To Dahlia Dahl, President Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military – more expansive than the one that eventually took effect during the Republican’s first term – is unfair and unwise.
Dahl, 22, a Chatham resident and the daughter of Dave and Corrina Dahl, enlisted in the Illinois Army National Guard in late 2020 to help pay for college. The Glenwood High School graduate and cinema major beginning her junior year at Southern Illinois University Carbondale went through basic training in June 2021 and is a specialist in the East St. Louis-based 1844th Transportation Company, for which she serves as a part-time truck driver.
She began coming out as a transgender woman in 2022 and started her medical transition in January of this year. Dahl filed for voluntary separation from the military to meet a July 6 deadline set by the Trump administration. That way, she can receive an honorable discharge, call herself a veteran and maintain some benefits rather than be removed from the military. Her service with the National Guard was originally supposed to extend until December 2026.
“I signed a contract, and I was willing to see it through to the end, and the government with whom I made the contract is not willing to see it through the end,” Dahl said. “And for what? What has changed between the Biden administration and the Trump administration? Only one thing, and that’s who’s in charge. I’m the same soldier that I was.”
Dahl is one of 12 Illinois National Guard soldiers who have volunteered for separation in response to orders issued by Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth following a May ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.
No soldiers or airmen in the Guard have been involuntarily separated in connection with the Trump administration mandate, according to Maj. William “Dutch” Grove, an Illinois National Guard spokesperson.
Trump, as commander in chief, first announced his ban on transgender troops via Twitter in 2017. After multiple court challenges from civil rights groups, and a change that his administration made to the policy in 2018, the orders that went into effect in April 2019 allowed active transgender members of the military to serve openly if they received a gender dysphoria diagnosis before April 2019, according to PolitiFact.
Active members who received a diagnosis after the policy was implemented would have to serve under the gender assigned to them at birth, PolitiFact said. People diagnosed with gender dysphoria after April 2019 or who had already undergone a transition couldn’t enlist.
Democrat Joe Biden, who beat Trump in the 2020 presidential election, rescinded the policy in January 2021.
The new policy, allowed by the Supreme Court to proceed while other legal challenges continue, is based on a Trump executive order that says anyone who is transgender can’t serve in the military because being trans conflicts “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle.” The order also says trans people lack the “selflessness and humility” required for military service.
The Pentagon says about 0.2% of the U.S. military’s members, or approximately 4,200 of the 2.1 million troops serving, experience gender dysphoria. The Pentagon so far has said as many as 1,000 openly identifying trans service members have filed for voluntary separation.
Dahl enlisted in the Guard during Trump’s first term and never expected him to return to office. She said many of her superiors in her unit have told her the Guard is losing a good soldier.
Dahl said everyone in her unit has known she is trans for several years. The notion that trans service members reduce the military’s combat readiness is false, she said. It’s not a philosophy that she has felt from her fellow soldiers, and it will further hinder the military’s recruitment efforts, she said.
Dahl noted that the approximately 4,200 members of the military who could leave because of the ban are more than the number of American troops killed on D-Day, on June 6, 1944, as the amphibious invasion of Normandy, France, began during World War II.
“Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are willing to part with 1,700 more than those who gave their lives on D-Day because of what? We’re weak?” Dahl asked. “We’re strong enough to not be allowed in women’s sports but we’re too weak for the military? My gender dysphoria, my being trans, has not impacted anything I’ve had to do as a soldier.”
Dahl, who wears her hair short, said she has never been deployed in the U.S. or abroad but has participated in required monthly training, summer training and fulfilled other basic responsibilities of being a soldier such as maintaining fitness, firing her weapon and not taking illicit drugs. The uniform is the same for male and female soldiers.
She is technically on administrative leave from the Guard – receiving pay but not participating in training or deployments – while an investigation of her and others’ applications take place to make sure they are not making up their transgender status to get out of the military.
Dahl said her commitment to the Guard will result in her college tuition being paid at least through the current school year. She would like to work in the film or television industry after graduation and said she may have to come up with tuition for the fall 2026 semester, which would be her last before graduating with a bachelor’s degree.
She said she has been encouraged by comments from state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago, who is working on potential legislation to provide tuition waivers for Illinois university students whose scholarships are being affected by Trump’s actions.
Dahl said she was well aware of Trump’s views on trans people. Still, when the trans ban began to take effect this summer, she said it added to an already devastating year for her personally. Her fiancé, a 24-year-old genderqueer person from Virginia whom Dahl met on the internet, died in a car crash there on March 18.
“So this was more like another block in the Jenga tower that was falling,” said Dahl. “I think it is unfair that I’m being removed from the military for something that was not a problem … and it’s happening to other people,” she said. “And I don’t like to have to choose between being a woman and being a soldier.”
This article appears in September 4-10, 2025.
You’re not a woman.
Pretty sure Dean Olsen doesn’t identify as a woman, so what’s the point in telling him he’s not a woman?
You are MALE.
Dean Olsen is indeed male. Where are you going with this?
Given the military manpower shortage, I’m not sure they can afford to turn down anyone.
Donald Trump is real MAN!
I’m enjoying the juxtaposition of this article next to the article wondering how the democrats can bring back the normal people who left their party.