President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to revise the Pentagon's policy on transgender troops, likely setting in motion a future ban on their military service. He also ordered troops to be reinstated who had left voluntarily or been booted for refusing COVID vaccines, outlined new rollbacks in diversity programs and provided for the deployment of a space-based missile defense shield for the U.
Trump and Hegseth had described parts of the anticipated orders throughout the day, but the exact language did not drop until late Monday. A transgender ban had been widely expected, and Trump's order largely sets the stage for a future ban - but directs Hegseth to come up with how that would be implemented in policy. In his order, Trump claimed that service by troops who identify as a gender other than their biological one "conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life" and is harmful to military readiness, requiring a revised policy to address the matter.
Trump had tried to ban transgender troops during his first term, but it was tangled up in the courts for years before being overturned by then-President Joe Biden shortly after he took office. Two groups, Lambda Legal and Human Rights Campaign, which represented transgender troops the first time, vowed to fight again. As we promised then, so do we now: we will sue.
During his first presidency, Trump established U. Space Command and the U. Space Force, which just marked its fifth birthday. Space continues to be a priority for the president, who has now directed the Pentagon to begin to develop the capability to shoot down missiles from space. For years, the U. It has at times declassified information about both countries' efforts to create offensive weapons to disable critical U. The Space Force is building a low-orbit ring of redundant satellites that can more quickly track and detect potential missile launches.
But establishing a way to shoot missiles down from space is something the U. The system was never developed due to cost and technological limitations. In his order called "an Iron Dome for America," Trump called for a multilayer missile defense system capable of countering an array of threats to the U. At least 8, troops were forced out of the military in for refusing to obey a lawful order when they declined to get the vaccine.
