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      Read the Supreme Court’s Decision on Transgender Care for Minors

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      26

      UNITED STATES v. SKRMETTI

      SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

      espouse support for transgender individuals. 13
      Transgender persons, moreover, have a defining charac- teristic (incongruence between sex and gender identity) that plainly “bears no relation to [the individual’s] ability to perform or contribute to society.”” Cleburne, 473 U. S., at 441. As a group, the class is no more “large, diverse, and amorphous,”” ante, at 4 (opinion of BARRETT, J.); ante, at 14 (ALITO, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment), than most races or ethnic groups, many of which similarly include individuals with “a huge variety”” of identities and experiences, ante, at 5 (opinion of BARRETT, J.). (Not all racial, ethnic, or religious minorities, for example, “carry an obvious badge’ of their membership in the disadvan- taged class.” Cf. ante, at 16 (opinion of ALITO, J.).) 14 As evidenced by the recent rise in discriminatory state and fed- eral policies and the fact that transgender people “are un- derrepresented in every branch of government,” Grimm, 972 F. 3d, at 611–613, moreover, the class lacks the politi- cal power to vindicate its interests before the very legisla- tures and executive agents actively singling them out for discriminatory treatment. See Lyng v. Castillo, 477 U. S. 635, 638 (1986). In refusing to say as much, the Court today renders transgender Americans doubly vulnerable to state- sanctioned discrimination.¹

      13 See Order, United States v. Shilling, No. 24A1030 (2025); see also Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Bi- ological Truth to the Federal Government, Exec. Order No. 14168, 90 Fed. Reg. 8615 (2025).
      14 See, e.g., L. Noe-Bustamante, A. Gonzalez-Barrera, K. Edwards, L. Mora, & M. Hugo Lopez, Measuring the Racial Identity of Latinos, Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnic-
      ity/2021/11/04/measuring-the-racial-identity-of-latinos/

      (highlighting

      the range of self-reported skin color among people who identify as La- tino).
      15 Of course, regardless of whether transgender persons constitute a suspect class, courts must strike down any law that reflects the kind of “irrational prejudice” that this Court has recognized as an illegitimate More

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      How Florida’s Attempt to Let Teens Sleep Longer Fell Apart

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      After lawmakers required high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m., school administrators complained that it was unworkable. Last month, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a repeal.Florida’s brief attempt to let high school students sleep longer began two years ago when one of the state’s most powerful politicians listened to an audiobook.The book, “Why We Sleep,” argues that sufficient sleep is fundamental to nearly every aspect of human functioning. Paul Renner, then the Republican speaker of the State House, said reading it turned him into a “sleep evangelist”; he started tracking his own sleep and pressing the book on other lawmakers.To give teenagers more time to rest, he pushed for a new law that would require public high schools to start no earlier than 8:30 a.m. and middle schools no earlier than 8 a.m. In 2023, Florida became only the second state — after California, its political opposite — to adopt such a requirement, and it asked schools to comply by 2026.“School start times are one of those issues that both Republicans and Democrats can get behind,” Mr. Renner said in an interview.This year, it all fell apart.Facing growing opposition from school administrators who said the later times were unworkable and costly, the Legislature repealed the requirement last month.Florida’s experiment was over before it began, an example of a policy driven by a single powerful lawmaker that flopped once he was termed out of office. It also illustrates how, even as concerns grow about the well-being of American teenagers, a modest scheduling shift with broad support from scientific and medical experts can struggle to gain traction.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In a Year of Working Dangerously, Fear of Trump Marks Public Service Awards

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      The Trump administration’s large cuts to the federal work force turned an annual celebration of federal workers into a reminder of loss.Every year in Washington, hundreds of federal workers put on gowns and tuxedos to honor colleagues who battle disease, pursue criminals and invent new technology, in what is billed as the Oscars of public service. Tearful honorees call co-workers and families onstage, and cabinet secretaries and the president offer thanks in person or by video.Things looked different this year.These are difficult times to be a nonpartisan federal expert, as the Trump administration has cast civil servants as villains and forced out a quarter-million of them. For the first time in the two-decade history of the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals, the federal employee of the year — the biggest honor — was no longer a federal employee.David Lebryk, a former top Treasury Department official, was forced out of his career position for refusing to grant Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency what he considered unlawful access to the government’s payment system.In accepting his award on Tuesday night, Mr. Lebryk noted that “most of my career was spent trying to be unnoticed.” But he referred to the circumstances that led to his resignation, and offered a credo for public service.“It is important to exercise principled leadership, make difficult decisions, have the courage and conviction to stand behind those decisions and be accountable and ultimately prepared to accept the consequences of those decisions,” he said.There were no other acceptance speeches for awards given at the event — a departure from previous years — because some honorees said they were fearful of even inadvertently irking the administration. At least one winner turned down the award because the worker’s boss, a Trump appointee, forbade the worker to accept it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ohio Officer Won’t Be Charged in Fatal Shooting of Teenager

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      The teenager, Ryan Hinton, was shot by a police officer responding to a stolen vehicle report on May 1. The youth’s father is accused of killing a sheriff’s deputy with his car.A police officer in Cincinnati will not be charged in the fatal shooting of a teenager whose father is accused of intentionally striking and killing a sheriff’s deputy with his car the day after his son’s death, prosecutors said.Connie Pillich, the prosecuting attorney for Hamilton County, said at a news conference on Tuesday that the officer, whom she did not identify, was “legally justified in his use of force” and declined to send the case to a grand jury.The teenager, Ryan Hinton, was fatally shot by a police officer who was responding to a report of a stolen vehicle on May 1. Mr. Hinton had a fully loaded gun that he pointed at officers when they confronted him, Ms. Pillich said.“I’m confident that my decision was based on every fact available and was made with due diligence and the utmost care,” the prosecutor said.Fanon A. Rucker, a lawyer for Mr. Hinton’s family, said in remarks after the news conference that the family planned to file a lawsuit.The police were investigating a report of a stolen vehicle when they found Mr. Hinton and three other people in the stolen car. When officers approached the vehicle, the four men ran. One of the officers saw Mr. Hinton fall as he ran away and heard the sound of metal hitting the pavement, Ms. Pillich said.In audio from police dash camera footage played at the news conference, another responding officer can be heard yelling, “He’s got a gun,” before shots are fired.Ms. Pillich said the officer who had fired the fatal shots told investigators that he had heard the warning about the gun and saw Mr. Hinton point a gun at him, after which the officer fired his weapon.The father, Rodney L. Hinton, 38, is accused of intentionally driving his car into a Hamilton County sheriff’s deputy who was directing traffic outside a University of Cincinnati graduation event on May 2, a day after the son’s death, according to the prosecutor’s office, which filed charges last month.A lawyer who had been representing the family said that they had gone to the Cincinnati police chief’s office earlier that day to see the body-camera footage of the confrontation and that Mr. Hinton had become visibly upset and left before the video was over.The elder Mr. Hinton pleaded not guilty last month to two counts of aggravated murder, one count of murder and two counts of felonious assault. He faces the death penalty if he is convicted of aggravated murder.Clyde Bennett, Mr. Hinton’s lawyer, said that he was being held without bond at the Clermont County jail. More

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      NYT Crossword Answers for June 18, 2025

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      Eli Cotham floats an idea.Jump to: Today’s Theme | Tricky CluesWEDNESDAY PUZZLE — No one can predict the life span of an internet meme. When a new snowclone (i.e. replicable phrase) or image macro is making its way through social media sites, it’s anyone’s guess as to when the joke will die a cringe-y death. You won’t see anyone today posting about how “one does not simply” do something. Plays on the William Carlos Williams poem about the plums in the icebox have largely fallen out of favor.The meme that inspired today’s theme and crossword, constructed by Eli Cotham, became popular online in 2017. Honestly, I didn’t get the appeal. When it spawned a game show on Netflix in 2020, I was genuinely baffled. But now that the expression has made its way into the New York Times Crossword, I have no choice but to concede defeat. I guess 58A is here to stay.Today’s ThemeA certain modern-day [Rainy-day game for children] is the witty grounds for entries at 16-, 24-, 35- and 50-Across. THE FLOOR IS LAVA (58A) has one rule: Players need to avoid touching the floor at all costs.When interpreted in a different way, each of these themed entries describes a means of staying off the ground. You can COUNTERBALANCE (16A), as in balance on top of a counter. From there, you may TABLE-HOP (24A) or COUCH SURF (35A). You can even BAR CRAWL (50A). Any other strategies for avoiding the lava? Feel free to share them in the comments.Tricky Clues13A. As a figure of speech, [Look bad?] normally refers to optics. But this clue ends in a question mark, which usually means that the entry has a more literal interpretation. Here, it’s about giving someone a bad look: OGLE.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NAACP Won’t Invite Trump to Its National Convention, Breaking 116-Year Tradition

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      The move by the N.A.A.C.P., the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, marked a new low in its relationship with the Trump administration.The N.A.A.C.P. will not invite President Trump to its national convention, breaking from a 116-year tradition of inviting the president to the marquee event of the largest and oldest U.S. civil rights organization.Derrick Johnson, the organization’s president, said in a statement that the decision was motivated by Mr. Trump’s policies, which he said had set back civil rights.“Donald Trump is attacking our democracy and our civil rights,” Mr. Johnson said. He added: “The president has signed unconstitutional executive orders to oppress voters and undo federal civil rights protections; he has illegally turned the military on our communities, and he continually undermines every pillar of our democracy.”The move marked a new low in the relationship between the N.A.A.C.P., which advocates for the rights of African Americans and other minority groups, and Mr. Trump. He has never attended the convention while serving as president, and the organization has vigorously confronted him in high-profile legal battles and symbolic statements.The acrimony has intensified in the second Trump administration, as Mr. Trump has cracked down on diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government. The N.A.A.C.P. and affiliated organizations have been heavily involved in lawsuits seeking to undo Mr. Trump’s executive orders banning D.E.I. practices.In a statement, Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said that “the N.A.A.C.P. isn’t advancing anything but hate and division, while the President is focused on uniting our country.”Mr. Johnson noted in his statement that there is a long history of both Democratic and Republican presidents attending the convention: President Harry S. Truman spoke at the event in 1947 — a year before he signed an executive order desegregating the military. President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended in 1954 and praised the landmark Supreme Court decision banning public school racial segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. President Ronald Reagan received a cool reception when he spoke at the convention in 1981, vowing in his speech that “we will not retreat on the nation’s commitment to equal treatment of all citizens.” More

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      Trump to Again Extend TikTok’s Reprieve From U.S. Ban

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      The president plans to sign another executive order this week that would give the popular video app more time to change its ownership structure.President Trump intends to again extend the deadline for when TikTok must be separated from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, or face a ban in the United States, its third reprieve this year.Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump would sign an executive order this week giving TikTok 90 more days — to mid-September — to find a new owner to comply with a federal law that requires the company to change its ownership structure to resolve national security concerns. TikTok’s current deadline is Thursday.“As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark,” Ms. Leavitt said in a statement.Mr. Trump has repeatedly declined to enforce the law, which the Supreme Court upheld in January after Congress passed it with wide bipartisan support last year. The app’s future is part of the discussion in his administration’s ongoing trade talks with China.Mr. Trump, who issued similar delays in January and in April, has given TikTok an unexpected lifeline after its future in the United States appeared to be doomed. The president tried to ban TikTok in his first term but flipped his stance on the app last year — a shift that is credited in part to one of his donors, who has a sizable stake in ByteDance, as well as his own growing popularity on the app.The repeated extensions have raised concerns among a handful of lawmakers, who have urged Mr. Trump to clarify his plans for TikTok or force it to stop operating in the United States. They and others in Washington worry that TikTok could hand over sensitive U.S. user data to Beijing, like location information, or that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations to sway opinions and spread misinformation in the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Adams Bars Reporter From News Conferences for Being ‘Disrespectful’

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      After a contentious exchange, Mayor Eric Adams said, “Make sure security knows he’s not allowed back into this room.”Chris Sommerfeldt, who covers City Hall for The Daily News, spent part of Tuesday reporting on ICE agents’ arrest of Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, at a Manhattan courthouse.By then, he was already the subject of some interest himself, after Mayor Eric Adams took the extraordinary step of barring him in the future from the weekly City Hall news conferences that are reporters’ only regular chance to ask Mr. Adams whatever they want.The mayor, whose interactions with reporters have often been contentious, imposed the ban after calling Mr. Sommerfeldt “disruptive” and “disrespectful” for shouting questions without being called on first, as is the custom at the so-called off-topic events.Mr. Sommerfeldt, one of two Daily News reporters who cover City Hall, has not been called on at one of the weekly events in more than three months, the newspaper reported.The exchange that preceded the mayor’s unusual move came as he discussed his plans for the general election campaign.Elected as a Democrat in 2021, Mr. Adams is skipping the party primary this year and has said he intends to run for re-election on two ballot lines of his own creation: EndAntiSemitism and Safe&Affordable.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More