By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday questioned President Donald Trump’s motives for issuing an executive order that calls for banning transgender troops from serving in the U.S. military, describing a portion of the directive as “frankly ridiculous.”

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes indicated that she won’t rule before early March on whether to temporarily block the Trump administration from enforcing the order, which plaintiffs’ attorneys have said illegally discriminates against transgender troops.

But her questions and remarks during Tuesday’s hearing suggest that she is deeply skeptical of the administration’s reasoning for ordering a policy change. Reyes also lauded the service of several active-duty troops who sued to block the order.

“If you were in a foxhole, would you care about these individuals’ gender identity?” the judge asked a government attorney, who answered that it “would not be a primary concern of mine.”

Trump’s Jan. 27 order claims the sexual identity of transgender service members “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life” and is harmful to military readiness. It requires Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to issue a revised policy.

Six transgender people who are active-duty service members and two others seeking to join the military sued to block the Trump administration from enforcing the order. In a court filing, plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that Trump’s order openly expresses “hostility” and constitutionally impermissible “animus” toward transgender people.

Reyes said the order’s language smears thousands of transgender troops as dishonest, dishonorable and undisciplined.

She asked Justice Department attorney Jason Lynch: “How is that anything other than showing animus?”

“I don’t have an answer for you,” Lynch responded.

“No, you have an answer. You just don’t want to give it,” the judge shot back.

Trump’s order also says that “use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex” is inconsistent with a government policy to “establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity.”

Reyes said it is “frankly ridiculous” to suggest that pronoun usage could impact the military readiness of the U.S. armed forces.

“Because it doesn’t. Because any common sense, rational person would understand that it doesn’t,” said Reyes, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

Reyes peppered Lynch for several hours with questions about the executive order. They disagreed on whether the language of the executive order explicitly bans transgender people from serving in the military.

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Reyes asked Lynch if Trump himself would call it a ban, then added, “He would say, ‘Of course it is,’ because he calls it a transgender ban.” Lynch said the order itself doesn’t require the discharge of service members while Hegseth crafts a policy that reflects it.

“Everyone knows a change is coming. I’m not denying that,” Lynch said.

Reyes is expected to hear more arguments on Wednesday and again on March 3.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys contend Trump’s order violates transgender people’s rights to equal protection under the Fifth Amendment, marking them as “unequal and dispensable, demeaning them in the eyes of their fellow service members and the public.”

“The ban is an irrational and prejudicial attack on service members who have risked their lives to serve their country,” they wrote in a court filing.

Government attorneys say the plaintiffs are prematurely challenging an order that doesn’t immediately require transgender troops to be discharged. The Justice Department also argues that the constitutional right to equal protection “requires only that similarly situated persons be treated alike.”

“A transgender individual identifying as a woman is not similarly situated to a biological female, nor is a transgender individual identifying as a man similarly situated to a biological male,” they wrote.

During Trump’s first term, the Republican issued a directive directive to ban transgender service members. The Supreme Court allowed the ban to to take effect. Biden scrapped it when he took office.

Thousands of transgender people serve in the military, but they represent less than 1 percent of all active-duty service members.

The plaintiffs include an Army Reserves platoon leader, an Army major who was awarded a Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan and a Sailor of the Year award winner serving in the Navy. They are represented by attorneys for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLAD Law.

A man holding an American flag and bagpipe silently saluted and put his hand over his heart on Tuesday in front of three wreaths memorializing three Burnsville first responders killed a year ago.

During a day of remembrances, Burnsville police officers gathered before dawn in the neighborhood where officers Matt Ruge and Paul Elmstrand, and firefighter/paramedic Adam Finseth were ambushed in a shooting.

Burnsville Deputy Police Chief Matt Smith said last week that he and officers wanted to be together at the same time they lost their colleagues and friends on Feb. 18, 2024.

“I said it at the memorial service last year and it’s so true, these guys — all three of them — were just the nicest guys,” Smith said. “We certainly miss them. … These sort of milestones are hard because it makes the feelings come back and they’re also, in their own way, healing to me.”

Related: In a year of sorrow, the women closest to Burnsville’s fallen first responders lean on each other

Last year, police responded to a 911 call about a domestic disturbance at a home on 33rd Avenue off Burnsville Parkway. Shannon Gooden, 38, barricaded himself in the home with seven children of his and his live-in girlfriend’s.

Police negotiated with Gooden for hours, but he opened fire “without warning” and shot more than 100 rifle rounds at law enforcement and first responders, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said last year.

Gooden fatally shot Finseth, Elmstrand and Ruge, and wounded Sgt. Adam Medlicott.

“They answered the call of duty to rescue seven children with unwavering resolve,” Burnsville Mayor Elizabeth Kautz said at a memorial service at City Hall on Tuesday.

The mayor, city council members, and the police and fire chiefs were flanked by large photos of each of the three men in their uniforms, and memorial wreaths bearing ribbons with their names and “EOW (End of Watch) 2/18/2024.”

Memorial wreaths were also outside City Hall and people left bouquets of flowers; a crocheted blue heart was placed next to each officers’ wreath and a red heart by Finseth’s.

Among the people who visited the memorials Tuesday was Sue Allmann of Burnsville. She said she went to “thank them for their service and speak on the evil of the world, trying to bring light to what happened.”

Nathan Michels of Plymouth was in the area for a meeting and visited the wreaths to pay his respects. “I can’t believe it’s been a year,” he said. “… It’s just unreal.”

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All the Burnsville officers who responded to the incident last year are back to work, Smith said.

“I think it’s a great testament to the resilience of everybody that works here and taking care of each other,” he said. “We’ve normalized getting mental health help, which we had already done before the incident.”

Last month, Ashley Dyrdahl, Gooden’s girlfriend, pleaded guilty to straw purchasing the firearms that Gooden used. Gooden, who died by suicide at the home after shooting the first responders, wasn’t allowed to possess firearms because of a past felony conviction.

Fundraising for trips to national memorials

The Minnesota Fraternal Order of Police Foundation is fundraising for family members and police and fire personnel to travel this spring to the National Law Enforcement Memorial and National Fallen Firefighters Memorial. Donations can be made at gofund.me/c592dd92.

While Columbine High School shooting survivor Anne Marie Hochhalter’s life was shaped by tragedy, the tenacious woman worked hard to ensure tragedy did not define her.

Hochhalter was 17 when her life shifted from teen clarinet player to among the most injured survivors of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. The high school junior was paralyzed after being shot in the back. She spent the rest of her days in a wheelchair with medical complications.

Six months after the shooting, her mother, Carla Hochhalter, walked into a pawnshop, asked to see a revolver and fatally shot herself.

Amid the media frenzy, medical care and grief, Anne Marie Hochhalter was determined to live life on her own terms. She went on to find her new normal, living independently in a handicap-accessible home with dogs to love and friends to cherish.

Anne Marie Hochhalter, 43, was found dead in her home Sunday.

Her death appears to be complications from the medical issues she suffered from the shooting, said Sue Townsend, stepmother of Lauren Townsend who died in the Columbine shooting. Sue and Rick Townsend reached out to Anne Marie Hochhalter after the tragedy and formed a familial relationship with her, calling her their “acquired daughter.”

“She was fiercely independent,” Sue Townsend said. “She was a fighter. She’d get knocked down — she struggled a lot with health issues that stemmed from the shooting — but I’d watch her pull herself back up. She was her best advocate and an advocate for others who weren’t as strong in the disability community.”

The families, united by tragedy, found joy within each other’s understanding, caring nature. They spent holidays and vacations together and developed a unique, intimate bond knitted together by wounds few else could understand.

“She was fun,” Sue Townsend said.

In 2018, they all took a Hawaii trip and rigged an innertube so Anne Marie Hochhalter could float in the ocean, her legs dangling in the water.

“She said the two hours she was out there she didn’t have any nerve pain at all,” Sue Townsend said. “The ocean was her happy place even though she didn’t get to go there but once.”

Nathan Hochhalter, Anne Marie Hochhalter’s brother, said his big sister was always a straight ‘A’ student who loved learning and reading. She had an affinity for musical instruments, playing harp, piano, clarinet and guitar.

“And she loved her mom a lot,” Nathan Hochhalter said.

Animals — particularly furry, four-legged friends — filled a huge part of Anne Marie Hochhalter’s heart.

She fostered dogs and owned several over the years, doting on them.

“She could probably name every dog in the neighborhood but maybe not the neighbors,” Sue Townsend said, laughing.

Two neighbors, Jan and Dave Anderson, who were a part of Anne Marie Hochhalter’s village, are taking her beloved chiweenie dog, Georgie.

Though Anne Marie Hochhalter was often in pain, she found escape in cinema. Sometimes, she and her friends would call each other, turn on a movie at the same time and watch it silently together over the phone, Sue Townsend said.

More than anything, Sue Townsend said Anne Marie Hochhalter would have wanted people to know she wasn’t a victim.

Her resilience, Sue Townsend said, was driven in part by stubbornness.

“It was this attitude of ‘I’ll show you,’” she said. “‘You’re not going to get me down.’”

In 2016, Anne Marie Hochhalter wrote a letter to the mother of Dylan Klebold who, along with Eric Harris, killed twelve students and one teacher in a shooting rampage at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.

The letter to Sue Klebold coincided with an ABC television interview promoting her book “A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy.”

In the letter, Anne Marie Hochhalter told Sue Klebold she harbored no ill will toward her.

“Just as I wouldn’t want to be judged by the sins of my family members, I hold you in that same regard,” Hochhalter wrote. “It’s been a rough road for me, with many medical issues because of my spinal cord injury and intense nerve pain, but I choose not to be bitter towards you. A good friend once told me, ‘Bitterness is like swallowing a poison pill and expecting the other person to die.’ It only harms yourself. I have forgiven you and only wish you the best.”