Trump memo directs Pentagon to implement transgender troop ban, with some leeway

President Trump
(Image credit: Pool/Getty Images)

President Trump signed a memo Friday directing the Pentagon to implement the ban on transgender troops he unexpectedly announced in late July. The document says the Defense Department (DoD) must stop accepting openly transgender recruits but allows Pentagon leadership to decide whether active transgender personnel can continue in their roles.

The memo also prohibits federal spending on sex-reassignment surgeries unless they are needed "to protect the health of an individual who has already begun a course of treatment to reassign his or her sex." The DoD has six months to decide what to do about current transgender personnel.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.