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Pentagon Reaches Settlement With Veterans Dismissed Over Sexuality

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Pentagon Reaches Settlement With Veterans Dismissed Over Sexuality

The Defense Department has reached a sweeping settlement with tens of thousands of people who were dismissed from military service because of their sexual identity, potentially paving the way for veterans to upgrade their discharge status and receive a range of benefits they had been denied.

The settlement, which the Pentagon agreed to late last week and was filed on Monday in Federal District Court in Northern California, must still be approved by a judge. It applies to a group of more than 30,000 veterans who received less-than-honorable discharges or whose discharge status lists their sexuality. Advocacy groups had filed a class-action civil rights lawsuit in 2023 alleging that the Pentagon had failed to remedy “ongoing discrimination” after the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy more than a decade earlier.

Those who leave the military with less-than-honorable discharges usually do not receive all of the benefits they would have been eligible for through the Veterans Affairs Department, including health care from the V.A.’s hospitals and clinics, educational benefits and access to job networks.

While the Defense Department has taken steps under the Biden administration to upgrade discharges and restore benefits for L.G.B.T.Q. veterans, the settlement is expected to make the process much easier. It would also help former service members remove references to their sexuality from their discharge paperwork. If a federal judge approves the settlement, it will be binding by law.

When reached for comment, the Pentagon referred to the Justice Department, which declined to comment. The settlement was reported earlier on Monday by CBS News.

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Sherrill Farrell, 63, a Navy veteran who is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in an interview that news of the settlement was “overwhelming.” Ms. Farrell, who is lesbian, enlisted in the Navy in 1985. She was outed by a bunkmate and kicked out of training after only 10 months as a fireman apprentice. Her dreams of following the footsteps of her father and grandfather by serving in the military were crushed, and she never applied for benefits.

“It wasn’t about the money,” Ms. Farrell said. “It was about human decency and treating people fairly, and the people that are willing to defend our country regardless of what their sexual orientation is or who they love.”

L.G.B.T.Q. service members who were open about their sexual orientation were barred from the military until 2011, when President Barack Obama repealed “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But the end of the policy did nothing to address the effects of it that tens of thousands of service members who were discharged because of their sexuality experienced.

Those whose discharges remain less than honorable are still denied full benefits. Their only option for upgrading their discharge is to petition individually, a process that can take over a year, according to the nonprofit legal services organization Legal Aid at Work, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit.

In other cases, even when a discharge is honorable, paperwork can out veterans because it refers to them or their actions as “homosexual.” It might say that they “attempted to engage in homosexual marriage,” Elizabeth Kristen, a lawyer with Legal Aid at Work, said in an interview.

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After the class-action lawsuit was initially filed in August 2023, the Defense Department began what it called a proactive review of service members who were discharged during the era of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” That review concluded in October, and more than 800 service members who were kicked out had their discharges upgraded to honorable. It was the first time that the department had systematically reviewed discharges related to sexual identity.

But the settlement that the Pentagon agreed to on Friday would go even further, creating a streamlined process that would apply to more people in a larger time frame.

“What it says,” Ms. Kristen said of the settlement, “is that the word ‘homosexual’ being taken off your records, that should be essentially as easy as getting your name changed.”

Many veterans had no idea that there was a pathway to getting their paperwork fixed. Some, like Ms. Farrell, had felt shame and did not ask for benefits that they would have been entitled to, if not for a less-than-honorable discharge.

Ms. Farrell was openly lesbian when she enlisted, and she said she felt guilty for answering “no” to the application question “Are you homosexual?” It is the only time she recalls lying about her sexual identity, she said, because she knew her application would not have been considered if she had told the truth.

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“I wanted to serve my country that bad,” Ms. Farrell said, choking up with emotion. “But because of my integrity and the way that I look at serving in the military, I kind of felt that they had a right to do what they did because I had lied.”

The settlement is one of several steps that the Biden administration has taken to remedy the effects of policies felt by L.G.B.T.Q. service members for decades. In June, President Biden offered clemency to some 2,000 veterans who were convicted of engaging in gay sex, which was outlawed by the military for more than 60 years, in order to address what he called a “historic wrong.”

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Video: Carter’s Coffin Transferred to Washington

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Video: Carter’s Coffin Transferred to Washington

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Carter’s Coffin Transferred to Washington

Former President Jimmy Carter’s body was moved on Tuesday from his home state of Georgia to Washington, where it will lie in state in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol until Thursday.

“Jimmy Carter’s work and those works speak for him louder than any tribute we can offer.” “Whether he was in the White House or in his postpresidential years, as was discussed, President Carter was willing to roll up his own sleeves to serve and get the job done.”

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Trump trolls Canada again, shares map with country as part of US: 'Oh Canada!'

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Trump trolls Canada again, shares map with country as part of US: 'Oh Canada!'

President-elect Trump on Tuesday again suggested that Canada should be added as the U.S.’s 51st state, sharing maps showing Canada as part of the U.S.

Trump shared a pair of posts to his social media platform Truth Social on Tuesday night — one with a map of the U.S. and Canada with “United States” written across the two countries and another post with the U.S. and Canada covered in an American Flag.

“Oh Canada!” he wrote in one post.

The incoming president has been pushing recently for Canada to be added to the U.S., including earlier on Tuesday.

TRUMP TROLLING CANADA AS 51ST STATE COULD BOOST DEMOCRATS WITH ‘BLUE-STATE BEHEMOTH’

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U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talk prior to a NATO round table meeting at The Grove hotel and resort in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, Dec. 4, 2019. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

“Canada and the United States. That would really be something,” Trump said at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. “They should be a state.”

On Monday, the president-elect argued in a social media post that “many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State.”

WHAT TRUMP IS SAYING ABOUT CANADA BECOMING THE 51ST STATE

“The United States can no longer suffer the massive Trade Deficits and Subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat,” he wrote on Truth Social.

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“Justin Trudeau knew this, and resigned. If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them,” he added. “Together, what a great Nation it would be!!!”

President-elect Trump and Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau

President-elect Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, left, CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images, right.)

Trudeau, who announced Monday that he will resign as Canadian prime minister once a replacement is chosen, said Tuesday there is no way Canada would join the U.S.

“There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” Trudeau wrote on the social media platform X. “Workers and communities in both our countries benefit from being each other’s biggest trading and security partner.”

Trump has been trolling Canada in recent weeks, floating the idea of it becoming the 51st state and posting a doctored photo of him standing beside a Canadian flag on top of a mountain.

Trump at a campaign event

President-elect Donald Trump arrives to speak at a news conference at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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The president-elect has also mocked Trudeau, repeatedly referring to him as “governor.” Additionally, Trump has threatened to impose massive tariffs on Canada.

Trump has also been pushing for Denmark to sell the North Atlantic island of Greenland to the U.S.

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Lawyers for security consultant say CNN report on Afghan evacuations destroyed his career

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Lawyers for security consultant say CNN report on Afghan evacuations destroyed his career

Attorneys for a U.S Navy veteran said Tuesday that their client’s reputation and earning power were destroyed by a 2021 CNN report on war profiteers following the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Zachary Young sued the network over a Nov. 11, 2021 story by chief national security correspondent Alex Marquardt about how Afghans were being charged exorbitant fees for assistance in getting out of the country.

The security consultant, whose background includes a stint with the private military contractor Blackwater, says the four-minute video package falsely portrayed him as acting illegally.

Young, who heads his own Boca Raton, Fla.-based company, was hired by corporations to get their employees out of Afghanistan, advertising his services on LinkedIn. His attorneys said his annual income went from $350,000 a year to zero after the report ran on CNN’s channels and website.

The jury in the trial, heard in a Bay County, Fla., court, will be asked to determine whether CNN journalists acted with actual malice, which is defined as the publication of false information with reckless disregard of the truth. If jurors find CNN liable, they can award Young monetary damages for loss of business income and emotional distress.

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Media companies typically settle defamation trials before they get to court, even if it’s expensive to do so. Last year Fox News paid $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems over false statements made about the company while reporting on President-elect Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Fox wanted to avoid the embarrassment of its executives being called to the stand.

But CNN is standing by Marquardt’s report. The defamation case tests how the public perceives mainstream media amid constant right-wing attacks on its credibility.

The six-person jury is from Bay County, where 73% of the votes cast in the 2024 presidential election went to Trump, a constant critic of media outlets that don’t present him in a positive light.

The core of Young’s suit is CNN’s use of the term “black market” in an on-screen graphic and in a spoken introduction before Marquardt’s report, which first aired on “The Lead with Jake Tapper.” Young, the only person mentioned by name in the segment, says the graphic gave the false impression that he was involved in illegal activity and exploited Afghans.

In opening statements at the trial, CNN’s attorney Dave Axelrod challenged Young’s claim that the report damaged his business or reputation. Axelrod said that many of the messages and contacts pertaining to Young’s activities have been deleted since the CNN story aired.

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“You’re going to see that CNN’s reporting … was accurate and you’re not going to see a single witness who will testify they thought less of Mr. Young,” Axelrod said.

Axelrod also said Young’s activities were never described as illegal. The term “black market” was used in the piece to describe unregulated activity, he added, and was not directly applied to Young.

Young’s attorney Kyle Roche argued that the dictionary defines black market as illegal.

CNN anchor Tapper delivered an on-air apology to Young over the use of the term after he objected five months after the story aired.

Roche’s opening statement also focused on the internal communications and emails between Marquardt and his producers that disparaged Young as they aggressively pursued the story.

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“I’m going to nail that Zachary Young mother———,” Marquardt wrote in one text.

“I’m going to hold you to that cowboy,” the producer replied.

Roche said emails and behind-the-scenes video footage show that “CNN took pleasure in casting [Young] as the villain for their hit piece.”

Even though CNN executives raised questions about the story — at one point saying it had “more holes than Swiss cheese” according to internal communications — it eventually passed through the network’s vetting process and was deemed ready for air, Axelrod noted.

“There is nothing false about Mr. Young in any of it,” Axelrod said.

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Although Young did not sit for an interview with CNN, he did send text messages acknowledging the high cost for his services. The text shown in the segment also made clear that Young did business with corporate sponsors.

“If someone reaches out, we need to understand that if they have a sponsor behind them to be able to pay [evacuation] costs,” said one text in the report which was shown in court.

Young took the stand in the trial and spent most of the time answering questions about his family, military background and his security work for corporations.

CNN’s Marquardt is expected to testify in the trial, which resumes Wednesday.

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