Column: Trump’s latest cruel attempt to ban transgender troops won’t survive without a fight
- Share via
The Trump administration‘s policies are built on a foundation of lies: Millions of foreign criminals and mentally ill people illegally stream across our borders. Doctors abort babies after they are born. Tariffs won’t drive up costs for American consumers. American taxpayers buy condoms for Hamas. Transgender service members undermine the armed forces.
Based on that last fiction, the Defense Department announced a ban on transgender troops Wednesday, following an executive order issued by President Trump in January.
“It directs the military to identify any service members who are transgender and then directs that all those will be put in separation proceedings,” said Jennifer Levi, senior counsel with GLAD Law, which along with the National Center for Lesbian Rights is suing to block the policy on behalf of six transgender service members. The plaintiffs say the policy violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantees.
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s plea to Trump the day after his inauguration exemplified the principled criticism the president deserves regardless of his victory.
Although some have read the ban as making some exceptions, Levi said it does not.
“It specifically says that everyone in service has to serve in their birth sex,” she said. “You cannot be transgender in the military.”
Tell that to Sgt. 1st Class Kate Cole, a transgender woman who enlisted at 17 and has spent her entire adult life in the Army. Now 34, Cole, who is one of the plaintiffs asking the courts to stop enforcement of the transgender ban, has earned numerous medals for acts of heroism and meritorious service.
The DOGE leader gets this right: Some of the things he says about government waste, fraud and abuse have to be corrected.
A marksman, she has been deployed to the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, the Baltic states and South Korea. Through it all, even during her transition, she never missed a day of training.
“We’re here, we’re serving honorably, we meet the standards and we just want to continue to serve,” she told me.
Cole said she had planned to leave the Army to transition at one point but decided to stay after reading in the Army Times that the military would study whether transgender troops could serve effectively. On the strength of that study‘s finding that transgender service members had no adverse impact on the military’s mission, then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter rescinded a ban on transgender troops in 2016.
“Although relatively few in number, we’re talking about talented and trained Americans who are serving their country with honor and distinction,” Carter said. “We invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to train and develop each individual, and we want to take the opportunity to retain people whose talent we’ve invested in and who have proven themselves.”
Since then, however, transgender service members have been treated like pingpong balls in a particularly cruel political game. Trump tried to ban them soon after he first took office in 2017. Lawsuits tied up his policy in various courts until President Biden took office in 2021 and reversed course.
And now here we are again. Trump is back in office, and his administration, led by the feckless billionaire Elon Musk, appears hell-bent on inflicting as much misery as possible as it merrily guts the federal government.
Trump’s rationale for the ban is as misbegotten and insulting as his edict that there are only two sexes.
“Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved,” Trump wrote in his executive order, “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle. ... A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee in Washington, D.C., was not having it.
“To call an entire group of people lying, dishonest people who are undisciplined, immodest and have no integrity — how is that anything other than showing animus?” she asked a Justice Department lawyer during a recent hearing. (The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that laws based solely on animus — bias, dislike or disfavor of people simply because of who they are — do not pass constitutional muster.)
Reyes is expected to rule after a hearing scheduled for March 12. A second, similar request to stop the anti-trans policy was filed on behalf of seven other service members by LAMBDA Legal in Seattle. Multiple legal challenges to policies like this are not unusual; the issue is likely to end up before the Supreme Court.
No one knows for certain how many transgender individuals are serving. A 2014 study by UCLA’s Williams Institute put the number of transgender people on active duty or in the National Guard or reserve forces at around 15,000. A 2016 Rand study commissioned by the Defense Department estimated that about 1,300 to 6,600 transgender service members were on active duty, with about 800 to 4,200 in the reserves. At least 18 countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Canada and Australia, allow transgender people to serve openly.
Whatever the actual number here in the United States, it is vanishingly small considering that the overall force comprises some two million troops.
“You and I both agree that the greatest fighting force that world history has ever seen is not going to be impacted in any way by less than 1 percent of the soldiers using a different pronoun than others might want to call them. Would you agree to that?” Judge Reyes asked Justice Department lawyer Jason Lynch.
“No, your honor,” Lynch replied. “I can’t agree with that.”
Sgt. Cole, who paid for her own transition, is currently stationed in Los Angeles, teaching tactics and leadership to ROTC students at UCLA, preparing them to become junior lieutenants. She hopes to retire in 2027 and move to Colorado to work as a climbing guide.
If she is kicked out of the Army before completing her 20 years of service, she stands to lose her $3,500 monthly pension. Thanks for your service, Sgt. Cole!
She does not generally discuss her gender identity or her role in the lawsuit, and even some of her friends have no idea she is trans.
“I’m proud of my service, and ultimately, I just want to continue to do my job,” Cole said. “I don’t want to be a symbol. I just want to do my job and exist.”
That is so little to ask. Doesn’t this country owe her that much?
Bluesky: @rabcarian.bsky.social. Threads: @rabcarian
