McCain, Ernst stand against Trump’s transgender policy for military

A military watchdog is frustrated that Republican leaders are criticizing the transgender policy announced by President Donald Trump.

Trump’s surprise decision, which he announced via Twitter on Monday, has produced predictable results from homosexual activists and their left-wing allies in the media and on Capitol Hill.

But it has also produced complaints from Republicans, including John McCain and Joni Ernst in the Senate, and from House Speaker Paul Ryan.

“There is no reason,” McCain said, “to force service members who are able to fight, train, and deploy to leave the military — regardless of their gender identity.”

A spokeswoman for Ernst, a combat veteran, said the freshman senator opposes taxpayers covering the cost of gender reassignment surgery but Americans who are qualified to serve “should be afforded that opportunity.”

McCain is famous for being captured and imprisoned by North Vietnam and he now chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee.

According to Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, McCain and that committee have yet to review the Obama-era mandates that affect military readiness and come with high costs.

“So if they are coming late to the game,” she says of McCain and others, “well maybe they should have gotten there sooner.”

There was immediate concern when Ash Carter, the former Secretary of Defense, announced the U.S. armed forces were allowing open transgenders, recalls Ron Crews of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty.

There have been millions of man hours spent since then re-training the military about transgenders, he says, and Trump’s decision ends that waste of manpower that takes away from combat readiness.

“So now we can let the military go back to what they’re designed to do,” he says.

In addition to some GOP leaders opposing any action, it was announced Thursday that no action will be taken by the Pentagon until Trump gives more “direction” about the new policy beyond his tweets.

The next step should be, says Donnelly, that President Trump or Secretary of Defense James Mattis revoke the Obama-era directives, which were written in consultation with LGBT activist groups.

“He has every right to do that,” she says of Trump. “He has the ability to do that. This will benefit everyone in the armed forces and everyone who counts on national defense.”

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