Pentagon-funded study shows troops mostly oppose Trump’s transgender military ban

Stop Transgender Military Ban Photo by: Ted Eytan, Wikimedia Commons

A Department of Defense-funded study from UCLA has found that 66% of cisgender military service members in all branches of the military broadly support the participation of transgender people in the military, effectively opposing Trump’s ban on trans service members.

This support poses a major challenge to one of President Trump’s main motivations for enacting the ban in the first place: the idea that trans service members have a negative effect on the rest of their units.

Related: Anti-LGBTQ Republican congressman says Trump opposes his own trans military ban

In the study’s abstract, the researchers recommended the ban be lifted: “Results suggest that the ban, in part, based on a belief that transgender service members degrade unit readiness, contradicts our findings of broad support for transgender service among active duty service members. Policies limiting transgender service in the U.S. military should be lifted given these data.”

If you’re wondering why the Pentagon or Trump would’ve commissioned such a study, they didn’t. President Obama ordered the study in 2018 to examine support for his now-revoked decision to allow trans people in the U.S. military. Apparently, Trump didn’t realize this and let the study continue.

In 2017, Trump announced the military ban in a series of tweets that claimed trans people cause “tremendous medical costs and disruption.”

In a subsequent press conference, former White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed that Trump feels trans people serving in the military “erodes military readiness and unit cohesion.”

Trans service members, however, have argued the contrary….

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