Posted on 02/23/2018 8:27:35 AM PST by NKP_Vet
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is expected to propose to President Trump that transgender members of the U.S. military be allowed to continue serving despite the president’s call last summer for a ban on all transgender service members, according to two U.S. officials with knowledge of the issue.
The defense secretary was scheduled to brief the president Wednesday, but the meeting was postponed and will occur soon, officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss policy deliberations. Dana White, a spokeswoman for Mattis, said the secretary will provide his recommendation to Trump this week and the president will make an announcement at some point afterward.
Officials at the White House and Pentagon declined to comment on the recommendations until Mattis delivers his plan.
“This is a complex issue, and the secretary is taking his time to consider the information he’s been given,” White told reporters Thursday. “It’s an important issue, and again, he sees all of his decisions through the lens of lethality.”
Trump surprised many Pentagon officials on July 26 by issuing a string of tweets in which he said he was banning all transgender people from the military, despite not having a plan in place. Trump tweeted that he had reached his decision “after consultation with my Generals and military experts,” citing the “tremendous medical costs and disruption” he believed it would cause.
Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, moved afterward to stop any changes from taking place until a new policy was adopted, and Mattis backed the move. The Obama administration began allowing transgender people to openly serve in the military in June 2016, prompting some people to come out for the first time.
It’s unclear whether Trump will adopt Mattis’s recommendations, which the president requested in an Aug. 25 executive order. Trump directed the military at the time to “return to the longstanding policy and practice on military service by transgender individuals that was in place prior to June 2016,” but left an opening under which Mattis could advise him in writing on changing Trump’s new policy. The order gave Mattis until Wednesday to establish a plan.
A Rand Corp. study commissioned by the Pentagon ahead of its 2016 policy change found that there were between 1,320 and 6,630 transgender service members among 1.3 million people on active duty — less than 1 percent of the force. The study concluded that it would cost between $2.4 million and $8.4 million to treat them annually, a “relatively small” amount. Mattis questioned last year whether the numbers in the Rand study were accurate, but said he wanted to study the issue further.
It is not clear how Mattis’s recommendations will address how transgender recruits are processed.
Before the Obama administration’s policy change, the Pentagon for years considered gender dysphoria a disqualifying mental illness. The policy adopted in 2016 banned the services from involuntarily separating people in the military who came out as transgender, and gave the Pentagon a year to determine how to begin processing transgender recruits.
But Mattis delayed allowing transgender recruits for an additional six months as the deadline neared. The decision “in no way presupposes an outcome,” but needed additional study, Mattis wrote at the time. Trump issued his ban on Twitter a few weeks later.
Since then, the Trump administration has been challenged in lawsuits, and federal judges required the Pentagon to open the military to transgender recruits beginning Jan. 1. The Pentagon indicated in December that it would not stand in the way of the court’s ruling and issued new policy guidance to recruiters on how to enlist transgender men and women.
The policy paper “shall remain in effect until expressly revoked,” the memorandum said. Allowing transgender people to serve in the military is “mandatory,” it added, repeating Dunford’s earlier directive that all people will be “treated with dignity and respect.”
Dunford, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee last fall, said transgender troops already in the military have served with honor.
“I believe any individual who meets the physical and mental standards, and is worldwide deployable and is currently serving, should be afforded the opportunity to continue to serve,” he said.
He added that he would continue to advise Trump that transgender service members who follow rules and regulations should not be ejected on the basis of their gender identity.
“Senator, I can promise that that will be my advice,” he said, in response to a question from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). “What I’ve just articulated is the advice I’ve provided in private, and I’ve just provided in public.”
How is transgendered being defined? Is it someone who goes through the surgery to get body parts removed, or is just dressing like the opposite sex enough?
James Norman Mattis (born September 8, 1950) is a retired United States Marine Corps general who is the 26th and current United States Secretary of Defense, serving in the Cabinet of Donald Trump
What kind of person wants to be remembered for approving transgender troops?
It is time for the mad puppy to go, but I wonder what chaos will then be stirred by the embedded Obama officer core.
Someone who wants the VA to pay for their surgeries.
The Kenyanesian Usurper purged the military of anyone who would not go along with the social engineering.
The only ones left are all supportive of mentally ill soldiers.
Such unmitigated nonsense. As if this were some great weighty matter that requires extensive pensiveness. No, the reality is that people who are gender confused and struggle with the issue of transgenderism are mentally unstable. Period. Do decide otherwise is simply cowardly bowing at the altar of political correctness, that's all.
If "Maddog" can't take the heat he should find a new job.
He just put in a new policy that troops that were not deployable for 180 days were going to be released from duty - the exception being combat wounded vets.
If this happens it will negatively affect combat readiness and the overall morale of the armed forces - especially the combat arms troops.
I think he also said “if they can be deployed overseas”
That wasn’t noted here and is somewhat cryptic when evaluating a degenerate
core = corps.
You sure of that? There seem to be people who “identify” as the opposite sex but aren’t motivated to have surgery. These are the kinds of people we read about demanding to use the opposite sex’s bathrooms. Are you sure the military won’t be classifying these folks as transgendered too?
The problem is that the ship has already sailed.
It’s one thing to never allow them in the first place, and another to disrupt the status quo once it has already happened, and I suspect Mattis’ motivation is not to disrupt the status quo, although I highly doubt he would have allowed transgenders, if the policy wasn’t already in place.
Which is why you have to nip things in the bud, because once liberals get their way, it’s very difficult to undo.
That was the easy part...
To which I’d add: Last summer President Trump made it very clear that he didn’t want transgender people in the military.
The Commandant of the Coast Guard, Paul F. Zukunft, immediately said that he would not “break faith” with his transgender troops.
Zukunft couldn’t even keep quiet. He had to publicly contradict the commander-in-chief. And he kept his job.
I agree.
Get ‘em out.
Mental. Morale. Military.
This is NOT a complex issue.
You can't have mentally ill people serving in our armed forces.
This is just wrong.
Trump should issue orders to Mattis to stop this nonsense
or fire Mattis.
It’s one thing for us regular folks to live with this transgender nonsense.
It’s another thing to force our military to live with it.
Mattis serves at the pleasure of the President, and as such should follow the orders and viewpoints of his Commander in Chief while providing his input and opinions back up the chain.
If Trump is telling him he has to do it, that is one thing. He can resign or go along with it.
But this seems different. He seems right on board with it. I watched highlights of his confirmation hearings, and I assumed he was being vague deliberately so they would approve his appointment.
But this seems to organically be him saying these things, not taking orders from Trump. I am bitterly disappointed.
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