New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Maine Sen. Susan Collins have teamed up to offer an amendment that would put Donald Trump's transgender military ban on ice, and the White House doesn't like it. The Washington Blade's Chris Johnson writes:
A White House National Security Council spokesperson told the Washington Blade the administration opposes the amendment, which may be considered on the U.S. Senate floor this week as part of the fiscal year 2018 defense authorization bill.
“The administration opposes the Sen. Gillibrand amendment,” the NSC spokesperson said. “The president signed an EO tasking DOD with implementation.”
If the senators succeeded in attaching the measure to the National Defense Authorization Act, it could put Trump in a bind, forcing him to choose between funding the military and keeping his ban intact. That's still a real long shot, but Sen. John McCain, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, isn't totally shooting down the effort either.
Here's what the amendment would do:
It expresses the sense of Congress that qualified individuals should be able to serve in the armed forces; prohibits the military from discharging service members solely for being transgender; and codified the review Mattis established in June to determine whether openly transgender people can enlist in the armed forces. The amendment calls for a report to Congress on that study by Feb. 21.
Trump's executive order prohibits the military from enlisting transgender recruits and charges Defense Sec. James Mattis with implementing the ban and determining whether transgender troops who are currently serving harm military readiness and, if so, discharging them. Naturally, the order was full of factual errors and a complete misunderstanding of current and previous military policy on the matter, as a lengthy Lawfare blog post notes. We’d expect nothing less.