Sabrina Bruce led a cybersecurity team protecting classified satellites for the United States Space Force. When Trump's transgender military ban took effect, she was removed from her post. Her position could not be filled. The work continued without her. She remained on the payroll, drawing full pay, unable to do the job she was trained to do.

Parker Moore supervised roughly 80 sailors running the nuclear reactor aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. A senior commander warned that Moore's technical expertise was essential. Moore was pulled from duty anyway. The ship deployed without Moore and entered combat operations. Moore was later discharged.

Army Captain Katie Benn spent 13 years in service as a decorated air defense officer. She was preparing to deploy to Iraq when she was told she could not go because she is transgender. Nearly a year later, she remains at home, her bags still packed, waiting for orders that have not come. Her soldiers are in harm's way without her.

These are not isolated cases. They are the documented operational reality of a policy the Trump administration justified as necessary to improve military readiness and reduce costs. The reality is the opposite on both counts.

The Pentagon is paying thousands of service members full salaries while barring them from performing the jobs they were trained to do. Their positions cannot be filled while they remain on the rolls. The military invested more than half a million dollars training one Army lawyer at Harvard who was discharged after less than two years of service. Pilots, doctors, nuclear specialists, intelligence officers, and legal corps members, trained at enormous public expense over years and decades, are being discarded. The Pentagon has not disclosed the total financial cost of this program. It has declined to comment on its operational impact.

What the government has disclosed is this: the military spent approximately $52 million on transgender-related healthcare over an entire decade. In a single month, the military spent more on lobster and crab. The fiscal rationale for the ban does not survive contact with the government's own data.

Neither does the readiness rationale. A review of 58 studies published in the International Journal of Transgender Health found no evidence that transgender service members undermine military readiness, unit cohesion, or deployability. Researchers found that poorer outcomes among transgender troops are linked to discrimination and stigma, not their ability to serve. The administration's core justification for the ban is not supported by the evidence. It has never been supported by the evidence.

What is supported by evidence is that the United States military is currently weaker, more expensive to operate, and less capable of filling critical specialized roles because of this policy. A cybersecurity specialist protecting classified satellites is gone. A nuclear reactor supervisor is gone. A decorated combat officer's unit deployed without her. The ban is not protecting military readiness. It is destroying it.

Sign this petition to demand Congress investigate the operational and financial cost of the transgender military ban, require the Pentagon to publicly disclose how many service members have been affected and the total taxpayer cost of paying troops who are not allowed to work, and call for policy on military service to be based on evidence of capability rather than ideology.