ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE: US President Donald Trump said Monday he had signed an executive order ridding the military of what he called \u201ctransgender ideology,\u201d in a potentially major setback for LGBTQ rights.
\nIn a series of orders related to the military that Trump told reporters he had signed on Air Force One, he also called for the building of a US version of Israel\u2019s Iron Dome missile defense system.
\nThe Republican signed further orders reinstating service members dismissed for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and extending a wider government crackdown on diversity programs to the armed forces.
\n\u201cTo ensure that we have the most lethal fighting force in the world, we will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military,\u201d Trump told a Republican congressional retreat earlier in Miami.
\nTrump has previously promised to bring back a ban on transgender troops, but it was not immediately clear what specific steps were contained in the new order, which has not yet been published.
\nA White House official with him said the order involved \u201celiminating gender radicalism in the military.\u201d
\nTrump\u2019s orders came at the start of his second week back in the White House and on the day a welcome ceremony was held at the Pentagon for his new defense secretary, military veteran and Fox News personality Pete Hegseth.
\n\u201cThank you for your leadership Mr. President. We will execute!\u201d Hegseth \u2014 who was confirmed last week despite concerns over his inexperience, and alleged record of heavy drinking and domestic violence \u2014 said on X.
\nTransgender Americans have faced a roller coaster of changing policies on military service in recent years, with Democratic administrations seeking to permit them to serve openly while Trump has repeatedly sought to keep them out of the ranks.
\nThe US military lifted a ban on transgender troops serving in the armed forces in 2016, during Democrat Barack Obama\u2019s second term as president.
\nUnder that policy, trans troops already serving were permitted to do so openly, and transgender recruits were set to start being accepted by July 1, 2017.
\nBut the first Trump administration postponed that date to 2018 before deciding to reverse the policy entirely, sparking criticism from rights groups.
\nTrump claimed that transgender service members were disruptive, expensive and eroded military readiness and camaraderie among troops.
\nTrump\u2019s Democratic successor Joe Biden moved to reverse the restrictions just days after he took office in 2021, saying all Americans qualified to serve should be able to do so.
\nWhile the number of transgender troops in the American military is fairly small \u2014 with estimates of some 15,000 out of more than two million uniformed service members \u2014 their dismissal would reduce US forces at a time when the country is already facing difficulties recruiting new personnel.
\nBiden\u2019s outgoing defense secretary Lloyd Austin appeared to criticize Trump\u2019s plans during a farewell address earlier this month, saying: \u201cAny military that turns away qualified patriots who are eager to serve is just making itself smaller and weaker.\u201d
\nTransgender issues have roiled US politics in recent years, as states controlled by Democrats and Republicans have moved in opposite directions on policies ranging from medical treatment to what books on the topic are allowed in public or school libraries.
\nTrump has meanwhile repeatedly promised to build a version of the Iron Dome system that Israel has used to shoot down missiles fired by Hamas from Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
\nBut he ignored the fact that the system is designed for short-range threats, making it ill-suited to defending against intercontinental missiles that are the main danger to the United States.
\n\u201cWe need to immediately begin the construction of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defense shield,\u201d Trump said in Miami, adding that it would be \u201cmade right here in the USA.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE: US President Donald Trump said Monday he had signed an executive order ridding the military of what he called \u201ctransgender ideology,\u201d in a potentially major setback for LGBTQ rights. In a series of orders related to the military that Trump told reporters he had signed on Air Force One, he also …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":76208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76209,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76191\/revisions\/76209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}