Trump also asked for the construction of a US counterpart of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system in a set of military directives he told reporters he had signed on Air Force One.
The Republicans issued additional directives that reinstated military personnel who had been fired for declining to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and expanded the government’s crackdown on diversity initiatives to include the military.
At a Republican congressional retreat earlier in Miami, Trump declared, “We will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military to ensure that we have the most lethal fighting force in the world.”
Although Trump has previously pledged to reinstate the ban on transgender personnel, it was unclear at first what precise measures were included in the new order, which has not yet been published.
According to a White House staffer who accompanied him, the directive aimed to “eliminate gender radicalism in the military.”
Trump’s directives came at the beginning of his second week in the White House, the same day that his new defense secretary, Fox News anchor and veteran, Pete Hegseth, was welcomed to the Pentagon.
“Mr. President, thank you for your leadership. We’ll carry out the execution! Despite reservations about his lack of experience and his reported history of excessive drinking and domestic abuse, Hegseth was confirmed last week, he said on X.
In recent years, transgender Americans have experienced a roller coaster of shifting military service regulations, with Trump constantly trying to keep them out of the military and Democratic administrations trying to allow them to serve openly.
The US military lifted a ban on transgender troops serving in the armed forces in 2016, during Democrat Barack Obama’s second term as president.
Under that policy, trans troops already serving were permitted to do so openly, and transgender recruits were set to start being accepted by July 1, 2017.
– ‘Patriots’ –
But the first Trump administration postponed that date to 2018 before deciding to reverse the policy entirely, sparking criticism from rights groups.
Trump claimed that transgender service members were disruptive, expensive and eroded military readiness and camaraderie among troops.
Trump’s Democratic successor Joe Biden moved to reverse the restrictions just days after he took office in 2021, saying all Americans qualified to serve should be able to do so.
While the number of transgender troops in the American military is fairly small — with estimates of some 15,000 out of more than two million uniformed service members — their dismissal would reduce US forces at a time when the country is already facing difficulties recruiting new personnel.
During a farewell address earlier this month, Biden’s outgoing defense secretary Lloyd Austin appeared to criticize Trump’s plans: “Any military that turns away qualified patriots who are eager to serve is just making itself smaller and weaker.”
Transgender issues have roiled US politics in recent years, as states controlled by Democrats and Republicans have moved in opposite directions on policies ranging from medical treatment to what books on the topic are allowed in public or school libraries.
Trump has meanwhile repeatedly promised to build a version of the Iron Dome system that Israel has used to shoot down missiles fired by Hamas from Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But he ignored the fact that the system is designed for short-range threats, making it ill-suited to defending against intercontinental missiles that are the main danger to the United States.
“We need to immediately begin the construction of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defense shield,” Trump said in Miami, adding that it would be “made right here in the USA.”