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President-elect Donald Trump’s soon-to-be White House press secretary quashed a report that Trump will “kick transgender troops” out of the military, telling The Daily Wire that the report is based on unnamed sources who have “no idea what they are actually talking about.”
“These unnamed sources are speculating and have no idea what they are actually talking about,” Karoline Leavitt told The Daily Wire. “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.”
Her statement followed a report from the London-based Times alleging that Trump would sign an executive order as early as his first day back in the White House kicking trans-identifying troops out of the United States military. The story claimed that there are as many as 15,000 individuals in the military who identify as transgender, and that these troops would be deemed medically discharged upon Trump taking office in January.
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During his previous administration, Trump had quickly announced that trans-identifying service members would no longer serve “in any capacity,” arguing that the military needed to be focused on “decisive and overwhelming victory.” His ban on trans-identifying people serving in the military took effect in 2019, but was reversed by President Joe Biden in January 2021.
“After 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 U.S. Military,” Trump said in a post on Twitter in 2017. “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.”
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
Under former President Barack Obama, and with the support of then-Vice President Joe Biden, the military began admitting trans-identifying service members. There is no official count of how many trans-identifying members of the military there actually are, and the article in The Times gives no explanation for how it arrived at 15,000.
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