When President Donald Trump tweeted about banning transgender people from the military,Watch Young Wife Bai Jie the announcement seemed to come with so little forethought and follow-through that the military had no choice but to ignore it.
Now, though, the White House is reportedly about to roll out an official ban.
SEE ALSO: Trump bars transgender people from military, calls them a "disruption"According to The Wall Street Journal, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will have six months to put the ban into effect once the White House officially delivers its 2.5-page plan. Mattis would be charged with deciding whether a soldier is able to deploy before determining whether or not to remove that soldier from his or her job. He will also be tasked with barring new transgender soldiers and cutting off money for medical treatment for transgender soldiers already in the military.
Trump initially tweeted about the ban on July 26, without much preamble and reportedly without notifying officials who would be tasked with implementing it. Barring transgender soldiers would reverse a decision made during the administration of President Barack Obama that allowed transgender soldiers to serve without having to conceal that they are transgender.
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Though Trump highlighted the "tremendous medical costs" supposedly required to treat transgender soldiers, a study conducted by the RAND corporation, a global policy think tank, showed that medical costs for transgender soldiers would at most cost $8.4 million per year out of a military health care budget of $6 billion.
Some surgeries would prevent transgender soldiers from deploying to wherever the military needs them to be, but that same RAND study concluded that fewer than 140 active-duty transgender soldiers "would seek transition-related surgeries" in a given year.
Estimates vary on how many transgender soldiers serve in the military, but there is little doubt that thousands of transgender people are currently members of the United States armed forces.
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