Trump maligns trans service members, diversity, learning in discriminatory EOs
Just some of Trump's final moves in a day apparently aimed at wrecking American government and harming those who rely on federal grants or foreign aid.
On Monday evening, President Donald Trump took direct aim at nondiscrimination and diversity in the military in a pair of executive orders that include a discriminatory provision declaring transgender people unfit for military service.
Both orders have names that have nothing to do with what they seek to do, so I will note their formal names just once.
In the first order, named “Prioritizing Military Readiness and Excellence,” what Trump did was discriminate against trans people.
Following last week’s anti-trans order defining “sex” for the federal government, this week’s anti-trans order applies those definitions of “sex” to the military-specific order and then goes disturbingly further, declaring that “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life.”
It is a horrifying statement of dehumanization that should be condemned by all:
The executive order then has a “policy” section that declares “individuals with gender dysphoria” — the medical diagnosis associated with treatment for transgender people — have too many “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints“ to meet the “high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.”
It’s appalling.
Then, just to make perfectly clear how petty, weak, and discriminatory Trump and his advisors are and how absolutely unrelated to — and even inconsistent with — “troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity” this order is, Trump declares that learning people’s pronouns is too difficult for the U.S. Armed Forces.
Under the order, newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — whose readiness, honesty, humility, and integrity were regularly questioned throughout his confirmation process — is responsible for updating the Medical Standards for Military Service in 60 days to reflect the new policy, both as to “Appointment, Enlistment, or Induction“ and as to “Retention.”
Legal challenges have already been promised.
[Update, 2:30 p.m. January 28: A lawsuit was filed on Tuesday:
Law Dork will have more as circumstances warrant.]
In the opening of the second executive order, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,“ Trump purports to implement an order that “every element of the Armed Forces should operate free from any preference based on race or sex.”
The real purpose of the order, however, is to eliminate any policies or programs that could make that possible. It requires the Pentagon to “abolish every DEI office” and related programs. I previously discussed why this is a problem in reference to Trump’s week-one orders. In short, Monday’s military order is an anti-diversity order masked by a nondiscrimination declaration.
The entire order does that, but few points do so more clearly than when Trump purports to ban professors at West Point from teaching “that America’s founding documents” — which acknowledged without in any way condemning slavery — “are racist.”
It’s going to be tough explaining the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Nineteenth amendments to those students after being told that the “founding documents” weren’t “racist or sexist.”
By its terms, also, then-Justice Thurgood Marshall’s 1987 speech regarding the 200th anniversary of the Constitution would not be allowed to be taught at West Point or the Air Force, Naval, or Coast Guard academies. In it, he said:
The focus of this celebration invites a complacent belief that the vision of those who debated and compromised in Philadelphia yielded the "more perfect Union" it is said we now enjoy.
I cannot accept this invitation, for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever "fixed" at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite "The Constitution," they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.
And yet, by Trump’s order, the speech is out.
That’s not all. Hegseth and newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are now apparently school superintendents for the service academies — responsible for erasing inconvenient history.
Neither has any background, whatsoever, in education.
Removing career employees
The executive orders were just two of the many destabilizing acts of the Trump administration on Monday.
Lawyers who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations were fired on Monday. Per the Washington Post, “Acting attorney general James McHenry informed the officials of their firings, saying that he ‘does not trust these officials to assist in faithfully implementing the President’s agenda.’” Other career lawyers — serving in valuable roles throughout administrations of both parties — are also being effectively forced out of government for similar reasons, Reuters reported.
One of the inspectors general who were purportedly fired on January 24 without Congress being given the legally required notice found himself without access to his building or computer system on Monday, the New York Times reported.
“[D]ozens of top career employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development” were ordered on Monday “to go on administrative leave,“ Politico reported.
And those are just individual government workers.
Spending “pauses”
Far more dangerous for America and the world are funding “pauses” that are causing domestic and global confusion — neither of which are good things.
The domestic news about federal grant spending was first reported by Marisa Kabas, who runs The Handbasket. Her reporting was later confirmed by the Washington Post.
The letter announcing the freeze reads like a bad blog post, complaining about “Marxist equity, transgenderism, and green new deal social engineering policies.“
And yet, the directive is outright dangerous. “This memorandum requires Federal agencies to identify and review all Federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President’s policies and requirements,” it states, while noting that it “does not include assistance provided directly to individuals.“
The memo from Matthew J. Vaeth, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, goes on:
As Donald Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, told the Post: The memo is confusing and will cause panic.
“In two pages, we’ve got what amounts to 60 years of tradition and policies that are thrown up in the air,” Kettl told the Post. “For those suffering most, the uncertainty will be immense.”
Additionally, Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck took on (some of) the legal questions involved here: Welcome to “impoundment.”
[Update, 3:30 p.m. January 28: A lawsuit challenging this OMB action was filed on Tuesday:
Law Dork will have more as circumstances warrant.]
It’s not just domestic spending, either. As the Wall Street Journal reported, there is a global problem, too.
The foreign aid actions already could have life-and-death consequences, given a halt on HIV drug distribution under PEPFAR following a halt on funding distribution.
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has been around since the George W. Bush administration and has saved millions of lives. As the New York Times put it, however, now “[a]ppointments are being canceled, and patients are being turned away from clinics, according to people with knowledge of the situation who feared retribution if they spoke publicly. Many people with H.I.V. are facing abrupt interruptions to their treatment.”
[Update, 11:30 p.m. January 28: The New York Times reported Tuesday that a waiver was given to allow drug distribution as part of PEPFAR “for now,” as the Times put it.]
That was day eight.
“… a commitment to an honorable, truthful, disciplined lifestyle …” Look who’s talking!
“If i am killed for simply living, let death be kinder than man”. Only this is on my mind these says. Comparing Nazi Germany and how Hitler’s party began, it’s very similar to Trumps villainizing, anti constitutional and ultranationalist sentiments.
“Ultranationalism has been an aspect of fascism, with historic governments such as the regimes of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany building on ultranationalist foundations by using specific plans for supposed widespread national renewal”(World Fascism A-K , 2006)
Unlearned lessons from history will repeat. The question will be who will be the victims this time?