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Earlier this year, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order that expelled transgender troops from the U.S. military, the administration claimed—against all evidence—that bigotry against trans people was not the reason behind the move. There’s no longer any plausible deniability, though, as Trump’s Defense Department recently escalated its war on trans service members by taking away some of those soldiers’ pensions and benefits.

Transgender troops began serving openly in 2016 under President Barack Obama. In his first term, Trump announced by tweet that he would ban transgender troops. A few months later, the Defense Department decided to bar them from

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