The DOD told Trans troops to be diagnosed. He uses the Paper Trail to expel them: NPR

Juana Summers, host:

The army expels transgender troops. This is part of a new ban promulgated by President Trump, and the deadline is on December 1. The Ministry of Defense goes through medical records and identifies anyone with gender dysphoria. During Trump’s first term, many of these troops were informed that they needed this diagnosis to keep their jobs. Now the army uses it to put them in place on administrative leave. Lauren Hodges de NPR reports.

Logan Ireland: I did what the service asked me to do. It seemed a little silly to me, but that was what the control list was.

Lauren Hodges, Byline: Logan Ireland is a chief sergeant of the US Air Force. In 2017, President Trump had just started his first administration. One of his first acts was to ban Trans from serving in the army. And if a trans person was already in the armed forces, they had two options. Go or get an official medical diagnosis for gender dysphoria, defined as the marked incongruence between the experienced sex of a person and their sex attributed to birth. As long as they made a documentation, they could stay. Ireland therefore made an appointment with a doctor, even if it says it was a little annoying.

Ireland: I have never necessarily felt dysphoric on whom I am. You know, I’m Logan. He was, you know, a woman born. But I went to a man. And I’m just here to live my life and do my job.

Hodges: But to keep this work, Ireland needed a military doctor to confirm the diagnosis and put it in file. So it’s done. And he was able to return to work, which was in the special investigation office. Former President Biden repealed the policy in 2021. Ireland thought that everything was settled.

Ireland: You know, we are first members of the service. We all raised our right hand. We carry the same uniform. We deploy in the world. You know, we don’t only meet standards. The only difference is that we are just transgender.

Hodges: Even when Trump was re -elected a few years later and the ban was reconstituted, Ireland thought it was safe.

Ireland: I thought that everything that would happen like the last time, that I would be acquired and that we still cleared.

Hodges: But this medical diagnosis he had to obtain, he was now used against him. This time, instead of squarely prohibiting all transgender soldiers, the Ministry of Defense included gender dysphoria as one of the medical conditions that disqualify people from military service. And thanks to all the meetings of these doctors in 2017, the Pentagon now had a list.

Ireland: It doesn’t seem real. It was a feeling of being expelled, of being betrayed.

Priya Rashid: It will be a completely unfair process.

Hodges: Priya Rashid is a military defense lawyer who represents several members of the Trans service as legal director of the National Institute of Military Justice. She says that some of her customers even tried to do the right thing in advance when Trump was re-elected according to what they were told during the first ban.

Rashid: We saw an influx of transgender people to go and get their diagnosis of gender dysphoria because they thought there would be another grandfather clause. So we have customers who said, I would not be released. I only went out because I thought the ban was going to be the same.

Hodges: Rashid has helped its customers navigate this early outing of military service. She says that the ban has already been traumatic for them. But the recent movements of the Air Force added the insult to the injury, starting with the remuneration of separation. In early August, the Air Force said that it would refuse transgender troops retired and that it moved to revoke the already approved requests.

The troops which served between 15 and 18 normally would automatically qualify for the advantages. But the Air Force now says that transgender troops must choose either a voluntary separation, with the same lump sum payment offered to junior troops, or an involuntary separation, which would make no salary or benefits. This means that if they try to stay and fight the ban, they get nothing. And moreover, says Rashid is that the lump sum is accompanied by conditions.

Rashid: separation remuneration means that you are paid and that you don’t have to turn it over. What these people really get is an early loan of zero interest in their disability and their accumulated rights. Thus, when they age and it is this older veteran who needs medical and financial support, they in fact exhaust their future disability and their accumulations of military rights.

Hodges: which means that they will have to eliminate future medical costs from this lump sum. In addition to the advantages revoked, the Air Force also recently announced that transgender aviators would no longer have the chance to discuss before a board of directors of their peers for the right to continue to serve. The separation panels, which are supposed to be independent, must recommend the separation of the member if the aviator has a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, according to a new memo.

Rashid: We did not know that when we opened this document, they were fundamentally changing the rules of how they lead longtime advice. The rules will not apply to these people. They will not receive a fair trial. The result will be predetermined based on the diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

Hodges: The new rules also prohibit hearings’ recordings or the use of judicial stenographers. Rashid says it’s illegal.

Rashid: The law on administrative procedure. They are required to provide calls. Transcription is the call mechanism. So, as, it is a first amendment and a right of the fifth amendment.

Hodges: Mick Wagoner is the founder and executive director of the Legal Network Support Veterans. He says that more than one law is breaking here.

Mick Waggoner: You have the influence of illegal command from the start, of the jump there, ordering a person to be expelled without any regular procedure.

Hodges: Waggoner also says that it puts a huge bump in one of the most powerful recruitment tools in the army.

Waggoner: The Quid Pro quo promises to serve you, there are some advantages at the end of this. And it is only a fundamental rupture of this contract that the military has.

Hodges: Overall, Waggoner says that the heavy effort to identify and remove transgender troops affects the preparation of the mission, the same priority named in the executive action which prohibited them. Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has listed letters, meritocracy, war fighting, responsibility and preparation as his main priorities for the armed forces. But Waggoner says that this effort is counterproductive for these values.

Waggoner: I think you cut your nose to poorly turn your face. You have this expertise in so many areas. I have one of my friends. She is a lieutenant-colonel in the navies. She was enlisted. She’s going on. But she fought in Falujah. So you know, when you talk, you know, war fighters, people who really fought. And she did it.

Hodges: Master Sargeant Ireland, during this time, he tries to plan his future without his long -standing career, or the payment of the retirement on which his family counted. He gave the Air Force 15 years old, met his wife there, served in Afghanistan, has moved his family several times. It was his life.

Ireland: I look around, I look at tattoos on my arms, and my heart breaks. It breaks because I have given so much my life to the service. It is an essential part of who I am.

Hodges: Lauren Hodges, NPR News, Washington.

Summers: NPR contacted the Air Force to comment. They did not respond.

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