resident Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would ban transgender people from the US military, a move appealing to some in his conservative political base but creating uncertainty about the fate of thousands of transgender service members.<\/p>\n
The surprise announcement by Trump, who as a presidential candidate last year vowed to fight for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people, came in a series of morning Twitter posts. It drew condemnation from rights groups and some lawmakers in both parties as politically motivated discrimination but was praised by conservative activists and some Republicans.<\/p>\n
The administration has not determined whether transgender individuals already serving in the military would be immediately thrown out, a point the White House and Pentagon have yet to decide, Trump spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.<\/p>\n
A transgender ban would reverse Democratic former President Barack Obama\u2019s policy and halts years of efforts to eliminate barriers to military service based on sexual orientation or gender identity.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military,\u201d Trump tweeted, without naming any of the generals or experts.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Sanders said Trump had \u201cextensive discussions with his national security team,\u201d and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was informed after the president made the decision on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was about military readiness,\u201d Sanders told a briefing. \u201cThis was about unit cohesion. This was about resources within the military, and nothing more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pentagon earlier referred questions about Trump\u2019s decision to the White House.<\/p>\n
Critics said the health costs of caring for transgender service members were a tiny portion of the military\u2019s healthcare budget and Trump\u2019s policy change was based on prejudice.<\/p>\n
His action unleashed a torrent of legal threats from civil liberties advocates seeking plaintiffs willing to challenge the ban in court and sparked a protest by hundreds who rallied outside an armed forces recruiting station in Manhattan\u2019s Times Square.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in a crisis. This is a dark day for everyone,\u201d Brad Hoylman, New York\u2019s sole openly gay state senator, said as he addressed the crowd, which carried \u201cResist\u201d signs amid chants of: \u201cHey-hey, ho-ho, Donald Trump has got to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
resident Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would ban transgender people from the US military, a move appealing to some in his conservative political base but creating uncertainty about the fate of thousands of transgender service members. The surprise announcement by Trump, who as a presidential candidate last year vowed to fight for lesbians, gays,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[679],"class_list":{"0":"post-4948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-trump-to-ban-transgender-us-military-personnel"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bartabangla.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}