Transgender Americans are openly enlisting in the U.S. military for the first time — and many say they feel courts will ultimately block President Donald Trump from banning their service.
Nicholas Bade, a 37-year-old transgender man who is among the first of what advocates expect will be a small but historic surge of enlistments, has wanted to join the military since he was young.
“I just couldn’t face the idea of doing it as a traditional female,” Bade told Reuters as he carried a folder of medical documents into an Air Force recruiting office in Chicago last week.
Although military officials have said they don’t know how many transgender people have enlisted since Jan. 1, advocates claim dozens, if not hundreds, of transgender people will seek to join an estimated 4,000 already serving.
