California changes rules for high school track meet after Trump's objections
Show Caption
Hide Caption
Donald Trump 'disappointed' with Vladimir Putin
President Donald Trump told reporters he was 'disappointed' with Russian President Vladimir Putin, referencing latest attacks on Ukraine.
There could be two winners in some girls events this weekend at the California state high school track and field meet − a transgender athlete and a cisgender athlete.
The scenario is part of rule changes made after President Donald Trump demanded a transgender athlete not be allowed to compete in girls track and field events.
The California Interscholastic Federation (CIF), the state's governing body for high school athletics, clarified the new rules in a press release May 28.
A new division will not be created to separate transgender athletes from cisgender athletes. But athletes assigned female at birth will receive medals based on where they would have finished if a transgender athlete had not competed in the same event − part of what the CIF is calling a "pilot entry process.''
Governor Gavin Newsom's spokesman, Izzy Gardon, in a statement provided to USA TODAY Sports, said, 'CIF's proposed pilot is a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness. The Governor is encouraged by this thoughtful approach.'
AB Hernandez, a 16-year-old transgender athlete, won titles in the triple jump and long jump at the southern California regional championship last weekend and is scheduled to compete in those events and the high jump in girls' varsity.
On May 27, Trump threatened to withhold federal funds from California if the state does not follow an executive order seeking to bar transgender athletes from women's sports. His post on social media referred to a trans athlete who competes in girls track and field.
Later in the day, the CIF changed the rules for the championship, which will be held May 30-31 in Clovis.
"The CIF values all of our student-athletes and we will continue to uphold our mission of providing students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete while complying with California law and Education Code,'' the federation said in a statement. "With this in mind, the CIF will be implementing a pilot entry process for the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships.
As part of the changes, additional female athletes were invited to compete in the 2025 state championships.
COMMENTARY: 16-year-old girl in harm's way so Trump can score points with his base
Medals at the state meet
Hernandez, a top contender in the girls triple jump and long jump, could end up standing on the medal podium next to the athlete who finishes second in the overall standings. Both would receive a first-place medal.
A duplicate medal would be created to accomodate the two athletes.
Hernandez would receive a medal based on her finish in the overall standings while the other athletes will receive medals based on their finish in the standings excluding Hernandez's results.
The CIF awards nine medals to the top boys and girls finishers in each event. (By contrast, other states create up to five divisions for each event to accomodate the athletes representing schools with a wide range of enrollments.)
Hernandez also is expected to contend for a medal in the high jump.
Also, as part of the rule changes, the CIF said in a statement that it would invite "any biological female student-athlete who would have earned the next qualifying mark" to compete in the state championships.
'Under this pilot entry process, any biological female student-athlete who would have earned the next qualifying mark for one of their Section's automatic qualifying entries in the CIF State meet, and did not achieve the CIF State at-large mark in the finals at their Section meet, was extended an opportunity to participate in the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships,' the CIF said in a statement. 'The CIF believes this pilot entry process achieves the participation opportunities we seek to afford our student-athletes.'
The CIF did not say how many athletes that could impact.
Trump's post on social media
Although the CIF did not cite Trump, the rule changes took place hours after his social media post that in part read, "THIS IS NOT FAIR, AND TOTALLY DEMEANING TO WOMEN AND GIRLS."
Trump isn't the only one who has sounded off on the matter. So has Hernandez.
'I'm still a child, you're an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person,'' she told Capital & Main in a story published May 15.
Certain things remain unknown. Such as how many female athletes will be impacted by the new rules and whether they'll be applied only in events in which Hernandez is competing.
The CIF did immediately respond to requests for information submitted by USA TODAY Sports.
In March, Newsom said on his podcast that it is "deeply unfair" to allow transgender girls and women to compete in women's sports.
California law prohibits discrimination based on gender identity, including at schools. State law also allows trans student athletes to compete on sports teams that align with their gender identity.
Last month Democratic state lawmakers blocked two bills that would have banned transgender athletes from girls sports.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
a minute ago
Russian drone strike on Ukraine apartments kills several before Trump-Zelenskyy meet
LONDON -- At least seven people, including two children, were killed by a Russian drone strike in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Sunday night, according to local officials. Serhiy Bolvinov, the head of Kharkiv National Police's investigations unit, said in a post to Facebook that five Shahed strike drones hit an apartment building at dawn. "An entire family died in an apartment on the fifth floor," Bolvinov said. Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 140 drones and four missiles in the country overnight into Monday morning, of which 88 drones were shot down or suppressed. Missile and drone impacts were reported across 25 locations in Donetsk, Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and Kyiv regions, the air force said. The latest attacks come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepares to meet President Donald Trump and a host of European leaders at the White House on Monday, where Trump has said he hopes his Ukrainian counterpart will agree to a deal to end Russia's war. Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy's influential chief of staff, wrote on Telegram of the latest round of strikes, "Russia continues to deliberately kill civilians." "That's why [Russian President Vladimir] Putin doesn't want to stop the fire -- he likes to shell peaceful cities and talk about wanting to end the war," Yermak wrote. "We don't see this desire yet." Both sides have continued their long-range strike campaigns throughout Trump's efforts to craft a ceasefire and peace deal to end the conflict, which began with Russia's full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022. Through July, Russia launched a record 6,443 drones and missiles into Ukraine, according to data published by the Ukrainian air force, with a daily average of 201 drones and six missiles. July's monthly total was the highest of the war to date, and around 13% more than were recorded in June. At least 286 people were killed and 1,388 injured in Ukraine in July, making last month the deadliest for Ukrainian civilians since May 2022, according to data published by the United Nations' Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. So far in August, the scale of Russian strikes has diminished. As of Monday, Ukraine's air force had recorded 1,344 drone and 27 missile launches by Russia in August -- an average of around 74 drones and more than one missile per day so far this month. Russia's Defense Ministry, meanwhile, has claimed to have shot down 1,740 Ukrainian drones so far in August, at a daily average of around 96 per day. The Defense Ministry in Moscow said its forces downed at least 24 Ukrainian drones overnight into Monday.
New York Times
a minute ago
- New York Times
Give Trump a Nobel! And an Emmy. And an Oscar …
'I waited and waited and waited, and I said, 'The hell with it, I'll become chairman and I'll give myself an honor.' Next year, we'll honor Trump, OK?' — President Donald Trump, who is now also the chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, using the announcement last week of its newest honorees to complain that he hasn't been accorded that distinction — yet. Maybe Trump was joking, but I think he's onto something. I really do. I say we give him one of the Kennedy Center Honors. And after that, the Nobel Peace Prize, his lusting for which almost certainly factored into his meeting with Vladimir Putin. And then, well, there's no end to the accolades we could bestow on him, the trinkets we could throw at him, the trumpets we could blow for him, if we think creatively enough. Just as there's no limit to his need for validation, veneration, feting, festooning. We can't wish away his vanity any more than we can take the wetness out of water. So why not work with it? If we keep him busy with award ceremonies and bury him in gleaming trophies, glittering medallions and gaudily framed certificates, he might not be so free or feel so compelled to assert his dominance in other ways, such as stripping poor people of their health insurance, immigrants of their humanity, the judiciary of its integrity, academia of its autonomy, Democrats of winnable congressional districts and America of democracy. A megalomaniac has only so much time and energy, especially at his age — though he looks a good 50 years younger than 79. That's the kind of thing we must tell him constantly and invent a prize for; besides which, whoever recorded the date that he entered this world was clearly a Trump-hating partisan who fudged the numbers to make him look bad. Everybody knows that birth certificates are rigged! We give Trump an Emmy. That's a no-brainer. Roughly two decades ago, he was actually nominated for that award, multiple times, as an executive producer of 'The Apprentice.' And he was somewhat less than gracious about watching 'The Amazing Race' be repeatedly crowned the best reality TV program instead. He mocked the ceremony on Twitter through the Obama years and was still raw about his absent Emmy during a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016. 'Should have gotten it,' he grumbled. We remedy that with a lifetime achievement Emmy, because he has been a television spectacle in so many ways for such a long time. In fact, he has done more than provide countless hours of television content — he's TV's most worshipful acolyte and devoted evangelist. It's his god, for Nielsen's sake. His entire political agenda is prompted by what he sees on TV. Or by how it will play on TV. He picks aides based on how they'll look on TV. I hate to break this to Pete Hegseth, but managerial prowess and military genius aren't how he landed defense secretary. Likewise, Pam Bondi didn't ride her legal acumen to attorney general. Of course, once we've given Trump an Emmy, he'll also want a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, so he can join the rarefied ranks of artists who've run that golden gamut and are known as EGOT royalty. We can just fast-track the president on alphabetical grounds. Much as he redefines reality, we can redefine the acronym, and from now on, EGOT will also stand for Trump's most prominent attribute affixed to his last initial. It's not much of a stretch to present him with a Fields Medal, the highest honor in mathematics. While it's currently reserved for brainiacs under 40, such norms are for chumps, not Trumps, and matter less than the singular brilliance of this president, whose novel formula for calculating trade imbalances and tariffs captivated economists. His analysis of election margins was equally innovative. In 2016, he converted the slenderest of triumphs in the Electoral College and a sizable loss of the popular vote into proof of 'a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen,' in the words of his own inauguration speech. (Is there a Nobel for self-congratulation?) Four years later, he transformed defeat in both arenas into fulminations about a wrongly and cruelly denied victory. Just this month, he brandished lavishly capitalized Truth Social posts, enterprisingly contrived charts and wounded pride to expose a numerical heresy accepted by less arithmetically gifted politicians: Deep State functionaries in the Bureau of Labor Statistics were cooking the books! In a method (sous vide?) that made Democrats look good. He'll fix that by deep-frying the data, then serving it with Republican-red ketchup. Perhaps, with a few tweaks of the criteria, we could even snag a Heisman for Trump. He went to college. Around that time, he was undoubtedly running back to his affluent father for help. He received an exemption from military service in Vietnam because of bone spurs, which aren't so far from the ball of a person's foot. And he was surely exhibiting back then what he has exhibited over the past decade, which is a phenomenal ability to evade all would-be tacklers and reach the end zone. Trump's visionary reconceiving of the necktie as something of a low-hanging neck pendulum — part boa, part bib — must qualify him for an existing fashion award or at least give us the opportunity to fashion a new one, ideally bestowed on him at an event in New Zealand, to maximize his travel time and eject him from the country for as long as possible. We'd have him host the event as well and, to further cram his schedule, any other festivity that caught his fancy. After all, he's slated to play that part at the Kennedy Center ceremony in December, and though he claimed at the news conference where he announced this year's honorees that he'd been coaxed into the role, an audio recording obtained by The Times shows that he himself floated the idea five months ago. At that news conference he rambled on and on, the expanse and eclecticism of his remarks a testament to his indefatigability when it comes to the sound of his own voice. And to his obsession with tributes — or at least with tributes to him. 'I'm on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,' he boasted, apropos of ego. He also slammed the Academy Awards for 'lousy ratings,' which is, of course, the greatest shame — the greatest sin — of all. With a ready solution. Have Trump take charge of the Oscars — behind the scenes, in front of the scenes, in as many scenes as he can be cast in. Have him choose the nominees and winners, just as (according to him) he ruled over the Kennedy Center Honors this time around. Have this big gold man hand out all the little gold men and get one (or more!) of his own, maybe for whatever hand he has in that Melania Trump documentary that Jeff Bezos's Amazon Studios reportedly purchased for the bargain price of $40 million. I figure that every second he's on the Oscars stage is a second he's not at the Resolute Desk, pursuing or setting some record for executive orders signed. That's a big, beautiful trade-off, the likes of which the world has never seen. What I'm Listening To and Watching My catch-up reading about Tucker Pillsbury — a singer-songwriter who performs under the name Role Model — suggests some skepticism about his musical bona fides versus his genre-hopping, TikTok-savvy pursuit of fame, and there's indeed an air of excessive calculation and insistent adorability about him. But I've been listening frequently and very, very contentedly to his album 'Kansas Anymore (The Longest Goodbye)' for the past two weeks, struck by how irresistibly and skillfully tuneful his songs are. Some indie artists seem wary of music that's too catchy and of lyrics too easily discerned and ripe with rhyme, as if such accessibility equals selling out. Not Pillsbury — and that's the glib beauty of him. The single 'Sally, When the Wine Runs Out' has become not just a hit but a thing: The gently goofy video went viral, and various celebrities (Kate Hudson, Natalie Portman, Bowen Yang) joined him onstage — as the Sally of the night — during live performances over recent months. But I don't even think it's the best track in a country-tinged pop collection of remarkable polish and poise. I appreciate how the words in 'Oh Gemini' curl around the chorus. A lovely breeze blows through 'Look at That Woman' and 'Old Recliners.' And 'Scumbag' turns self-loathing (feigned, clearly) into a foot-stomping anthem. I tend to make somewhat random musical associations, and 'Kansas Anymore' — in terms of its exuberance, emphasis on hooks and classic song construction — brought to mind and persuaded me to return to two other albums I've greatly enjoyed. One is 'Martinis & Bikinis,' which the singer-songwriter Sam Phillips released back in 1994; the tracks 'Strawberry Road' and 'I Need Love' are as addictive as I remembered them. The other is 'Being Funny in a Foreign Language,' a 2022 release by The 1975 whose highlights include 'Oh Caroline' and 'I'm In Love With You,' the two songs that the band wisely chose to perform on 'Saturday Night Live' in 2023. Enough has been said about the politics and postmodern superhero sensibility of the latest 'Superman' movie, directed and co-written by James Gunn. I want to draw attention to a pleasure somewhat overshadowed by that — Nicholas Hoult's delicious performance as Lex Luthor. From the Hulu television series 'The Great' and the movie 'The Menu' in 2022 through the movies 'Nosferatu' and 'Juror No. 2' last year, Hoult has emerged as one of the most versatile, dependable and sought-after actors in the business. And I get the exciting sense that the best is yet to come. For the Love of Sentences At least once a month I try, as necessary relief, to purge Trump — to purge government — from this section of the newsletter. I hereby present a bouquet of colorful prose with no political thorns. In The Boston Globe, Christopher Muther celebrated a New England roadway rest stop with food options beyond the ultraprocessed and prepackaged norm. He contemplated getting the avocado toast. 'But I'm in the mood for poutine on this rainy Sunday afternoon,' he wrote. 'I know what you're thinking. 'Rest stop poutine? Are you sure?' Rest stop poutine sounds like the name of an indie rock band, or a French Canadian laxative.' (Thanks to Jane Abbott of Hubbardston, Mass., for nominating this.) In The Asheville Watchdog, John Boyle bemoaned the latest example of inadequate transparency regarding the University of North Carolina at Asheville's development of woodland near the school: 'That's just one more sheet of tar paper slapped over the project's skylights so no one can look in and see what's happening.' (Maria Juarez, Asheville, N.C.) In The Washington Post, Gaya Gupta invoked one of Minnesota's promotional tag lines to report on an accidentally drained body of water in the state: 'The 'Land of 10,000 Lakes' is going down to 9,999 for a little while.' (Aimee Germain, Clinton, N.Y.) In The Times, Franz Lidz dropped a reference to the performers famous (or infamous?) for 'Y.M.C.A.' and 'Macho Man' into an essay on a much different band of swaggerers: 'The Vikings, beyond their reputation as medieval bad boys — Pillage People, if you will — were accomplished traders who established commercial routes that stretched all the way to Baghdad.' (Mark Flannery, Fullerton, Calif., and Terry Burridge, Arlington, Va.) Also in The Times, Jessica Grose identified proof in nature that humans aren't the only species whose reproductive health is compromised by contaminants: 'Studies have shown that endocrine-disrupting chemicals also affect the fertility of many different kinds of male wildlife, and it's not as if fish are deciding to put off childbearing until they're more financially stable.' (Peggy Sweeney, Oviedo, Spain) And Rob Copeland puzzled over a contemporary currency: 'I've always thought of crypto as an unlikely addition to mainstream finance, like mustard on spaghetti.' (Maureen Holtz, Champaign, Ill.) In Word Smarts, Samantha Abernethy argued for the importance of strategically placed semicolons: 'We visited Bologna, Italy; Nice, France; and Madrid, Spain. Try writing that sentence with only commas, and you'll get lost somewhere in southern Europe.' (Bob Gardner, Granite Bay, Calif.) I'm a semicolon enthusiast myself, evident in the headline that I wrote for this newsletter in late 2023. In The Athletic, Andrew Baggarly described the pace of activity around the trading deadline in Major League Baseball: 'The transactions cook like a bag of Orville Redenbacher in the microwave — staggered sounds over the preceding days, a building noise in the early hours on deadline day, an insane number of deals exploding in the final minutes, then a few stray pops after the deadline passes as news gets out about last-second deals.' (Mark Sewall, Alexandria, Va.) In The Wall Street Journal, Jared Diamond recognized how differently Hal Steinbrenner approaches his stewardship of a storied sports franchise than his father, George, did: 'The elder Steinbrenner ran the New York Yankees with all the patience of an Upper West Sider stuck behind a tourist in the whitefish line at Zabar's.' (April Stewart Klausner, West Cornwall, Conn., and Richard Holland, Oak Park, Ill., among others) Also in The Wall Street Journal, Jason Gay placed his advance coverage of a preseason pro football game in the context of the increasingly year-round obsession with the sport: 'Everywhere I look, the page has turned, and turned long ago — to football, football, football. Forget what the calendar says. The N.F.L. media is now the pharmacy that puts out its Christmas stuff during the first week of June.' (David Calfee, Lake Forest, Ill., and Paul Strieleman, Deerfield, Ill.) A few days later, Gay cited the national mood in late summer to justify his report on the game itself: 'An exhausted America always warms to a fun, low-stakes story at this time of year, like a math whiz who sailed to the Bahamas in a canoe he built out of Fanta cans, or a giant squash that looks exactly like Clint Eastwood.' In that article, he added: 'It's only August, but this is fun. America is suddenly intrigued by the 2025 season of the Cleveland Browns. Try and compete with that, giant squash that looks exactly like Clint Eastwood.' (James Brockardt, Pennington, N.J.) To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in 'For the Love of Sentences,' please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
New York Times
a minute ago
- New York Times
Marco Rubio Once Filed a Brief Embracing Birthright Citizenship
In a 2016 court filing, Marco Rubio, then a senator running for president, made the case that the Constitution conferred citizenship on essentially all children born in the United States. His argument was a crisp rendition of what was until recently the consensus understanding. But the views he expressed are now in tension with an executive order issued by President Trump in January that seeks to restrict birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court seems likely to hear a direct challenge to the order's constitutionality in the term that starts in October. The little-noticed court filing helps show how quickly the Republican Party and parts of the mainstream of conservative legal thought have shifted on the issue. It is also a reminder that the question of who is born a citizen may affect eligibility to be president. Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement that 'it's absurd the NYT is even wasting time digging around for decade-old made-up stories,' adding that Mr. Rubio was '100 percent aligned with President Trump's agenda.' Mr. Pigott's statement did not address the arguments in the 2016 brief or how to square them with the executive order. Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at Temple University and an expert on citizenship, said in an email that the 2016 filing was a 'powerful, succinct statement of why the 14th Amendment has been interpreted to cover almost all children born in the United States, regardless of parental immigration status.' 'There's no reason why the argument he put to work in 2016 couldn't be put to work today against the Trump executive order,' Professor Spiro wrote. Mr. Rubio, now the secretary of state, submitted the brief in response to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Arkansas by a fringe presidential candidate, David Librace. Mr. Librace's suit contended that Mr. Rubio was ineligible to be president because he was not, as the Constitution requires, a 'natural born citizen.' Mr. Rubio was born in 1971 to Cuban immigrants who would not become citizens until 1975. Judge Brian S. Miller of the Federal District Court in Little Rock dismissed the suit. 'Although the questions raised by Mr. Librace are interesting, they are questions that he simply does not have standing to bring,' the judge wrote, noting that 'courts have consistently held that voters do not have standing to sue based on the 'birther' argument.' The arguments Mr. Rubio made in his brief were broader than they needed to be to win his case. He addressed, for instance, not only the Constitution's presidential eligibility clause but also the provision of the 14th Amendment on birthright citizenship. He went on to say that the amendment, the common law on which it was based and the leading Supreme Court precedent all confirmed that 'persons born in the United States to foreign parents (who were not diplomats or hostile, occupying enemies) were citizens of the United States by virtue of their birth.' Mr. Trump contends, by contrast, that the children of parents in the United States unlawfully or temporarily are not automatically citizens because they are not, as the 14th amendment requires, 'subject to the jurisdiction' of the United States. The gap between the two positions would not have mattered in Mr. Rubio's circumstances. His parents were lawful residents when he was born, meaning he would have been on the right side of the line Mr. Trump has sought to draw, including in an executive order he issued on his first day in office seeking to curtail birthright citizenship for many children. The order has been tied up in the courts ever since. On the other hand, those distinctions make no sense, Professor Spiro said. 'Particularly weak is the administration's attempt to distinguish among legally present noncitizens,' he said. 'By trying to exclude the children of so-called nonimmigrants — including student visa holders and temporary workers — the administration loses the argument that it's only targeting those who are here in violation of the law.' Mr. Rubio's brief certainly did not draw that line. Instead, he defended birthright citizenship wholesale, saying that the 14th amendment was 'intended to remove any doubt that all persons born in the United States, regardless of race, ancestry, previous servitude, etc., were citizens of the United States.' The Supreme Court issued a decision in June arising from the executive order, but the justices did not address the directive's constitutionality. Since then, several lower courts have ruled against the order, accepting arguments along the lines of those offered by Mr. Rubio. In July, for instance, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction blocking the executive order, on grounds nearly identical to those sketched out in 2016 by Mr. Rubio, who is a defendant in the case. Among his official responsibilities are issuing passports and overseeing immigration laws abroad. In a filing this month, the administration vowed to move quickly 'to enable the Supreme Court to settle the lawfulness of the citizenship order' in the term that will start in October. The filing added that the solicitor general, the administration's top appellate lawyer, 'has not yet determined which case or combination of cases to take to the court.' Mr. Rubio's brief was filed in response to a lawsuit that at least bordered on the frivolous, during a grueling and heated presidential campaign. He may have paid little attention to the contours of the arguments made on his behalf. Such a brief was not, in any event, the place to make a major or even a particularly considered statement on birthright citizenship. The general assertions in Mr. Rubio's 2016 brief were wide-ranging and confident, reflecting the conventional wisdom. In the coming months, the nation is likely to learn whether the consensus holds.
