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      Severe Weather Tears Through Midwest

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      A storm, believed to be a tornado, ripped through a mobile home community in eastern Indiana. Ohio and Kentucky were also hit.Tornadoes were reported as storms tore through Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio on Thursday, according to news reports.Local officials believe a tornado hit a trailer park in Winchester, in eastern Indiana, according to 13 WTHR, an NBC News affiliate. However, meteorologists said they were still working to confirm that a tornado had touched down there.Tornadoes in the MidwestLocations of tornado sightings or damage reported by trained spotters. More

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      Will Shortz, New York Times Crossword Editor, Says He Is Recovering From a Stroke

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      Mr. Shortz, who has been with The Times for three decades and also hosts NPR’s “Sunday Puzzle,” said on Sunday that he had a stroke in February but was recovering.Will Shortz, crossword editor of The New York Times and the host of NPR’s “Sunday Puzzle,” is recovering from a stroke, he said on Sunday.Mr. Shortz, who is 71 and has been with The Times for three decades, shared the health update in a recorded message that aired on Sunday at the end of the puzzle quiz segment during the NPR program “Weekend Edition Sunday.”“Hey guys, this is Will Shortz. Sorry I’ve been out the last few weeks. I had a stroke on February 4, and have been in rehabilitation since then, but I am making progress,” he said in the message. “I’m looking forward to being back with new puzzles soon.”Ayesha Rascoe, the host of “Weekend Edition Sunday,” wished Mr. Shortz a speedy recovery.“We here at ‘Weekend Edition,’ we love Will and I know that everybody at home does too and we are rooting for him and we are so hopeful and know that he will feel better soon,” she said during the segment.Mr. Shortz, who last year celebrated his 30th anniversary as crossword editor at The Times, also founded the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, spent 15 years as the editor of Games magazine, and has appeared weekly as the puzzle master on “Weekend Edition Sunday.”“When I was a kid, I imagined a life where I’d be sitting in an attic somewhere, making my little puzzles for $15 each, somehow surviving,” he said in a 2017 interview with The Times. “I actually wrote a paper in eighth grade about what I wanted to do with my life, and it was to be a professional puzzle maker.”Despite skepticism from his middle school teacher about that dream, Mr. Shortz went on to self-design a degree at Indiana University in enigmatology — the scientific study of puzzles as it is related to semiotics, culture and cognition. He also studied law.In 1993, Mr. Shortz became the Times’s fourth puzzle editor, and, in an interview last year, he recalled telling his hiring editor at the time that he hoped to “maintain the quality and intellectual rigor of the Crossword” while bringing in young contributors, fresh themes and modern vocabulary.The content of the crosswords, he said, should have lasting cultural impact, which he defined as “at least five to 10 years.”Mr. Shortz could not be immediately reached on Sunday for further comment about his recovery, and when he might return to work.Jordan Cohen, a spokesman for The New York Times, said in an email that the newspaper had been in “regular contact” with Mr. Shortz and wished him “the best on his path to what is expected to be a full recovery.” Mr. Cohen added, “We look forward to having him back at work when he is ready.”A spokeswoman from NPR shared Mr. Shortz’s aired statement by email on Sunday, but did not immediately respond to questions about when he might return to work. More

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      Appeals Court Allows Indiana Ban on Transition Care for Minors to Take Effect

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      A lower court had mostly blocked enforcement of a state law that banned gender-transition care for minors, but a federal appellate court lifted that injunction on Tuesday.Indiana’s ban on hormone treatments and puberty blockers for transgender minors can go into effect, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday, undoing a lower court decision last year that had largely blocked the law.The three-paragraph ruling by a panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, based in Chicago, said it was staying a preliminary injunction that the district court had issued in June, just before the law was scheduled to take effect last summer.The appellate judges did not explain their reasoning but simply said that a full opinion on the case would be issued in the future.The decision further unsettles the national legal landscape around transgender care for minors, with bans blocked in some states but not others, and it could lead to abrupt changes in treatment for young people in Indiana.“This ruling is beyond disappointing and a heartbreaking development for thousands of transgender youth, their doctors and their families,” the American Civil Liberties Union and the A.C.L.U. of Indiana, which brought the lawsuit challenging the ban, said in a statement. “As we and our clients consider our next steps, we want all the transgender youth of Indiana to know this fight is far from over,” the statement added.The Indiana attorney general, Todd Rokita, whose office defended the law in court, said on social media that “we are proud to win this fight.”“Our common-sense state law, banning dangerous and irreversible gender-transition procedures for minors, is now enforceable,” said Mr. Rokita, a Republican. Republican-led states have raced to ban gender-transition care for minors in recent years, leading to a series of lawsuits in federal and state courts that so far have had mixed results. Many legal experts on both sides of the issue expect the legality of the bans to ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.The Indiana ban passed the Republican-controlled legislature last spring by large margins and was signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb, a Republican. Supporters of the law claimed they were seeking to protect young people from making life-altering decisions that they might later regret.Families of transgender children sued to block the law, saying that it would put transgender youths at immediate risk of unwanted changes to their bodies, which would have lifelong consequences.A federal district judge, James Patrick Hanlon, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, temporarily blocked portions of the law banning hormone treatments and puberty blockers for minors while the lawsuit proceeded. He allowed a ban on gender-transition surgeries for minors to take effect as scheduled.But after hearing arguments this month, a three-judge panel from the Seventh Circuit, made up of two judges appointed by Republican presidents and one appointed by a Democratic president, lifted Judge Hanlon’s injunction. More

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      US supreme court won’t hear case over bathrooms for transgender students

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      The US supreme court has decided it will not hear a case centering on the debate over bathrooms for transgender students.The decision came on Tuesday despite an appeal from Indiana’s metropolitan school district of Martinsville.Martinsville school district officials hoped the nation’s highest court would not require allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choosing.But the supreme court rejected the case without comment.Federal appeals courts are divided over whether school policies enforcing restrictions on which bathrooms transgender students can use violate federal law or the US constitution.In the 2023 case court brought by the Martinsville metropolitan school district, the Chicago-based US seventh circuit court of appeals ruled in favor of transgender boys, granting them access to the boys’ bathroom.The seventh circuit’s opinion, written by judge Diane Wood, said that she expected the nation’s highest court to eventually be involved.Wood wrote: “Litigation over transgender rights is occurring all over the country, and we assume that at some point the supreme court will step in with more guidance than it has furnished so far.”The federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, also has ruled to allow transgender students to use the gendered bathroom with which they identify. But the US appellate court based in Atlanta ruled against granting that legal ability.Court battles over transgender rights are ongoing across the country. And at least nine states are restricting transgender students to bathrooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth.Some claim it’s a move in violation of Title IX, the US civil rights law passed in 1972 which prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding.In 2021, the supreme court rejected hearing a similar case involving a Virginia school, upholding a lower court’s ruling that the Gloucester county school board’s decision to prohibit a transgender boy from using the boy’s restroom was unlawful.Battles over transgender students’ right to play for their preferred sports teams are also taking place.Last year, supreme court justices decided against taking up a case that started after a West Virginia school district banned a transgender girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson, from competing for a girls’ track and cross-country teams. The decision upheld a lower court’s ruling that Pepper-Jackson could compete for the girls’ teams if she wanted.The Joe Biden administration last year weighed in on the debate, proposing that schools may block some transgender athletes from competing on sports teams that match their gender identities under certain circumstances while arguing against blanket bans.The Department of Education wrote in April 2023: “The proposed rule would establish that policies violate Title IX when they categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are.“The proposed rule also recognizes that in some instances, particularly in competitive high school and college athletic environments, some schools may adopt policies that limit transgender students’ participation.”
      The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Indiana supreme court clears way for Republican abortion ban

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      The Indiana supreme court ruled on Friday that the state’s abortion ban does not violate the state constitution, removing a major hurdle to enforcing the ban Republicans approved last summer.The court’s decision overturns a county judge’s ruling that the ban probably violates the state constitution’s privacy protections, which she said are stronger than those found in the US constitution. That judge’s order has allowed abortions to continue in Indiana since September, despite the ban.An opinion from three of the court’s five justices said that while Indiana’s constitution provides some protection of abortion rights, the “General Assembly otherwise retains broad legislative discretion for determining whether and the extent to which to prohibit abortions”.All five Indiana supreme court justices were appointed by Republican governors.The Republican state attorney general, Todd Rokita, issued a statement praising the decision: “We celebrate this day – one long in coming, but morally justified. Thank you to all the warriors who have fought for this day that upholds LIFE.”Although the court’s decision strikes down the injunction blocking the ban, it was not immediately clear how soon the ban would take effect. The justices returned the case to the county judge for further action, and left open the possibility of a narrower challenge to the ban.Indiana’s abortion ban also faces a separate court challenge over claims it violates the state’s 2015 religious freedom law signed by GOP the then governor, Mike Pence.Indiana became the first state to enact tighter abortion restrictions, acting in August, after the US supreme court’s eliminated federal protections by overturning Roe v Wade in June 2022.Most Republican-controlled states have enacted tighter abortion restrictions since the US supreme court’s ruling last summer. All the restrictions have been challenged in court.In the past year, judges in Arizona, Iowa and South Carolina have ruled that the bans are not permissible under the state constitutions.Besides Indiana, enforcement of restrictions are on hold as courts decide the cases in Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah and Wyoming. In North Dakota, lawmakers hav since adopted a different ban to replace the one that was blocked. In South Carolina, another ban has been put into place and put on hold by a court. And in North Carolina, a federal judge weighed whether to temporarily block parts of new abortion restrictions set to take effect on Saturday.Democratic-led states, such as Indiana’s neighbors of Illinois and Michigan, have mostly taken steps to protect abortion access.The Indiana ban would eliminate the licenses for all seven abortion clinics in the state and ban the vast majority of abortions even in the earliest stages of a pregnancy. It includes exceptions allowing abortions at hospitals in cases of rape or incest before 10 weeks post-fertilization; to protect the life and physical health of the mother; and if a fetus is diagnosed with a lethal anomaly.The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which represented Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinic operators, argued before the supreme court in January that the state constitution’s liberty protections provide a right to privacy and to make decisions on whether to have children.The state attorney general’s office countered that Indiana had laws against abortion when its current constitution was drafted in 1851 and that the county judge’s ruling would wrongly create an abortion right.The Indiana supreme court’s decision said the state constitution “protects a woman’s right to an abortion that is necessary to protect her life or to protect her from a serious health risk”.The majority opinion, however, also found that the constitution “generally permits the General Assembly to prohibit abortions which are unnecessary to protect a woman’s life or health, so long as the legislation complies with the constitutional limits that apply to all legislation, such as those limiting legislation to a proper exercise of the police power and providing privileges and immunities equally”.A separate court challenge to the ban is ongoing as another county judge in December sided with residents who claim it violates the state’s religious freedom law, which Republican legislators pushed through in 2015 and sparked a widespread national backlash as critics argued it allowed discrimination against gay people.The state supreme court in January turned down a request from the attorney general’s office that it immediately take up the religious freedom lawsuit. The state’s intermediate court of appeals is scheduled to hear arguments over that lawsuit on 12 September.The Marion county judge Heather Welch in December agreed with five residents who hold Jewish, Muslim and spiritual faiths and who argued that the ban would violate their religious rights on when they believe abortion is acceptable. For now it only directly affects those plaintiffs – legal experts say anyone else claiming religious protections of their abortion rights would need their own court order. More

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      Judge blocks implementation of Indiana ban on treatment for trans minors

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      A US federal judge on Friday issued an order stopping an Indiana ban on puberty blockers and hormones for transgender minors from taking effect as scheduled 1 July.Indiana’s American Civil Liberties Union sought the temporary injunction in its legal challenge of the Republican-backed law, which was enacted this spring amid a national push by politically conservative legislatures to curb LGBTQ+ rights.The order from US district court judge James Patrick Hanlon will allow the law’s prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries to take effect. Hanlon’s order also blocks provisions that would prohibit Indiana doctors from communicating with out-of-state doctors about gender-affirming care for their patients younger than 18.The ACLU filed the lawsuit within hours after the Republican governor, Eric Holcomb, signed the bill on 5 April. The challenge, on behalf of four youths undergoing transgender treatments and an Indiana doctor who provides such care, argued the ban would violate the US constitution’s equal protection guarantees and trampled upon the rights of parents to decide medical treatment for their children.Indiana’s Republican-dominated legislature approved the ban after contentious hearings that primarily featured testimony from vocal opponents, with many arguing the gender-affirming care lessened the risk of depression and suicide among transgender youth. More

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      Representative Jim Banks Announces Senate Bid in Indiana

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      The seat will be open as Senator Mike Braun runs for governor instead.Representative Jim Banks, a staunch conservative with the backing of a deep-pocketed political action committee, opened his bid for an Indiana Senate seat on Tuesday with an ad highlighting his deployment to Afghanistan and issuing a broadside against “radical socialist Democrats.”Mike Braun, who currently holds the seat and is one of the state’s two Republican senators, will run for governor next year, creating an opening that could lead to a crowded primary fight in the reliably Republican state. Mr. Banks, who recently led the House’s Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus that is broader and less confrontational than the House’s Freedom Caucus, turned to the Senate after he lost his bid to be whip, the No. 3 Republican position in the G.O.P.’s new House majority.He enters the contest with the backing of the Club for Growth, a moneyed conservative political action committee that spent millions of dollars to get its preferred House and Senate candidates across the line in the November midterms. The group and its super PAC “are prepared to spend whatever it takes to help Banks secure the nomination and victory,” its president, David McIntosh, said Tuesday.The Club for Growth is already spending money against another possible candidate, the former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, whom it considers too conciliatory. Mr. Banks signaled that he too would focus on Mr. Daniels, who was also president of Purdue University and a White House budget director under President George W. Bush. Mr. Daniels a decade ago called for a truce on cultural issues, a stance Mr. Banks appeared to call out in an interview with Politico, saying that issues like abortion and gender “matter more than at any point in my lifetime.”“I’ll never be calling for a truce on social issues or cultural issues,” he told Politico.Mr. Banks also has the endorsement of Representative Larry Bucshon, another Indiana Republican, and Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas.But Indiana’s current governor, Eric Holcomb, who is facing a term limit, is considering a run for the Senate, as is Representative Victoria Spartz, whose Ukrainian birth has elevated her voice in Congress.In his announcement, Mr. Banks called himself “a small-town kid from a working-class home” with deep roots in Indiana and a record fighting overseas and in Congress for “conservative Hoosier values.” He threw in a nod to former President Donald J. Trump, calling him “the strongest president in my lifetime.”Mr. Braun, a businessman who had little political experience when he ran against Senator Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, in 2018, beat him by six percentage points. His victory came two years after Representative Todd Young breezed past Evan Bayh, a Democrat and former senator who had come out of retirement to try a comeback. Those defeats signaled just how difficult a Democratic comeback in the state would be.In November, Mr. Young won re-election with nearly 59 percent of the vote. More

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      Near-total abortion ban with narrow exceptions takes effect in Indiana

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      Near-total abortion ban with narrow exceptions takes effect in IndianaLaw effectively wipes out abortion access for 1.5m people in the state, which was a safe haven for those seeking the procedure A sweeping abortion ban went into effect in Indiana on Thursday, containing only extremely narrow exceptions for medical emergencies, rape and incest and making it the latest state to largely outlaw the procedure in the US.The ban is being challenged in court by the ACLU and several abortion care providers, with hearings set to start on 19 September.Indiana lawmakers passed the legislation during a special legislative session in early August, with a six-week pause before it came into effect. Then, Indiana was the first in the nation to bring in a new law banning abortion after Roe fell. Before that, anti-abortion activists had relied on so-called “trigger laws”, written pre-Roe, to ban the procedure once the supreme court decision came down.But earlier this week West Virginia followed and also passed a sweeping ban.“We will always have more work to do because we need to make it unimaginable to end an unborn baby’s life,” the Republican state senator Liz Brown said when she backed the bill six weeks ago.The law effectively wipes out abortion access for 1.5 million Indianans of reproductive age, and will have far-reaching consequences as Indiana had become a safe haven for those seeking abortion in other nearby states.Now, residents in places like Ohio, Wisconsin and Kentucky, which have total or near-total abortion bans in place, will have to travel hundreds of miles to neighboring Illinois for the procedure. Meanwhile, other midwestern states, like Michigan, will put abortion rights directly to the public in a ballot in November.The Indiana law – known as SB 1 – is an all-encompassing abortion ban with some extreme restrictions. It limits abortions to cases where there is serious risk to the health or life of the pregnant person, and in the case of a lethal fetal anomaly up to 20 weeks post-fertilization.Similar abortion restrictions in other states have already put the lives of pregnant people at risk, which is of huge concern in a state like Indiana, which has some of the worst maternal and infant mortality rates in the US.The Indiana law allows abortions in the case of rape or incest – but only up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. Indiana threw rape and incest exceptions into the spotlight on an international stage early this year, after a 10-year-old girl travelled to the state from Ohio after being raped. Dr Caitlin Bernard, the girl’s OB-GYN, spoke out about the case after the 10-year-old was denied an abortion in her home state due to a trigger law in Ohio that does not include exceptions for rape.The ban puts a limit on where abortions can be performed, specifically banning abortion clinics from performing the procedure. Instead, abortions must be performed in hospitals or surgical centers owned by hospitals. That has left hospitals scurrying to set up special units and work out their options – previously hospitals performed only a tiny fraction of abortions happening in state.TopicsIndianaAbortionUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More