When President Donald Trump returned to office in January, Master Sergeant Logan Ireland was worried about what would happen to his career.
The 38-year-old transgender Air Force member had already jumped through bureaucratic hoops to be able to serve during Trump’s first term. In 2017, Trump tweeted he wanted to ban trans people from the military; the White House formalized its policy over the next year, carving out exceptions for people like Ireland who had already begun medically transitioning. Ireland had to get a doctor’s note diagnosing him with gender dysphoria in order to keep his job.
And now, that diagnosis is being used to purge him — and thousands of other transgender service members — from the military, despite his 15 years of service, including deployments in Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates and South Korea.
“The Air Force made me who I am,” he told HuffPost. “It helped me find my voice.”
As the Air Force has haphazardly rolled out its separation process for transgender troops, Ireland is also one of the few service members to be approved for, and then subsequently and inexplicably denied access to, early retirement benefits.
