A candidate for a senior position at the Department of Homeland Security withdrew from consideration on Wednesday, citing President Donald Trump’s decision to ban transgender people from serving in the military.
.. “As I mentioned in our conversation, I am a strong advocate for diversity, both in the Republican Party and in government,” Fluharty wrote in an email obtained by POLITICO. “The President’s announcement this morning — that he will ban all of those who identify as transgender from military service — runs counter to my deeply held beliefs, and it would be impossible for me to commit to serving the Administration knowing that I would be working against those values.”
Fluharty, who is openly gay, said he interviewed for the job on Tuesday, one day before Trump’s surprise tweet that the government “will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity” in the U.S. military.
Why Trump’s Ban on Transgender Servicepeople Is Flatly Unconstitutional
Here’s another Trump policy likely to get held up in courts.
a wall-to-wall ban on transgender Americans in the armed forces could only be understood as rooted in what constitutional doctrine calls animus: that is, the bare dislike of a group of people. And as the Supreme Court has held in cases going back at least to the 1970s, animus is never a constitutionally valid reason for government action.
.. The Israeli military, which is not known for compromising its fighting effectiveness out of deference to softheaded social causes, includes transgender individuals in its ranks.
.. Trump’s tweets did not speak of barring transgender personnel from combat; it proposed to bar transgender persons from military service “in any capacity[.]”
.. The U.S. military employs people in a lot of capacities. It has doctors, lawyers, chaplains, cartographers, meteorologists, journalists, diplomatic attaches, cargo pilots, engineers and cooks. And it’s hard to think of any reason why transgender individuals should be banned from all of those roles. Indeed, it’s hard even to think of any reason why a government might want to ban transgender persons from all of those roles—except, of course, for simple dislike of transgender individuals.
.. Yes, the military might incur such costs if it paid the bill for the medical care associated with actual gender transition, as was the policy under Obama. But if that were the concern, the military could simply stop providing that benefit, thus saving the money without barring all transgender persons.
.. Regardless of whether the president himself bears ill will toward transgender people, his aim might be to appeal to a political base that does. But it’s well-established that one cannot escape anti-discrimination rules on the grounds that one is catering to someone else’s prejudice rather than acting on one’s own.
The classic example is a restaurant that refuses to hire black waitstaff, not because the restaurant owner is a racist but because the restaurant owner thinks the customers want the waitstaff to be white. This “customer preference” argument is a known loser, and it’s no different as an argument about voters rather than customers.
.. government actions discriminating on the basis of gender are subject to what constitutional doctrine calls “heightened scrutiny” and in particular that they can survive only if they are “substantially related to important government interests.”
.. If a policy is based in animus, it is unconstitutional regardless of whether a similar policy or even the identical policy could have been enacted for permissible reasons. What makes such a policy invalid is its purpose rather than the specifics of how it is carried out.
Tillerson faces fights on eliminating envoys
The positions on gay rights, anti-Semitism and other issues have proliferated over the years.
Jewish organizations and many lawmakers are furious that Tillerson hasn’t yet named a new special envoy to combat anti-Semitism. Digital gurus are unhappy that Tillerson may chop the slot focused on cyber issues. Tillerson’s attempt to discard the special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan spurred such an outcry among South Asia watchers that he went ahead and named someone to the role temporarily.
.. The State Department’s ranks include 67 special envoys, depending on how you count them. That’s far too many, say critics who see a bloated diplomatic bureaucracy and question the need for a special coordinator for Haiti, a position focused on post-earthquake reconstruction, when there’s an ambassador supposed to be based there.
Inside Trump’s snap decision to ban transgender troops
A congressional fight over sex reassignment surgery threatened funding for his border wall.
House Republicans were planning to pass a spending bill stacked with his campaign promises, including money to build his border wall with Mexico.
But an internal House Republican fight over transgender troops was threatening to blow up the bill. And House GOP insiders feared they might not have the votes to pass the legislation because defense hawks wanted a ban on Pentagon-funded sex reassignment operations — something GOP leaders wouldn’t give them.They turned to Trump, who didn’t hesitate. In the flash of a tweet, he announced that transgender troops would be banned altogether.
.. And when Defense Secretary James Mattis refused to immediately upend the policy, they went straight to the White House. Trump — never one for political correctness — was all too happy to oblige.
.. The announcement, multiple sources said, did not sit well with Mattis, who appeared to be trying to avoid the matter in recent weeks. An extensive Defense Department review of the policy was already underway, but a decision wasn’t expected for months.
.. “It’s not so much the transgender surgery issue as much as we continue to let the defense bill be the mule for all of these social experiments that the left wants to try to [foist] on government,” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), a conservative supporter of the Hartzler proposal, said last week.
He added: “It seems to me, and all due respect to everyone, that if someone wants to come to the military, potentially risk their life to save the country, that they should probably decide whether they’re a man or woman before they do that.”
.. “I’m glad the president will be changing this costly and damaging policy,” Hartzler said after Trump’s announcement. “Military service is a privilege, not a right. We must ensure all our precious defense dollars are used to strengthen our national defense.”