Hot off a victory in the US Supreme Court, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the military services to go to full speed in discharging transgender members of the Armed Forces; see Breaking: Supreme Court Hands Down Momentous Decision on Transgenders in the Military – RedState. In a terse statement released on X, Hegseth said, "After a SCOTUS victory for @POTUS, TRANS is out at the DOD."
The Department of Defense is moving along three tracks. Servicemembers who self-identified as transgender before the original March 26 deadline (see Pentagon Orders Discharge of Transgenders – RedState) will be eligible for separation pay, and they are to be immediately processed for discharge. They will be eliminated within the next thirty days. About 1,000 members of the Armed Forces are expected to fall into this category. The ban on recruiting transgenders was reinstated effective immediately; see SecDef Hegseth Orders an End to Enlisting Transgenders – RedState. A new deadline for self-identification is established as June 6, 2025, for active duty and July 7, 2025, for Reserve servicemembers. Transgenders complying with this deadline will "may" be eligible for separation pay. At the end of the self-identification window, the military services will move to involuntarily separate those transgenders remaining. That number is uncertain, but as of December 9, 2024, there were officially 4,240 transgenders on active duty, and in the National Guard and Reserves but advocacy groups place the number at around 15,000.
Hegseth's move also puts an end to the policy of court-ordered but taxpayer-funded surgery and drug regimens for transgenders in the military.
In response, Politico ran an opinion piece spotlighting Commander "Emily" Shilling, a Navy EA-18 pilot, headlined "‘I’m Heartbroken’: A Trans Military Commander Confronts Trump’s Ban." As it turns out, Shilling is married and has kids, which I guess does make "her" a lesbian trapped in a man's body.
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