The ban on trans servicemembers has been making its way through the courts and we have lost an advocate in the administration, the Secretary of Defense who has been trying to hold his former boss back from doing even more drastic steps to trans servicemembers.
All the ways Mattis tried to contain TrumpIt wasn’t much but at least he tried to stop his boss… now there is no restraint on Trump and God help us.
The Defense secretary tried to steady the president without saying "no."
Politico
By Wesley Morgan
December 20, 2018
For two years, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis slow-walked and stymied President Donald Trump's most dramatic impulses on military policy.
That strategy came to a swift end when it came to Syria.
Trump’s and Mattis' vocal disagreement on withdrawing U.S. troops from the war-ravaged country was just the latest clash between the president and his Pentagon chief on their approach to deploying the military and projecting American power
[…]
Transgender troop ban
When Trump tweeted his order that the military ban transgender personnel, Mattis tried to walk it back but ultimately failed. After the White House followed up the tweet with formal guidance, Mattis ordered a six-month policy review headed by his top deputy and generals from each of the military branches.
While the reviews were underway, the existing Obama-era policies that allowed troops to be open about their transgender status — and in some cases receive government-funded sex-reassignment surgeries — remained in place.
But the review ended with Mattis largely acquiescing to Trump, recommending in a memo to the president that "persons with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria" be "disqualified from military service except under limited circumstances.”
Trump followed through in March by formally ordering a ban based on Mattis’ recommendation — although that policy is now being contested in several court cases.
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