President Trump’s announcement on Twitter on Wednesday morning that he is reinstating a ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. armed forces came as a surprise to a lot of people. Most notably, it seemed to come as a shock to the Pentagon, which was already moving forward, albeit slowly, with plans to lift the ban.
<section class="about-the-author fancy inline with-head">White House officials are openly conceding that the
move was motivated by electoral politics. Vice President Mike Pence and chief strategist Steve Bannon had reportedly
been pushing the policy shift,and
Politico reported that the president made the decision to resolve a congressional squabble in order to secure funds for his border wall. The rollout of the new policy itself was very odd, betraying a striking lack of effort to pretend this was anything other than a unilateral White House move.</section>
The Pentagon press office
was unaware that this decision was coming and
referred questions about it to the White House. The previous transgender policy is
still on the department’s website. The Senate Armed Services Committee was reportedly
caught by surprise, too, which raised
the ire of committee chairman Sen. John McCain, who called it “unclear” and “yet another example of why major policy announcement should not be made via Twitter.”
Secretary of Defense James Mattis reportedly
was consulted on the decision, but it’s hard to know what form that consultation took, particularly since Mattis is currently on vacation this week.
Just three weeks ago,
Mattis announced that he was giving military commanders another six months to review whether allowing transgender people to enlist would impact military readiness. (Transgender troops already serving were not affected by the review.) If Trump were actually making this decision in consultation with “my generals,” as he claimed this morning, why wouldn’t he wait until December when that review will be complete?
