“There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President’s direction has been received by the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary has issued implementation guidance,”<\/em> Dunford wrote in a memo to service chiefs, commanders and senior enlisted leadership on Thursday, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n “In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect. As importantly, given the current fight and the challenges we face, we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions,”<\/em> he added.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Trump announced in a series of tweets from his personal account that the US government will \u201cnot accept or allow\u201d<\/em> transgender individuals to serve in the military \u201cin any capacity.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Once official, this would reverse the June 2016 decision<\/a> by the Obama administration that allowed existing service members to come out as transgender and instructed the military to develop policies for recruiting new ones.<\/p>\n \u201cOur military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail,\u201d<\/em> Trump wrote.<\/p>\n Read more<\/p>\n Trump tweeted that he made the decision after \u201cextensive discussions\u201d<\/em> with his national security and military advisers.<\/p>\n Mainstream news outlets have challenged that version of events, with the New York Times saying that Defense Secretary James Mattis was informed only a day before the announcement and was \u201cappalled\u201d<\/em> by the president\u2019s decision. CNN cited<\/a> Dunford\u2019s letter as proof that the Pentagon was \u201cblindsided\u201d<\/em> by Trump\u2019s tweets.<\/p>\n At the end of June, however, Mattis approved a six-month delay<\/a> in implementing transgender recruitment, citing the requests from all service branches for more time to make sure it did not adversely affect the \u201creadiness and lethality\u201d<\/em> of the military.<\/p>\n In the meantime, he said, all service members would be treated \u201cwith dignity and respect.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n While Trump\u2019s critics have denounced<\/a> the new policy, a major concern is how it will affect the currently serving members of the military who identify as transgender. One major issue that requires clarification is whether they will be discharged honorably, and therefore continue to receive health and pension benefits they\u2019ve earned while in service.<\/p>\n While LGBT advocates have claimed that there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members, a 2016 RAND Corporation study put that estimate at 2,450 on active duty and 1,510 in the reserves. Officially, about 250 troops have come out as transgender since the June 2016 policy announcement.<\/p>\n The US military has 1.3 million active-duty members and 990,000 in the reserves, according to most recent estimates<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Pentagon has not yet received official orders from the White House on implementing a ban on transgender service members, said General Joseph Dunford (USMC), chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Donald Trump\u2019s chief military adviser. “There will be no modifications to the current policy until the President’s direction has been received […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":319019,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-319145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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