Why is the Army recommending training for this transgender officer that the Pentagon plans to oust?

Second Lieutenant Nicolas Talbott, an Army reservist from Ohio, is torn between packing for officer training in Missouri and waiting to see if he’ll be expelled under President Donald Trump’s revived ban on transgender military service.

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Talbott’s Army career has become a study in contradictions and a symbol of the precarious position thousands of transgender troops now occupy. While military commanders encourage him to report for months of officer training to advance his career, Talbott remains under threat of being expelled from the service simply because he is transgender.

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“They want me to go to BOLC,” Talbott said, using the acronym for the Army’s Basic Officer Leader Course, which is mandatory for officers like him. “But I just can’t justify uprooting my life for training when I could get there and on any day they could tell me, ‘You’re not eligible to continue,’ but because I’d be on active-duty status, I’d be stuck there on post, unable to leave.”

Talbott, 31, is a second lieutenant in the Army Reserve and the lead plaintiff in Talbott v. United States, one of several ongoing legal challenges to the Trump administration’s policy reinstating a blanket ban on transgender military service. The Advocate has chronicled the trajectory of Talbott and other plaintiffs for months.

The policy, implemented this year through Trump’s executive order and now allowed to proceed while litigation continues, orders the military to identify and remove any service member with a diagnosis, history or symptoms “consistent with gender dysphoria.”

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The Pentagon has confirmed it’s reviewing medical records, and Talbott warns that social media posts and personal conversations could be used to identify transgender service members who did not voluntarily disclose their status before the policy took effect.

Troops removed under the ban will receive RE-3 reentry codes on their records, a designation that often bars reenlistment and can create obstacles for civilian employment.

Talbott deliberately chose not to resign by the military’s July 7 so-called voluntary deadline for reservists, deciding instead to wait for the involuntary separation process to begin. For now, though, he’s suspended in a haze of uncertainty.

This weekend, he’s supposed to report for drill in Ohio as usual. But as of midweek, he still didn’t know whether he’d be permitted to serve normally.

“It could range anywhere from business as usual to being told to follow female standards, or just being sent back home,” he said. “It’s impossible to plan anything.”

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Talbott is scheduled to leave for BOLC at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, on August 3, a four-month training course required for all Army officers. Without it, his military police career cannot advance. The program teaches basic soldiering skills, tactical leadership, and branch-specific training that shapes the trajectory of military careers. It often requires soldiers to relocate far from home.

Talbott worries that if he leaves for Missouri as scheduled, he could find himself stuck on base, unable to leave or work his civilian job, if the military decides mid-course to terminate him. “I’d just be in limbo,” he said.

For Talbott, the paradox of being encouraged to advance his career while simultaneously facing expulsion exemplifies the broader absurdities of the Trump administration’s ban.

“It’s supposed to be so urgent to kick us out, but they can’t even tell us what the process looks like,” he said. “It’s haphazard, and it’s cruel.”

“I can’t make my financial plans for the upcoming month,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m making my civilian paycheck. I don’t know if I’m making my Army paycheck. It’s mind-boggling to me that this is something those pushing trans people out of the military say is such an urgent issue, and yet it seems like they weren’t prepared to actually enact the process.”

In his civilian life, Talbott works as a project manager, coordinating large-scale furniture installations at universities across the nation. The job takes him across the country to Alabama, Alaska, and points in between, and has become both a refuge and a source of stress, as work travel collides with his military uncertainty.

Related: Transgender service members warn SCOTUS of ‘Un-American’ purge if Trump ban is reinstated

“I’m heading to Alabama tomorrow,” he said. “I’m planning a big installation in Alaska in a couple of weeks. I’ve got bills to pay, things to do, and I have drill this weekend. I have to help my unit get ready for annual training next month, whether or not I’ll even be going with them.”

Even amid the turmoil, Talbott finds moments to carve out small joys, like spontaneous road trips with his dog, Lily. A few weeks ago, he loaded Lily into his truck after a work trip in North Carolina and detoured six hours out of the way to give her a first glimpse of the ocean.

“It was kind of one of those things I put on her bucket list,” Talbott said. Lily, who is terminally ill, wasn’t much of a fan of the ocean itself, but she adored lying on the sand, soaking up the breeze and the sun. “She could’ve sat there all day,” he said.

Talbott says he intends to keep fighting, not just for himself but for the thousands of other transgender Americans who serve or hope to serve.

“We’re going to keep fighting this in court,” he said. “At the end of the day, as long as we can put on that uniform and perform our jobs and meet the standard, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be allowed to do so.”