Hello and welcome to Outward Slate's podcast about queer life.

I'm Christina Cotarucci, a senior writer at Slate.

And for the past few weeks, it's felt like we've been standing in front of a fire hose,

trying to make sense of the flood of power grabs and devastating policy changes coming from

the White House. Since Donald Trump took office last month,

he's issued a slew of executive orders designed to make it harder for trans people to participate in public life.

Two of them specifically target trans kids with restrictions on gender affirming care and the kinds of support they can get at school.

There was also an executive order that will make

trans people revert to the gender marker assigned to them at birth when they renew their passports,

which sets the stage for the harassment and humiliation of trans people at airports, hotels,

anywhere else you have to show your documents. Even though we knew, in some sense, that this was

coming, it's all been

really demoralizing and I'm sure scary for me and I'm sure a lot of you. Sometimes it feels right

to just tune things out and not pay attention to the news. But also for me, I'm really grateful

to have this show as a kind of container for grappling

with everything that's happening right now and understanding the impact. So to that end this week,

I wanted to talk to someone who's going to be facing the fallout from yet another Trump executive

order. This one lays the groundwork for a new ban on trans people in the military.

And I have two people with me this week to discuss what that will look like and how advocates are fighting it.

Garrett Morgan is a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, and Sasha Bookert is a lawyer at Lambda Legal.

We'll get right into it after the break.

We're back with Gerard Morgan, a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Thank you so much for being here, Garrett.

...