NYC schools chancellor affirms support for trans, other LGBTQ kids in face of Trump policies
The city's public school system allows transgender students to change their name and gender on school records, regardless of legal documentation, according to the regulations linked in the memo. Public school students may also participate in competitive sports and gym classes aligned with their gender identity.
'Our policies remain in effect, and in fact, we have strengthened them in recent years, including updating our guidelines on gender inclusion,' read the letter going home Monday in children's backpacks across the five boroughs.
'I'm proud that at New York City Public Schools, we have robust curricula, resources, and programs to support students who identify as LGBTQ+ and to increase representation and inclusivity within our schools.'
During his first month in office, President Trump signed a series of executive orders, from declaring there are only two sexes on federal documents to excluding transgender students from girls sports, which Trump's allies have pushed as an issue of fairness. Yet another order threatens to pull federal funding from any school found to be teaching 'gender ideology.'
In the midst of those changes, scores of parents called on Aviles-Ramos to issue some kind of acknowledgement of the rhetoric and the reversal of years of precedent at the federal level. While the chancellor showed her support for LGBTQ students at an annual Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) Summit and local town halls, no systemwide communication went out to all families.
Earlier this month, at a sprawling protest to support transgender youth in Union Square where organizers estimated the crowd reached 7,000 people, multiple parents expressed disappointment in the school system's silence.
'I'm disappointed that we haven't heard more supportive statements from our leadership at the DOE,' Brooklyn mom Hallie said on Feb. 8. 'I think pretty much everyone agrees that [Mayor] Adams is under Trump's thumb right now, and we can't count on him to look out for anyone but himself.'
Adams, who said he is refraining from publicly criticizing Trump and dealing with him one-on-one instead, directed his commissioners in a closed-door meeting to follow his lead, including Aviles-Ramos. The mayor has denied any quid pro quo with the Trump administration in exchange for dismissing his federal corruption case.
The schools chancellor's letter on Monday pointed to a few resources, including GSA student clubs, classroom resources featuring the voices of LGBTQ+ people, and mental health support. Aviles-Ramos did not mention Trump by name or any of his specific policies.
For some parents, the direct communication did not go far enough.
'I think this is still too little too late. It would be great if they could actually address the orange elephant in the room,' said Gavin Healy, a progressive member of a Manhattan education council, in an apparent reference to Trump.
Last school year, the panel — Community Education Council 2 — passed a resolution calling on the school system to reconsider its gender inclusive policy in school sports. Then-Schools Chancellor David Banks forcefully condemned the measure, which was nonbinding.
Healy, who voted against the resolution and has since been supporting a push to rescind it, described the absence of an explicit mention of sports as 'concerning.'
'The chancellor's letter still leaves that line of attack open,' he said, 'and that's alarming.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
8 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: The Democrats go ‘Trump lite' in latest plan to save democracy
Democrats have tried everything to beat Donald Trump. But they're only 1 for 3 in presidential elections against him. Twice, they impeached him — but that didn't destroy his political career. Several top Democratic prosecutors brought the force of the law against him, but in trying to bring him down, they only made him stronger. They've tried to 'go high' when he went low. But he went lower and won. And painting Trump as the worst-ever threat to American democracy didn't thwart the greatest White House comeback story in history. So, what do Democrats do now? The latest plan, piloted by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose counteroffensive just won the support of former President Barack Obama, is to be a bit more like Trump — but only up to a point and for a limited time. California state legislators are expected on Thursday to pass bills to set up a statewide referendum in November on redrawing the state's congressional maps in a way that could net Democrats five seats in the House of Representatives. The counterattack went into force after deep-red Texas enacted its plan, ordered by the president, to launch a rare mid-cycle redistricting effort in search of five Republican House seats. Trump is blatantly attempting to save the GOP — and himself — from losing the chamber in the 2026 midterms and is prepared to do anything to prevent it. Texas Democrats made a big noise, leaving the state to block votes on the plan — but like almost all other party schemes to slow Trump, it was doomed to fail. The Texas House passed the redistricting bill on Wednesday; it will now move to the state Senate. Newsom — who has a long and testy history with the president — but who shares some of his instincts for stunt politics — is not just taking on Trump by leveraging the mechanics of government in the Democratic cause. He's also personifying the maxim that one way to defang a bully is to laugh at him. The governor's turned his social media accounts into a parody of the president's own huffing and puffing in block capitals on Truth Social. 'THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN' Newsom wrote after a post on X earlier this month, trolling Trump by mimicking one of his online quirks. This might all seem rather immature and below the dignity of the governor of one of the most powerful states in the union. But it's playing Trump at his own social media game and recognizes that the president has shattered the norms of political speech. A more serious argument many Democrats are now making is that the Republican Party has transformed into such an anti-democratic force that they must do everything to fight back. Sure, it would be more noble for Democrats to stand on principle and refuse to follow Republicans down an authoritarian path by just drawing up more House seats because they feel like it. But they'd be sure to lose. Newsom's response might be cynical. But he's also seized on the Texas redistricting fight because he's one of the few Democrats who have power and know how to use it. He's also channeling palpable demands from the Democratic base for more of a fight. 'He doesn't play by a different set of rules,' Newsom said of Trump last week. 'He doesn't believe in the rules.' On Monday, Newsom seized on Trump's latest Truth Social rant about mail-in voting with his own post on X that aimed to get into the president's head. 'Trump knows he is going to LOSE in 2026,' Newsom wrote. 'His plan to rig new Congressional seats is going to backfire — thanks to California. Now, he's clamoring for other ways to cook the results. This man reeks of DESPERATION.' Newsom is taking a political gamble. There is no guarantee that enough of California's voters will agree with his attempt to change the state Constitution. The California Citizens Redistricting Commission is a cherished plank of state democracy. But as he eyes the White House, the California governor has created a platform to elevate himself over Democratic rivals in galvanizing demands for more urgency in the fight against Trump and his administration challenging election fairness on multiple fronts. In effect, he's soft-launching a bid for the 2028 Democratic nomination without having to make it official. If he succeeds in creating more seats for his party and it captures the House next year, he will claim a lion's share of the credit. Obama addressed the conundrum of whether to play by the rules on redistricting as a true democrat might in a speech on Tuesday night. 'I've had to wrestle with my preference, which would be that we don't have political gerrymandering,' he said at a fundraiser for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. The ex-president added: 'What I also know is that if we don't respond effectively, then this White House and Republican-controlled state governments all across the country, they will not stop, because they do not appear to believe in this idea of an inclusive, expansive democracy.' Obama said he had 'tremendous respect' for Newsom's approach in that Newsom made the California response conditional on what Texas did. He also praised Newsom's proposal to restore the state's independent redistricting committee after the 2030 census — following Trump's term. The 44th president's pragmatism reflects bitter experience, since he rocketed to attention in a 2004 Democratic National Convention address in which he declared, 'There's not a liberal America and a conservative America — there's the United States of America.' Obama might be best remembered for soaring speeches. But eight years since he left the White House, it's often forgotten he could play hardball: His 2012 reelection campaign ruthlessly savaged GOP nominee Mitt Romney's character. Arguing that democracy was not 'self-executing,' Obama said that if Democrats really believe their own rhetoric, they should do something about it. He called for more support for the NDRC, litigation and organizing. And Obama also made striking allusions to the fights against slavery and racial discrimination in the 20th century. 'It took organizing and activism, and people demonstrating and sometimes getting beat or thrown in jail. It took a civil war,' he said. 'It took extraordinary leadership and courage in order to amend the Constitution. And then to make sure that those victories were actually manifested required people to march and go to jail and in some cases, die.' This came against a backdrop of the supine response of law firms, universities and corporate chieftains to Trump's power grabs. Obama's warning posed the immediate question of whether the ex-president will be taking a more prominent political role himself. Obama has been a caustic critic of Trump at key moments — for instance during the 2020 and 2024 Democratic National Conventions, when he warned about his successor's threat to democracy. But he has wide interests in a lucrative retirement, including in film production and advocacy for his post-presidential foundation. And ex-presidents (among many others) know there can be a price for standing up to a successor who has weaponized the Justice Department. And would Obama be an effective force? His efforts in 2024, including a barn-burner speech at the convention in Chicago that was one-upped by former first lady Michelle Obama, couldn't prevent Trump's return to the White House. Many Democrats are pining for a new generation of leaders. And the next Democratic president, whenever he or she arrives, will require fresh vision and energy after the GOP's attempt to eviscerate the government. Meanwhile, Newsom isn't the only Democrat adopting some of Trump's methods to try to gain traction in the age of fragmented media and online anarchy. Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, for instance, has been trolling the president, Trump-style on social media. 'The man in the White House wants to 'crack down' on crime in D.C.… cute,' she wrote on X this week. 'The audacity of sitting in the Oval Office with felony charges and thinking you can lecture anyone on 'law and order.'' Still, Democrats had better be careful. However brazen they get, they'll never match Trump's flame-throwing. A subtext of Trump's populism is that all politics are corrupt. And if voters believe that the Democrats are just as bad as the president, his own more venal behavior won't seem as bad. Trump and MAGA Republicans are trying to create such equivalence. They've portrayed the criminal indictments against Trump during his campaign as the cold-blooded exploitation of government power — even though several of them arose from his attempt to steal the 2020 election. The GOP has better arguments that he was singled out in a successful civil fraud prosecution against him, his adult sons and the Trump Organization in New York. And when Republicans argue that Democrats are guilty of flagrant partisan redistricting of House seats in states they control, like Illinois and Maryland, they have a point. Still, most such efforts fit into the conventional corruption of the age-old practice of gerrymandering. No modern political figure has attempted the assaults on democracy and elections carried out by Trump. The run-up to the midterms may also show whether voters want another showdown over democracy when they are pained by still-high grocery prices and a struggle to afford housing. Neither party has compelling plans to offer relief. No wonder Trump's approval ratings are underwater and Democrats have been plumbing record lows in popularity this year. Democrats are now vowing to 'fight fire with fire,' as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul put it recently. But getting down in the muck and fighting dirty with Trump is risky. He's miles better at it than they are.
Yahoo
35 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump, 79, Forgets the Name of an Ocean
President Trump's senior moments have seen him confuse several land-based locations, but now his possible cognitive slide seems to have extended offshore. During a Tuesday morning interview on Fox and Friends, Trump discussed his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and seemed to forget the name of the ocean that separates the U.S., Europe and Russia. Trump said that European leaders like Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are 'consumed far more with [Ukraine] because they're right there.' 'You know we have an ocean that's separating us, right? A thing called... an ocean,' he said. 'A big, beautiful ocean. And, uh, they don't, they're right there. So it's a different kind of a thing for them.' Trump possibly appeared to be referring to the Atlantic, which separates the U.S. from Europe and the west of Russia. The U.S. is, however, also separated from Russia to the west by the Bering Sea. The coast of the mainland of Alaska, where Trump and Putin met last Friday, is separated by 55 miles of sea from the eastern coast of Russia. At the closest point of any land, Alaska's Little Diomede Island is separated from Russia's Big Diomede Island by 2.4 miles of open water—which turns to ice capable of bearing human weight in winter. Infamously, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said that 'you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska' in 2008, providing fodder for a viral SNL spoof starring Tina Fey. Trump considered offering Palin a cabinet position in his first administration, but his knowledge of her home state seems to have grown fuzzier since 2016. At a press conference last week, Trump said twice that he was going to Russia, leaving Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt to explain why the president didn't seem to remember that his meeting with Putin was being held on American soil. On Tuesday, the Fox hosts allowed Trump to bulldoze through his lapse, as he continued to ramble about negotiations with Ukraine and how the war is Joe Biden's fault. 'It was always thought that Ukraine was sort of a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe. And it was, it was a big wide buffer. Everything worked out well until Biden got involved,' he said. 'Biden gave them $100 billion right up front, I don't give them anything... since I've been there, we don't pay.' In fact, the Trump administration has largely kept the Biden administration's military aid to Ukraine intact, delivering $6.2 billion in weapons to the country in the first half of this year. After promising dozens of times during the 2024 campaign that he would end the war 'within 24 hours,' Trump has found it more difficult than expected to broker peace. 'I have ended six wars. I thought maybe this would be the easiest one, and it's not the easiest one,' he said on Monday. 'It's a tough one.' It could remain tough sledding for Trump if his geographic recall doesn't improve. The White House declined to answer 'stupid questions about oceans.'
New York Post
37 minutes ago
- New York Post
Trump administration can terminate Temporary Protected Status for more than 60,000 migrants, appeals court rules
A federal appeals court ruled in favor of President Trump on Wednesday, allowing his administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 60,000 migrants from Honduras, Nicaragua and Nepal. In a unanimous decision, the three-member panel of judges on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals halted a lower court order that had blocked the Trump administration from eliminating temporary deportation protections and revoking work permits from the migrants. 'The government's motion for a stay pending appeal … is granted,' Circuit Judges Michael Hawkins ( a Bill Clinton appointee), Consuelo Callahan (a George W. Bush appointee) and Eric Miller (Trump appointee) wrote in their brief, two-page ruling, which did not explain the decision. Advertisement Last month, San Francisco-based District Judge Trina Thompson, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, had paused Trump's planned elimination of TPS for migrants from the three countries until Nov. 18. 3 Thompson's order barring the revocation of legal status for the migrants was overturned in a unanimous appeals court panel ruling. United States District Court Northern District of California Thompson accused Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem of being 'motivated by racial animus' in her controversial opinion. Advertisement 'The freedom to live fearlessly, the opportunity of liberty, and the American dream. That is all Plaintiffs seek,' the judge wrote in her July 31 order. 'Instead, they are told to atone for their race, leave because of their names, and purify their blood. The Court disagrees.' Thompson even included a comparison of the Trump administration's immigration policies to the trans-Atlantic slave trade in her now-overturned ruling. Hondurans and Nicaraguans had been given the legal status to emigrate and get work permits as a federal response to humanitarian issues following Hurricane Mitch in 1998, when the storm hit both countries, killing almost 7,300 people. Nepal joined the TPS program in June 2015 after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked the country. Advertisement 3 Noem announced that TPS for Honduran, Nicaraguan and Nepalese migrants would be revoked earlier this year. via REUTERS 3 The migrants were allowed to enter the United States after their home countries were afflicted by natural disasters. AP Earlier this year, Noem announced that the protections would be revoked, and she offered a plane ticket and a $1,000 'exit bonus' to migrants willing to self-deport immediately. 'Temporary Protected Status was designed to be just that — temporary,' the DHS secretary said in a statement at the time. Advertisement Noem also maintained that the nations have since recovered from the natural disasters that prompted their enrollment in the program. Protections for Nepalese migrants were set to expire Aug. 5, and Honduran and Nicaraguan migrants will be pushed out of the program in September. Around 51,000 Hondurans, 7,200 Nepalis and 2,900 Nicaraguans are currently in the TPS program without more permanent green-card status, according to DHS statistics previously reported by CBS News.
