for the Pentagon to determine how to handle transgender recruits in the military. In the meantime, people were allowed to begin to “transition” to the opposite sex and pursue changing their gender on official IDs without fear of being discharged.

As recently as a few weeks ago, women in the military were being told in new training materials for the U.S. Army to ‘accept’ naked men in their showers. James Hasson writing for the Federalist noted that this type of policy amounts to “using the military for social engineering, not defense.”

Trump’s announcement comes on the heels of two other breaking news stories regarding transgender activism. New Jersey passed a bill this week that requires schools to use preferred gender pronouns and names for all students, and even permit locker room and bathroom access to the opposite sex. The Minnesota Department of Education has just approved a transgender “toolkit” that will be distributed to all public and charter schools in the state. The toolkit contains controversial instructions on pronouns, bathrooms and locker rooms.

With states passing laws to enforce compelled gender pronoun usage, and schools implementing policies that compromise privacy, safety, and free speech, it’s clear that the debate is far from over.

President Trump’s position on transgender issues is not completely clear. On the one hand, he has told Caitlin Jenner, formerly Bruce Jenner, that he is welcome to use the women’s bathroom in Trump Towers. On the other hand, he supports common sense policies such as this.

Everyone should reject policies that deny the biological reality of male and female. As The New Atlantis pointed out last year, “The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be “a man trapped in a woman’s body” or “a woman trapped in a man’s body” — is not supported by scientific evidence.”