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.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan marked the launch of Turkey’s “Year of the Family” on Monday with an attack on the LGBTQ community and the announcement of measures to boost birth rates.
Citing the “historical truth that a strong family paves the way for a strong state,” Erdogan unveiled a series of financial measures to support young families.
The president returned to themes he has espoused before about LGBTQ people, including the portrayal of the LGBTQ movement as part of a foreign conspiracy aimed at undermining Turkey.
“It is our common responsibility to protect our children and youth from harmful trends and perverse ideologies. Neoliberal cultural trends are crossing borders and penetrating all corners of the world,” he told an audience in Ankara. “They also lead to LGBT and other movements gaining ground.
“The target of gender neutralization policies, in which LGBT is used as a battering ram, is the family. Criticism of LGBT is immediately silenced, just like the legitimate criticisms of Zionism. Anyone who defends nature and the family is subject to heavy oppression.”
Despite its low profile in Turkey, the LGBTQ community has emerged as one of the main targets of the government and its supporters in recent years.
Pride parades have been banned since 2015, with those seeking to participate facing tear gas and police barricades. In recent years, meanwhile, anti-LGBTQ rallies have received state support.
Turning to the “alarming” decline in the population growth rate, Erdogan said Turkey was “losing blood” and recalled his 2007 demand that families have at least three children.
The president also pointed to people getting married later in life and rising divorce rates as causes for concern. Turkey’s annual population growth rate dropped from 2.53% in 2015 to 0.23% last year.
“If we do not take the necessary measures, the problem will reach irreparable levels. In such an environment, population loss is inevitable,” he added.
To combat the threat to the family, Erdogan revealed policies such as interest-free loans for newlyweds; improved monetary allowances for the parents of new-born children; financial, counseling and housing support to encourage new families; and free or low-cost childcare.
The Biden administration’s Title IX rules expanding protections for LGBTQ students have been struck down nationwide after a federal judge in Kentucky found they overstepped the president’s authority.
In a decision issued Thursday, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves scrapped the entire 1,500-page regulation after deciding it was “fatally” tainted by legal shortcomings. The rule had already been halted in 26 states after a wave of legal challenges by Republican states.
President-elect Donald Trump previously promised to end the rules “on day one” and made anti-transgender themes a centerpiece of his campaign.
The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia and West Virginia.
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti called it a rejection of the Biden administration’s “relentless push to impose a radical gender ideology.”
“Because the Biden rule is vacated altogether, President Trump will be free to take a fresh look at our Title IX regulations when he returns to office,” Skrmetti said in a statement.
The Education Department did not immediately comment on the decision.
The Biden administration ignited controversy when it finalized the new rules last year. The regulation expanded Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding discrimination based on sex in education, to also prevent discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. It also widened the definition of harassment to include a broader range of misconduct.
Civil rights advocates hailed it as a victory, saying it gave LGBTQ students new recourse against discrimination. But it drew outrage from conservatives who said it could be used to protect transgender athletes in girls’ sports.
The rule didn’t explicitly address athletics and mostly detailed how schools and colleges were required to respond to cases of discrimination and sexual assault. A separate proposal dealing with transgender athletes in sports was put on the back burner and later revoked after it became a focal point of Trump’s campaign.
In his decision, Reeves found the Education Department overstepped its authority by expanding the scope of Title IX.
There’s nothing in the 1972 law suggesting that it should cover any more than it has since Congress created it, Reeves wrote. He called it an “attempt to bypass the legislative process and completely transform Title IX.”
The judge also found that it violated free speech rights by requiring teachers to use pronouns aligning with a student’s gender identity.
“The First Amendment does not permit the government to chill speech or compel affirmance of a belief with which the speaker disagrees in this manner,” Reeves wrote.
Rather than carve out certain aspects of the rule, Reeves decided it was best to toss the regulation in its entirety and revert to a previous interpretation of Title IX. He said his decision will “simply ’cause a return to the status quo’ that existed for more than 50 years prior to its effective date.”
Among the biggest critics of the rule was Betsy DeVos, former education secretary during Trump’s first term. On the social media site X, she wrote that the “radical, unfair, illegal, and absurd Biden Title IX re-write is GONE.”
Bill Cassidy, R-La., chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said Biden’s rule “betrayed the original intent of Title IX by removing longstanding protections that ensured fairness for women and girls.”
“With President Trump and a Republican majority in Congress, we will ensure women and girls have every opportunity to succeed on the field and in the classroom,” Cassidy said in a statement.
Four years after launching a push for more diversity in its ranks, McDonald’s is ending some of its diversity practices, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions.
McDonald’s is the latest big company to shift its tactics in the wake of the 2023 ruling and a conservative backlash against diversity, equity and inclusionprograms. Walmart, John Deere, Harley-Davidson and others rolled back their DEI initiatives last year.
McDonald’s said Monday it will retire specific goals for achieving diversity at senior leadership levels. It also intends to end a program that encourages its suppliers to develop diversity training and to increase the number of minority group members represented within their own leadership ranks.
McDonald’s said it will also pause “external surveys.” The burger giant didn’t elaborate, but several other companies, including Lowe’s and Ford Motor Co., suspended their participation in an annual survey by the Human Rights Campaign that measures workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees.
McDonald’s, which has its headquarters in Chicago, rolled out a series of diversity initiatives in 2021 after a spate of sexual harassment lawsuits filed by employees and a lawsuit alleging discrimination brought by a group of Black former McDonald’s franchise owners.
Related Stories
“As a world-leading brand that considers inclusion one of our core values, we will accept nothing less than real, measurable progress in our efforts to lead with empathy, treat people with dignity and respect, and seek out diverse points of view to drive better decision-making,” McDonald’s Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski wrote in a LinkedIn post at the time.
But McDonald’s said Monday that the “shifting legal landscape” after the Supreme Court decision and the actions of other corporations caused it to take a hard look at its own policies.
A shifting political landscape may also have played a role. President-elect Donald Trump is a vocal opponent of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Trump tapped Stephen Miller, a former adviser who leads a group called America First Legal that has aggressively challenged corporate DEI policies,as his incoming deputy chief of policy.
Vice President-elect JD Vance introduced a bill in the Senate last summer to end such programs in the federal government.
Robby Starbuck, a conservative political commentator who has threatened consumer boycotts of prominent consumer brands that don’t retreat from their diversity programs, said Monday on X that he recently told McDonald’s he would be doing a story on its “woke policies.”
McDonald’s said it had been considering updates to its policies for several months and planned to time the announcement to the start of this year.
In an open letter to employees and franchisees, McDonald’s senior leadership team said it remains committed to inclusion and believes a diverse workforce is a competitive advantage. The company said 30% of its U.S. leaders are members of underrepresented groups, up from 29% in 2021. McDonald’s previously committed to reaching 35% by the end of this year.
McDonald’s said it has achieved one of the goals it announced in 2021: gender pay equity at all levels of the company. It also said it met three years early a goal of having 25% of total supplier spending go to diverse-owned businesses.
McDonald’s said it would continue to support efforts that ensure a diverse base of employees, suppliers and franchisees, but its diversity team will now be referred to as the Global Inclusion Team. The company said it would also continue to report its demographic information.
The McDonald’s Hispanic Owner-Operators Association said it had no comment on the policy change Monday. A message seeking comment was left with the National Black McDonald’s Operators Association.
President Joe Biden is abandoning his efforts to provide some protections for transgender student athletes and cancel student loans for more than 38 million Americans, the first steps in an administration-wide plan to jettison pending regulations to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from retooling them to achieve his own aims.
The White House expects to pull back unfinished rules across several agencies if there isn’t enough time to finalize them before Trump takes office. If the proposed regulations were left in their current state, the next administration would be able to rewrite them and advance its agenda more quickly.
Even as the Biden administration moves to pull back the rules, it pushed ahead with cancellation through other avenues on Friday. The Education Department said it was clearing loans for another 55,000 borrowers who reached eligibility through a program known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which was created by Congress in 2007 and expanded by the Biden administration.
As the pending Biden regulations are withdrawn, nothing prevents Trump from pursuing his own regulations on the same issues when he returns to the White House, but he would have to start from scratch in a process that can take months or even years.
“This isn’t the way I wanted it to end,” said Melissa Byrne, an activist who has pushed for student debt cancellation. “Unfortunately, this is the most prudent action to take right now.”
She blamed Republicans for putting the Biden administration in this position. “It’s a bummer that we have a GOP that is committed to keeping working-class Americans in debt,” Byrne said.
The withdrawals are beginning as Washington braces for a potential government shutdown that could further complicate efforts by the Biden administration to tie up loose ends.
In documents withdrawing the student loan proposals, the Education Department insisted it has the authority to cancel the debt but sought to focus on other priorities in the administration’s final weeks. It said the administration would focus on helping borrowers get back on track with payments following the coronavirus pandemic, when payments were paused.
“The department at this time intends to commit its limited operational resources to helping at-risk borrowers return to repayment successfully,” the agency wrote.
For the regulation on transgender students, the department said it was withdrawing the proposal because of ongoing litigation over how Title IX, the landmark law preventing sex discrimination, should handle issues of gender identity. In addition, the department said there were 150,000 public comments with a range of feedback, including suggestions for modifications that needed to be considered.
At this point, the department wrote, “We do not intend for a final rule to be issued.”
Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, accused the White House of “adding more red tape and making it more difficult for him to govern.”
“President Trump will not be deterred by their dirty tricks and will use every lever of power to reverse the damage Biden has done and implement his America First agenda,” Leavitt said.
Kate Shaw, who served in the White House counsel’s office under President Barack Obama, said it’s not unusual for administrations to speed up or slow down rulemaking. It’s more typical, she said, for the federal government to race to finalize regulations during a transition period, but that can be difficult when there’s a time crunch.
“If you haven’t started it early enough, you’re not going to be able to wrap it up,” she said.
An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said the administration still supports the goals of its regulatory proposals. However, the process can be lengthy because it requires legal reviews and collecting input from the public.
Federal agencies are now analyzing which rules to finish and which to pull back before the end of Biden’s term, the official said.
In recent years, presidents have tended to rely more on executive orders and federal regulations to sidestep gridlock in Congress. However, the rulemaking process can be less durable than legislation, leaving policies more vulnerable to shifts between administrations.
There are dozens of other pending regulations across the Education Department and other agencies, ranging from relatively trivial updates to sweeping policies that carry weighty implications for the nation’s schools and businesses.
If a rule has already gone through a public feedback process under Biden, Trump could simply replace it with his own proposal and move straight to enacting the policy, effectively bypassing the comment period.
The pair of student loan proposals expected to be withdrawn Friday represented Biden’s second attempt at widespread debt cancellation after the Supreme Court rejected his first plan.
One of them is a proposal from April that would have provided targeted debt relief to 30 million Americans. It laid out several categories of borrowers eligible for relief. Borrowers who saw their balances balloon because of interest would have had their accrued interest wiped away. Those who had been repaying loans for 20 years or more would have gotten their loans erased.
That proposal was halted by a federal judge in September after Republican-led states sued, and it remains tangled in a legal battle.
The second rule being withdrawn is a proposal from October that would have allowed the Education Department to cancel loans for people facing various kinds of hardship, including those struggling with steep medical bills or child care costs.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, said Biden never had the authority to accomplish these plans.
“With today’s latest withdrawal, they are admitting these schemes were nothing more than a dishonest attempt to buy votes by transferring debt onto taxpayers who never went to college or worked to pay off their loans,” he said in a statement.
Although Biden did not achieve the sweeping loan cancellations that he initially promised, his administration has forgiven an unprecedented $180 billion in federal student loans through existing programs.
“Because of our actions, millions of people across the country now have the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan debt,” Biden said in a statement.
On Friday, officials announced they were erasing debt for another 55,000 workers — including teachers, nurses and law enforcement officials — through Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The program promises to cancel loans for borrowers who spend 10 years in government or nonprofit jobs.
The $4.28 billion in relief is expected to be the final round of public service loan forgiveness before Biden leaves office in January.
Biden’s rule on transgender sports was proposed in 2023 but was delayed multiple times. It was supposed to be a follow-up to his broader rule that extended civil rights protections to LGBTQ+ students under Title IX.
The sports rule would have prevented schools from banning transgender athletes outright while allowing limits for certain reasons — for example, if it was a matter of “fairness” in competition or to reduce injury risks.
Biden’s proposal left both sides of the issue asking for more. Advocates for transgender athletes said it didn’t go far enough in protecting transgender students from school policies that could unfairly exclude them. Opponents said it fell short of protecting girls and ensuring fairness.
The regulation sat on the back burner through the presidential campaign as the issue became a subject of Republican outrage. Trump campaigned on a promise to ban transgender athletes, with a promise to “keep men out of women’s sports.”
Had Biden’s proposal been finalized, it was certain to face legal challenges from conservatives who said Biden overstepped his authority. Biden’s broader policy on Title IX, which was finalized in April, faced a barrage of legal challenges that prevented it from taking effect in 26 states.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers returned to the state Capitol on Monday to begin a special session to protect the state’s progressive policies ahead of another Trump presidency.
The Democratic governor, a fierce critic of President-elect Donald Trump, is positioning California to once again be the center of a resistance effort against the conservative agenda. He is asking his Democratic allies in the Legislature, who hold supermajorities in both chambers, to approve additional funding to the attorney general’s office to prepare for a robust legal fight against anticipated federal challenges.
Democratic Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel on Monday introduced legislation to set aside $25 million for legal fees to respond to potential attacks by the Trump administration on state policies regarding civil rights, climate change, immigration and abortion access.
“While we always hope to collaborate with our federal partners, California will be ready to vigorously defend our interests and values from any unlawful action by the incoming Trump Administration,” Gabriel said in a statement.
“We’re not going to be caught flat-footed,” Newsom said at a recent news conference.
Trump often depicts California as representing all he sees wrong in America. Democrats, which hold every statewide office in California and have commanding margins in the Legislature and congressional delegation, outnumber registered Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 statewide.
Trump called the Democratic governor “New-scum” during a campaign stop in Southern California and has relentlessly lambasted the Democratic stronghold over its large number of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, homeless population and thicket of regulations.
Trump also waded into a water rights battle over the endangered delta smelt, a tiny fish that has pitted environmentalists against farmers and threatened to withhold federal aid to a state increasingly under threat from wildfires. He also vowed to follow through with his campaign promise of carrying out the mass deportation of immigrants without legal status and prosecuting his political enemies.
Before the special session begins, state lawmakers are scheduled to swear in more than two dozen new members and elect leaders for the 2025 legislative session. Hundreds of people also are planning to march around the Capitol on Monday to urge the Legislature to try to stop Trump’s mass deportation plans.
State Attorney General Rob Bonta said his office will protect the state’s immigration population, while Newsom last week unveiled a proposal to revive a rebate program for electric vehicle purchases if the incoming Trump administration eliminates a federal tax credit for people who buy electric cars. Newsom is also considering creating a backup disaster relief fund for the wildfire-prone state after Trump’s threats.
Republican lawmakers blasted Newsom and his Democratic allies over the special session. Rep. Vince Fong, who represents the state’s Central Valley farm belt, said California should work with the incoming Trump administration instead.
“Gavin Newsom’s actions are tone-deaf to the concerns of Californians who disapprove of the direction of our state and country,” Fong said in a video on social media.
Legislators also are expected to spend the year discussing ways to protect dozens of laws expected to be targeted by the Trump administration, including one that has made the state a sanctuary for people seeking abortions who live in states where such practices have been severely limited.
California, the nation’s most populous state, was the first to mandate that by 2035 all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs sold in California be electric, hydrogen-powered or plug-in hybrids. The state also extends state-funded health care to all low-income residents regardless of their immigration status.
Newsom hasn’t provided details about what actions the lawmakers will consider but said he wanted funding in place before Trump’s inauguration day, Jan. 20. The state spent roughly $42 million in litigation costs during the first Trump administration, officials said.
California is projected to face a $2 billion budget deficit next year, with bigger shortfalls ahead. Gabriel, who sued the first Trump administration in 2017 when it tried to end a program to shield young immigrants from being deported, said lining up the funding now is “a wise investment.”
California successfully clawed back $57 million between 2017 and 2018 after prevailing in a lawsuit to block the Trump administration from putting immigration enforcement conditions on certain federal law enforcement grants. Another legal victory over the citizenship question in the 2020 census forced the federal government to return $850,000 to the state, according to the attorney general’s office.
“We are positioned, if necessary, to be the tip of the spear of the resistance and to push back against any unlawful or unconstitutional actions by the Trump administration,” said Gabriel, who chairs the budget committee.
During Trump’s first presidency, Democratic attorneys general banded together to file lawsuits over immigration, Trump’s travel ban for residents of Muslim countries, the environment, immigration and other topics. But Trump has one possible advantage this time around: He was aggressive in nominating conservative jurists to federal courts at all levels, including the Supreme Court.
Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper with a woman’s first name in recent days as the Republican presidential nominee focuses his closing message on a hypermasculine appeal to men.
On a Friday morning post on Trump’s social media site Truth Social, the former president referred to one of the most prominent openly gay journalists in the U.S. as “Allison Cooper.”
Trump made the subtext even more explicit later Friday during a rally in Traverse City, Michigan, where he criticized a town hall Cooper hosted with Vice President Kamala Harris.
“If you watched her being interviewed by Allison Cooper the other night, he’s a nice person. You know Allison Cooper? CNN fake news,” Trump said, before pausing and saying in a mocking voice: “Oh, she said no, his name is Anderson. Oh, no.”
CNN journalist Anderson Cooper in New York City on Dec. 10, 2023. Mike Coppola / Getty Images for CNN
On Saturday, Trump repeated the name during another Michigan rally, then followed it up during a nighttime reference in Pennsylvania. “They had a town hall,” Trump said in Michigan. “Even Allison Cooper was embarrassed by it. He was embarrassed by it.”
In referring to Cooper with a woman’s name, Trump appeared to turn to a stereotype heterosexual people have long deployed against gay men. Such rhetoric evokes the trope of gay men as effeminate and comes as Trump aims to drive up his appeal among men in the final stages of his bid to return to the White House.
The former president on Friday recorded a three-hour interview with Joe Rogan, a former mixed martial arts commentator whose podcast is wildly popular among young men. On Oct. 19, Trump kicked off a Pennsylvania rally discussing legendary golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for Cooper declined to comment.
