In an all-too-rare move these days, a statue honoring the Confederate war dead is staying put. At least for the time being.

U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston of the Eastern District of Virginia, who was nominated by Donald Trump in 2019, issued a temporary restraining order on Monday preventing the statue from being removed from cemetery grounds. The memorial, which was unveiled in 1914, was slated to be removed on the recommendation of an independent commission that had been formed to rename military bases and other assets that commemorated that Confederacy on military property. 

BREAKING: Trump-appointed Judge Rossie Alston issues a temporary order halting the removal of the Confederate Reconciliation Memorial.

The Biden DOD just started tearing down the 109-year-old reconciliation memorial from Arlington National Cemetery. pic.twitter.com/yjZ8IRnfVD

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 18, 2023

Crews had gathered at Arlington Cemetery Monday morning with removal equipment and planned to have the monument removed from the grounds by December 22. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, not a fan of the plan to remove the monument from Arlington, planned to relocate the statue to New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley.

The stay of removal comes after a group called Defend Arlington, which is affiliated with Save Southern Heritage Florida, filed a lawsuit Sunday seeking the restraining order. The lawsuit accuses the Army, which oversees the administration and maintenance of the cemetery, of moving too fast in seeking the memorial's removal. Per the lawsuit, "The removal will desecrate, damage, and likely destroy the Memorial longstanding at ANC as a grave marker and impede the Memorial’s eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places."

In issuing his order, Judge Alston acknowledged there was merit to the argument by the plaintiffs that the work involved in removing the statue would disturb nearby gravesites. Alston ordered participants in the matter to be ready to argue their cases this Wednesday, and also noted that he "takes very seriously the representations of officers of the Court, and should the representations in this case be untrue or exaggerated, the Court may take appropriate sanctions.”

The statue at the heart of the matter is vastly different from the ones vandalized and torn down a few years ago by unhinged leftist mobs intent on erasing history. This statue is not of a Confederate soldier, but portrays a woman wearing a wreath of olive leaves and includes a Bible verse:

The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

The plaintiffs welcomed the judge's ruling, saying they look forward to proving that the removal would affect gravesites and arguing that the monument should remain as it promotes reconciliation between North and South.