President Trump has once again ordered a ban on transgender troops in the military. Trump issued a similar order early in his first presidency. President Biden removed it, but on Monday, Trump issued an executive order starting the process of putting it back in place.
The newly sworn-in secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, now has 30 days to submit a plan to put the order into effect.
For more on this, we are joined by Col. Bree Fram of the U. Space Force. She is one of the highest-ranking transgender service members in the armed forces. Welcome to the show. DETROW: I should say right off the top, you're here in your personal capacity, but you're still in the military, you're still active duty. And I have to start with this. What does this mean for you? FRAM: What this means for me and so many transgender service members is that we're back where we've been before, and we're dealing with a government policy that says we, in some way, shouldn't be part of the military Our values don't align with the military.
And that's a huge challenge because we've had over almost a decade of open service where we have proved, as transgender service members, that we meet or exceed the standards the military has. DETROW: I would like to, if it's all right with you, read a few lines from this order and talk to you about it, because it gets to what you just said. And I don't want to take it out of context, so I'm going to read a couple sentences here. Reading Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DOD policy, expressing a false gender identity divergent from an individual's sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.
Reading A man's assertion that he is a woman and his requirement that others honor this falsehood is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member. And I wanted to read that because you are a high-ranking officer in the Space Force. This is an agency that Trump created. You are helping shape it in its early years. And he is saying - he's essentially saying that you don't belong, that you can't be trusted.
