Donald Trump has signed an executive order targeting transgender members of the armed services.

In 2017, President Trump banned transgender Americans from the military, though with an exception for those already serving. His new order, “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” goes much further—it bans all transgender service members, stating that the “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

The order also asserts that Pentagon “standards for troop readiness” are not compatible with “with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria” and “shifting pronoun usage.”

Alaina Kupec, president and founder of the transgender advocacy group GRACE, served as a Navy intelligence officer in the 1990s. She says “the wording of the Executive Order is shocking and alarming” to her and “should be for all Americans,” calling the order a mistake—especially for military readiness.

“Trans people have always served in the military. We have troops that are serving across the globe who are transgender,” says Kupec, “This is going to have an immediate and direct impact on commands around the globe. It’s going to make our military less ready to fight.”

Transgender people are twice as likely to serve in the military—with an average 12 years’ service.

“The trans ban was wrong in 2019, it’s wrong now, and so [is] every other attempt to discriminate against minority populations who want to serve and protect our country,” said Rachel Branaman, the executive director of the Modern Military Association of America, an advocacy group for LGBTQ service people.

The order comes on the heels of the confirmation of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, who has called to fire any military leadership “involved in any of the DEI woke shit,” and a little over a month after Biden signed the most recent National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which barred coverage of healthcare for transgender children of military service members.

Kupec realized she was transgender while in the Navy. “I had to make a decision to leave the Navy because I couldn’t continue to serve knowing that I was transgender,” she said. “It was heartbreaking, because I loved what I did in the Navy.”

Kupec was good, too: “I had two Navy achievement medals for leadership as the lowest-ranking officer in my squadron.” Her choice to leave the military, which at that time didn’t allow for transgender service members, came out of a desire to protect the country. “I lived my life with integrity. I could not live in fear of not being able to pass a polygraph, or somebody trying to blackmail me [for being transgender], and then potentially compromise my ability to defend our country.”

The most recent survey available, from 2018, estimates that there are approximately 15,000 transgender service members, making up 0.7 percent of the active military. Transgender people are twice as likely as cisgender people to serve in the military, and have an average of 12 years of service.

A fact-sheet about the order elaborates on the administration’s concerns with gender affirming care and military readiness: “It can take a minimum of 12 months for an individual to complete treatments after transition surgery, which often involves the use of heavy narcotics. During this period, they are not physically capable of meeting military readiness requirements and require ongoing medical care. This is not conducive for deployment or other readiness requirements.”

Kellan Baker, executive director of the Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker Health in Washington, DC, says that the idea that transgender service members face lower standards is false. “Transgender service members have to meet the same deployability standards as anyone else. Thousands of transgender service members have successfully met these standards and proven themselves in service over the last four years.”

“Many transgender people don’t need surgeries at all,” Baker says. “Hormone therapy is much more common.”

“As an expert in transgender health,” Baker added, “I am unaware of any surgery with a recovery period even remotely approaching 12 months. Typical recovery times are two to four weeks and do not involve any type of unusual or extended pain management protocols.”

The Modern Military Association also rebuts the idea that gender-affirming care is an obstacle to military readiness: “Transgender service members are fully deployable, even during transition,” said a spokesperson for the group. “For those who do get surgery, it’s not different from knee or shoulder surgery commonly undergone by service members during downtime. It doesn’t interfere with deployments.”

Kupec calls the ‘military readiness’ reasoning “pure ignorance from people who just don’t know what it’s like to go through a gender transition.”

Other critiques have aimed at the financial cost of health care for trans troops. “Statistically speaking,” notes the Modern Military Association, “healthcare for transgender service members is about the same as for any other service member.”

Kupec also cites widespread medical support for gender-affirming care and its benefits: “We’re not listening to the medical experts right now. We’re listening to religious extremists.”

“We see these policies turn our nation into one that only values a secular extremist version of Christanity, in spite of our founding fathers’ clear mandate separating state and religion,” says Kupec. “As someone who is Catholic and has as strong faith in God, I ask all Americans how this dehumanizing and marginalization of transgender people is consistent with their Christian values.”

Kupec argues that those in the Trump administration who are pushing for a trans military ban “don’t know the first transgender sailor, soldier, marine or airman. Some of the best and brightest people serving our country are transgender, on active duty right now, and have been serving for 10 to 20 years,” she says. “To remove them based only on their gender doesn’t demonstrate our values of liberty and justice for all.”

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