1. United States
2. Mich.
3. Letter

Transgender service members are being forced out of the military while we're in active conflict with Iran. Their deployed teams are working short-staffed. This is a readiness crisis of your making. Air Force Master Sgt. Logan Ireland should be deployed with his team overseas right now. Instead, he's fighting in court after the Air Force granted him early retirement orders, let him make life decisions based on those approvals, then voided them without individual review. The Justice Department is now arguing he hasn't been harmed because he's still getting paid. That's insulting. A recent review of 58 empirical studies in the International Journal of Transgender Health found no evidence that transgender service members harm unit cohesion, cost more than comparable medical populations, or are less deployable than their peers. The administration ignored this research entirely in its court filings. Paula Neira, a Naval Academy graduate forced out in 1991, said it best at the recent Albert Cashier Awards: "You did not fail. Our country, our service, your chain of command failed you." She's right. Transgender people have fought in every American war since the Civil War. They've earned the right to serve. Stop these discharges. Let them do their jobs.