Trump Punishes Transgender Patriots

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/opinion/trump-transgender-military-ban.html

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So far, President Trump has not succeeded in his plans to steal health insurance from tens of millions of people, break up families by deporting millions of would-be Americans, enrich his fellow 1 percenters with new tax breaks and bar immigrants from entering the country because of their religion.

But you’ve got to start somewhere, so today he settled for punishing a few thousand patriots who want to serve their country in the military.

Cutting off a review by the Pentagon of a 2016 decision to allow transgender men and woman to join the armed forces, Trump announced (on Twitter, of course, because it’s vital to reduce all of his thoughts to short outbursts on social media) that he “will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military.”

The decision, which prompted congratulatory comments from his supporters on the far right, was camouflaged as a carefully considered effort to ensure the military is at its full fighting potential.

Trump said in his tweets that he took this step “after consultation with my generals and military experts.” (Foolishly, I had thought they were still America’s generals, and not the personal minions of the temporary occupant of the Oval Office.) But those very same generals, represented by the secretary of defense, James Mattis, said last month that they would need six more months to study the idea of allowing transgender people to enlist.

The ban on transgender service members was lifted in June 2016 by Ashton Carter, then the secretary of defense, and recruitment was supposed to begin on July 1.

Trump’s tweeted reasons for reversing the policy are transparently ridiculous. “Our 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,” Trump said in his series of tweets, which he closed with a peculiar “Thank you.”

There is no evidence that allowing transgender people to serve openly in uniform would interfere with the “decisive and overwhelming victory” that Trump fantasizes about. Estimates of the number of transgender service members range from about 2,500 to about 15,500, most of whom have not revealed their gender identity. There are far more gay men and women in uniform and their presence did not in any way disrupt American military power before or after the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was repealed.

Trump’s comment about medical costs is equally ludicrous. Representative Adam Smith, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said that the total cost of hormone therapy for transgender soldiers since 2012 has been just $297,000. In 2016, the RAND Corporation estimated that paying for medical services for transgender soldiers if the ban were lifted would cost $2.4 million to $8.4 million a year. That’s a couple of Trump visits to one of his golf resorts, and at most about 0.001 percent of the Pentagon’s nearly $600 billion budget.

The Pentagon’s website says the 2016 policy change followed “a comprehensive and inclusive process that included the leadership of the armed services, medical and personnel experts across the department, transgender service members, outside medical experts, advocacy groups and the RAND Corporation.”

Were all of the military leaders and experts involved in that process replaced by new ones who told Trump to reverse the decision? And when was the president consulting with them? In between threatening the job of his attorney general for refusing to block the Russia investigation, sucking up to Vladimir Putin and swanning around his golf clubs?

Or did he just call in Steve Bannon and his new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, and ask them for a way to throw some red meat to his most intolerant supporters while the health care bill flounders on Capitol Hill and new revelations come out almost daily about his campaign’s strange dealings with the Kremlin?