Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) on Monday called a Trump administration policy barring transgender people from serving openly in the military “appalling” and a wedge meant “to divide and distract” Americans.
“Earlier this month, I joined my neighbors across Delaware in celebrating the freedoms that define our nation, freedoms made possible by those who have worn the uniform,” McBride said in a floor speech on Monday. “It is appalling that while families gathered under fireworks to honor that sacrifice, the Trump administration was all too quietly forcing thousands of patriots out of military service.”
The Pentagon began removing openly transgender service members from the military in June, after the Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Defense may enforce a policy that President Trump ordered in January. Two district courts blocked the policy from taking effect before the Supreme Court issued its ruling, with one federal judge describing it as “soaked in animus.”
Unlike a policy enacted during Trump’s first term that prevented most transgender people from serving but made an exception for troops who had already started their gender transition, the administration’s new policy offers virtually no leeway, deeming anyone with a current diagnosis, history or symptoms of gender dysphoria unfit for military service.
Transgender Americans, according to a Jan. 27 executive order, cannot satisfy the “rigorous standards” needed to serve, threatening military readiness and unit cohesion, an argument long used to keep marginalized groups — including Black, gay and female Americans — from serving.
A 2016 RAND Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon found that allowing trans people to serve had no negative impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness or readiness.
“These are Americans who have served with honor, with distinction and with unshakable patriotism; brave, honorable and committed patriots who have also dared to have the courage to say out loud that they are transgender,” McBride, herself a transgender woman and the first out trans member of Congress, said on Monday.
“These are qualified, trained and decorated service members. They have deployed into combat, flown missions overseas, and led troops through danger, and now this administration is telling them that despite their qualifications and their exemplary quality of service, that they can no longer serve simply because of how they express their gender.”
“This ban weakens our military,” she added. “It betrays our values, and it sends the cruelest possible message to some of our most dedicated citizens: that their service is unwelcome, and that one’s identity matters more than what they’ve done, what they’ve sacrificed and what they fight for.”
Several legal challenges to the Trump administration’s policy are ongoing. In May, 32 trans service members, supported by GLAD Law and the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, asked the Supreme Court to reinstate a lower court’s preliminary injunction preventing the ban on transgender troops from being implemented while the case moves through the courts.
In a letter to the court, the plaintiffs in Talbott v. USA wrote that recent statements made by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “underscore that the ban was motivated by anti-transgender animus, not by the medical considerations advanced by the government.”