After 30 years in uniform, a veteran in Nebraska who survived ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is running for Congress

When Kishla Askins talks about why she is running for Congress in Nebraska, she does not begin with polling or party. She begins with the people she could not bring home.

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Askins, a retired U.S. Navy veteran and former senior Pentagon and Veterans Affairs official, spent more than 30 years in uniform, first as an enlisted sailor, then as a Navy corpsman and emergency medicine physician assistant who deployed with the Marine Corps to combat zones. Some of the service members under her care died. That loss, she said, still guides her.

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“I made a sacred promise,” Askins said in an interview with The Advocate. “For me, it’s about giving them a voice, and giving a voice to everyone who needs one in Congress.”

Kishla Askins spent 30 years in the U.S. Navy and deployed with a Marine unit where she treated emergencies including trauma.Kishla for Congress

Now Askins is running as a Democrat in Nebraska’s Secnd Congressional District, a competitive Omaha-based seat, at a moment when the military — the institution that defined her adult life — is again being reshaped by exclusion. The Pentagon continues to enforce a renewed ban on transgender service members, even as legal challenges work their way through federal courts and critics warn the policy undermines readiness and morale.

Askins is not transgender. But as a gay woman, she knows what it means to serve under the threat of erasure.

She served before, during, and after “don’t ask, don’t tell,” surviving two investigations in the 1990s that nearly ended her career because she was gay. The first began after a command law enforcement officer overheard sailors discussing her relationship. The inquiry escalated to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service without her knowledge.

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“I don’t know how many nights I cried,” Askins said, as she got choked up retelling the story. “The mental health aspect of this was almost unbearable. Here I was, this young sailor who just wanted to serve her country — and to be told you can’t because of who you love.”

While in the U.S. Navy, Keishla Askins deployed several times.Kishla for Congress

A commanding officer ultimately shut down the investigation, citing her work ethic and service record. A second investigation followed a year later and was again halted. Each time, Askins said, colleagues quietly risked their own careers to protect her.

Those years coincided with her wife’s rise through the ranks of the Marine Corps. Her wife, Alison, was a pioneering aviator and became the first woman selected to command a Marine aviation unit and later the only woman to command a Marine aircraft group, Askins said. Yet under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Askins could not sit beside her at official ceremonies.

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“I had to sit in the back because I was ‘the friend,’” she said.

Today, the two live a quieter life between campaign stops. They’ve been together for 16 years and got married in 2015, “in Virginia as soon as we could,” she said. When Askins is not fundraising or knocking on doors, she spends time with her wife and their four-and-a-half-pound Yorkiepoo, Bentley — “the real star of the family,” she joked, noting that the dog has his own Instagram account and sometimes gets more engagement than she does. The moments matter, she said, because they are reminders of the life she once had to keep hidden.

Kishla Askins married her wife, Alison, in 2015, after the Obergefell decision made marriage equality the law of the land.Robert Mang

That experience helps shape Askins’s response to today’s policies barring transgender people from military service, rules she views as a replay of an era the armed forces have already outgrown.

As a clinician, Askins said the standard for service has never been ideological. It has been medical.

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“Are you worldwide deployable? That’s it,” she said. “If you are medically ready, then you should be able to serve. This is a medical diagnosis for politicians not to weigh in on.”

The renewed ban, she warned, arrives at a time when fewer than 1 percent of Americans serve in uniform, and the military faces deep recruitment and retention challenges. Excluding qualified people, she said, is not just discriminatory — it is dangerous.

“We have a huge talent management issue,” Askins said. “That should be a national security flag.”

On the campaign trail in Nebraska, Askins said voters rarely raise transgender issues at all.

“Zero,” she said.

Instead, constituents talk about rising costs, housing affordability, health care, and economic instability. “There’s an overwhelming, chaotic uncertainty in our nation right now,” she said. “People wake up and don’t know what they’re going to find.”

Keishla Askins and her wife, Alison, each had remarkable military careers.Kishla for Congress

As a longtime health care provider, Askins has been particularly alarmed by the rollback of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which she said is already driving up premiums and discouraging preventive care.

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“We’re going to see people not go to primary care until they’re in extremis,” she said. “And then now they have a chronic disease that costs far more than what we could have prevented.”

Even while campaigning, Askins is finishing a doctorate in public health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Her research focuses on biosecurity risks linked to thawing permafrost and a warming Arctic, examining how environmental instability can unleash infectious disease threats and strain already fragile systems.

Representation, Askins said, is not about symbolism. It is about lived experience and about ensuring Congress reflects the people it governs.

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“Being investigated twice and almost kicked out of the military because I was gay was a challenge,” she said. “But it made me more resilient. And I refuse to allow anyone else to be attacked for something that is simply about who they are.”

Looking back on her career, from combat zones to the Pentagon to serving as a senior executive at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Askins said the lesson she hopes the country relearns is one the military once modeled at its best.

“The military is a family,” she said. “And families are stronger together. That’s what the United States is about.”