Another US federal judge blocks Trump policy banning transgender troops
A US judge in Washington state has blocked enforcement of president Donald Trump's order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
It is the second nationwide injunction against the policy in as many weeks.
The order on Thursday from US District Court Judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma came in a case brought by several long-serving transgender military members who say the ban is insulting and discriminatory, and that their firing would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations.
In his 65-page ruling, Mr Settle — an appointee of former president George W Bush and a former captain in the US Army Judge Advocate General Corps — said the administration offered no explanation as to why transgender troops, who have been able to serve openly over the past four years with no evidence of problems, should suddenly be banned.
'The government's arguments are not persuasive, and it is not an especially close question on this record,' Mr Settle wrote.
'The government's unrelenting reliance on deference to military judgment is unjustified in the absence of any evidence supporting 'the military's new judgment reflected in the Military Ban.'
US District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, DC, similarly issued an order blocking the policy last week but then put her own ruling temporarily on hold pending the government's appeal.
The US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia late on Thursday told the parties that it would consider putting the ruling into effect if 'any action occurs that negatively impacts' transgender service members.
In a more limited ruling on Monday, a judge in New Jersey barred the Air Force from removing two transgender men, saying they showed their separation would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations that no monetary settlement could repair.
Mr Trump signed an executive order on January 27 that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members '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.
In response, defence secretary Pete Hegseth issued a policy that presumptively disqualifies transgender people from military service.
'They can do the right number of pullups. They can do the right amount of pushups. They can shoot straight,' Sasha Buchert, an attorney with the civil rights law firm Lambda Legal, said after arguments Monday in Tacoma.
'Yet, they're being told they have to leave the military simply because of who they are.'
Those challenging the policy and Mr Trump's executive order in Tacoma include the Gender Justice League, which counts transgender troops among its members, and several transgender members of the military.
Among them is US navy commander Emily 'Hawking' Shilling, a 42-year-old woman who has served for more than 19 years, including 60 missions as a combat aviator in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In his ruling, Mr Settle highlighted her case.
'There is no claim and no evidence that she is now, or ever was, a detriment to her unit's cohesion, or to the military's lethality or readiness, or that she is mentally or physically unable to continue her service,' he wrote.
'There is no claim and no evidence that Shilling herself is dishonest or selfish, or that she lacks humility or integrity. Yet absent an injunction, she will be promptly discharged solely because she is transgender.'
During arguments on Monday, Justice Department lawyer Jason Lynch insisted that the president was entitled to deference in military affairs and suggested the service ban was not as broad as the plaintiffs had suggested.
The judge peppered Mr Lynch with questions, noting that the government had offered no evidence that allowing transgender troops to serve openly had caused any problems for military readiness.
Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1% of the total number of active-duty service members.
In 2016, a Defence Department policy permitted transgender people to serve openly in the military.
During Mr Trump's first term in the White House, the Republican issued a directive to ban transgender service members, with an exception for some of those who had already started transitioning under more lenient rules that were in effect during the Obama administration.
The Supreme Court allowed that ban to take effect.
President Joe Biden, a Democrat, scrapped it when he took office.
The rules imposed by Mr Hegseth include no such exceptions.
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Hamilton Spectator
21 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
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Hamilton Spectator
21 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Trump ignites debate on presidential authority with Iran strikes and wins praise from Republicans
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Vox
21 minutes ago
- Vox
This time it's Trump's war
is a senior correspondent at Vox covering foreign policy and world news with a focus on the future of international conflict. He is the author of the 2018 book, Invisible Countries: Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood , an exploration of border conflicts, unrecognized countries, and changes to the world map. US President Donald Trump addresses the nation, alongside US Vice President JD Vance, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, from the White House in Washington, DC on June 21, 2025. Carlos Barria/Pool/AFP via Getty Images Donald Trump claimed during his 2024 campaign for president that America had fought 'no wars' during his first presidency, and that he was the first president in 72 years who could say that. This was not, strictly speaking, true. In his first term, Trump intensified the air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, ordered airstrikes against Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime in response to chemical weapons use, and escalated a little-noticed counterinsurgency campaign in Somalia. But in those cases, Trump could say, with some justification, that he was just dealing with festering crises he had inherited from Barack Obama. Likewise, the president has repeatedly claimed that the wars in Gaza and Ukraine never would have happened had he been president when they broke out, rather than Joe Biden. That's a counterfactual that is impossible to prove, and he may have been overly optimistic in his promises to quickly negotiate an end to both those conflicts, but it's fair to say that both are wars Trump inherited rather than chose. This time, it's different. This time, it's Trump's war. 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But this contradicts the very recent statements from his own intelligence agencies and director of national intelligence. According to the Wall Street Journal's reporting, officials in these agencies were not convinced by Israel's new evidence that something dramatic had changed in Iran's nuclear program. It also contradicts Trump's own statements from earlier this month when he publicly discouraged Israel from attacking Iran, saying it would derail his efforts to negotiate a new nuclear deal. It's hard to overstate just how fast the Trump administration's policy has shifted. Just a month ago, Trump appeared to be giving Netanyahu's government the cold shoulder, pursuing direct diplomacy with Israel's staunchest enemies – including Iran – and cozying up to governments in the Gulf that plainly had no appetite for a new war. Now Trump has not only endorsed Netanyahu's war; he has joined it, and boasted in his brief statement from the White House on Saturday that the two had worked as a team like 'perhaps no team has ever worked before.' He ended his speech with 'God bless Israel' along with 'God bless America.' Tonight was also a major blow to those on the right, as well as some on the left, who hoped that the Trump administration would usher in either a new era of military restraint or a shift in priorities away from the Middle East toward China. (The US has now relocated military assets from Asia for this war.) There's still a lot we still don't know, but it's fair at this point to say that this is a war of Trump's choosing. Trump's extraordinary gamble In his statement from the White House on Saturday night, Trump said that the operation had been a 'spectacular military success' and that the enrichment facilities had been 'totally obliterated.' For the moment, we don't have corroborating evidence of that. Israel had mostly avoided striking these sites itself. Only the US has the powerful GBU-57 'bunker buster' bombs that can destroy Iran's most security nuclear sites, particularly the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, and only the US has the aircraft that can carry them. US officials told the New York Times that US bombers dropped a dozen bunker busters on Fordow on Saturday. Many experts believe the facility would be difficult to destroy and require multiple strikes, even with those bombs. Doubts about whether Fordow could be destroyed were reportedly one reason why Trump hesitated in ordering these strikes. In his statement, Trump also implied that this was a one-off operation for now. Speaking of the pilots who dropped the bombs, Trump said, 'hopefully we will no longer need their services at this capacity' but also threatened that if Iran did not 'make peace' then 'future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.' He added: 'There are many targets left.' The hope appears to be that Iran will now be forced to cut a deal to entirely give up its nuclear program. But an Iranian regime mindful of its own legitimacy is also likely to retaliate in some form, possibly by targeting some of the roughly 40,000 US troops deployed around the Middle East. The hope may be that these will be limited tit-for-tat strikes like those that followed the US assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2020, though subsequent assessments have found that those attacks did more damage than was initially thought and could easily have killed far more US troops. In any event, the Iranian regime is far more desperate now, and once the missiles start flying, it could get very easy for things to escalate out of control. If Iran has any remaining enrichment infrastructure, either at these sites or hidden elsewhere throughout the country, the country's leaders may now feel far less hesitation about rushing to build a bomb. There was long a view that Iran's leaders preferred to remain a 'threshold nuclear state' — working toward a bomb without actually building one. In this view, they believed that their growing capacity to build a weapon gave them leverage, while not actually trying to build one avoided US and Israeli intervention. That logic is now obsolete. It's also not clear that Israel simply wants nuclear concessions from the Iranian regime. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that new intelligence about Iran's nuclear capabilities was the reason for starting this war, it's been clear both from the Israeli government's rhetoric and choice of targets that this is a war against the Islamic Republic itself, and that regime change may be the ultimate goal. Trump didn't mention regime change in his statement, but he has now committed American military power to that Israeli war. So far, this war has been characterized by stunning Israeli tactical successes, as well as the seeming impotence of Iran and its once vaunted network of regional proxies in its response. (Though it's unclear how long Israel's air defense system can keep up if Iranian strikes continue at this pace.) This may have emboldened a president who has backed off of actions like this in the past, convincing him that striking Iran's nuclear program now would be effective and that the blowback would be manageable.
