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New York Post
3 days ago
- Health
- New York Post
Air Force denies early retirement pay to some transgender service members
The US Air Force announced Thursday that transgender service members who have served between 15 and 18 years will not be able to obtain early retirement benefits. Those transgender service members – forced out of the Air Force under President Trump's January executive order targeting 'gender radicalism' in the military – will instead have the option to take a lump-sum separation payment or be removed. The move follows President Trump's executive order banning transgender people from the military. AP The Air Force, however, approved early retirement for self-identifying transgender service members with 18-20 years of honorable service. 'Although service members with 15-18 years of honorable service were permitted to apply for an exception to policy, none of the exceptions to policy were approved,' an Air Force spokesperson said in a statement. 'Approximately a dozen service members between 15 and 18 years of service were prematurely notified that their [early retirement] applications under the gender dysphoria provision had been approved,' the spokesperson added, noting that a higher-level review was required. Voluntary separation pay at double the amount of involuntary separation pay will be offered to those with 15-18 years of service and 'remaining military service obligations, including service obligations incurred as a result of a bonus or transfer of post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to dependents will be waived.' Military officials indicated that it is rare for early retirement benefits to be granted to people with 15 to 18 years of service time, according to CBS News. Approximately 1,000 service members self-identify as being diagnosed with gender dysphoria, according to the Pentagon. There are roughly 1.3 million active duty troops. Transgender service members not granted early retirement will be eligible for a lump-sum payment if they leave voluntarily. SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock There are no current tallies of how many transgender service members are in the services, but a 2016 Defense Department survey estimated there were 8,980 active duty and 5,727 reserve troops who identified as transgender, according to a 2018 report by the Palm Center, a California-based think tank. That included '1,850 transgender men (who joined the military as women) and 7,129 transgender women (who joined the military as men),' the report said. The Pentagon moved forward with Trump's transgender troop ban after it was granted permission by the Supreme Court in May. 'TRANS is out at the DOD,' Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on X at the time. 'This is the president's agenda,' Hegseth said in a separate video message. 'This is what the American people voted for, and we're going to continue to relentlessly pursue it.'
New York Post
04-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Why Israel and the US still need each other more than ever
'What does America gain from the US–Israel relationship?' It's a question asked frequently by cultural elites, as well as by college students and young graduates. With the State of Israel celebrating its independence day—Yom Ha'Atzmaut—this past week against the backdrop of a still-raging war in Gaza and ever-escalating tensions with Iran, it's worth addressing this concern head-on. The reality is that America benefits in many ways from its close relationship with Israel. Perhaps the most obvious is in enhanced national security and deterrence on the world stage. 7 Since the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, the Jewish nation has helped redrawn the Middle Eastern political map, mostly to the benefit of the US. SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Simply put, Israel's enemies are America's enemies. Time and again, we see Israel take military or covert action against opponents who have American blood on their hands. Consider, as but one example, the American tragedy at the remote Tower 22 military outpost, located in the far northeastern corner of Jordan near the tripoint with Syria and Iraq. 7 Pres. Biden's policy of appeasement allowed anti-American factions to operate in the Middle East — often with deadly results. REUTERS On January 28, 2024, Iran-backed terrorist militias in Iraq launched a drone assault at Tower 22—one attack drone evaded the outpost's aerial defenses, striking the base and killing three US soldiers while injuring 47 more. The soldiers' deaths were needless but all-too-predictable, coming as they did after the Biden administration refused, for months, to respond to more than 160 separate Iran-backed attacks on US military bases in the Middle East in the months following Hamas' attack on Israel. 7 Israel's denotation of thousands of pagers in Lebanon used by Hezbollah operatives was a master-stroke in strategic and tactical planning and execution. @Osint613 On April 1, 2024, the Israel Defense Forces eliminated a top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, in a targeted strike on an auxiliary building adjoining the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria. Even if Zahedi was not the one who literally ordered that precise drone launch, the deterrent effect against Iran-backed Islamist thugs seeking to maim and kill American military assets overseas was the same. Truthfully, this same dynamic holds every time Israel takes out an Iranian military or intelligence asset. Iran is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers and Marines via its infamous roadside improvised explosive devices deployed during the Iraq War. Via its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, it was also unequivocally culpable for the April 1983 US embassy bombing in Beirut and the October 1983 Beirut barracks bombings that killed 63 innocent civilians and 241 US Marine Corps personnel, respectively. Other than al-Qaeda and perhaps the Iranian regime itself, no terrorist organization has more American blood on its hands than Hezbollah. 7 The pager operation had been in development for years and took out thousands of Hezbollah fighters. Abaca Press/INSTARimages On July 30, 2024, the Israel Defense Forces eliminated top-ranking Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. Shukr was not merely responsible for the mass murder of 12 Druze (Israeli-Arab) children playing soccer in the Golan Heights the weekend prior, he was also one of the top-ranking Hezbollah officials culpable for the Beirut barracks mass slaughter of US Marines. The State Department had long labeled Fuad Shukr a 'Specially Designated Global Terrorist' and put a $5 million bounty on his head after the Marine barracks bombing. Decades of inaction followed, but the IDF delivered the goods on July 30, 2024, sending an arch-terrorist with American blood on his hands to the ash heap of history. History repeated itself less than two months later when the IDF finally decided to escalate meaningfully its military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon after nearly a year of rocket fire that had systematically depopulated the Israeli north. 7 A satellite image of Tower 22, a US military base in Jordan attacked by the Islamic State; three US soldiers were killed. Planet Labs/AFP via Getty Images On September 20, 2024, another Israeli airstrike in Beirut eliminated senior Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil. Aqil, like Shukr, had long been classified by the State Department as a 'Specially Designated Global Terrorist' due to his instrumental role in the lethal truck bombing at the US embassy in Beirut. Aqil's bounty, in fact, was two million dollars higher than Shukr's. One week later, the IDF delivered the Hezbollah grand prize: Hassan Nasrallah, who had led the outfit for more than three decades as its secretary-general, was eliminated in a massive Beirut blast just minutes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finished a fiery speech at the United Nations. The Nasrallah strike, in turn, came on the heels of a daring, sophisticated, and brilliant Mossad operation carried out against Hezbollah commandos in Lebanon and Syria: mass Israeli-orchestrated explosions of Hezbollah-held personal pagers, walkie-talkies, and other handheld devices. Overall, Israel decimated nearly the entirety of Hezbollah's organizational leadership in a matter of weeks in September 2024. In righteously eliminating so many high-ranking Hezbollah leaders in such a short span, the IDF performed a remarkable public service for the United States military and the American people—a just retribution for the terrible deeds of murderous arch-jihadists with tremendous American blood on their hands, decades in the making on all counts. Nor was the IDF, during this crucial 2024 stretch, preoccupied with Hezbollah to the exclusion of other jihadist outfits. In a stunning but largely unrelated targeted assassination that followed the Fuad Shukr assassination in Beirut less than 12 hours later, Israel also eliminated Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, one of the masterminds of the October 7, 2023, massacre, in Tehran. Israel did it again on October 16, 2024, eliminating Yahya Sinwar—the chief architect of the Simchat Torah Massacre and the longtime organizational leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip—during a chance encounter in Rafah, Hamas's southernmost stronghold in the Gaza Strip. 7 Author Josh Hammer. Courtesy of Josh Hammer Notably, Israel would not have been able to hunt down Sinwar if Prime Minister Netanyahu had listened to weak-minded Western leaders, such as President Biden, who adamantly opposed an IDF incursion into Rafah. The overall message sent by Israel from these high-profile 2024 strikes could not have been clearer: We can, and we will, come after you—no matter where you try to hide. Pure, unadulterated power is the lingua franca of Middle East geopolitics—a point often lost on many Americans and other holier-than-thou Westerners, but rarely lost on hardheaded Israelis. And if America adopts a similar sober approach to Islamism, that would be yet another tremendous gift of the US-Israel relationship. Happy independence day, Israel. Keep on fighting the bad guys. By doing so, you're actually helping all of us. Josh Hammer is Newsweek senior editor-at-large and author of the new book, 'Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West' (Radius Book Group), from which this is adapted.
