Yeshiva University in New York has agreed to recognize an LGBTQ student club after years of legal disputes that at one point reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
The university said Thursday in a statement that it reached an agreement with the students to end the litigation and will officially recognize the club, which will be called Hareni and “will operate in accordance with the approved guidelines of Yeshiva University’s senior rabbis.”
“The club will be run like other clubs on campus, all in the spirit of a collaborative and mutually supportive campus culture,” the university said.
The club was formerly known as the YU Pride Alliance and was long the subject of litigation over whether the university had to recognize it. The school contended that such recognition would violate its religious beliefs.
In 2022 the dispute wound up in the Supreme Court, which cleared the way for the club to be recognized while also telling Yeshiva it should return to state court to seek quick review and temporary relief.
In its own statement Thursday, the club confirmed the agreement and said it will enjoy the same privileges as other student organizations on campus. It plans to host charitable events, movie nights, panel discussions and career networking events and will publicly use “LGBTQ+” on flyers and advertisements.
“This agreement affirms that LGBTQ+ students at Yeshiva University are valued members of the community,” said Schneur Friedman, a president of the group.
“This victory is not just for our club — it’s for every student who deserves a safe space to be themselves,” said Hayley Goldberg, another Hareni president.
“I’m excited to move forward, build community, and continue advocating for a school where everyone belongs,” Goldberg said.
References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient, the Enola Gay aircraft that dropped an atomic bomb on Japan and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content, according to a database obtained by The Associated Press.
The database, which was confirmed by U.S. officials and published by AP, includes more than 26,000 images that have been flagged for removal across every military branch. But the eventual total could be much higher.
One official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details that have not been made public, said the purge could delete as many as 100,000 images or posts in total, when considering social media pages and other websites that are also being culled for DEI content. The official said it’s not clear if the database has been finalized.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had given the military until Wednesday to remove content that highlights diversity efforts in its ranks following President Donald Trump’s executive order ending those programs across the federal government.
The vast majority of the Pentagon purge targets women and minorities, including notable milestones made in the military. And it also removes a large number of posts that mention various commemorative months — such as those for Black and Hispanic people and women.
But a review of the database also underscores the confusion that has swirled among agencies about what to remove following Trump’s order.
Aircraft and fish projects are flagged
In some cases, photos seemed to be flagged for removal simply because their file included the word “gay,” including service members with that last name and an image of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.
Several photos of an Army Corps of Engineers dredging project in California were marked for deletion, apparently because a local engineer in the photo had the last name Gay. And a photo of Army Corps biologists was on the list, seemingly because it mentioned they were recording data about fish — including their weight, size, hatchery and gender.
In addition, some photos of the Tuskegee Airmen, the nation’s first Black military pilots who served in a segregated WWII unit, were listed on the database, but those may likely be protected due to historical content.
Armorers and other ground personnel undergo training at Chanute Field, Ill., during World War II.U.S. Air Force via AP
The Air Force briefly removed new recruit training courses that included videos of the Tuskegee Airmen soon after Trump’s order. That drew the White House’s ire over “malicious compliance,” and the Air Force quickly reversed the removal.
Many of the images listed in the database already have been removed. Others were still visible Thursday, and it’s not clear if they will be taken down at some point or be allowed to stay, including images with historical significance such as those of the Tuskegee Airmen.
Asked about the database, Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot said in a statement, “We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms. In the rare cases that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly.”
He noted that Hegseth has declared that “DEI is dead” and that efforts to put one group ahead of another through DEI programs erodes camaraderie and threatens mission execution.
Some images aren’t gone
In some cases, the removal was partial. The main page in a post titled “Women’s History Month: All-female crew supports warfighters” was removed. But at least one of the photos in that collection about an all-female C-17 crew could still be accessed. A shot from the Army Corps of Engineers titled “Engineering pioneer remembered during Black History Month” was deleted.
Other photos flagged in the database but still visible Thursday included images of the World War II Women Air Service Pilots and one of U.S. Air Force Col. Jeannie Leavitt, the country’s first female fighter pilot.
Pfc. Christina Fuentes Montenegro prepares to hike to her platoon’s defensive position during patrol week of Infantry Training Battalion near Camp Geiger, N.C. Oct. 31, 2013. Sgt. Tyler Main / U.S. Marine Corps via AP
Also still visible was an image of then-Pfc. Christina Fuentes Montenegro becoming one of the first three women to graduate from the Marine Corps’ Infantry Training Battalion and an image of Marine Corps World War II Medal of Honor recipient Pfc. Harold Gonsalves.
It was unclear why some other images were removed, such as a Marine Corps photo titled “Deadlift contenders raise the bar pound by pound” or a National Guard website image called “Minnesota brothers reunite in Kuwait.”
World War II Medal of Honor recipient Pfc. Harold Gonsalves during World War II.U.S. Marine Corps via AP
Why the database?
The database of the 26,000 images was created to conform with federal archival laws, so if the services are queried in the future, they can show how they are complying with the law, the U.S. official said. But it may be difficult to ensure the content was archived because the responsibility to ensure each image was preserved was the responsibility of each individual unit.
In many cases, workers are taking screenshots of the pages marked for removal, but it would be difficult to restore them if that decision was made, according to another official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide additional details that were not public.
A Marine Corps official said every one of its images in the database “either has been taken down or will be taken down.” The Marines are moving on the directive as fast as possible, but as with the rest of the military, very few civilian or contractor employees at the Pentagon can perform content removal, the official said.
Staff Sgt. Krysteena Scales performs pre-flight checks before departing on a mission in a C-17 Globemaster III, March 19, 2009, at an undisclosed location in Southwest Asia.Senior Airman Andrew Satran / U.S. Air Force via AP
In the Marine Corps, just one defense civilian is available to do the work. The Marine Corps estimates that person has identified at least 10,000 images and stories for removal online, and after further review, 3,600 of those have been removed. The total does not count more than 1,600 social media sites that have not yet been addressed.
Many of those social media sites were military base or unit support groups created years ago and left idle. No one still has the administrative privileges to go in and change the content.
The Marine official said the service is going through each site and getting new administrative privileges so it can make the changes.
On Feb. 26, the Pentagon ordered all the military services to spend countless hours poring over years of website postings, photos, news articles and videos to remove any mentions that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion.”
If they couldn’t do that by Wednesday, they were told to “temporarily remove from public display” all content published during the Biden administration’s four years in office.
Two public school districts and several parents have sued the state in a bid to undo anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people in Pennsylvania, saying that the two-year-old regulation is illegal because it goes beyond what lawmakers intended or allowed.
The lawsuit, filed in the statewide Commonwealth Court late Thursday, comes amid a debate in Pennsylvania and nationally over the rights of transgender high school athletes to compete in women’s sports.
If the lawsuit is successful, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission would no longer be able to investigate complaints about discrimination involving sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression. The plaintiffs’ lawyers also say a favorable ruling in court would bar transgender student athletes from competing in women’s high school sports in Pennsylvania.
The plaintiffs include two districts — South Side Area and Knoch, both in western Pennsylvania — and two Republican state lawmakers, Reps. Aaron Bernstine and Barbara Gleim, as well as three parents and seven students.
The lawsuit names Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, which investigates complaints about discrimination because of someone’s race, sex, religion, age or disability in housing, employment and public accommodations.
Shapiro’s office said it had no immediate comment Friday and the commission did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the lawsuit Friday.
The lawsuit is aimed at the definition of sex discrimination that the commission expanded by regulation to include sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.
The regulation was approved in late 2022 by a separate regulatory gatekeeper agency, and it took effect in 2023.
The plaintiffs contend that the state Supreme Court has interpreted the term “sex” as used in the Pennsylvania Constitution to mean either male or female.
They also contend that the state Legislature never gave permission to the Human Relations Commission to write regulations expanding the legal definition of sex discrimination, making the regulation a violation of the Legislature’s constitutional authority over lawmaking.
The commission has justified the expanded definition by saying that state courts have held that Pennsylvania’s anti-discrimination laws are to be interpreted consistently with federal anti-discrimination law. The commission can negotiate settlements between parties or impose civil penalties, such as back pay or damages.
For years, Democratic lawmakers tried to change the law to add the terms sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression to the portfolio of complaints that the Human Relations Commission could investigate. Every time, Republican lawmakers blocked the effort.
President Donald Trump has targeted transgender and nonbinary people with a series of executive orders since he returned to office.
He has done it with strong language. In one executive order, he asserted “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex.”
That’s a dramatic reversal of the policies of former President Joe Biden’s administration — and of major medical organizations — that supported gender-affirming care.
American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Sruti Swaminathan said that to be put into effect, provisions of the orders should first go through federal rulemaking procedures, which can be years long and include the chance for public comment.
“When you have the nation’s commander-in-chief demonizing transgender people, it certainly sends a signal to all Americans,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director at Human Rights Campaign.
Things to know about Trump’s actions:
Recognizing people as only men or women
On Trump’s first day back in office, he issued a sweeping order that signaled a big change in how his administration would deal with transgender people and their rights.
The stated purpose is to protect women. “Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the order says.
The document calls on government agencies to use the new definitions of the sexes, and to stop using taxpayer money to promote what it calls “gender ideology,” the idea broadly accepted by medical experts that gender falls along a spectrum.
Federal agencies have been quick to comply. Andrea Lucas, the acting chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for example, announced this week that she would remove identity pronouns from employees’ online profiles and disallow the “X” gender marker for those filing discrimination charges.
“Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters,” Lucas said in a statement.
On Friday, information about what Trump calls “gender ideology” was removed from federal government websites and the term “gender” was replaced by “sex” to comport with the order. The Bureau of Prisons stopped reporting the number of transgender incarcerated people and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed lessons on building supportive school environments for transgender and nonbinary students.
Researchers have found less than 1% of adults identify as transgender and under 2% are intersex, or born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female.
Requests denied for passport gender markers
In the order calling for a new federal definition of the sexes, Trump included some specific instances in which policy should be changed, including on passports.
The State Department promptly stopped granting requests for new or updated passports with gender markers that don’t conform with the new definition.
The agency is no longer issuing the documents with an “X” that some people who identify as neither male nor female request and will not honor requests to change the gender markers between “M” and “F” for transgender people.
The option to choose “X” was taken off online passport application forms Friday.
The ACLU says it’s considering a lawsuit.
Trans women moved into men’s prisons
Trump’s initial order called for transgender women in federal custody to be moved to men’s prisons. Warbelow, from Human Rights Campaign, said her organization has received reports from lawyers that some have been.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to requests for information about such moves.
There have been at least two lawsuits trying to block the policy. In one, a federal judge has said a transgender woman in a Massachusetts prison should be housed with the general population of a woman’s prison and continue to receive gender-affirming medical care for now.
Opening the door to another ban on trans service members
Trump set the stage for a ban on transgender people in the military, directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to come up with a new policy on the issue by late March.
In the executive order, the president asserted that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
Trump barred transgender service members in his first term in office, but a court blocked the effort.
A group of active military members promptly sued over the new order this week.
Defunding gender-affirming medical care for trans youth
The care in question includes puberty blocking drugs, hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgery, which is rare for minors.
If fully implemented, the order would cut off government health insurance including Medicaid and TRICARE, which serves military families, for the treatments.
It also calls on Congress to adopt a law against the care, though whether that happens is up to lawmakers.
Twenty-six states already have passed laws banning or limiting gender-affirming care for minors, so the change could be smaller in those places.
Some hospitals have paused some gender-affirming care for people under 19 following the executive order while they evaluate how it might apply to them.
Barring schools from helping student social transitioning
Another executive order seeks to stop “radical indoctrination” in the nation’s school system.
It calls on the Education Department to come up with a policy blocking schools from using federal funds to support students who are socially transitioning or using their curriculum to promote the idea that gender can be fluid, along with certain teachings about race.
The order would block schools from requiring teachers and other school staff to use names and pronouns that align with transgender students’ gender identify rather than the sex they were assigned at birth.
Some districts and states have passed those requirements to prevent deadnaming, the practice of referring to transgender people who have changed their name by the name they used before their transition. It is widely considered insensitive, offensive or traumatizing.
The day after President Donald Trump returned to office, Lisa Suhay took her 21-year-old daughter, Mellow, to a passport office in Norfolk, Virginia, where they live.
Getting a passport for Mellow, who is transgender, was urgent.
In an executive order Trump signed the night before, the president used a narrow definition of the sexes instead of a broader conception of gender. The order says a person is male or female and it rejects the idea that someone can transition from the sex assigned at birth to another gender. The framing is in line with many conservatives’ views but at odds with major medical groups and policies under former President Joe Biden.
Her family wants Mellow to be able to leave the country if things became unbearable for transgender people in the U.S. as the federal government increasingly moves not to recognize them.
“If the worst was to come to worst and things were to threaten my life,” she said, “I would have some way out.”
Trump’s Jan. 20 order, which questions the existence of transgender and nonbinary people, created confusion and pain for Mellow and others seeking new, renewed or updated passports. A group of people affected by the policy filed a lawsuit Friday challenging it in federal court in Boston.
The State Department fell in line with Trump’s order
The State Department quickly stopped issuing travel documents with the “X” gender marker preferred by many nonbinary people, who don’t identify as strictly male or female. The department also stopped allowing people to change the gender listed on their passport or get new ones that reflect their gender rather than their sex assigned at birth.
Applications that had already been submitted seeking gender marker changes were put on hold. The State Department also replaced its webpage with information for “LGBTQI+” travelers to just “LGB,” removing any reference to transgender or intersex people.
Knowing about the policy change, Mellow checked the box for “male,” even though that’s at odds with her life and her state-issued driver’s license.
“We had to swear oath to the fact that the information that we presented was true, even if what we had to do was not truthful to ourselves” Mellow said. “It was emotional because it was in a way lying to yourself.”
Her mother worries that Mellow might not be granted a passport — or that it could create legal problems if her documents don’t match or because she swore to something that’s not true.
Trump has targeted transgender people on several fronts
The passport policy is among several actions Trump has taken since returning to office that could stifle rights and legal recognition of transgender, intersex and nonbinary people.
The same order that seeks to define the sexes to exclude them would also require housing transgender women in prison in men’s facilities. Additional orders could open the door to kicking transgender service members out of the military, barring the use of federal taxpayer money to provide gender-affirming care to transgender people under 19 and keeping transgender girls and women out of girls and women’s sports competitions.
The lawsuit filed Friday by ACLU lawyers challenging the passport change contends that the order discriminates against people based on their sex or transgender status, depriving them of their rights to equal protection, privacy and speech. It also contends the abrupt policy change violates the requirement for a 60-day notice and comment period.
Trump’s administration has said the policy would not affect existing unexpired passports.
Groups such as New Jersey-based Garden State Equality warned transgender and nonbinary members that they could be at risk when returning to the U.S. after traveling abroad, particularly if their passport has the “X” gender marker.
A family is in limbo over one son’s application
Elise Flatland, a mother of four in the Kansas City suburb of Olathe, Kansas, is still waiting to hear about whether a passport has been approved for her 12-year-old transgender son.
Elise Flatland, right, meets with state Rep. Nikki McDonald, D-Olathe, to help her in opposing efforts to roll back transgender rights, in Topeka, Kan., on Jan. 29.John Hanna / AP file
The family filled out the application in December at the same time they requested passports for two of their other children. The others have arrived, but his has not. Flatland said it’s essential to have the travel document so the family could go to another country for gender-affirming care if it becomes unavailable in the U.S.It would also help her son in other ways. A 2023 Kansas law left them unable to change his birth certificate, so he has no government-issued document that reflects his gender. Having one could help answer fellow sixth graders who question his identity, more so since Trump was elected in November.
“There is definitely a sense of everyone being emboldened in their anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ attitudes, and they have no need to act politely in public,” Flatland said.
Seeking a passport change means handing over documents
Anticipating a passport change, Ash Lazarus Orr, a West Virginia advocate for transgender people, sent in an expedited application to change the gender marker on his passport from “F” to “M” days before Trump took office.
But it wasn’t processed until after inauguration, and Orr doesn’t expect the change will be made.
A complication for Orr is that the State Department has his current passport, which doesn’t expire for several years, his birth certificate and marriage license. That has put some upcoming international travel plans into question.
He said he hopes his non-updated passport will be returned, so he can travel. “Worst-case scenario, I could see this lost through the entire administration where I don’t have a passport,” Orr said.
The State Department said it “corrected” a passport application
Zaya Perysian, a 22-year-old content creator who lives in Los Angeles, tried to change the gender mark on her passport once she heard about Trump’s passport policy.
She bought a plane ticket to Canada to serve as the basis for a request for expedited service. After an appointment at a passport office, she hoped the switch would be approved.
Days later, her new passport arrived in the mail along with a letter explaining that the application had been “corrected” to male.
She said the issue is bigger than the travel document.
“They don’t want any trans person to feel validated,” she said in an interview. “They want it to go back to how it used to be, where we were seen as like these creatures, and that we were just like night stalkers.”
Both Orr and Perysian are among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit seeking to halt the policy.
Donald Trump, the candidate, pledged to get “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”
Donald Trump, the president, wasted little time delivering on his promise to address a topic that seemed to resonate across party lines. Trump issued an executive order on the day his second term began that called for “restoring biological truth to the federal government” and signed another on Wednesday titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.”
The federal government now has wide latitude across multiple agencies to penalize federally funded entities that “deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities.”
“The war on women’s sports is over,” Trump declared.
Probably not. Legal challenges like the ones that have met some of the other executive orders aimed at transgender people are likely.
What is in the executive order?
The biggest takeaway is that the Trump administration has empowered the federal government to take aggressive steps to go after entities — be they a school or an athletic association — that do not comply. Federal funding — and potentially grants to educational programs — could be pulled.
The threshold for noncompliance: Any entity that denies “female students an equal opportunity to participate in sports and athletic events by requiring them, in the women’s category, to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.”
The Education Department announced less than 24 hours after the order’s signing that it was investigating San Jose State University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, all of which have had Title IX violations reported against them for allowing transgender athletes to compete.
Sex vs. gender : How will that affect Title IX?
Every administration has the authority to issue its own interpretations of the landmark legislation best known for its role in ensuring gender equity in athletics and preventing sexual harassment on campuses.
Given the push-pull of how recent presidencies view Title IX, it has created a whiplash effect.
Joe Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office that interpreted sex as “gender identity” under Title IX, a move that protected transgender athletes from being discriminated against if they wanted to participate in a sport that aligned with their gender identity, not their sex assigned at birth.
Yet it took more than three years for Title IX regulations saying that to be finalized. And when they were, they lacked specifics sports and were put on hold by courts.
Trump’s order explicitly states that sex means the “immutable biological classification as either male or female.” ‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of “gender identity.” The order adds that “sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
The decision marks a significant shift in the way Title IX is viewed and more explicitly, how it will be enforced.
How many transgender athletes will be affected?
That number is hard to pin down.
The NCAA, for example, does not track data on transgender athletes among the 544,000 currently competing on 19,000 teams at various levels across the country, though NCAA President Charlie Baker testified in Congress in December that he was aware of fewer than 10 active NCAA athletes who identified as transgender.
A 2019 survey of high school students by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) noted just 5% of respondents said they participated in a sport that aligned with their gender identity. A 2022 report by the Williams Institute estimated about 300,000 high school-age students (ages 13-17) identified as transgender. How many of those young people participate in sports is unknown, but it is likely a tiny fraction.
Does the order have actual teeth?
The reach of Title IX extends far beyond the participation of transgender athletes. Noncompliance is believed to be widespread.
The Women’s Sports Foundation noted in a 2022 report that there were still “gross gender inequities” across all college divisions and that there was “cause for concern about widespread Title IX noncompliance in high school and college and university athletic programs” even before the COVID-19 pandemic made women’s sports even more vulnerable.
Yet to date no school at any level has had its federal funding rescinded for not meeting Title IX standards that require institutions to provide women with equal access and treatment, said Cheryl Cooky, a professor at Purdue University who studies the intersection of gender, sports, media and culture. She wondered where all this support for women’s sports in general — and not on this issue specifically — has been for the last five decades.
“All of these other inequalities have existed and now you’re in a position of power to address those opportunities and this is what you’re addressing?” Cooky said. “The fact that this is the issue that the administration is concerned about speaks volumes in terms of how we value women in this society and how we value women’s sports in this society.”
Yet given Trump’s unpredictable approach to governing, precedent and history might not apply.
How will this work at the state level?
About half the states have already enacted legislation that effectively bars transgender athletes from competing in the category that aligns with their gender identity. The AP reported in 2021 that in many cases, states introducing a ban on transgender athletes could not cite instances where their participation was an issue.
Some states are already planning to challenge the Trump order in court. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong called the order “mean spirited and unlawful” and called for those opposed to the order to “stand together and fight back.”
What also remains unclear is whether a federal agency can go after specific organizations — like state high school sports associations — that do not receive money directly from the federal government.
How will this affect college sports?
The NCAA Board of Governors moved quickly, amending its transgender participation policy to limit competition in women’s sports to athletes assigned female at birth. The NCAA has more than 500,000 athletes competing for some 1,100 schools.
“We strongly believe that clear, consistent, and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions,” Baker said Thursday. “To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.”
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, the governing body for more than 200 small schools across the country, voted unanimously in 2023 to effectively ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
What about the Olympics?
On a move most saw coming once Trump won a second term, his administration still managed to sneak in a curveball.
The order calls for the office of the secretary of state to use “all appropriate and available measures” in hopes of having the International Olympic Committee come up with a uniform transgender policy. The organization has passed the buck for years, deferring to the international federations for each sport.
That could change, however, when a new IOC president replaces the retiring Thomas Bach. Several candidates to replace Bach — notably former track star and current director of World Athletics Seb Coe — have voiced support for a uniform policy.
The IOC this week said it will “continue to explain and discuss the various topics with the relevant authorities.”
Hospitals in Colorado, Virginia and the nation’s capital said Thursday they have paused gender-affirming care for young people as they evaluate President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at cutting federal support for such care.
Denver Health in Colorado has stopped providing gender-affirming surgeries for people under age 19, a spokesperson confirmed Thursday, in order to comply with the executive order and continue receiving federal funding. It is unclear whether the hospital will continue providing other gender-affirming care for youth, including hormone therapy and puberty blockers.
In Virginia, VCU Health and Children’s Hospital of Richmond said they have suspended gender-affirming medication and gender-affirming surgical procedures for those under 19 years old.
In Washington, D.C., Children’s National Hospital said the hospital had “paused prescriptions of puberty blockers and hormone therapy to comply with the directives while we assess the situation further.” The hospital already did not perform gender-affirming surgery on minors, a spokesperson said Thursday.
Trump’s order, signed Tuesday, is part of a push to reverse Biden administration policies meant to protect transgender people and their care. It ordered agencies to take steps to makes sure that hospitals receiving federal research and education grants “end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”
Other hospitals told The Associated Press that their current practices would continue. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago said hospital officials are reviewing the order and “assessing any potential impact to the clinical services we offer to our patient families.”
“Our team will continue to advocate for access to medically necessary care, grounded in science and compassion for the patient-families we are so privileged to serve,” the statement said.
The language in Trump’s executive order — using words such as “maiming,” “sterilizing” and “mutilation” — contradicts what is typical for gender-affirming care in the United States. It also labels guidance from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health as “junk science.”
WPATH said in a statement that restrictions and bans on “access to necessary medical care for transgender youth are harmful to patients and their families.”
Gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth isn’t common. A new study shows that fewer than 1 in 1,000 U.S. adolescents with commercial insurance received puberty blockers or hormones during a recent five-year period, and the bulk of gender-affirming surgeries are not performed on youth.
The Denver hospital said Trump’s order would affect the mental health of its transgender patients, and that they would continue to receive primary and behavioral health care.
“Denver Health is committed to and deeply concerned for the health and safety of our gender diverse patients under the age of 19,” the hospital’s statement said.
Federal prosecutors on Friday dropped the case against a Texas doctor who called himself a whistleblower on transgender care for minors and was accused of illegally obtaining private information on patients who weren’t under his care.
The dismissal of the case against Dr. Eithan Haim in U.S. district court in Houston comes as the Trump administration in its first week has already issued executive orders rolling back transgender rights.
Prosecutors had said that Haim, a 34-year-old surgeon, took the information and shared it with a conservative activist with “intent to cause malicious harm” to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, one of the nation’s largest pediatric hospitals.
Haim pleaded not guilty in June to four counts of wrongfully obtaining individually identifiable health information, saying outside the courthouse that he had “done nothing wrong.”
“We’re going to fight this tooth and nail, stand up for whistleblowers everywhere,” Haim said in June.
Ryan Patrick, one of Haim’s attorneys, said the dismissal speaks to the veracity of their case, and they “‘are very happy for Dr. Haim and his family that this ordeal is finally over.”
Haim works in the Dallas area but had previously worked at Texas Children’s Hospital as part of his residency. The indictment alleged that Haim asked to reactivate his login there and in 2023 began accessing information on pediatric patients not under his care and then turned it over to a media contact.
Haim has publicly identified himself as the person who gave the information about patients at Texas Children’s to a conservative activist, who published a story that the hospital was providing transgender care for minors in secret.
At the time, transgender care for minors was legal in Texas, but the hospital had announced in 2022 that it would stop would stop gender-affirming care. A ban in Texas on transgender care for minors went into effect in September 2023.
Texas Children’s said in a statement Friday that they “defer to and respect” the Justice Department’s decisions in the case. In previous statements, hospital officials said its doctors have always provided care within the law.
Haim, who had been released on bond, faced up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
Decades after investigators unearthed thousands of human bones and bone fragments on a suspected Indiana serial killer’s property, a renewed quest is playing out in laboratories to solve a long-running mystery: Who were they?
A new team working to identify the unknown dead says the key to their success will be getting relatives of men who vanished between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s to provide samples of their own DNA.
Those samples can then be screened against DNA profiles scientists are extracting from the remains, which were found starting in 1996 on Herbert Baumeister’s sprawling suburban Indianapolis property.
The original investigators believed that at least 25 people were buried at Baumeister’s 18-acre Fox Hollow Farm estate in Westfield, based on evidence that included 10,000 bones and bone fragments, as well as handcuffs and shotgun shells.
Baumeister, a 49-year-old thrift store owner and married father of three, killed himself in Canada in July 1996 before police could question him, taking with him many secrets, including the names of his presumed victims.
Investigators believed that while his family was away on trips, Baumeister, who frequented gay bars in Indianapolis, lured men to his home, where he killed and buried them.
By the late 1990s, authorities had identified eight men using dental records and available DNA technologies. But then those efforts stopped, although the remains of at least 17 people may have still been unidentified.
Hamilton County Coroner Jeff Jellison said the renewed identification effort revealed that county officials at the time decided not to fund additional DNA testing, which “essentially halted further efforts to identify the victims and placed the cost of a homicide investigation on family members of missing people.”
“I can’t speak for those investigators, but it was just game over,” Jellison said.
An unfinished job
As decades slipped by, the bones and fragments sat in boxes at the University of Indianapolis’ Human Identification Center, whose staff helped excavate the remains.
That changed after Eric Pranger sent Jellison a Facebook message in late 2022. The Indianapolis man’s family had long believed his older cousin, Allen Livingston, was among Baumeister’s victims.
Livingston was 27 when he vanished in August 1993 after getting into someone else’s car in downtown Indianapolis. After hearing about Baumeister three years later, his mother, Sharon Livingston, and other relatives began suspecting that Allen, who was bisexual, was among the dead.
Jellison was about to take office when Pranger asked if he could help get some answers for his aunt, who had serious health problems.
“How do you say to no to that? That’s our job as coroners by statute, to identify the deceased,” Jellison said.
In late 2022, police took DNA samples from Sharon Livingston and one of her daughters. Jellison began working with a team that includes the Indiana State Police, the FBI, the Human Identification Center, local law enforcement and a private company that specializes in forensic genetic genealogy.
A family finds some closure
Staff at the Human Identification Center, where the remains are stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled space, selected some of the most promising bones for DNA analysis.
At the Indiana State Police Laboratory, scientists cut out sections of bone, froze them with liquid nitrogen and pulverized them into a fine powder. They then used heat and chemicals to break open bone cells in the first step toward extracting a full DNA profile.
Nearly a year after hearing from Pranger, Jellison announced in October 2023 that a ninth Baumeister victim had been identified: Allen Livingston.
Sharon Livingston finally received some form of closure. She died in November 2024.
“It made me happy to be able to do this for my aunt,” Pranger, 34, said. “I’m the one who got the ball rolling to bring her son home after 30 years and I felt privileged.”
“After Allen was identified I was so excited and then after the fact I asked myself, `Now what? I got answers, but what about all the other families?’” Pranger added.
The other victims
Jellison said about 40 DNA samples have been submitted by people who believe a missing male relative may have been killed by Baumeister. He said those are entered into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, but are used solely for identifying missing people.
The coroner and his partners hope to get more DNA samples from relatives of men from across the U.S. who vanished between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. They noted the men may have been traveling and stopped in Indianapolis to visit friends or sample its nightlife.
Dr. Krista Latham in Indianapolis on Aug. 1. Rick Callahan / AP file
To date, scientists have extracted eight unique DNA profiles — all male — from more than 70 of the 100 bones that were sent to the Indiana State Police Laboratory by Dr. Krista Latham, the Human Identification Center’s director.
One matched DNA samples provided by Livingston’s mother and sister. Four matched four of the eight men first identified in the 1990s: Jeffrey Jones, Manuel Resendez, Johnny Bayer and Richard Hamilton.
The three other DNA profiles remain unidentified and two are still undergoing testing. Those three have boosted Baumeister’s presumed victims to 12.
What’s next?
Jellison and his partners say their identification effort could take several more years to complete.
Most of the bones were crushed and burned, reducing their potential to yield usable DNA. Latham, a professor of biology and anthropology, said bone fragments deemed in poor shape are being held back from the destructive testing process in hope that future DNA technologies can unlock their secrets.
Jeff Jellison in his office in Noblesville, Ind., on July 11.Rick Callahan / AP file
She noted some of the men may have been estranged from relatives or ostracized because of their sexuality. No one may have noticed when they vanished.
“These are individuals who were marginalized in life. And we just need to make sure that that’s not continuing in death as well,” Latham said.
For the ongoing work, Jellison has obtained DNA reference samples from relatives of seven of the eight men originally identified in the 1990s. The eighth man, Steven Hale, was adopted and efforts to locate biological relatives have thus far failed, the coroner said.
Relatives of missing men who want to provide family DNA reference samples for the effort to identify remains can contact the Indiana State Police missing persons hotline at 833-466-2653 or the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office at 317-770-4415.
Honoring the victims
As remains are identified, piece by piece, families can opt to have them cremated and interred at a memorial dedicated in August in Westfield. It includes a plaque with the names of the nine identified victims, with room for more names.
Linda Znachko, whose nonprofit Indianapolis-based ministry He Knows Your Name, paid for the monument, said at the memorial’s dedication that the identification campaign “will bring honor to those who lost their lives at the Fox Hollow tragedy.” Remains belonging to Livingston and Jeffrey Jones were added to the memorial’s ossuary and white doves were released during the dedication.
Livingston’s younger sister, Shannon Doughty, attended with several relatives, including Pranger. She said it was a relief finally knowing what happened to her brother, despite his tragic end.
“At least you know,” said Doughty, 46. “The fear of the unknown is the worst right? So just knowing, it’s a multitude of emotions. You wanted to know but you didn’t want to know. But you needed to know.”
A national rights group said Tuesday that more U.S. companies are providing strong benefits and protections to LGBTQ employees despite an ongoing effort by conservative activists to get high-profile brands to stop participating in the organization’s annual workplace report card.
The education arm of the Human Rights Campaign released its latest Corporate Equality Index the day after McDonald’s became the latest big company to say it would no longer provide information for the annual evaluation of policies affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees.
Last year, Walmart, Ford, Harley-Davidson and other consumer brands that came under pressure said they would end their voluntary participation in the grading system. The HRC rated them anyway, giving Harley-Davidson a score of 10 out of 100 and Ford a 75, for example.
The index has emerged as a top target of conservative activists as part of a broader campaign to pressure businesses into abandoning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that were designed to reduce discrimination against women, members of racial and ethnic minority groups, and LGBTQ people.
A 2023 Supreme Court decision that declared race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions unconstitutional emboldened critics of DEI programs to target universities, government agencies and corporations on social media, in the courts and in state legislatures. Some companies, including McDonald’s, cited the high court precedent as their reason for curtailing diversity policies.
The Human Rights Campaign Foundation said the 2025 equality index nonetheless included 72 employers that were first-time participants, and that 765 of the 1,449 companies graded received a perfect score, 28% more than last year.
“At times, progress meets backlash, but companies continue to dedicate the time and resources to reinforcing workplace inclusion,” HRC President Kelley Robinson said in a statement. “As a result, they are more competitive and more creative while attracting and retaining top talent and widening their consumer base.”
The number of companies given official ratings included ones that have said they would pull out of the process. Some completed the organization’s survey months before their decisions. The HRC said it would continue to monitor companies that drop out and assign them scores.
McDonald’s was among the companies earning the top score of 100. Walmart and Lowe’s both received 90 points.
The scores are based on points companies get for a range of workplace metrics, such as having anti-discrimination policies that encompass sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, and offering health benefits that cover same-sex spouses and the needs of transgender individuals.
This is the second index that assigned points for having gender transition guidelines that managers, transitioning employees and their colleagues can consult. More than 1,000 of the companies graded for 2025 reported adopting such guidelines, a 21% increase, the HRC said.
“Obviously, there are plenty of examples of organizations that have made some kind of announcement around retreating from some aspects of how they were doing DEI, including things like participation in this survey,” said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at NYU School of Law. “But the vast majority of companies that were doing DEI before are still doing it. The only difference is that they’re changing some programs mostly for legal risk mitigation purposes and or doing it more quietly so that they don’t attract as much attention and scrutiny.”
The Corporate Equality Index debuted in 2002 and primarily focused on ensuring that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer employees didn’t face discrimination in hiring and on the job. Over the years, the criteria to gain a perfect score grew stricter, and experts say the Index helped improve workplace benefits for LGBTQ people.
