Ousted under Trump's trans military ban, retired Space Force Col. Bree Fram launches bid for Congresshttps://www.advocate.com/politics/bree-fram-congressional-run 🔗Christopher Wiggins (20 Jan 2026)
A retired U.S. Space Force colonel who was forced out of the military under the Trump administration's ban on transgender service members announced Tuesday that she is running for Congress in Virginia, turning a sudden end to her 23-year military career into a bid for elected office.
For more than two decades, she served in uniform — through war, technological transformation, and the creation of the U.S. Space Force itself. She rose to the rank of colonel, led billion-dollar national security programs, deployed overseas, and helped build the nation's newest armed service with an eye toward the future rather than nostalgia for the past.
Then, in December, her career ended abruptly. Not because of failure or misconduct. Not because she could no longer do the job. But because the Trump administration decided that transgender people no longer belonged in the ranks.
Weeks later, Fram, 46, stood at a retirement ceremony unlike any other at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters in Washington, D.C., presided over by retired four-star general Stanley McChrystal — one held not in triumph but in defiance, honoring transgender service members forced out under a sweeping ban. The moment was both an ending and a reckoning.
On Tuesday, Fram announced that she is entering electoral politics with a message shaped by loss, conviction, and a stubborn belief that the country is still capable of becoming something better than it is right now.
