Transgender Navy commander reacts to Trump’s ban on trans service members

We are hearing from a major veterans group criticizing President Trump's ban on transgender troops from serving in the military. The CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America says that the president's order tells servicemembers their sacrifice is not valued. Last night, we spoke to Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw about this, and he argued also that he believes transgender people are not fit to serve.

I'm saying, by definition, if you if you have transitioned into a different gender, you are not meeting our medical standards, right? That's you're you're creating. No, it's not an opinion.

But then again, it's the devil serving in the military right now. Tonight, the president's latest ban is being challenged in a court in a lawsuit that was brought by six transgender service members and two transgender individuals who wanted to enlist. My source on this tonight is the US Navy commander, Emily Schilling, who has done two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan as a Navy pilot, was awarded three Air Medals and an award for Superior Airman Ship as well.

She transitioned two years ago and has since been promoted with merit. She's also the president of Sparta, which is an advocacy organization made of transgender troops. And I want to thank you so much for being here.

just this order that came out and we finally got to read the text of it this morning. You have almost two decades in your naval career. What is your view of this?

well, it hit me kind of hard. You know, I have dedicated about 19. 5 years of service.

It was my dream to join and fly for the Navy since I was little. I did the two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and 60 combat missions. I got a lot of value at it.

and a lot of self, you know, self-identity out of it. Later, I went on to be a test pilot. And then the meritorious promotions.

I have been at the pinnacle of naval aviation. I think I'm I'm proof standing here that, you know, we are qualified to serve. And when you see this in the language of it, I was reading through this because the congressman and I were kind of going back and forth on this last night, and it says that, quote, an adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex conflict.

So they soldiers commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle even in one's personal life. What is it like for you to hear those words? First of all I want to do is keep serving.

You know, I've done that almost 20 years. I want to keep going. I have no desire to get out.

And the feedback that I've had from prior to transition to after is that it's made me actually a better leader, able to connect with my people more and in a more authentic way because I can meet them wherever they are. And so when you hear this idea that that because you've gone through that, that you are not set to serve as the congressman was, was stating saying that did that you wouldn't be able to be up to the standards. I mean, you know, what the standards are and what those requirements are and what that requires from you.

What is your response to that? Well, there's a lot of, disinformation out there, and a lot of talking points on it, but, I'm one of the first naval aviators to regain my flight clearance post transition. And what that means is the Navy was wrongfully medically conservative.

I'm going to go fly a $100 million aircraft. the F-18, like you saw in talking to, so they ran me through every psychological evaluation, every physical evaluation they could think of. And at the end of the day, there was no reason to keep me out of the cockpit.

We see this with all of the troops that are deployed across the world today already, and buried in combat units. We have lawyers, doctors, special forces, rangers, and they're all there today. If we yank them out, it leaves critical holes that are going to take decades to fill.

So we dug in on this with the congressman. I want you to listen to to what he said about that. Exactly.

And the test that you do go through. I know what war is like, and I know what it takes to deploy. I was not allowed to deploy for for for vision issues.

Now, what if you need to be on a bunch of medications and your and your entire body has been has been changed radically into another gender? It makes it very difficult to deploy you into the places that we need to deploy. You.

You're basically arguing you're proof that they're wrong. I am proof. my total, total med downtime, as I put it, was about a month.

That's that's in line with somebody who has minor knee surgery. we have individuals who go through as much a transition as they want without ever being down. it's really just, you know, bad out.

And we've heard from people like the new secretary of Defense PDX that talk about recruitment and how they need to improve and how the numbers are down and they're trying to appeal to people. So what does it say when when an order like this comes out saying, even if you want to serve, we're saying you can't at a time when we're saying we're also at low levels of recruitment. Yeah.

So the executive order actually just asked the Secdef to generate new policy. And if you read his most recent memo to the troops, the last line says that he supports all members and all families of the armed forces. I hope he stands by those words.

What would you I mean, if you could see Defense Secretary Hegseth and, you know, talk about your own service and what you've been through. He also served. What would you say?

I think that would be a really wonderful conversation. I would welcome it. when people get to know somebody who's transgender or, we're able to kind of change the narrative, I think there's a lot of misconception of what it's like to to live in my shoes or live in my boots as it was.

commander, it was so great to have you on. Thank you for coming on and sharing that perspective. following that interview last night.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.