The White House is refusing to talk about President Trump’s new ban on transgender service members in the military. A Dept. of Justice court filing late Friday night, a White House press release and a DOJ memo were the only announcements about the ban made. Like the administration officials Trump has fired – from Jim Comey to Rex Tillerson to Andrew McCabe – there was no official announcement made to the people most affected: transgender service members, who had to find out they are likely to lose their jobs via social media or television.
Monday afternoon Chris Johnson (photo, right), likely the best-known White House correspondent for an LGBT news outlet, was in the press briefing room and tried repeatedly to get Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah to answer his questions about the ban on transgender service members.
He was ignored.
“Raj clearly saw me in the third row, but skipped me over. He knew what I was going to ask,” Johnson, the Chief Political and White House reporter for The Washington Blade told NCRM via electronic message.
Johnson also tweeted his frustration.
He was not the only reporter trying to get the White House to explain the ban. At the end of the very short daily briefing, another reporter asked Shah but was ignored:
It’s not the first time Johnson has been ignored, especially when there’s important LGBT-related news. Last year it got so bad that after five months of being “iced out,” he was forced to publicly announce that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeatedly refused to call on him.
“The White House refuses to take inquiries from the only LGBT publication in the White House at a time when the administration continuously rolls out anti-LGBT policies,” Johnson wrote. “Among them is a ban on transgender military service; a rollback of LGBT civil rights protections at the Justice Department; sending an attorney to a federal court in New York to argue firing people for being gay is perfectly legal; and new ‘religious freedom’ guidance that essentially green lights the denial of services to LGBT people.”