The last decade has seen the Republican party slide from GOP to MAGA, but nothing demonstrates how complete and permanent this shift to Trumpism is than Donald Trump’s second trans military ban.
Considering Republicans’ long history of opposition to LGBTQ+ equal rights – from marriage to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, from the AIDS crisis to their support for sodomy laws – it perhaps isn’t surprising that trans people have come under fire from the Republicans in the 21st century. However, the willingness of Trump’s Republican party to knowingly sacrifice military readiness simply to further their cruel anti-trans agenda shows how far the party has shifted.
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Republicans have always prioritized the military. They have historically pushed for greater military spending and for more power to be given to the armed forces.
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“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was instituted during the Clinton administration as an imperfect softening of the military’s previous total ban on gay and bi people serving. George W. Bush could have reversed that change and pushed Congress to take America back to when queer people weren’t allowed to serve at all, but it allowed for more people to serve in the military and helped to further Republican goals enough (especially after September 11) that the social agenda was secondary to the military.
When Trump moved to ban trans people from serving in the military during his first term, the situation was different to what we are seeing in 2025, both in the political climate and the timeline it was enacted on. Trans identities were not a hot-button issue for Republicans yet and weren’t as much a part of mainstream discussions.
In 2016, North Carolina passed H.B. 2 to restrict bathroom access for trans people, but it was met with heavy backlash and ultimately repealed. It would be several more years before states were widely pushing anti-trans bills again.
That first trans military ban started not as an executive order but as a tweet from the president in July 2017 that reportedly took top generals by surprise. It took until March 2019 for a policy to be written up that explained how the ban would be implemented. That guidance restricted active-duty service members to a choice between leaving the military or continuing to serve as their gender assigned at birth and also prevented trans applicants from being considered for service if they had medically transitioned.
In 2025, Trump’s ban came at light speed compared to the 20197 ban, and it was much less forgiving. Coming in the first weeks of his presidency, Trump’s second trans military ban was done by executive order, as he had finally understood that tweets weren’t how policy was made. Initial claims suggested that some active-duty service members could be exempted from the ban by obtaining a waiver, which would have made it similar to the ban from 2019. However, it soon became clear that this wasn’t the case. Unlike before, Waivers are only available to those who have never medically transitioned or reported gender dysphoria and who are willing to serve under their assigned at birth gender.
The first trans military ban raised concerns over medical costs for trans people in the armed forces and claimed that they caused “disruption.” This time, those same claims rear their ugly heads, but they’re accompanied by language that reveals that this is truly all just about demonizing trans people. The new order claims that being trans isn’t compatible with the “honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity” that the military requires in its members. This baseless attack on the character of all trans people demonstrates that this is about hating a marginalized community, not about military readiness. It may also be a weak attempt to have some reason for the ban that can’t easily be countered with facts and figures.
The first time around, Trump and the Republicans could plead a certain amount of ignorance about the actual impact of their ban. While there was a study in 2014 that led to trans people being allowed to serve openly in the military, there was less mainstream discussion about trans people in the military.
Additionally, that study focused on the impact on trans people. Since Trump’s first trans military ban, the potential impact on military readiness has been examined more closely.
In November last year, SPARTA, a non-profit that supports trans service members in the U.S. military, estimated that the proposed ban could cost $18 billion in lost investments because many trans service members have 12 to 21 years of experience and hold important leadership roles. Outside of the fiscal cost, the loss of those members of the armed forces would severely affect military readiness. Significant time would have to be taken to recruit and train people to take their places, and because of the specialized nature of many senior positions, those gaps would not be able to be filled with new or existing service members at their current ranks and levels of experience.
The exact scope of the impact on the military isn’t even known. While the numbers are sometimes downplayed, many sources suggest that there are around 15,000 trans people serving in the military. However, those numbers usually cite studies from 2011 to 2016, and the true number may now be higher.
Even the claims that the medical costs incurred by trans people put an undue strain on the military are weak at best. Data obtained in 2019 revealed that the Pentagon has spent around $8 million on healthcare for trans service members since 2016. That figure might sound like a lot, but it is less than 0.1% of the $50 billion the military spent on healthcare in 2019 alone.
While some on the left are likely to not worry about military readiness as much, the move to ban trans people from the military once again shows the true shift in Republican priorities. A strong military at any cost has been the Republican line for decades. Being willing to take a hit on military readiness just to attack a small, marginalized group and cash in on recent anti-trans messaging is the latest sign that the Republican GOP is gone. Now it’s Trump’s Republicans all the way down.
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