On Friday night, Trump issued a new executive order that prohibits transgender individuals from serving in the armed forces except under “certain limited circumstances.” The White House said retaining troops with a history or a diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” – those who may require substantial medical treatment – “presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality.”

As expected, the new policy was promptly assailed by congressional Democrats, civil rights groups, and the pro-LGBT Human Rights Campaign.

The new order comes based on findings documented in a new 44-page Department of Defense study and on the recommendation of Defense Secretary James Mattis. Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, has high praise for the report.

“I appreciate the fact that the report is completely fact-based,” she tells OneNewsNow. “It quotes many new sources – experts in the field of psychology, endocrinology, and otherwise; people who know what they’re talking about when it comes to these psychological conditions, which can be very complex.”

Donnelly

Donnelly says while the Trump administration has taken a big step to eliminate political correctness in the military, more steps still need to be taken.

“The federal judges still are running the military – and you can see the difficulties here because of the court orders. It’s almost a bifurcated policy now,” she explains.

“We have Obama’s policies [being] upheld by the courts – [and] in the meantime, Secretary Mattis and President Trump have said very clearly [that] transgender persons who require or who have undergone gender transition surgeries or treatments are disqualified from military service.”

The CMR leader predicts much of the confusion won’t be resolved until the Supreme Court intervenes.

Maginnis: Akin to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’

A national defense analyst says the new policy is similar to the military’s previous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

“What it does allow is that you must serve in the sex defined by your DNA,” explains Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis (USA-Ret.). “If you have the equipment to be a man, then you have to serve as a man.”

Maginnis

The senior fellow for national security at the Family Research Council argues that “confused people” should not be serving.

“It’s almost a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,'” Maginnis continues. “In other words, if you’re confused, just don’t tell people that you’re confused and try to act as if you’re a woman when in fact your biology says you’re a man.”

Maginnis says the new transgender rule should follow the same guidelines that were enforced when he was serving in the U.S. Army.

“I had a soldier in my active-duty years who was a male soldier by day [but] at night he would dress up like a woman,” he recalls. “[One night] he was trying to come [back] on the military installation using his male military ID and he was stopped and turned over to our command – and we expeditiously moved him out.”