This week I talked with Matt Thorn, President and CEO of OutServe-SLDN, the national voice for LGBT service members, about Trump’s threatening tweets that transgender service members would be banned from serving in the Armed Forces. Trump claimed in his Tweets that our transgender community should be banned from the military because of the financial cost and disruption associated with transgender service members. Currently there are 15,000 transgender service members in the US military. The financial cost of providing health care to transgender troops would be at most $8.4 million per year according to the New England Journal of Medicine which is one one-hundredth of one percent of the military’s annual health care budget. Fifty-six retired Generals and Admirals have warned Trump that if his ban were to be implemented it would degrade military readiness. Transgender troops have been serving honorably and openly for the past year and have been widely praised by commanders. Eighteen foreign nations including the UK and Israel allow transgender troops to serve and none have reported any detriment to readiness. I talked to Matt about what action OutServe-SLDN will take to protect transgender service members and recruits should Trump follow through on his threats to ban transgender military service members and his spin on our LGBTQ issues.