Following the Trump administration’s ban on transgender service members, the U.S. Air Force is now denying early retirement benefits to transgender troops with 15 to 18 years of service.

“This is just betrayal of a direct commitment made to these service members,” Shannon Minter of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights told Reuters, calling it “devastating.”

According to Minter, the denial of early retirement benefits could cost transgender service members hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetimes.

Reuters calls the benefits denial “the latest escalation by President Donald Trump’s administration as it seeks to bar transgender individuals from joining the U.S. military and remove all who are currently serving. The Pentagon says transgender individuals are medically unfit, something civil rights activists say is untrue and constitutes illegal discrimination.”

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Critics blasted the Trump administration.

“Absolutely appalling bigotry,” wrote Jessica Riedl, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. “This is how the administration treats people who have defended our country in the military for nearly two decades? I hope the courts block this, as it cannot possibly be legal.”

“Disgusting way to treat Americans who have stepped up to serve,” wrote Fred Wellman, a graduate of West Point and an Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours.

“A draft dodger who never served a day in his life is denying benefits to those who served honorably for 18 years,” commented the nonpartisan Veterans for Responsible Leadership. “Just like when black soldiers were denied benefits after WWII. The cruelty towards marginalized communities that serve is as American as apple pie. We must do better.”

“It was never about the bathrooms or the sports,” remarked U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI). “It was always just to demonize and punish. These Americans have devoted their careers to keeping us safe, and they are getting screwed by their government.”

“The Trump administration has gone from removing a targeted group from government service to stealing what they earned,” commented Dylan Williams, vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy. “It’s textbook fascism and a further step on the path of state repression, dispossession and violence that humanity has seen the horrific consequences of before.”

“The Trump admin is telling anyone who will listen that its treatment of transgender service members is motivated by animus,” wrote civil right attorney Matthew Segal. “The question is whether federal courts, including SCOTUS, will listen.”

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President Donald Trump will sign a memorandum ordering colleges and universities to submit information on their admissions to ensure they are complying with a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court order banning affirmative action and gutting race-conscious admissions. The order would expand the current admissions data the government collects.

“Admissions data has increasingly become a focus of the Trump administration as part of its effort to change the ideological balance of the higher education system, which the president views as hostile to conservatives,” The New York Times reported.

Several Ivy League schools have agreed to hand over to the Trump administration certain admissions data, including “standardized test scores and grade point averages of all applicants, as well as information about their race, a measure that could profoundly alter the competitive college admissions process,” according to the Times.

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The 2023 6-3 Supreme Court ruling banned public and private colleges and universities from considering race as a factor in its admissions decisions. Schools had said they needed to do so to protect the constitutional guarantee of equal protection, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her dissenting opinion.

Bloomberg News called Thursday’s order “a new and expansive front” in the Trump administration’s “pressure campaign against colleges.”

Angel Perez, CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, Bloomberg added, “said the data transparency mandate could drive institutions away from the kinds of holistic admissions practices that have helped them increase diversity on campuses.”

“The bottom line,” Perez said, “is that colleges that don’t admit enough White students will be punished.”

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has agreed to a request from U.S. Senator John Cornyn to locate the Texas Democratic state lawmakers who exited the state in an effort to deny Republicans a quorum—part of a broader attempt to block Governor Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump’s push to redraw congressional maps and boost GOP-held House seats, the Texas Republican announced Thursday.

“We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Senator Cornyn said in a statement that referred to the Texas Democrats as “supposed lawmakers.”

Axios reported that “Texas issued civil warrants for the Democratic lawmakers, but local law enforcement can’t make arrests outside the state.”

The Texas Democrats are in Illinois, according to that state’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker.

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Legal and political experts are blasting the move.

“There’s literally no federal law applicable to this situation. None,” Governor Pritzker told podcaster Jessica Yellin on Wednesday, according to Axios.

“The key question here is on what grounds would the FBI be doing this,” wrote MSNBC Justice and Intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian. “What is the crime they are investigating? The FBI can’t just use its vast surveillance powers to locate random citizens. In fact, that’s what conservatives have long been so concerned about re FISA authorities.”

“This is a patently unlawful, unconstitutional abuse of federal power,” constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis said on Thursday.

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“We are in a deeply dangerous, illiberal place in America when the federal government will deploy law enforcement to force state legislators to act on legislation that’s contrary to their conscience and an attempt to undermine free elections,” Kreis added.

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, addressed Senator Cornyn: “John, I understand your need to tilt crazy right to counter your lunatic primary challenger. But calling on the FBI to act illegally and wrongly to go after Texas Democrats is beneath you, and simply shameful. You used to believe in the law and the Constitution.”

Asking what “criminal interest” the FBI could have in this, U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) called it “yet another disgusting partisan abuse of power by the FBI,” and said that “any agent asked to assist should refuse to do so.”

Watch video of Governor Pritzker below or at this link.

Pritzker: The fact is that neither Texas nor the FBI at the federal level has the authority to arrest these Texas Democrats

They’re welcome to visit Chicago or anywhere in Illinois—to take in the great views of our lake and our city, and enjoy the incredible restaurants we… pic.twitter.com/0UhJOpEzvb

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 7, 2025

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