On the evening of Monday, January 28, President Donald Trump issued, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” an executive order designed to ban transgender troops from the United States military. While this action has been somewhat expected since Trump won the 2024 presidential election (he attempted to ban transgender troops during his first term), implementation of the order remains murky.
Until Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth submits his plan to carry out the order, transgender service members can’t be sure how sweeping future policy will be and how it will impact their careers. Luca Schrock, a Surface Warfare Officer Lieutenant in the US Navy, is one such service member. Schrock agreed to talk with News Is Out about his experience as a transgender member of the United States military.
Eleven years into his career—four years at the United States Naval Academy and 7 years of commissioned service—Schrock is facing the very real possibility of starting over. “I was expecting a couple of years, at least, to be able to prepare,” Schrock says. If Hegseth and Trump decide to use medical separation, which is reportedly what Trump has in mind, to remove transgender members from service, it would be much harder to fight back and stall the order from taking effect. “There’s no board process [for medical separation] and there’s no real way to fight it. You’re notified of separation and you’re out of the military,” Schrock says.
“We don’t know if we’ll be totally stripped of benefits,” Schrock says.
“There’s a lot that I’ve worked towards. That’s true for many of us,” Schrock says. “I’ve been working towards a second GI Bill.”
The bill is an education benefit that allows service members to further their own education or give that benefit to a family member. However, Schrock’s two and a half years away from accessing his second GI Bill, meaning any education plans he has for the future would need to be funded in some other way.
Schrock also points out that a ban on transgender troops effectively outs trans service members to co-workers who may not know about their gender identity. “People would figure it out or ask around. The ban is implemented and you disappear: not a lot of dots to connect there,” Schrock says. The ban might also out transgender service members to future potential employers who would see a resume with military service that ends just as the transgender ban is enforced.
It’s a slap in the face to Schrock and others who’ve dedicated portions of their lives to this country. Serving in the military was a goal for Schrock from an early age. “When I was 12-years-old, I went to my cousin’s graduation from West Point. It was something that spoke to me and that I wanted to do,” Schrock says. “My mom’s whole family is West Pointers. That was all of the men in the family.”
Schrock has other reasons for wanting to give back to the United States. “I was adopted from Romania and I always felt that I wanted to serve my country—the country that had given me all of the opportunities that I’ve had,” Schrock shares. Joining the military was more than a career choice for him. “The decision was kind of twofold. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my male counterparts in my family and do something that I now see was gender affirming,” Schrock says.
Now, with his career in a precarious place, Schrock is considering other options. “I am working on taking the LSAT and potentially looking at law school after the Navy, mostly as a result of this,” he says. Between the possible end of his military career and the start of law school, Schrock doesn’t have a job lined up. He explains that it’s difficult to look for work when he’s still unsure of when and how the ban might impact him.
If the ban on transgender service members makes it so that Schrock can no longer hold his position, he says he’d be unlikely to re-enter the military should a future president end the ban. “I think I would have a really hard time doing that. Every four years my career is up in the air: it’s challenging and it’s precarious,” he says. There’s no guarantee that a future president would reverse a ban: the law on transgender service members has flip-flopped since the Pentagon first allowed troops to openly identify as transgender in 2016.
Recruitment and retention is key to maintaining an effective and prepared military. Eliminating skilled and trained transgender professionals from service not only harms a marginalized group, it also puts the nation’s security at risk. With an estimated 9,000-12,000 transgender folks currently serving in the US military, the total ban on transgender service members would erase a wealth of knowledge and sow division between units. In fact, transgender folks are twice as likely to serve in the military. Removing these troops poses a monumental risk to the integrity of the military and the country in the name of transphobia.
“We are not medically unfit to serve. I am not medically unfit to serve. My record states that for itself,” Schrock says. There are shockingly few studies on the health of transgender troops as the military. However, a study for the National Library of Medicine corroborates Schrock’s statement: transgender service members’ health barely differs from that of their cisgender counterparts. There’s no data to support that transgender service members cost substantially more to treat or insure, which has been the argument for many in favor of a ban.
Service members and activist groups have already filed lawsuits in response to Trump’s executive order. Whether the ban is actually enacted remains to be seen. For now, transgender service members continue to do their jobs and keep an eye on the news. “We perform really well in the military and we’ve decided that we want to serve. We should be allowed to do so,” Schrock says.
This article was first posted on News Is Out.