Donald Trump will keep Obama's LGBTQ protections, no plans for executive order

Here's one executive order President Donald Trump won't sign — for now. 

In a statement to the New York Times, the Trump administration said the president will leave Obama's 2014 executive order on federal protections for LGBTQ workers intact. Trump's statement came on the heels of rampant speculation that an executive order rescinding these protections was forthcoming. 

In his statement, the administration continued to cast Trump as a paragon of LGBTQ allyship. 

"President Trump continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights, just as he was throughout the election," the statement said. "The president is proud to have been the first ever G.O.P. nominee to mention the LGBTQ community in his nomination acceptance speech, pledging then to protect the community from violence and oppression."

The statement's allusion to "violence and oppression" mirrors Trump's own rhetoric on the campaign trail. During the Republican National Convention, Trump said he would protect the LGBTQ community from the "violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology." The convention took place less than two months after the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Trump and several other conservatives, including Tomi Lahren, have used the shooting as a rhetorical strategy to further anti-Islam views. 

Though Trump has decided not to go forward with this particular executive order, there are still plenty of ways his administration could do harm to LGBTQ Americans. His cabinet houses a few anti-LGBTQ people, including Vice President Mike Pence, who orchestrated one of the original statewide religious freedom laws in Indiana, which allowed anti-LGBTQ discrimination. 

Trump did not indicate what led him to his final decision on the executive order, though perhaps he just "asked the gays."