Donald Trump, who famously never served in the armed forces and had several draft deferments, is giving up on fighting the deadline for accepting transexual individuals into the United States military, for now.
As of January 1, 2018, transgender people will again be allowed to sign up for the military once again.
In an announcement made Friday by the Department of Justice to BuzzFeed News, it was revealed that they will delay going forward and challenging the block on Donald Trump’s transgender military ban.
‘The Department of Defense has announced that it will be releasing an independent study of these issue in the coming weeks. So rather than litigate this interim appeal before that occurs, the administration has decided to wait for the DOD study and will continue to defend the President’s and Secretary of Defense’s lawful authority in district court in the meantime.’
People who have challenged Trump’s ridiculous and discriminatory transgender military ban consider this a huge victory for ongoing lawsuits.
Shannon Minter, an attorney representing plaintiffs in a case out of DC told BuzzFeed News:
‘There was never any legitimate reason for President Trump to upset the military’s existing policy on transgender troops. We are hopeful the Department of Defense will once again confirm that excluding transgender people from military service would serve only to deprive the Armed Forces of dedicated service members and undermine our national security.’
Below are some of the top Twitter responses to the news that transgender people will again be allowed to join the military:
The decision to delay an appeal by the DOJ comes after several losses on the issue in court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit denied the DOJ’s request on December 21 to put a lower court’s order concerning the date on hold. The following day a more detailed order was issued when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit also denied the same request.
The video below came from The Washington Post:
Trump initially brought up the transgender military ban in July, on his favorite form of social media, Twitter:
After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017
After the president initially proposed the ban of transgender people entering the military protests broke out across the country, as well as overseas. At one rally in Portland, Oregon, organizer Don J. Balwin said:
‘The President is on record promising to fight for the LGBTQ community but has clearly betrayed us. This rally is to motivate and educate our people on how to fight back and to know where their resources are. We want the Trans community to know we love and support them and we’re not going to take this lying down.’
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