Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has announced the Pentagon is ending its ban on transgender people serving openly in the U.S. military.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter: “Our mission is to defend this country, and we don’t want barriers unrelated to a person’s qualification to serve preventing us from recruiting or retaining the soldier, sailor, airman or marine who can best accomplish the mission. We have to have access to 100 percent of America’s population for our all-volunteer force to be able to recruit from among them the most highly qualified and to retain them.”

Under the new rules, the military will provide all healthcare, including surgery, to transgender troops. Many hailed the decision as a step forward in LGBT rights. Victoria Rodríguez-Roldán of the National LGBTQ Task Force said, “This decision is a great victory for the many trans people who have served and sacrificed in the military over the years.” But others criticized the decision. Award-winning writer Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore wrote, “How far we have come from the original goals of gay liberation as it emerged in the 1960s and 1970s—an end to the oppressive state, organized religion and the nuclear family—a rejection of war, racism, white supremacy and imperialism…” We’ll have more on the Pentagon decision with transgender veteran, Colorado Democratic congressional nominee Misty Plowright later in the broadcast.