DEMS/MILITARY/TRANSGENDER/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The House on Thursday [3-28-19] rebuffed a move by the Trump administration to restrict transgender individuals from serving in the military. Voting 238-185, the House approved a nonbinding resolution opposing transgender troop limits just weeks before the Pentagon’s new policy is set to take effect. The measure is the majority Democrats’ first swipe at President Donald Trump’s reversal of the Obama-era policy allowing transgender individuals to serve openly, which the president announced in a tweet in July 2017. Democrats have hammered Trump and the Pentagon for undoing the policy on a whim without consulting military leaders. On the House floor Thursday, they slammed the policy as ‘targeted discrimination’ without regard to whether transgender individuals can meet military standards…The Pentagon, which was caught flat-footed by Trump’s abrupt announcement, has since refined the final policy under former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The new guidelines are not a blanket ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, but, among other provisions, they would require troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria after the policy takes effect to serve in their biological sex. They would also bar people with a history of gender dysphoria from joining unless they’ve been medically stable in their biological sex for 36 months and haven’t transitioned.”
–Conner O’Brien, “House rebuffs Trump on transgender troop ban,” Politico, March 28, 2019 11:08 am