Supreme court decision ‘authorizes untold harm to transgender children’, says Justice Sotomayor in her dissent
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision “does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and “invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight”.
This, she said, “authorizes … untold harm to transgender children”.
This case presents an easy question: whether SB1’s ban on certain medications, applicable only if used in a manner ‘inconsistent with … sex’, contains a sex classification. Because sex determines access to the covered medications, it clearly does. Yet the majority refuses to call a spade a spade. Instead, it obfuscates a sex classification that is plain on the face of this statute, all to avoid the mere possibility that a different court could strike down SB1, or categorical healthcare bans like it.
The Court’s willingness to do so here does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight. It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them. Because there is no constitutional justification for that result, I dissent.
She acknowledged her “sadness” and said the decision “abandons transgender children and their families to political whims”.
[T]he majority subjects a law that plainly discriminates on the basis of sex to mere rational-basis review. By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.
Key events
Rachel Leingang
I talked with Minnesota’s Republican House speaker Lisa Demuth, a colleague and friend of Melissa Hortman’s who worked closely with her in a tied state House this year.
Demuth said she learned a ton by watching how Hortman worked, and despite their political differences, they had a mutual respect. She recalled their shared love of Cheetos as a late-night snack during long legislative sessions and said Hortman was always direct, true to her word and looking for creative solutions even in rocky times.
Since Hortman’s death by a gunman this weekend, Demuth, who is leading the chamber through this moment, said the body’s human resources department is working to get resources to all members of the legislature and staff to make sure they have assistance. For her personally, on the fifth day since the murders, she said she has cried less today.
A vigil is planned for the state capitol this evening. Hortman’s family has also put up a GoFundMe to support the Hortmans’ two adult children with the costs of their parents’ funerals and repairs to the home, cars and garage that were damaged by the shootings. “In the ensuing police response to capture the assassin, their home, garage and cars were severely damaged in a hail of bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters,” the fundraiser notes.
Related: Tough, whip-smart and selfless: Melissa Hortman, ‘singular force for democracy’, remembered
People are checking in with each other, Demuth said, and “there’s an extra layer of compassion, not dependent on political alignment, but just people are like, how are you doing? And genuinely asking that and pausing for a response.”
In a time of heightened divisiveness, the tragic shootings can give people an opportunity to extend grace to each other regardless of their political disagreements and see each other first as people, she said.
“There are those moments that are fewer now than maybe they were years ago, something that we can recapture, where we can know each other as people,” Demuth said. “And then even when we disagree, it doesn’t have to become personal.”
Trump again knocks Fed’s Powell and muses about appointing himself to lead central bank
Donald Trump has once again knocked Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for what he expected would be a decision not to lower interest rates and said the man he put in the role during his last term had done a poor job.
Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, mused about appointing himself to lead the US central bank, based on his dissatisfaction with Powell.
Maybe I should go to the Fed. Am I allowed to appoint myself at the Fed? I’d do a much better job than these people.
Trump has long criticized Powell and sparked market concern earlier this year when he suggested the central bank chief’s termination couldn’t come fast enough.
Trump has since walked back from that rhetoric, saying he would not fire Powell before his term as chair ends next year, but he has not held back on his broader criticism – he has called Powell a “major loser” – and has made clear that he will not ask Powell to stay on as the central bank’s leader.
He told reporters:
What I’m going to do is, you know, he gets out in about nine months, he has to, he gets fortunately terminated … I would have never reappointed him, Biden reappointed him. I don’t know why that is, but I guess maybe he was a Democrat … he’s done a poor job.
The Federal Reserve is expected to keep interest rates unchanged today as its policymakers weigh signs of a cooling economy, the risk of higher inflation from US import tariffs, and the escalating crisis in the Middle East.
Trump expressed disappointment in advance of the decision and underscored his belief that the Fed had been too late at cutting rates.
I call him ‘too late Powell’ because he’s always too late. I mean, if you look at him, every time I did this I was right 100%, he was wrong.
Vinay Prasad, the director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, has been named as the health regulator’s chief medical and science officer, STAT News reports, citing an internal memo.
Prasad will also lead the center that regulates vaccines, and gene therapies. The agency’s chief scientist and chief medical officer have typically been two distinct roles. Prasad will now hold three separate jobs at the agency, solidifying his position as a top adviser to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, who announced the appointment to the staff, according to the STAT News report.
Hegseth says he would remove troops from US cities if supreme court ordered it
Pete Hegseth said that he would remove military troops from American cities that Trump deployed to assist federal law enforcement officers if the Defense Department is directed to as a result of a supreme court ruling.
“If the supreme court orders you to remove troops from American cities, will you do so?” asked senator Elizabeth Warren.
“As I’ve said senator, I don’t believe district courts should determine national security policy, but if the supreme court rules on a topic, we will abide by that,” the defense secretary said.
Trump deployed National Guard troops and US Marines to Los Angeles in response to protests against the administration’s immigration enforcement policies. The move sparked widespread controversy, including among the leaders of the Los Angeles police department and California governor Gavin Newsom.
US supreme court rules against Texas over nuclear waste storage
The US supreme court has ruled against the state of Texas and oil industry interests in their challenge to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) authority to license certain nuclear waste storage facilities.
The 6-3 ruling reversed a lower court’s decision declaring a license awarded by the NRC to a company called Interim Storage Partners to operate a nuclear waste storage in western Texas unlawful. The NRC is the federal agency that regulates nuclear energy in the US.
The NRC issued a license in 2021 to Interim Storage Partners, a joint venture of France-based Orano and Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists, to build a nuclear waste storage facility in Andrews County in Texas, near the New Mexico border.
The US government and the company had appealed the decision by the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the NRC lacked authority to issue the license based on a law called the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The appeal was brought under Democratic former President Joe Biden and was continued under Republican president Donald Trump.
Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ advocacy group, released a statement following the Supreme court decision upholding the Tennessee ban on youth gender-affirming care. The statement says that the ruling is “yet another example of why governments, politicians, courts, and extremists have no place in the exam room.” It reads:
“We are profoundly disappointed by the US Supreme Court’s decision to side with the Tennessee legislature’s anti-transgender ideology and further erode the rights of transgender children and their families and doctors. We are grateful to the plaintiffs, families, and the ACLU for fighting on behalf of more than 1.3 million transgender adults and 300,000 youth across the nation.
Gender-affirming care is proven to save lives. Major medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, support gender-affirming medical and psychological care because it saves lives and improves mental well-being. Providers, pediatricians, and specialists have been making thoughtful, evidence-based, and age-appropriate health care decisions with families and transgender patients for decades.
Equal access to health care and bodily autonomy are fundamental human rights for every person, including our transgender children and youth. Instead of protecting young transgender people across the nation, states will now feel emboldened to codify discrimination more broadly in health care. This ruling is yet another example of why governments, politicians, courts, and extremists have no place in the exam room, endangering every transgender person. The consequences of this devastating decision will be felt by anyone who needs gender-affirming care; worse for transgender patients already facing widespread discrimination in hostile states.
The Tennessee Equality Project fought this bill in the 2023 legislative session, then stood up for Tennesseans on the steps of the Supreme Court on December 4th, 2024. We are even more determined in our fight for transgender rights across Tennessee and call on our allies to honor transgender youth by taking actions in state and local government. To our transgender community, we see you, we love you, and we stand with you.”
US senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said today that he has asked the Trump administration to provide all 100 senators a classified briefing on the situation unfolding between Israel and Iran that has resulted in days of the two countries trading missile attacks.
“We’ve gotten briefings and I have requested that we get an all-senators classified briefing,” Schumer said, adding that he believes it will be granted.
‘Nobody knows what I’m going to do,’ says Trump on Iran
Speaking outside the White House, Donald Trump declined to answer reporters’ questions on whether the US was planning to join Israel in launching air strikes on Iran or its nuclear facilities.
He said Iran had “reached out” and “wants to negotiate” but he feels “it’s very late to be talking”.
“There’s a big difference between now and a week ago,” Trump said. “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
Trump said that Iran had proposed to come for talks at the White House. He did not provide details. He described Iran as totally defenceless, with “no air defence whatsoever”.
Meanwhile, defence secretary Pete Hegseth told the Senate armed services committee the US military is “prepared to execute” any decision Trump might make on matters of war and peace, even as he declined to confirm preparations of strike options on Iran.
“If and when those decisions are made, the Department [of Defense] is prepared to execute them,” Hegseth said.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer called the decision part of the Republican “cruel crusade against trans kids” to divert attention away from proposed cuts to Medicaid.
Republicans’ cruel crusade against trans kids is all an attempt to divert attention from ripping healthcare away from millions of Americans. We’ll keep fighting and we’ll keep marching on.
Supreme court decision ‘authorizes untold harm to transgender children’, says Justice Sotomayor in her dissent
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the decision “does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and “invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight”.
This, she said, “authorizes … untold harm to transgender children”.
This case presents an easy question: whether SB1’s ban on certain medications, applicable only if used in a manner ‘inconsistent with … sex’, contains a sex classification. Because sex determines access to the covered medications, it clearly does. Yet the majority refuses to call a spade a spade. Instead, it obfuscates a sex classification that is plain on the face of this statute, all to avoid the mere possibility that a different court could strike down SB1, or categorical healthcare bans like it.
The Court’s willingness to do so here does irrevocable damage to the Equal Protection Clause and invites legislatures to engage in discrimination by hiding blatant sex classifications in plain sight. It also authorizes, without second thought, untold harm to transgender children and the parents and families who love them. Because there is no constitutional justification for that result, I dissent.
She acknowledged her “sadness” and said the decision “abandons transgender children and their families to political whims”.
[T]he majority subjects a law that plainly discriminates on the basis of sex to mere rational-basis review. By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.
The supreme court’s 6-3 decision is a major blow to the transgender community at a time when the Trump administration has taken steps to roll back gains made in recent years.
The court’s majority opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by the other five members of the conservative wing. The three liberal justices dissented.
Roberts wrote:
This case carries with it the weight of fierce scientific and policy debates about the safety, efficacy, and propriety of medical treatments in an evolving field. The voices in these debates raise sincere concerns; the implications for all are profound. The Equal Protection Clause does not resolve these disagreements.
US supreme court upholds Tennessee ban on youth gender-affirming care in loss for transgender rights
Carter Sherman
A Tennessee state law banning gender-affirming care for minors can stand, the US supreme court has ruled, a devastating loss for trans rights supporters in a case that could set a precedent for dozens of other lawsuits involving the rights of transgender children.
The justices’ 6-3 decision effectively protects from legal challenges many efforts by the Trump administration and state governments to roll back protections for transgender people. Another 26 states have laws similar to the one in Tennessee.
The case, United States v Skrmetti, was filed last year by three families of trans children and a provider of gender-affirming care. In oral arguments, the plaintiffs – as well as the US government, then helmed by Joe Biden – argued that Tennessee’s law constituted sex-based discrimination and thus violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Under Tennessee’s law, someone assigned female at birth could not be prescribed testosterone, but someone assigned male at birth could receive those drugs.
Tennessee, meanwhile, has argued that the ban is necessary to protect children from what it termed “experimental” medical treatment. During arguments, the conservative justices seemed sympathetic to that concern, although every major medical and mental health organization in the US has found that gender-affirming care can be evidence-based and medically necessary. These groups also oppose political bans on such care.
In recent years, the question of transgender children and their rights has consumed an outsized amount of rightwing political discourse. Since 2021, 26 states have passed bans on gender-affirming care for minors, affecting nearly 40% of trans youth in the US. Twenty-six states have also outlawed trans kids from playing on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.
Many of these restrictions have been paused by court challenges, but the supreme court’s decision could have vast implications for those lawsuits’ futures. A study by the Trevor Project, a mental health nonprofit that aims to help LGBTQ+ kids, found that anti-trans laws are linked to a 72% increase of suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary youth.
‘How can you not know the population of Iran?’ Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz get into heated exchange
In a vivid illustration of the enormous schism on the American right over the Iran question, clips from Tucker Carlson’s interview yesterday in which he calls out Texas senator Ted Cruz for not knowing basic facts about Iran have gone viral. The full interview will be out today.
Cruz, who has called for regime change in Iran, could not answer basic facts about the country, including its population size and ethnic makeup, spurring a shouting match with Carlson. At one point a fuming Carlson says to Cruz:
You’re a senator who’s calling for the overthrow of the government and you don’t know anything about the country!
The former Fox News host has been highly critical of the prospect of Trump getting involved in Israel’s war with Iran for being at odds with his isolationist “America First” approach to foreign policy and his administration’s pledge to keep America out of “forever wars” in the Middle East. Trump has responded to his criticisms by repeating his stance that “Iran can’t have nuclear weapon”.
The exchange represents the wider dilemma Trump finds himself in with the issue threatening to split his Maga base, with even Georgia congresswoman and Trump loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene leaping to Carlson’s defence in a major break with the president, saying that anyone who supported intervention in Iran was not “America First”.
Yesterday conservative Republican congressman Thomas Massie, of Kentucky, sided with Democrats to introduce a bill that would block the president from engaging US forces in “unauthorised hostilities” with Iran without congressional approval. “This is not our war,” he said on X.
Trump’s former political strategist, Steve Bannon, also argued on Carlson’s podcast that allowing the “deep state” to drive the US into a war with Iran would “blow up” the coalition of Trump supporters.
Women more worried about economy under Trump than men, poll finds
Lauren Aratani
Women across the political spectrum are more concerned about the state of the US economy and inflation under Donald Trump than men are, according to a new exclusive poll for the Guardian.
More Democrats than Republicans are now concerned about the economy following the president’s return to power. But pessimism was higher for women even among Republicans and independents, according to a new Harris poll.
Overall, 62% of women and 47% of men said that the economy and inflation is getting worse, a gap of 15 percentage points. The gender gap crossed party lines with both Democratic and Republican women expressing greater concerns about the economy than men.
“Here’s what everyone missed: women aren’t being pessimistic about the economy – they’re being realistic,” said Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer of Harris Poll.
Women are experiencing the sharp edge of inflation on essentials like groceries and childcare in ways that stock portfolios can’t capture.
Across questions about their outlook on the state of the economy, most respondents (78%) expressed concerns about the amount of uncertainty, particularly around prices. Yet women appear to be bearing the brunt of Trump’s economic policy, particularly around his tariffs.
More women (71%) than men (62%) reported being their household’s primary shopper. This difference in household shopping responsibility translates into broader gaps in concern over affordability and prices:
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More women said they are very worried about food prices (52% of women compared to 39% of men)
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More women said they’re spending more time trying to find deals or go to more affordable stores (36% versus 26%)
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More women said their financial security is getting worse because of their difficulty in affording essential goods and services (55% versus 46%)
The differences increased when respondents were asked about their comfort in affording their lifestyles in the current economy, including affording a family, a home, life as a single individual, and childcare. Just 27% of women said they felt comfortable affording a family now, compared to 43% of men.
Although confidence in switching jobs was low among all respondents, 34% of men were confident in a job switch compared to 25% of women. Women are also more pessimistic about receiving a meaningful raise this year: 54% of women said they think they’ll get a raise, compared to 63% of men.
US Senate Democrats demand Kennedy explain canceling bird flu vaccine contract
US Senate Democrats have demanded health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr make public the reviews on which his department said it based its decision to cancel a contract for developing a bird flu vaccine.
Donald Trump’s administration last month canceled a $590m contract awarded to Moderna in January by outgoing president Joe Biden’s administration for the late-stage development of its bird flu vaccine for humans, as well as the right to purchase shots.
“This is a grievous mistake that threatens to leave the country unprepared for what experts fear might be the next pandemic – and there appears to be no rationale for this decision other than your ill-informed and dangerous war on vaccines,” senators Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Duckworth wrote in a letter seen by Reuters.
The cancellation endangers American lives and will likely contribute to a 20% rise in the price of eggs this year, they wrote to Kennedy, who has a long history of questioning the safety of vaccines contrary to scientific evidence.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services at the time said the contract was canceled after a comprehensive internal review determined the project did not meet the scientific standards or safety expectations required for continued federal investment.
Warren and Duckworth demanded Kennedy make the review public, alongside a similar review the department cited when it cut funding of a $258m program researching an HIV vaccine. They also asked for a detailed description of how the department decided to end the contracts, and a staff briefing.
“You have failed to justify either of these moves to cripple vaccine research,” Warren and Duckworth wrote. “Furthermore, these decisions appear to be part of your larger, unfounded vendetta against mRNA technology.”
Kennedy named eight members last week to serve on a panel of vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including some who have advocated against vaccines, days after abruptly firing all 17 members who had been serving on the independent committee of experts.
Several of his appointees specifically oppose the mRNA vaccine technology used in some of the newest immunizations such as the Covid-19 vaccine, including by Moderna.
