Article snippet: President transgender individuals from openly serving in the U.S. military. The directive gives the Department of Defense six months to develop an implementation plan that will go into effect on March 23, 2018. The overall basis for the president's directive was "national security considerations," according to a senior White House official. "In my judgment, the previous Administration failed to identify a sufficient basis to conclude that terminating the Departments' longstanding policy and practice would not hinder military effectiveness and lethality, disrupt unit cohesion, or tax military resources, and there remain meaningful concerns that further study is needed to ensure that continued implementation of last year's policy change would not have those negative effects," Trump's memo reads. The memo comes one month after Trump said he would not permit transgender individuals from serving, tweeting "the military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail." Trump's guidance effectively returns the Pentagon to its pre-June 2016 policy when then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter allowed transgender individuals to serve openly, permitting the funding of treatments and gender reassignment surgeries. Carter gave one year for the Pentagon to study how to allow transgender individuals to join the military -- referred to as "acce... Link to the full article to read more