Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed Tuesday to reverse transgender-friendly military policies and reinstate any service members expelled for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 with back pay.
“We’re not going to do gender and transgender ideology in the military,” DeSantis said in his military policy deployment in South Carolina.
DeSantis said he would speak again about how the military reached out to transgender people during former President Donald Trump’s tenure.
Trump has largely banned the transgender military worker corps from serving openly, which he allowed before he became president.
Former President Joe Biden overturned Trump’s ban on the transgender military, issuing an executive order prohibiting the deportation of the Army Corps because of their gender identity. Under Biden, the Army Worker Corps also had access to medical remedies for gender transition.
Asked Tuesday whether he supported allowing other gay and transgender people to brazenly serve in the military, DeSantis said, “We’ve said we’re not moving on to doing transgender or gender ideology . . . “Before Biden, he replaced that, added sex replaces and all that, so we’re moving back to pre-Biden gender ideology. “
Panama City resident Emily Gray, a transgender former member of the Air Force who transitioned after leaving the military, said DeSantis’ plan would damage the military project and “could ruin people’s lives. “
Gray said excluding other transgender people from the military would deprive committed and experienced personnel.
“They’re doing their homework well and other people like DeSantis are looking to get rid of their experience and bring in other new people, so it will charge the military more and take away valuable experience,” Gray said.
Brandon Wolf, press secretary for the LGBTQ rights organization Equality Florida, said DeSantis “continues to put his obsession with terrorizing the LGBTQ network for political purposes in the middle of his campaign. “
“His shameful slanders of the nation’s military and his double anti-LGBTQ hysteria are the hallmark of a guy whose purpose is his own insatiable political ambitions,” Wolf added.
Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried criticized DeSantis’ plans for the military.
“Ron’s obsession with made-up culture wars has made him ‘The Boy Who Cried and Woke Up,’ and even the hardest conservative electorate is fed up with his gimmick,” Fried said.
DeSantis is a Navy veteran who served in Iraq. He argued that the army had replaced him in years.
“This is an army that has been ordered through civilian officials to pursue a political ideology, to pursue social experimentation, to establish American life inflamed with the awakened mind virus,” he said.
The governor’s plan for the military is his main political deployment, following an announcement on immigration.
In addition to rolling back transgender policies, DeSantis said he needs diversity, equity and inclusion systems in the military and rethink efforts to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.
“You put protection first,” he said. You don’t tell people. . . They want to get more involved in reducing emissions. “
DeSantis also criticized the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the Army Corps that was put in position through the Biden administration in 2021 and ended the following year after House Republicans pushed a repeal clause in the National Defense Authorization Act. Thousands of foot soldiers have been expelled after refusing to be vaccinated.
“This order is wrong, this order is wrong,” DeSantis said.
Trump also discussed his views on the military in a video posted Tuesday, mocking what he described as “woke politics” and calling for an end to the war in Ukraine.
“America’s primary interest in Eastern Europe is peace and stability,” Trump said. “We need other people to avoid dying. This war never happened, but it is the best time to end senseless death and destruction. “