Trump enraged a whole lot of people and delighted a small few this morning by arbitrarily announcing that transgender people will not be allowed to serve in the military in "any capacity."
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow......
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
....Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming.....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
....victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
Trump is wrong about the costs of transgender medical care, and he's wrong about transgender service members posing a "burden," but he may also be wrong about the policy.
I say he "arbitrarily" announced this ban because it appears that no one else knew about it. Secretary of Defense James Mattis is currently on vacation and the Pentagon is deferring all questions to the White House.
Trump’s tweets Wednesday also came more than an hour before the Defense Department released its own brief statement on the matter, in which it referred "all questions about the President's statements to the White House."
The Department of Defense website still reflects information about the policy change implemented by Carter in 2016.
Here's more from the Wall Street Journal:
The presidential announcement took the Defense Department by surprise.
“The tweet was the first we heard about it,” said a defense official familiar with the matter. [...]
A report commissioned by the Pentagon on the effects of allowing transgender individuals to serve openly, released in May 2016, found that policy shift would have little to no impact and negligible costs on military cohesion or readiness. The study, conducted by the Rand Corp., found that between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender individuals serve on active duty, amounting to about 0.05% of the total U.S. active force. The study pegged the likely estimate at 2,450.
There are approximately 15,000 transgender individuals serving in the military today and it's not clear what this will mean for them. Banning transgender service does not mean there will be no transgender service members, it simply means they will have to hide it. It's Don't Ask Don't Tell 2.0, and possibly worse version at that. Transgender service members could be forced to hide their gender identity and their sexual orientation as it pertains to their true identity.
The ACLU appears to be gearing up for a fight, but as far as we know this policy only exists in Trump's tweets right now. There's been no official dictation or written orders handed down.
The Pentagon spends fives times as much on Viagra as it does transgender-specific medical care, by the way.
“The implication is that even in the most extreme scenario that we were able to identify … we expect only a 0.13-percent ($8.4 million out of $6.2 billion) increase in health care spending,” Rand's authors concluded.
By contrast, total military spending on erectile dysfunction medicines amounts to $84 million annually, according to an analysis by the Military Times — 10 times the cost of annual transition-related medical care for active duty transgender servicemembers.
The military spends $41.6 million annually on Viagra alone, according to the Military Times analysis — roughly five times the estimated spending on transition-related medical care for transgender troops.
We also spend more on Trump's trips to the Mar-a-Lago than transgender medical care.