President elect Donald Trump reportedly plans to issue an executive order on his ‘first day in office’ to ban transgender members of the military.
The controversial order would cause as many as 15,000 active service members to be ‘medically discharged’ – deeming them unfit to serve, per The Sunday Times.
Trump seeks to issue the executive action on January 20, 2025 or Day 1 of his term, the Times said, preventing any transgender people from enlisting in the military as all branches continue to struggle with recruitment.
The 78-year-old former president has nominated former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense and has pledged to purge all government agencies of ‘woke‘ policies.
In a podcast interview recently, Hegseth called the inclusion of transgender people in the service ‘pushing boundaries.’
He suggested that you can’t integrate trans people in as easily as people of different races were integrated ‘because being transgendered in the military causes complications and differences.’
Hegseth also said that transgender people were ‘not deployable’ because they are ‘reliant on chemicals.’
It’s not the first time Trump has attempted to get rid of trans people from the service. In 2017, then-President Trump announced through a series of tweets that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military. Hegseth supported the move.
