Supreme Court temporarily extends access to abortion pill mifepristone by mail

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld state bans on transgender girls from participating in girls’ and women’s competitive sports, reversing a pair of lower court decisions that had blocked the bans as violations of Title IX and the 14th Amendment.

The 6-3 decision came from Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The ruling in a pair of cases from West Virginia and Idaho effectively upholds laws in those two states, plus 27 others that block trans girls from teams consistent with their gender identity.

The decision marks the first time the high court has weighed in on the heated national debate over transgender athletes.  

The court’s ruling is a major setback for the estimated 122,000 transgender American teenagers who participate in high school sports, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA.

For trans teens and their families, the dispute has involved a matter of immutable identity and equal opportunity.  

For many states and top U.S. athletic organizations, including the U.S. Olympic Committee and NCAA, the inclusion of trans athletes has been seen as creating an unfair and unsafe playing field.

The competitive advantage boys and men have physically over girls and women has been well established in physically demanding sports by medical research and serves as a primary basis for distinctions between the sexes in athletics.

Studies have shown testosterone produced during male puberty does lead to more muscle mass, larger hearts and lungs, greater body height and longer limbs on average for boys and men, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.

Many transgender teens who have received gender-affirming medical treatment from a young age argue that they lack any physiological advantage because they have not undergone male puberty.

Twenty-one states allow transgender girls to compete on girls’ sports teams, including California and New York, which have laws explicitly protecting the right of trans girls to play.

Becky Pepper Jackson, the only known openly transgender athlete in West Virginia in any sport, sued her state in a bid to continue competing on her high school track team where she throws discus and shot put. Jackson recently won the state championship in girls shot put.

“I’ve been a girl forever, and playing on the guys’ team is going backwards,” she told ABC News in an interview last year.

When West Virginia’s law takes effect, she will no longer be allowed to participate in girls competitive sports leagues. Competing with boys, she said, would “go against who I am.”

Becky, who has openly identified as a girl since third grade, said she has never undergone male puberty, thanks to puberty-blocking medication.

Idaho college student Lindsay Hecox, a former track and cross-country runner who was barred from trying out for her school teams, sued over her state’s ban in 2020. Last year, she asked the Supreme Court to drop her case because she no longer wished to compete in sports and didn’t want to be in the spotlight. However, Idaho fought to keep the case alive.

Lower courts concluded separately that the state bans discriminate “on the basis of sex” in violation of Title IX, the landmark civil rights law that has promoted equal opportunities for women and girls in athletics, and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority reversed those decisions and reinstated the laws.

Last year, the same majority upheld a Tennessee law banning some gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender minors, rejecting claims that the law discriminated “on the basis of sex” and saying that states should have leeway to regulate health care in an area of scientific uncertainty.

In 2020, however, the high court concluded in a landmark decision that a Michigan transgender woman fired by her employer for being transgender was discriminated against “on the basis of sex” under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Justice Neil Gorsuch explained in his majority opinion at the time that her termination was “for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.”

Sixty-nine percent of Americans believe transgender girls should only be allowed to play on boys’ teams, consistent with their gender assigned at birth, according to a June 2025 Gallup survey.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(WASHINGTON) — In the dead of night at 2:09 a.m., the House passed a bill to extend FISA through April 30 by unanimous consent, after Republicans tanked procedural votes on the controversial warrantless surveillance law.

The short-term extension buys GOP leaders more time to continue negotiations amid Republican infighting over the program that was set to expire on Monday.

Despite opposition from some GOP hardliners, Speaker Mike Johnson was this week still trying to determine a path forward to muscle through an 18-month clean extension of the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The program allows the federal government to collect communications of foreigners abroad without a warrant, including when those people are interacting with Americans.

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. government believes it’s a vital tool for protecting the country against “hostile foreign adversaries, including terrorists, proliferators, and spies, and to inform cybersecurity efforts.”

House Republican leaders postponed a debate and a procedural vote on FISA that had been scheduled for 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday. The Senate now will need to consider the legislation.

President Donald Trump has urged Republicans to back the measure and hosted a group of hardliners at the White House Tuesday night to find a path forward as the law is set to expire on Monday.

“I am asking Republicans to UNIFY, and vote together on the test vote to bring a clean Bill to the floor. We need to stick together when this Bill comes before the House Rules Committee today to keep it CLEAN!” Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday.

“Our Military Patriots desperately need FISA 702, and it is one of the reasons we have had such tremendous SUCCESS on the battlefield,” Trump added. “It has already prevented MANY such Attacks, and it is very important that it remain in full force and effect.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe attended the House Republican closed-door conference meeting on Wednesday and also advocated for a clean extension of the program.

Hardline Republicans, who oppose a clean extension of the surveillance tool and demand reforms like a warrant requirement, were not convinced to change their position following the meeting.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris of Maryland said “no” when asked if progress was made on FISA during the meeting.

“They have to deal with the FISA court’s objection to the warrantless searches,” Harris said.

There has been a continued debate over Section 702 because it sometimes allows the government to collect Americans’ communications without a warrant.

“Discussions are ongoing still,” Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona said leaving.

Rep. Keith Self of Texas, who attended the White House meeting on Tuesday night, said he does not believe a clean extension will pass.

“We’ll see … but, I don’t think the clean extension will pass,” he said.

After the meeting, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise suggested some “minor changes” could be made to the legislation to appease the holdouts but did not divulge specifics.

“FISA has been important for our country’s national security,” Scalise said. “We’ve put some important much needed reforms in place the last time it was up for reauthorization and what President Trump has asked is that now we reauthorize it with those reforms in place, and that’s what we’re working to do. So, we’re having some final conversations. Not all of our members are quite there yet.”

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said several Republicans “want to see further reforms” to the program.

“We feel like we need improvements. Obviously, we want greater protections for citizens with respect to warrants,” he said. “We want to make sure that there’s greater penalties, for example, for government officials who abuse their authority and power.”

Scalise said Ratcliffe explained to Republicans how FISA is being “used in the real world to stop bad things from happening.”

As he was leaving, Ratcliffe said the meeting “went great.”

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(FLORIDA) — Florida’s state legislature passed a new congressional map on Wednesday that could allow Republicans to flip up to four seats.

It now goes to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had proposed it earlier this week after teasing mid-decade redistricting for months. The governor has argued that Florida’s population growth and other legal issues meant the state had to redraw its map.

The new map, analysts say, could leave just four Democratic-held districts in the state after the 2026 midterms.

But it’s likely to face legal challenges, particularly because the Florida Constitution has what are known as the Fair Districts Amendments, which prohibit drawing congressional districts “with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent” and includes protections for minority voters and keeping districts contiguous. 

Representatives for DeSantis have argued that the Fair Districts Amendments, approved by voters in 2010, are faulty.

But Democrats have been adamant that the process of considering the map was rushed, and that the mid-decade redistricting gambit will be found illegal by courts.

“This is a map that is designed and intended to rig outcomes, and to benefit one political party, the Republican Party, Donald Trump’s Republican Party, in direct violation of Florida’s constitution,” Democratic state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith said on Wednesday ahead of the vote. 

Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Powers said “Florida got it right.”

“Governor Ron DeSantis and our Legislature have delivered congressional maps that reflect the continued growth of our state that are fair, and constitutional, ensuring Florida voters are represented accurately,” Powers said in a statement on Wednesday.

Some Republican members of Florida’s U.S. House delegation had previously expressed concerns that a map redraw could backfire for the GOP, weakening incumbents while galvanizing Democratic voters.

The passage of Florida’s new map came on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and dealt a blow to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

DeSantis and his team argued that the case and ruling lent credence to Florida redrawing its map.

The new Florida map also comes roughly a week after Republicans faced a loss when Virginia voters approved allowing a new congressional map there that could let Democrats flip up to four seats. The results of that election are currently held up in court.

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