川普宣布禁止跨性别者在军中服役_时事

川普宣布禁止跨性别者在军中服役

President Donald Trump says the U.S. military will no longer let transgender people serve in any capacity, reversing a policy former President Barack Obama's administration announced a year ago.

In a string of Twitter comments, Trump said Wednesday that after consulting with generals and military experts, he was ordering the armed forces to stop accepting transgender recruits.

"Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail," Trump wrote.

Trump did not say what would happen to transgender people already in the U.S. military - about 4,000 personnel, according to research by the Rand Corporation.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said later that Trump will "have to work together" with the Defense Department to "lawfully determine" the fate of transgender service personnel already in the military.

She rebuffed reporters' inquiries suggesting that Trump had broken an election-campaign vow to support the transgender community. The president felt his decision was "the best one for the military," Sanders said.

In addition to service members known to be transgender, defense officials said there are about 250 military personnel who are believed to be transitioning to a gender other than the one they were identified with at birth.

Trump's announcement came one day ahead of a deadline for the military to update its medical regulations to accommodate transgender personnel, but the Pentagon appeared to be caught off-guard when the president issued his Twitter comments.