Press Releases

Today, news reports indicate that a new policy on transgender individuals serving in the military will be released by the Department of Defense next week. Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-TX) made the following remarks regarding the announcement:

“If reports are correct, I believe Secretary Carter has put the political agenda of a departing administration ahead of the military’s readiness crisis. The force is exhausted from back to back deployments and spending their home-station time scrambling to get enough equipment and training before they deploy again. My focus is on helping the troops now - to be the most effective, deployable force possible. Consistent with that philosophy, when we learned DOD was looking at new policies on the service of transgender individuals, the Committee posed a number of questions to DOD. In particular, there are readiness challenges that first must be addressed, such as the extent to which such individuals would be medically non-deployable. Almost a year has passed with no answer to our alt="(NULL)" from Secretary Carter. Our top priority must be warfighting effectiveness and individual readiness is an essential part of that.”