Welcome to the weekend, Rulers! Sadly, today will be our last Friday ruling together, as I will be moving to a full-time breaking news job starting next week. It’s been an honor to participate in this community with all of you and the stellar Women Rule team: Kat, Dana, Emma, Rachel and our fearless leader Teresa. But this doesn’t have to be goodbye — keep in touch at gewing@politico.com or on X. For now, let’s get into it one last time… Donald Trump is once again moving to bar transgender troops from military service. The president signed an executive order at the end of January repealing a policy that allowed trans troops to serve in the military. The move marked the latest in a series of policy moves targeting trans people across the country, from participating in school sports to receiving gender-affirming health care. The new order asserts that “radical gender ideology” has “afflicted” the Armed Forces, and that trans service members impede unit cohesion and military readiness. “Expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” it reads. It is not clear what this order means for trans people currently serving in the military — or if they will be barred from serving. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth signaled adherence to the order on Feb. 7, announcing in a memo an immediate halt to “all accessions of people with a history of gender dysphoria” and all planned gender-affirming care procedures. The Army confirmed it would acquiesce to the order a week later. “Efforts to split our troops along lines of identity weaken our Force and make us vulnerable,” Hegseth’s memo reads. “Such efforts must not be tolerated or accommodated.” He added, “Individuals with gender dysphoria have volunteered to serve our country and will be treated with dignity and respect.” A Department of Defense official reiterated to Women Rule this week that the agency plans to “fully execute and implement all directives outlined” in Trump’s orders, “ensuring that they are carried out with the utmost professionalism, efficiency and in alignment with national security objectives.” But current trans troops say there is no inherent contradiction to being trans and serving their country. “We see that as a false dichotomy,” Army Major Alivia Stehlik tells Women Rule. “We all know that there’s nothing about being trans that limits [our] ability to serve in the military.” Stehlik has served in the Army for the past 17 years — and she has no intention of stopping now. Stehlik came out publicly in 2017 and transitioned while on active duty before deploying to Afghanistan in 2018. When she came back to the U.S. the following year, she testified before Congress about the realities of being trans in the military. Shortly thereafter, the first Trump administration enacted a ban on trans enlistment. Through it all, Stehlik “continued to show up” for duty, something that she says remains true across the board for trans service members. Trump’s new executive order would impact thousands of trans service members on active duty. According to the Modern Military Association of America, an organization that provides support for trans service members, veterans and their families, the military is the largest employer of trans people in the country. The order immediately sparked anxiety and “demoralization for the people on the ground who get up every day to serve this country and are now essentially being told that their very being and personhood is illegal,” an official from the organization, granted anonymity because of personal safety concerns, tells Women Rule. A key element of the policy is that it references an earlier Jan. 20 executive order Trump issued declaring that the government would recognize only two “unchangeable” sexes — male and female. The decision to invoke that earlier order could lay the groundwork for a blanket ban on trans troops. Critics argue the sweeping nature of the order and the lack of clarity around its enforcement means that for the time being policies could be unevenly implemented across various levels of the military. That ambiguity, the Modern Military official says, is the “scariest” part of the new order. One thing is clear, however: Access to gender-affirming care will no longer be an option for trans people serving in the military. Proponents of the policy argue that the cost of care for trans service members is exceedingly high and ending that coverage would be a budget boon for the military. But the policy’s critics say that trans health care is just like any other kind of health care, pointing out that its relatively low cost amounts to “budget dust.” The Department of Defense reportedly spent around $15 million to provide gender-affirming care for 1,892 active service members between Jan. 1, 2016, and May 14, 2021 — compared to the over $50 billion the DOD requested for the Military Health System for 2021 alone. In fact, advocates say, the loss of trans service members would represent a much larger cost to the armed services. Seventy-three percent of trans troops are in senior-level positions with between 12 to 21 years of experience, according to Modern Military. Combined, these trans service members represent decades of specialized training worth billions of dollars, the organization's official tells me. Losing these individuals would create major gaps in institutional knowledge that would take over 20 years to replace, according to estimates by Modern Military. Banning trans service members would also exacerbate a preexisting recruitment issue, the official says. “This kind of messaging is telling people entire groups are not welcome. It's hateful and it's prejudiced,” the official tells Women Rule. “That's not the kind of messaging that flies with young eligible military recruits these days.” The order is facing immediate legal challenges. The day after Trump signed it, six active-duty trans service members and two trans veterans seeking reenlistment filed a lawsuit challenging the policy. They're headed to court this week. Without clear guidance on what the order means in the short-term, Modern Military is advising trans service members and their families to continue doing their work and to be prepared for any eventuality — including receiving discharge papers. When service members spend days and weeks in stressful trainings or in the field with diverse teammates from across the country, their primary concern is showing up for one another and for their country, according to Stehlik. “You end up close with people who have really different life experiences for all sorts of reasons,” Stehlik tells Women Rule. “None of that really plays in the military. It all becomes like, ‘Oh, hey, I didn't know that thing about you.’ And not just trans service members, but service members period are all just really focused on, ‘Hey, we believe in this thing that we're doing here.’”
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