MILITARY/SUPREME COURT/TRANSGENDER/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday [11-23-18] asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review lower court rulings blocking a policy barring certain transgender people from military service, declining to wait for decisions from federal appeals courts currently considering the issue. Trump announced in March that he would endorse a plan by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to restrict the military service of transgender people who experience a condition called gender dysphoria. The policy replaced an outright ban on transgender service members that Trump announced last year on Twitter, citing concern over military focus and medical costs. But judges in federal courts in Washington state, California, and Washington, D.C., refused to lift injunctions that they had issued against Trump’s original ban to allow the updated policy to be enforced.”
-Reuters, “Trump Takes Bid to Restrict Transgender Troops to Supreme Court,” The New York Times online, November 23, 2018