As Joe Biden snoozes through another vacation, President Trump has been hard at work, looking at ways to restore the U.S. military from its enfeebled state.

He's reportedly decided to ban transgender troops as one of his first acts as president.

According to The Times of London, which got the first report:

Donald Trump is planning an executive order that would lead to the removal of all transgender members of the US military, defence sources say.

The order could come on his first day back in the White House, January 20. There are believed to be about 15,000 active service personnel who are transgender. They would be medically discharged, which would determine that they were unfit to serve.

It would also lead to a ban on trans people joining the military and would come at a time when almost all branches of the American armed forces are failing to meet recruitment targets.

Trump, 78, has railed against “woke” practices in the military, saying that some high-ranking officers are often more interested in diversity, equity and inclusion than planning to fight.

The ban is expected to be wider ranging than a similar order made during his first term in office, when Trump prevented transgender people joining the armed forces, but allowed those already serving to keep their jobs. President Biden rescinded the order, but this time even those with decades of service will be removed from their posts, according to several sources.

It's a common sense move, given that number of problems that allowing transgender troops into the ranks presents, either willingly or unintentionally, assuming the executive order goes through after its likely string of activist court challenges.

Based on what's seen in the press so far, transgender advocates are crying crocodile tears in the press about the 15,000 or so transgender troops who would stand to be dismissed for medical reasons, (which is hardly a disgraceful way to go), claiming it would decimate troop readiness.

They cite recruitment shortfalls, according to the Times:

“These people will be forced out at a time when the military can’t recruit enough people,” a source familiar with Trump’s plans said.

Which doesn't hold much water, given that the U.S. military has about 2 million active duty, National Guard, and reserve service members. It's unlikely that these 15,000 transgender service members are indispensible given that the military has already dismissed 8,000 service members for refusing the COVID vaccine, and we didn't hear any of those recruitment arguments from this crowd when that was happening.

 However, it would probably go a long way to restoring order and morale within the military ranks which would actually aid recruitment.

Service members give up a lot of freedom, including privacy, in order to serve in close quarters, so some kind of basic order is essential. A transgender soldier or sailor or airman, particularly an unreconstructed one, is naturally disruptive to that requirement. 

To start, in a military work setting, it's hard to have to say an obvious male is somehow a female against the evidence of one's eyes. Yet that's policy, and it's not as if service members can simply walk away if they don't want to participate.

However, it's worse than that. Last year, according to a Senate investigation, an 18-year-old female recruit from what was probably a National Guard position, was forced to shower naked with two transgender service members bearing full full male genitilia. Apparently, she had to sleep with them,  too. That was a major invasion of female space as well as an open gate to rape from someone who could use that transgender claim for those purposes. The servicewoman was told she could quit if she didn't like it, or "work through their chain of command" as if she should even have to do that, which is an insulting command all by itself.

It's hard to imagine an event like that being conducive to good military morale even to service members who were not among the affected women.

The Senators behind the report, concluded that this kind of policy was actually what was keeping recruitment numbers down.

According to Fox News:

"She could have basically resigned or stepped away. She could have started over again. But nonetheless, it was an extremely uncomfortable position. And I think this is one of the reasons why we're not meeting our recruitment goals now," [Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota)] said. 

When asked whether other women in the military may be experiencing similar discomforting scenarios due to the transgender policies in place, Sen. Rounds pointed to the Biden administration's failure to meet recruitment goals. 

The "recruitment crisis" is partially due to Biden's "woke agenda that we now see coming down by executive order," Rounds said.

It's not just recruitment, though, it's also double standards. Transgenderism itself is an unnatural state that requires heavy use of chemicals and drugs to maintain an appearance of one's chosen gender. Troops like that cannot easily be deployed as other troops can, rendering their service a full paper-pushing service requiring less sacrifice than the others do, and that is very different from the service of troops in the field. However, as these things go, it's one that's more likely to proximity to the halls of power, similar to court eunuchs, leading to promotions and higher-ranking policy positions that other troops doing the harder work in the field don't have. That's not conducive to good military order, either.

And the double standards are very literal indeed -- how is it someone who requires constant medication to maintain transgender appearances be allowed in the service when someone with diabetic foot problems or even mild PTSD can be dismissed? My young nephew was denied a right to enlist a third time based on a diagnosis of mild PTSD that his rough Army combat service in Iraq and Syria gave him. He understood why they were refusing him, but of course, it was not easy. It has to be worse for any service member when he or she can see that the Pentagon makes exceptions for constant medication of transgender service members, but not combat-wounded soldiers? Something isn't right there -- obviously, politically powerful special interests take precedence over even combat troops, which can't be good for morale. 

The other problem is that transgender individuals are drawn to the Pentagon based on its free medical care for serving troops according to some reports. That puts more in the service than in proportion to their numbers in the population as a whole, which isn't good for military readiness and order, given the number of exceptions they require.

That doesn't mean transgender individuals are to be ill-treated or ostracized as having no place in society. Some people, particularly those with medical issues, simply aren't suited to military service based on its unique requirements of the military, including conformity to a certain order.

Trump's order makes sense if the idea is to get rid of wokery as a goal and replace it with the goal of winning wars. That's what the service needs, given its wretched record of leadership failure as evidenced in their U.S. pullout from Afghanistan. We can either have a fighting force that wins, or a fighting force that exemplifies the wokester DEI vision, but we can't have both.

Image: Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, via Picryl // public domain dedication