House votes to stymie Trump's transgender troop ban
The House quietly voted Thursday to block the Trump administration's restriction on transgender individuals serving in the military, as part of a $695 billion defense spending bill.
Lawmakers adopted by voice vote an amendment offered by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) that would block funding for the Pentagon's latest transgender troop policy, which went into effect in April 2019.
The measure was included in a package of three dozen Democratic amendments to the six-bill, $1.3 trillion spending measure the House is expected to pass on Friday. The measure includes the annual defense funding bill.
Republicans opposed the amendment package, but didn't demand a roll call vote.
No lawmakers spoke for or against the transgender troop amendment, but its easy passage is yet another jab at the Trump administration's reversal of the Obama-era policy allowing transgender individuals to serve openly in the military.
President Donald Trump abruptly announced in a July 2017 tweet he would overturn the Obama administration policy.
Democrats have called the policy discriminatory and have voted to overturn the Trump administration's more restrictive policy several times since retaking the House majority.
The new policy requires troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria to serve in their biological sex. It also prohibits people with a history of gender dysphoria from joining the military unless they've been medically stable in their biological sex for 36 months and haven't transitioned. The policy grandfathered in troops who were serving openly before the new rules went into effect.
"I think people recognize that this issue is cooked," Speier, who chairs the House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee, said of the policy in an interview with POLITICO in May. "What we did was just so wrong on so many levels."
The House included provisions to overturn the ban in the defense authorization and appropriations bills last year, though the measures weren't included in compromise legislation agreed to by the House and Senate.
This year, House Democrats didn't attach the proposal to their policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed overwhelmingly this month.
The same amendment package includes a proposal from Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) that blocks funding for the military to be used "in contravention of the First Amendment." Escobar's amendment is the latest effort by Democrats to rein in Trump after he threatened in June to use active-duty troops against protesters.
Rep. Ken Calvert of California, the top Republican on the House Defense Appropriations panel, derided the Democratic amendment package for including "political statements that have no place in the defense appropriations bill." He singled out Escobar's amendment.
"Make no mistake, the men and women of the United States military protect and defend the First Amendment along with the entire Constitution to which they swore an oath," Calvert said. "It is beneath the institution to call their loyalty into question."
