‘It’s crushing:' Transgender troops and advocates prepare to fight Trump's new policy

Record ID: 1953644

  • Title: ‘It’s crushing:' Transgender troops and advocates prepare to fight Trump's new policy
  • Date: 29th January 2025
  • Summary: WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (RECENT - JANUARY 19, 2025) (REUTERS) WIDE VIEW RETIRED MARINE, SARAH KLIMM, SITTING AT RESTAURANT BOOTH (SOUNDBITE) (English) RETIRED MARINE, SARAH KLIMM, SAYING: “I think if we look back, we can go through a lot of the political rallies and stuff that Trump held, and he said the quiet part out loud a long time ago. And it was one of the Carolina rallies where he stated, he was talking about trans people and the crowd was going nuts. And then all of a sudden he transitioned to start talking about taxes and the crowd goes silent. And he then stood there and goes: 'You see that I talk about taxes and nobody cares, but I talk about trans people and the crowd goes completely nuts.'”
  • Embargoed: 12th February 2025 11:00
  • Keywords: Donald Trump executive order military transgender
  • Location: CALIFORNIA, MARYLAND, WASHINGTON, DC AND ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA, UNITED STATES/ LOGAR, AFGHANISTAN
  • City: CALIFORNIA, MARYLAND, WASHINGTON, DC AND ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA, UNITED STATES/ LOGAR, AFGHANISTAN
  • Country: US
  • Topics: North America,Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA003456520012025RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text:After President Donald Trump announced on Monday (January 27) that he had signed his much-anticipated executive order placing restrictions on transgender members of the U.S. armed forces, transgender service members in the military were ready.
    Within 14 hours of the order, six transgender service members became plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday (January 28) by GLAD Law, a LGBTQ rights advocacy group, and the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR) that alleging the new restrictions violating constitutional guarantees of equal protection.
    Navy Commander Emily Shilling, a combat veteran who leads SPARTA, an advocacy group for transgender troops, said transgender service members began preparing for possible restrictions in May - long before the November elections returned Trump to the White House.
    In a weekend workshop, conducted just blocks from the White House, nearly two dozen transgender service members practiced high-pressure scenarios, including combative mock interviews, to teach them how to advocate for transgender rights if there was a change in policy after the Nov. 5 election.
    During his first term, Trump announced that he would ban transgender people from serving in the military. He didn't fully follow through with that ban. His administration froze their recruitment while allowing serving personnel to remain.
    “I came out in 2019, shortly after the ban was reinstated under Trump's first presidency," said Shilling, a fighter pilot who has flown 60 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan during her two decades in the military. "It was devastating to me.
    Shilling said SPARTA was also prepared legally.
    "We have prepared legal battles, similar to the 2017 legal battles that were brought to support and defend trans troops," she said.
    "My identity as a fighter pilot, as a parent, as a spouse, that just happens to be transgender, should have no bearing on my ability to serve and to continue to fly the jets I love," she said.
    Shilling said SPARTA membership had grown 10% since the election to 2,200 members, many of them senior enlisted members.
    The Pentagon said that as a matter of policy it did not comment on pending litigation. The White House referred back to Monday's executive order.
    About 1.3 million active-duty personnel serve in the U.S. military, Department of Defense data shows. While transgender rights advocates say as many as 15,000 service members are transgender, U.S. officials say the number is in the low thousands. There is no data that tracks breakdown of transgender service members by job, but they include special operators, pilots and doctors.
    (Production: Julio-Cesar Chavez, Maria Alejandra Cardona, Herbert Villarraga, Arlene Eiras, Alexandra Sarabia, Jane Ross)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register