Service members sue Trump administration over transgender military service ban
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(WASHINGTON) — Lambda Legal and Human Rights Campaign, two leading LGBTQ+ advocacy groups, filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday challenging the Trump administration over the president’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
The lawsuit, which was obtained by ABC News, was filed in the U.S. District Court-Western District of Washington on behalf of six active duty transgender service members, a transgender person seeking to enlist in the military, as well as Seattle human rights organization Gender Justice League.
“By categorically excluding transgender people, the 2025 Military Ban and related federal policy and directives violate the equal protection and due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment,” the lawsuit said. “They lack any legitimate or rational justification, let alone the compelling and exceedingly persuasive ones required. Accordingly, Plaintiffs seek declaratory, and preliminary and permanent injunctive, relief.”
U.S. Navy Commander Emily “Hawking” Shilling, who according to the lawsuit has been serving in the military for 19 years, criticized the ban in a statement, saying that the measure is “not about readiness or cohesion, and it is certainly not about merit.”
“It is about exclusion and betrayal, purposely targeting those of us who volunteered to serve, simply for having the courage and integrity to live our truth,” Shilling said.
The lawsuit comes after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 28, rescinding Biden administration policies that permitted transgender service members to serve openly in the military based on their gender identity.
The order directed the Department of Defense to revise the Pentagon’s policy on transgender service members and stated that “expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.”
The order further argued that receiving gender-affirming medical care is one of the conditions that is physically and mentally “incompatible with active duty.”
“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” the order continued.
“The assertion that transgender service members like myself are inherently untrustworthy or lack honor is an insult to all who have dedicated their lives to defending this country,” Shilling said in the statement.
Trump issued a similar order during his first term in office that was challenged in the courts and now HRC and Lambda Legal have joined other leading advocacy groups in challenging the order in the courts.
GLAD Law and The National Center for Lesbian Rights also filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on behalf of six transgender service members on Jan. 28.
ABC News has reached out to the Trump administration but a request for comment was not immediately returned.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday thanked supporters during a virtual call and vowed that the “fight’s not over” in her first remarks since conceding defeat to President-elect Donald Trump three weeks ago.
“The fight that fueled our campaign, a fight for freedom and opportunity, that did not end on Nov. 5. A fight for the dignity of all people? That did not end on Nov. 5,” Harris said. “A fight for the future, a future in which all people receive the promise of America No. A fight that is about a fight for the ideals of our nation, the ideals that reflect the promise of America That fight’s not over.”
“That fight’s still in us, and it burns strong,” Harris later added. “And I know this is an uncertain time. I’m clear-eyed about that. I know you’re clear-eyed about it, and it feels heavy. And I just have to remind you: Don’t you ever let anybody take your power from you. You have the same power that you did before Nov. 5 and you have the same purpose that you did and you have the same ability to engage and inspire. So don’t ever let anybody or any circumstance take your power from you.”
The grassroots call came immediately after Harris held a call with her campaign’s finance committee. The finance call was attended by more than 400 donors, according to a source familiar.
On the grassroots call, Harris also briefly discussed the historic sum of money that ran her campaign, though she did not address what went wrong as she and her campaign face intense scrutiny over how they could raise that money and lose to Trump so resolutely.
”The outcome of this election, obviously, is not what we wanted. It is not what we work so hard for,” Harris said. “But I am proud of the race we ran. And your role in this was critical. What we did in 107 days was unprecedented.”
Harris said that over the course of those 100-plus days, her campaign raised $1.4 billion, much of which was from grassroot donors: “Nearly 8 million donors contributed an average donation of about $56.”
“You gave all that you could to support our campaign. Because of your efforts — get this — we raised an historic $1.4 billion, almost $1.5 billion from grassroots supporters alone, the most in presidential campaign history,” she said.
“Being involved can make a difference, and that remains true. And that’s one of the pieces that I just want us to please take away — that our fight for freedom and for opportunity and for the promise of America, it included, for example, nearly almost 4 million first-time contributors to our campaign because of the work you did, of helping people know that they can be engaged and that they’re not outside, that they’re inside, that we’re all in this together,” she added.
Harris was joined by her former running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on both calls — a rare appearance from the two, though Harris joined the call from San Francisco and Walz from Minnesota.
Walz on the grassroot donor call also spoke to supporters’ feeling of loss following the election and repeated Harris’ claims that she is not finished with fighting.
“I think all of us saw the possibility, and I know there’s a bit of a feeling of loss because we saw what a real leader looks like,” Walz said.
“She did deliver the best of our better angels,” he added. “She delivered a vision where all of us mattered. She did it with grace and dignity and continues to do that every single day. She is still in this fight. She is doing it every single day. She is not done with her current job. She’s not done being part of it with all of you.”
Harris’ and Walz’s remarks follow some postelection analysis from Harris campaign senior officials during an episode of “Pod Save America” that aired on Tuesday, including some reaction to finances.
Harris campaign Chairwoman Jennifer O’Malley Dillon said that during the cycle, the bulk of the campaign’s spending was used to reach out to “very-hard-to-find voters,” including low-propensity and young voters, while investing across all swing states because polling reflected that each was in play.
“We were trying to, yes, spend more resources on digital … because we’re trying to find young people, we’re trying to find these lower-propensity voters that were tuned out to politics,” O’Malley Dillon said.
“We had some unique things that we had to do in this race that I think were really critical to do early and spent a lot of resources at an earlier stage than we would have to,” she added, noting those resources were spent on both advertising and field programming. “We saw, up until the very end, that … every single state was in such a margin of error. There was nothing that told us we couldn’t play in one of these states.”
During the podcast, O’Malley Dillon and senior campaign adviser David Plouffe accused the Trump campaign of coordinating with its super PACs, a practice that is not legal, but noted the Democrats need to take note and do the same.
“We have to stop playing a different game as it relates to super PACs and the Republicans. Love our Democratic lawyers. I’m tired of it, OK? They coordinate more than we do. I think amongst themselves, I think with the presidential campaign, like I’m just sick and tired, OK? So, we cannot be at a disadvantage,” Plouffe said.
“I think our side was completely mismatched when it came to the ecosystem of Trump and his super PACs and ours,” O’Malley Dillon said.
“We had a super PAC that was helpful, very important and necessary for the work that they did because they were the kind of central recipients of a lot of the funding on our side and they staked a strategy and a plan, and we clearly could see it, and we knew what it was [going] to spend, but we did not have the ability to have people come in with us early. And so every ounce of advertising, every ounce of carrying these strategic imperatives, of defining the vice president and trying to bring down Trump’s numbers, all sat with us as a campaign,” O’Malley Dillon added.
Harris has rarely been seen since she delivered her concession speech at Howard University the day after the election. She attended the Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery a week later and was seen making her first return to the White House a day after that. The vice president also spent the last week on vacation in Hawaii.
Walz, in the month since the election, has remained almost entirely out of the national spotlight, resuming his duties as the governor of Minnesota.
He delivered his final speech of the 2024 campaign cycle on Nov. 8 from suburban Minneapolis, joining a chorus of fellow Democratic governors who said they would protect their states from threats to reproductive freedoms, citizenship and other things under the Trump administration. The former vice presidential nominee also said he’d work to find common ground with swaths of people who voted “for the other side” on Nov. 5.
Harris and Walz remained mostly separate on the campaign trail in the roughly 15 weeks she had him as her running mate. The governor was present at Harris’ concession speech at Howard University the night after the election but did not speak or publicly interact with her. Before that, the two held a joint rally on Oct. 28 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, their first event together since late August, when they were seen together in Savannah, Georgia, on a bus tour.
Prior to that, their last time at a rally together was in Milwaukee for programming linked to the Democratic National Convention in August.
(WASHINGTON) — After days of heated negotiations on Capitol Hill and eleventh-hour interference from President-elect Donald Trump and his ally Elon Musk, the House passed a funding bill to prevent a government shutdown Friday night, with the Senate following suit early Saturday morning.
The 118-page bill contains most of the provisions that were put in place in the bipartisan bill that was agreed to on Wednesday before it was killed after Musk criticized Republicans who supported it.
Trump also called for the bill to raise the debt limit ceiling. The federal government is not expected to hit its borrowing limit until sometime in the spring or winter of 2025, and Trump has stated his desire to have the issue dealt with while Joe Biden was president.
Under the proposal, which is awaiting Biden’s signature, the federal government would be funded until March 2025. It did not include a provision to raise the debt ceiling limit.
The bill did include $100 billion for disaster aid, $30 billion for farmers and a one-year extension of the farm bill, provisions that were under heavy debate prior to this week’s votes.
Some of the provisions that were in the bill earlier in the week were removed including $100 million for pediatric cancer research and a deal that would have transferred the land that holds RFK Stadium from the federal government to the District of Columbia.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday said the Equal Right Amendment should be considered ratified, but is stopping short of taking any action on the matter in his final days in office.
“I have supported the Equal Rights Amendment for more than 50 years, and I have long been clear that no one should be discriminated against based on their sex,” Biden said. “We, as a nation, must affirm and protect women’s full equality once and for all.”
Biden said he agreed with the American Bar Association, which has said the amendment cleared the necessary hurdles to be added to the Constitution after Virginia in 2020 became the 38th state to ratify it even though that was well past the deadline for ratification.
“It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people,” Biden said. “In keeping with my oath and duty to Constitution and country, I affirm what I believe and what three-fourths of the states have ratified: the 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex.”
Political debate around the ERA, which was first introduced in 1923, ramped up after the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in 2022 and again after the 2024 election.
In December, more than than 120 congressional Democrats called on Biden to officially ratify the amendment before ceding power to President-elect Donald Trump.
“Solidifying your legacy on equal rights with a final action on the ERA would be a defining moment for the historic Biden-Harris administration and your presidency,” they said in their letter to Biden.
The move prompted a rare statement from the leaders of the National Archives, who contended the amendment couldn’t be certified without action from Congress or the judicial system because states did not meet the deadline established by Congress for ratification.
Lawmakers had set a seven-year deadline in 1972 for state ratification, though later extended it by an additional three years. Efforts by Democrats in recent years to remove the deadline have failed.
“Court decisions at both the District and Circuit levels have affirmed that the ratification deadlines established by Congress for the ERA are valid,” the archivists wrote. “Therefore, the Archivist of the United States cannot legally publish the Equal Rights Amendment.”
Though Biden renewed his call for the ERA to become law of the land, he is not taking any action on the matter before he departs the White House on Monday, according to a senior administration official.
When pressed by reporters whether any steps would be taken in addition to Biden’s messaging, the official “he is using his power of the presidency to make it clear that he believes and he agrees with leading constitutional scholars,” but said he wasn’t taking any specific action.
When asked why the announcement came now, the official said that Biden has supported the amendment for decades but said that he felt strongly about making this push before he leaves office.
If Biden had taken any action to force ratification, it would have likely resulted in a legal fight, experts said.
“At that point, there would be further litigation,” Wilfred Codrington III, a constitutional law professor at Cardozo Law, previously told ABC News. “But really that would just become a question or a conflict between the president and Congress.”
“If Congress is not doing something to suggest that the amendment is ratified, then that’s kind of where the ball is going to end,” Codrington said. “Congress is ultimately the gatekeeper when it comes to amendments.”
The ERA is unlikely to be a priority in the incoming administration or new Congress, where Republicans control the House and Senate. Republicans have argued in the past that the amendment is unnecessary and duplicative.
“That doesn’t seem to be where the Republicans are going,” Codrington said. “But it is notable that states are also another avenue that advocates can look to.”
Codrington pointed to New York voters approving Proposition 1, a measure akin to the Equal Rights Amendment that also includes safeguards to abortion access, during the 2024 election.
