Reports that President-Elect Donald Trump will remove all transgender individuals from the U.S. Military are false.

According to Fox News, the reports have been declared false by Karoline Leavitt, the incoming White House press secretary.

As we will see, though, Trump and his team have not ruled the possibility of such a removal out. They have only said that they have not made up their minds on the subject.

In other words, although the reports are currently false - because they said that Trump will remove transgender individuals from the military - it is still possible that, at some point, the reports will be true.

Background

The Washington Examiner explains:

Roughly 15,000 members of the U.S. military identify as transgender and could be pushed out if Trump followed through on a statement he made during his first term, according to information that SPARTA Pride shared with Military.com this week.

The statement, referred to above, dates all the way back to 2017, shortly after Trump entered the White House for the first time. He posted it to Twitter - this was before Trump was removed from the social media outlet and before he returned.

The Examiner reports, "Trump touted on Twitter in July 2017 that the United States would stop allowing transgender people in the military 'in any capacity.'"

Trump, however, was never able to implement this particular policy. The Examiner explains:

That decree did not come to fruition. Trump blamed "tremendous medical costs and disruption" for not moving forward with this plan, but he later put forward a different policy that blocked people diagnosed with gender dysphoria from being admitted into the military unless they had already undergone surgery changing their gender at birth.

This policy was allowed to stand- even surviving a challenge at the U.S. Supreme Court - until President Joe Biden took over.

The reports are false

Lately, there have been anonymous reports indicating that Trump was looking to finish what he started during his first administration.

Leavitt has released a statement, in response to the reports, insisting that "no decisions on this issue have been made."

"No decisions on this issue have been made. These unnamed sources are speculating and have no idea what they are actually talking about," the incoming White House press secretary said.

She added, "No policy should ever be deemed official unless it comes directly from President Trump or his authorized spokespeople."

Trump himself has not released a statement on the matter.