A "transgender" Navy commander is warning that if the Trump administration prohibits "trans"-identifying people from openly serving in the U.S. military, it would create "critical holes that are going to take decades to fill."
Cmdr. "Emily" Shilling, a biological man who has surgically modified his body to look like a woman, talked to CNN's Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday about how Trump's edict, if executed, will affect our armed forces.
Shilling claimed that banning openly "transgender" service members could cause glaring gaps in military readiness, thereby jeopardizing national security."We see this with all the troops that are deployed across the world today already embedded in combat units," Shilling said. "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."
Shilling insisted that his own medical "transition" made him a better military leader because he can now connect with his subordinates in "a more authentic way."
"I have been at the pinnacle of naval aviation," Shilling said. "I'm proof standing here that we're qualified to serve."
Shilling was one of the first naval aviators to regain his flight clearance post-"transition."
A member of Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR)'s diversity action team, Shilling has advocated for the Navy to ramp up its inclusion efforts and increase access to so-called "gender-affirming care" through TRICARE, the military's health care program.
In 2023, Shilling was the Speaker for the Dead at NAVAIR's Transgender Day of Remembrance vigil and spoke at the U.S. Defense Department's annual Pride Month celebration.
Among Shilling's other activism-related accolades, he earned a spot in Curve magazine's 2024 list of Top 50 LGBTQ+ Women and Non-Binary Trailblazers, spoke on a 2023 Women in SciTech panel at an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics symposium, and received the 2022 LGBTQ+ Corporate Advocate of the Year Outie Award, according to NAVAIR's public affairs office.
"I have no desire to get out," Shilling, who's shy of the 20-year milestone needed for military retirement benefits, declared.
If implemented, this would be Trump's second executive order on the issue to take effect. In April 2019, Shiling came out as "transgender" two days after the rollout of Trump's previous policy. However, at the time, it meant Shilling could still continue to serve but only as his biological sex.
"It was kind of like Don't Ask, Don't Tell," Shilling recounted to NBC News when then-President Joe Biden reversed Trump's first policy. "I could be whoever I wanted to be at home. I just couldn't do anything at work."
While speaking to Collins this week, Shilling recalled passing every psychological evaluation and every physical exam "you can think of" after undergoing body modification surgery. "At the end of the day, there was no reason to keep me out of the cockpit," Shilling said.
Trump's latest executive order pertaining to "transgender troops"—signed Monday—states that "adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life."
According to Trump's directive, the U.S. cannot focus on developing a lethal, unified fighting force if the military is accommodating "ideologies harmful to unit cohesion."
"A man's assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member," the mandate says.
It also calls into question the mental and physical fitness of "transgender" military members, citing longstanding U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) health standards that say service members must be "free of medical conditions and physical defects" that would necessitate "excessive" leave of duty for treatment or hospitalization. As a result, many mental and physical illnesses are considered incompatible with active duty, including disqualifying conditions like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and suicidality.
People who go through "sex-change" surgeries never fully recover and end up lifelong patients. For example, men who turn their penis into a pseudo-vagina spend the rest of their lives using a dilator to keep the newly created hole open.
Accordingly, the Trump White House says service members must be able to fight in "austere conditions and without the benefit of routine medical treatment or special provisions."
This, however, is not an immediate ban. What it does do is direct U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to update the military's current medical guidelines and issue guidance for implementing Trump's order within the DoD. It now hinges on Hegseth to carry out the order's objectives.
"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," Shilling said of Hegseth. "I hope he stands by those words."
Shilling indicated that he would "welcome" a meeting with Hegseth, who's also an Army veteran. "When people get to know somebody who is transgender, we're able to change the narrative. There's a lot of misconception about what it's like to live in my shoes, or live in my boots, as it were," Shilling said.
Between 2016 and 2021, the Pentagon reportedly spent approximately $15 million on "gender-affirming care" to nearly 2,000 active-duty service members, according to Military.com's analysis of DoD data. Of the surgical procedures, more than 240 "gender-reassignment" surgeries were performed on military personnel over that five-year span, including the chopping off of breasts and testicles, hysterectomies, and labiaplasty.
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