Trump pulls Stefanik’s UN nomination

(WASHINGTON) — Transgender U.S. service members will be separated from the military unless they receive an exemption, according to a new Pentagon policy disclosed in a court filing on Wednesday.

According to the memo, the Pentagon must create a procedure to identify troops who are transgender by March 26 and orders that the separation of individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria must be completed by June 25.

Those to be separated from the military will include service members receiving some form of treatment or hormones for that diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who have gone through a gender-affirming surgery.

The new policy was included as an exhibit in the federal case of Talbott v. Trump, a federal lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order that rolled back the previous policy allowing transgender service members to serve in the military.

“Military service by Service members and applicants for military service who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria is incompatible with military service,” the memo said.

“Service by these individuals is not in the best interests of the Military Services and is not clearly consistent with the interests of national security,” said the memo.

“Individuals who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria are no longer eligible for military service,” it added.

The service members who will be separated will receive honorable discharges unless their record indicates they should receive a lower-level discharge. Receiving an honorable discharge means they would be able to receive benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

“The Department only recognizes two sexes: male and female. An individual’s sex is immutable, unchanging during a person’s life. All Service members will only serve in accordance with their sex,” according to the memo.

The new policy will allow certain exemptions from separation or allow enlistment on a case-by-case basis separation if they can provide that “there is a compelling Government interest in retaining the Service member that directly supports warfighting capabilities.”

Current service members can also apply for an exemption if they can prove that they have been stable in their sex for three months “without clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning,” and that they never attempted to transition to another sex; and will adhere to all standards for the service member’s sex.

On Feb. 7, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a memo that lifted the Pentagon’s previous policy on transgender service and said the U.S. military would no longer allow transgender individuals to join and would stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender dysphoria. He also set a timeline for the Pentagon to develop an implementation plan for the new policy.

There are currently 4,240 active-duty, Guard and Reserve service members who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, according to a defense official.

Since 2014, the total number of diagnoses for gender dysphoria was 5,773 with 1,000 of those having gone through gender-affirming surgery. The total costs for treatments, hormones and surgeries during that time frame was $52 million, said the official.

There are about 2.1 million service members in the U.S. military — and about 1.3 million of them are on active duty.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Army identified Saturday the third soldier on the Black Hawk helicopter involved in the midair crash over the Potomac River Wednesday night as Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach.

Lobach, of Durham, North Carolina, was the last member of the helicopter’s crew to be identified. The six-year Army member was assigned to the 12th Aviation Battalion at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, according to the Army.

Lobach’s family initially withheld her identity when the Army released the names of the other two soldiers killed in the collision, Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Lloyd Eaves.

“Rebecca was many things. She was a daughter, sister, partner, and friend. She was a servant, a caregiver, an advocate. Most of all, she loved and was loved. Her life was short, but she made a difference in the lives of all who knew her. Our hearts break for the other families who have lost loved ones in this national tragedy and we mourn with them,” her family said in a statement.

Lobach was among the 67 people killed in the crash between the helicopter and the American Airlines regional jetliner.

The Army said Lobach had no deployments but was awarded the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal and Army Service Ribbon.

Her family said she volunteered White House military social aide, supporting the president and first lady in hosting countless White House events, including ceremonies awarding the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Lobach also was a certified Army Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention victim advocate and “hoped to continue her education so she could serve this country as a physician when her time with the Army ended,” her family said.

“She once said, ‘My experiences with SHARP have reinforced my resolve to serve others with compassion, understanding and the resources necessary for healing,'” her family said in a statement.

“Her life was short, but she made a difference in the lives of all who knew her. Our hearts break for the other families who have lost loved ones in this national tragedy and we mourn with them,” the family added.

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(WASHINGTON) — Following the Department of Education’s gutting of nearly 50% of its workforce Tuesday evening, educators have expressed deep concern — not only for students’ futures but for their own as well.

Tara Kini, chief of policy and programs at the Learning Policy Institute, told ABC News on Friday the job cuts will have “huge impacts” on teachers.

She pointed to the loss of federal money that previously funded teacher training programs as particularly devastating, especially for programs for teachers of special needs, marginalized and multilingual students.

“The fact that those grants will be able to go out the door means that we’re going to have fewer teachers trained, particularly for high-need subject areas where there are shortages all over the country,” she said.

“We will lose counselors, social workers, behavior specialists — people who ensure safety and stability for students who need it most,” Robert Castleberry, a fifth grade teacher in Kansas and the American Federation of Teachers’ Kansas secretary, said in a statement to ABC News.

“I hope this change by the government doesn’t set educators back years while our states are working to try and figure out how to distribute all those funds,” said Michael Brix, an instructor at the Peoria Public Schools’ Woodruff Career and Technical Center in Illinois and a member of the Peoria Federation of Teachers.

​As President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order proposing to return education power to states, senior Department of Education officials stressed the massive reforms on Tuesday are going to help the department get funding to states in a more cost-efficient way.

“What we are doing now is not working,” the officials said. “It’s just not, so it’s time for change and that’s what’s starting tonight.”

But Kini said the cuts this will exacerbate preexisting issues of teacher shortages and lack of funding that has already been prevalent in America.

“Our schools are already grossly underfunded in Connecticut,” said Jennifer Graves, special education teacher in New Haven, Connecticut, and vice president of New Haven Federation of Teachers. “We are really, really struggling already and constantly working in a deficit model to support not only general education students but especially our most vulnerable populations — our multilingual learners and our students with disabilities.”

As a result, teachers could become more overworked and struggle to accommodate student demands, with Kini speculating that classes could get combined and offer less individualized attention.

“Or they may cut some courses like electives altogether because they don’t have teachers to teach it,” she continued. “They may staff classes with substitute teachers or long-term substitute teachers … who aren’t trained for the job, and none of those options are good for student learning.”

Mike Carvella, a third grade math and science teacher in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, told ABC News during a rally on Friday how students with individualized education plans, or IEPs, can be denied by private schools, causing them to flood the public school system and subsequently affect teachers.

“That’s going to put more kids with IEPs into more underfunded public schools and put more pressure on public school teachers and public school districts to educate kids who are already marginalized and already have learning problems,” he said.

Kini noted the coronavirus pandemic in which teachers faced shortages and were forced to pick up “more of the burden” while simultaneously juggling their own responsibilities.

She also emphasized how vital federal funding programs are for allocating resources to marginalized students.

“The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds teacher training and professional development for special education teachers, and that’s a huge chunk of federal funding that’s going to be impacted. It’s going to impact the numbers of special education positions,” Kini said. “The same is true for Title 1 funding for low-income students and Title 3 funding for multilingual students.”

IDEA is a law that ensures free public education to children with disabilities, including special education and other resources.

The DOE promised that it would continue delivering all statutory programs, including funding for special needs and disadvantaged students, formula funding, student loans and Pell Grants for low-income students.

Yet sources told ABC News that most of the reduction in force affected the Offices for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid, effectively terminating many of the department’s employees who are tasked with investigating discrimination within schools and helping the nation’s students achieve higher education.

Kini spoke to the job cuts at OCR, emphasizing that students will not be protected from unlawful discrimination and explaining how this would consequently force teachers to pick up an additional responsibility and “play more of that watchdog role.”

When asked about the future of teaching, Kini expressed a bleak outlook over the likelihood of young people seeking to pursue education as a career.

“It would be a little bit of speculation there, but I think it would be a reasonable conclusion for a young person today to look at what’s happening with the uncertainty in education, and particularly with the cuts to the U.S. Department of Education, and say, ‘You know what? That doesn’t seem like a stable career choice for me right now,'” Kini said.

Jim Ward, a retired educator and retired National Education Association employee who traveled from St. Louis, Missouri, to Washington, D.C., for Friday’s #EDMatters Rally outside the department’s headquarters, emphasized to ABC News how students remain the most important priority.

“All the dedicated educators that are here today are serving in those classrooms because they care about the needs of every single student, not just the ones that look like them — although their workforce is quite diverse, too — which you might not see in some of the more exclusive private schools,” Ward said.

Lori Stratton of Kansas also attended the rally, telling ABC News how “meaningful” it was for her to be present on Friday.

“I’ve been a teacher for 34 years. Most of my sons are in education. My husband’s in education. Most of my family’s in education. This is our business. You know, we are believers,” she said. “We have dedicated our lives to supporting students in public schools, and I feel like it’s an American value. I feel like there is not a bigger democratic American value than supporting education.”

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