A trans rights group went to court to stop a preliminary injunction to halt the military ban of transgender troops, and the federal judge wasn’t playing with the DOJ. She tore into lawyers from the Justice Department, homing in on a tweet from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. She heard arguments about the Pentagon’s attempt to disqualify transgender troops “without an exemption”.
“During the hearing, Reyes pointed to a post on X in which Hegseth quoted, “Pentagon says transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption.” The post in question linked to a Fox News Digital article about an internal Pentagon memo. The memo, revealed in a court filing late last month, says “U.S. service members who are transgender or otherwise exhibit gender dysphoria are prohibited from military service unless they obtain an exemption.”
Now here’s for the good part! In her grilling of the DOJ lawyers, she pointed out that one of the trans members “has more commendations than books in our library” (nicely said, Ma’am!) as an example that trans troops perform just as well as non-trans troops. She wanted to know why she should take Hegseth’s side when he really should have deferred to the Joint Chiefs. The lawyer said they should defer to Hegseth as he has broad authority to set policies for national defense. Right. Another problem is that the decision was made using 2 studies, both of which undercut his policy rather than supporting it.
She then used an example comparing the price of Viagra for the troops over ONE year as opposed to the price of gender dysphoria treatments over TEN years. Guess which one was lower? Mmmmhmmmm.
Okay, I have to quote this next part because it’s glorious and says it better than I could:
When she questioned government lawyers that Hegseth’s repost of a tweet made it appear that all transgender troops would be disqualified from service, Manion argued that Hegseth was only using “shorthand” for the broader policy. “Look at the words in the policy,” said Manion.
“No!” said Reyes. “Do you really think you can do that, say one thing in public and then come here to court and say something else entirely?” Touche! And match point! I wish I had been there to see this because I expect the lawyer was knocked speechless, and we know that’s rare. “His words are that this covers all transgender people. I’m not going to speculate that he was just being sloppy,” Reyes said of Hegseth. And one more quote: Reyes then said that Manion had until Monday to deliver a declaration from Hegseth that he didn’t actually mean all transgender people.
Now the Justice Department is having a fit over this decision and complaining about her “misconduct” while presiding over the case. Wimps. They don’t like being bested. To me, they were most definitely in the wrong and they deserved to get their asses kicked. Don’t say something if you can’t back it up, boyo. Their side was built on Petey always being right, and he isn’t. The cracks are already showing and Hegseth has only been in the position about 30 days. This was something he didn’t need to get involved in, even with tRump’s backing. If the Joint Chiefs didn’t have a problem, why should he?
Well, he just has to wave his dick around and pretend he’s boss. It doesn’t work that way. You are not omnipotent. You are bound by laws. Too bad twisting them for your purpose didn’t work, Petey. I would hope you would learn from this, but I doubt it. I see many lawsuits in his future. Thanks for sticking with me!
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🤔 And, Susan, tonight it crossed my brain that Federal judges kicking ass and the Senate vote on the CR vs. government shutdown are related and should be considered together!
Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was on Chris Hayes’ show on MSNBC. Schumer is being hit from all sides to stand tough and allow a shutdown and I would usually agree that we should shutdown and make Republicans eat the problem. But, Schumer made two arguments I had not considered and I am now thinking a shutdown should be avoided.
First, during a shutdown, Republicans will have full control of what parts of the Federal government to shutdown…those guys do not make good choices. And, second, they could shut down the Federal courts system which is our most successful resistance to date. As bad as the CR is, I think we must let our best parts of government keep working, especially those courts! 💪
Okay, I’m a little less unhappy with Chuck. I haven’t been watching anything to do with the CR because I’m so pissed about it. We are handing the power of the purse to tRump and that’s going to be a disaster. But avoiding Republicans pick and choose during a shutdown is worse. There are enough programs that could potentially suffer if there was one. So I understand his choice better but I don’t have to like it. I’m definitely loving the court smackdowns!!!