“Democracy Now!” speaks with two transgender women who made history this week by winning Democratic primaries in Utah and Colorado to challenge Republican incumbents for U.S. Congress in November. The program also gets their reaction to the Pentagon’s announcement that it will end its ban on openly transgender people serving in the military.

“The only thing that should matter is, can you do the job? Nothing else,” says Misty Plowright, a 33-year-old military veteran, of Colorado.

On Tuesday, she and Misty Snow, 33, of Utah, became two of the nation’s first openly transgender candidates to win a major-party congressional primary in U.S. history, the late Karen Kerin of Vermont being the first. “My trans status didn’t come up” on the campaign trail, Plowright notes. “They were much more focused on issues, my stances.”

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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