Trump Goes to the Mattis on Trans Policy
Senate liberals haven’t had the easiest of times adjusting to Donald Trump. After the last decade of shaming conservatives, they’re not exactly used to Republican leaders standing up and confronting them on issues like sexuality. But this president is a rare breed.
Senate liberals haven’t had the easiest of times adjusting to Donald Trump. After the last decade of shaming conservatives, they’re not exactly used to Republican leaders standing up and confronting them on issues like sexuality. But this president is a rare breed. His policies have never been about what the Left thinks or how he’s labeled. They’ve been about what he can do to make America better. If that means bucking the status quo or offending people who are used to being coddled, he’s willing. And his military transgender policy proves it.
In the year since President Trump ended the days of Obama-era social experimentation in the ranks, Democrats probably believed that they could scare the new administration into submission. When that didn’t happen, and a new memo outlining his policy appeared at the Pentagon last month, they were rattled. Thursday, in a hearing with Defense Secretary James Mattis, they looked for weak spots to pressure the White House into changing its mind. Fortunately, they found none.
Despite the ranting of Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) that Mattis was somehow harming the military by not letting the $3.7 transgender distraction continue, the defense chief held the line. Gillibrand accused the Pentagon of not doing its research, despite more than 45 pages of data that proved what a disaster this confusion would be. “It appears,” she says, “that this report your department has issued is not based on the department’s data or science, but rather on, quote, ‘potential risks’ that the authors cannot back up. In fact,” she continued, “this seems to me to be the same unfounded claims and unfounded concerns that led the opposition to repealing ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’… I think you need to do a lot more work on this topic to inform yourselves.”
Mattis said he “regretted” the way Gillibrand presented the issue but told her “it would be ‘impossible’” for the service chiefs to answer those questions. For starters, President Obama and then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter never bothered asking them about the policy. Of course, we know from testimonies then that both the Army and Marine Corps had been vocal about their objections to the change. Yet even now, Gillibrand claims, not one member of the branch’s brass will complain about it.
Mattis pushed back on her assumption, arguing that the chiefs wouldn’t have been able to identify issues, because the Obama-era policy didn’t allow it! As FRC’s Peter Sprigg points out, the military wouldn’t have received any reports of unit cohesion problems because Obama’s guidance (which is still in effect) forbids the identification of individual troops as transgender in their reports! It was Ash Carter’s way of insulating the decision from criticism. “The reason is that under the Carter policy, the reporting is opaque. We cannot report that problem emanated from a transgender,” Mattis said. “So, the questions you’ve asked the service chiefs and the chairman are ones that right now the Carter policy prohibited that very information from coming up because it is private information.”
But if complications are what the Left is looking for, active-duty troops identified plenty of them when the Military Times poll asked. Fifty-seven percent had a negative opinion of Obama’s decision to let people who identify as transgender serve openly. More than half said it would have a “very negative” impact on morale. Compare that to just 16 percent who thought the idea would improve troop morale. Secretary Mattis was clear in his testimony that he came into the job without any position or agenda. But this level of frustration is impossible to ignore.
What wasn’t impossible to ignore, apparently, was the service chiefs themselves, who, Mattis learned recently, were never even consulted about one of the most sweeping changes ever instituted. “Last spring, Mattis said he learned military service chiefs made clear that the Obama administration had not answered key questions about recruiting transgender troops,” the Washington Examiner reported. “They were asking me questions,” Mattis told the senators, “because we were coming up on the advent of the induction of transgender, and they wanted to know how they were going to deal with certain issues, basic training, deployability. I said, ‘Didn’t you get all of this when the policy was rolled out?’ …They said ‘No.’ And I said, ‘Well, did you have input? And they said, 'No,’ they did not.”
Mattis was astonished. To him, he said, the lack of consultation with the service chiefs was “very, very newsworthy.” It proved what most of us have known all along — that it was a purely political decision that put Obama’s personal agenda ahead of the stability and lethality of the military. Thank goodness for leaders like this president who know that the Defense Department should never advance a political cause at the expense of national security.
Originally published here.
Ready, Set, Go for Pompeo at State
The opposition to new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo all seems like a distant dream now that new DOS head has been sworn in. Just how good was the choice? Well, even the mainstream media is taking time out of its conservative sniping to applaud it.
U.S. News and World Report noted the “mostly favorable picture of Pompeo,” pointing out “his strong working relationship with President Trump and his accomplishments during his time in the Army, Congress and the CIA.” The Washington Post, which surprised readers with its endorsement of the former CIA director, insists that Pompeo will be a welcome change from his predecessor at DOS. “Pompeo is expected to strike a dramatically different tone with Trump than his predecessor, Rex Tillerson, who had a testy relationship with the president that often left them publicly at odds.”
Over at The Hill, the confirmation was dubbed “a setback for liberals.” And while The New York Times didn’t go out of its way to praise the pick, it did mention how opposing Pompeo might have hurt some Democrats’ midterm chances. Over at the Associated Press, the press pool announced that a plane was held on the tarmac until Pompeo could be sworn in and take off on his first international trip. “No secretary of state had ever traveled abroad so soon after being confirmed,” the AP reports. Pompeo “will attend a NATO foreign ministers summit” in Brussels “and meet with the top diplomats from Turkey and Italy. … From there, the State Department said Pompeo planned to fly to the Middle East for stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Jordan.”
Obviously, Trump’s decision to replace Tillerson is already paying off. After an impressive year at the CIA, where he was a popular and successful manager, Pompeo is ready to slide right into his role with the trust he’s already built with leaders around the world. Of course, one of the issues he’ll be prioritizing, with the help of Ambassador Sam Brownback, is international religious liberty. That will be a welcome change from Obama’s foreign policy, which approached the idea as a humanitarian issue to be addressed when possible but not incorporated into any wider strategic thinking about security in the world order.
But what if it should be? FRC plans to discuss that in a special event next Wednesday, May 2, at noon. We’ll be highlighting a developing body of evidence that suggests the presence of religious freedom is significantly connected to security, stability, and prosperity. Distinguished guests Dr. Thomas Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute, and Catholic University’s Professor Robert Destro will join Tony and our own Travis Weber to talk about these findings and what Secretary Pompeo might do to shift America’s approach on this issue.
Originally published here.
Victory for Homeschooling on the Left Coast
They came by the hundreds, one newspaper said — “perhaps thousands.” Some traveled hours, others waited hours, all for the opportunity to protest one of the most outrageous homeschooling bills every introduced: California’s AB 2756.
Spilling out into crammed hallways and overflow rooms, families poured into the statehouse just for the opportunity to spend a few minutes speaking out on a measure that would give the government more power over parents who educate at home. Initially, the bill tried to mandate fire inspections of all homeschooling families (which, not surprisingly, firefighters rejected). Then the proposal was amended — this time to force homeschooling families to give out private information like names and addresses.
Liberals used a nightmarish story to prop up their argument, insisting that the case of the Turpins, parents who used homeschooling as an excuse to torture and starve their kids, meant that greater oversight was necessary. Conservatives fired back. Committee member Kevin Kiley (R) said that using the Turpin family to create law was not good policy. “That is an extreme outlier case. Any data set will have extreme outlier cases.” Nearly 1,000 people spoke out in opposition, reporters said, including a candidate for governor, Assemblyman Travis Allen (R). “AB 2756 is absolutely wrong. It must fail. It must fail today,” he said. “California’s parents and children have the right to the very best education this state can possibly provide.”
The line of opponents waiting to testify snaked around the building, many, one outlet pointed out, “with small children in tow.” By afternoon’s end, only two people from the surrounding area spoke in support of the controversial bill. Hours later, families got the news they’d been waiting for: “no member of the committee was willing to make a motion for a vote.” The bill was dead. Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, cheered the outpouring of parents from around the state. “All is not lost in California,” he said. “When we stand together, we can still make a difference.”
FRC’s good friend and fellow Watchman on the Wall, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills Pastor Jack Hibbs, who helped flag this issue for thousands of Christian families, celebrated on Facebook. “This is a great lesson to everybody — stand for what’s right and do the right thing. This is a great victory for homeschoolers everywhere! We live to fight another day!”
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
