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Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service, looking at the numbers that get reported by the media and thinking,

where did that come from?

I'm Charlotte McDonald, recently on the news.

President Trump has made a surprise announcement

that he's banning transgender people from serving in the U.S. military.

After consultation with my generals and military experts, he tweeted,

please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military.

Now I'll be honest, when I heard this I wasn't entirely sure what the policy was previously.

Could transgender people serve in the US military? To find out I asked Rada Iingar

from the think tank the Rand Corporation

whether transgender personnel had been able to serve

in the American Armed Forces previously.

In terms of joining as transgender,

that was considered an exclusionary characteristic for what is called

a sessions and so a session policy did not allow individuals who openly

...