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Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
More states pass laws restricting transgender people's bathroom use
A transgender activist clasps her hands while Kentucky state senators vote in 2023 on a bill restricting gender-affirming care for minors. So far in 2025, at least eight states have passed or expanded laws restricting which bathrooms transgender people are allowed to use. () Nineteen states now have a law or policy banning transgender people from using bathrooms that match their gender identity. About 1 in 4 transgender people live in states with some form of bathroom restrictions, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit research group that tracks LGBTQ+-related legislation. So far this year, at least eight states have passed new transgender bathroom laws or expanded existing ones. In March, Wyoming Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed a pair of Republican-sponsored bills restricting the use of bathrooms and locker rooms in public buildings. The House bill requires public school students and anyone in a government building to use the bathroom or locker room corresponding with their sex assigned at birth, regardless of their gender identity, appearance or the gender on their legal documents. The Senate's bill, which requires public school students to use facilities that align with their sex at birth, was introduced after a local school board called on lawmakers to restrict bathroom use. SC senators approve K-12 mandate that 'a boy will use the boys' bathroom' Wyoming Republican Rep. Martha Lawley, who sponsored the House bill along with another one restricting transgender girls' participation in sports, called them 'commonsense measures.' 'As the first state to grant women the right to vote, we showed the nation that Wyoming leads when it comes to equal opportunity,' Lawley wrote in an op-ed she published online ahead of the legislative session. 'Now, we can lead again, ensuring our daughters and granddaughters can pursue their dreams with the same sense of fairness and security.' Earlier in the session, a local Wyoming basketball coach who is a transgender woman spoke against the bill because she said it would require her to share a restroom with teenage boys, WyoFile reported. Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and West Virginia have also passed or expanded similar bathroom laws this year. South Carolina renewed its K-12 bathroom law this year as part of the state budget. The mandate — initially inserted into the budget last year during the Senate's floor debate — applies to multi-stalled school restrooms and places where students undress, to include locker rooms and gym showers. Such directives attached to South Carolina's state spending package — called provisos — are officially one-year laws. But they roll over from one year to the next indefinitely, unless legislators vote to take them out. There was no debate at all this year on the bathroom rule, which carries over into the fiscal year that starts Tuesday. A lawsuit challenging it was filed in federal court last November on behalf of a transgender middle school student in Berkeley County. Attorneys for the national nonprofit Public Justice have asked for the law to be suspended pending the case's outcome, but nothing has been decided. In Arizona, the legislature passed a bill in May that would have restricted school bathrooms and changing rooms, but Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed it, along with two other GOP-backed bills targeting transgender people. Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@ SC Daily Gazette Editor Seanna Adcox contributed to this report. Like the SC Daily Gazette, Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Amid FEMA uncertainty, Western governors commit to more coordination on post-fire flooding
From left: Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox sit for a panel discussion on post-fire flooding, an issue affecting many Western states. (Photo by Patrick Lohmann / Source NM) Several governors of Western states on Tuesday endorsed formalizing a partnership to help each other deal with the aftermath of increasingly devastating wildfires, citing the long-term effects of post-fire flooding and also uncertainty about the Federal Emergency Management Agency's future. Governors from New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado attended a panel discussion on the topic of post-fire flooding at the Western Governors' Association meeting in Santa Fe. The governors questioned experts — including state emergency response officials and a government landslide scientist — at a discussion called 'Flood After Fire – Enhancing Safety in Post-Fire Landscapes.' The governors described the phenomenon as increasingly urgent due to wildfires burning hotter and larger across the West. High-severity wildfires can change soil composition, converting even modest rainstorms that fall on burn scars into potential floods or debris flows. In New Mexico, for example, post-fire flooding has impeded the recovery from the 2022 Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire, both for the City of Las Vegas as it tries to rebuild its water treatment facility and for smaller communities in and around the 534-square-mile burn scar. Other Western governors, including Spencer Cox of Utah, said they're increasingly concerned about flooding after fires. That was the case when Cox came across the aftermath of a fire that burned this week. Las Vegas to get $98 million to replace water treatment facilities after 2022 wildfire damage 'The first thing I thought when I drove into that community had nothing to do with the fire or the homes burned,' he said. 'What I realized was, for the next five or six years, things are going to be pretty awful for those people because of the mudslides and the runoff, the sediment that comes down.' The conversation occurred as at least six wildfires burn across New Mexico, and as burn scar areas in northern and southern New Mexico experience severe flooding or are warned to be on high-alert for it. While no FEMA official sat on the panel, the agency's past performance with post-fire flooding and its future loomed over the meeting. Participants mentioned the agency's name more than 10 times, and speakers noted the challenges they'd face if the agency is dismantled, as called for briefly by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. While New Mexico's United States Senators Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján say the agency should still exist, they recently called on FEMA to change the way it deals with post-fire flooding. The agency has 'repeatedly struggled to respond effectively' to second-order effects from wildfires, including 'cascading disasters such as landslides, flooding and water system failures that compound damage and slow recovery,' the senators wrote. NM's U.S. senators to Noem: Reform FEMA. Don't scrap it entirely. Collin Haffey, a Washington post-fire recovery leader who worked for New Mexico Forestry Division during the 2022 wildfires here, spoke on the panel and said there's a 'tremendous amount of uncertainty' about the federal government's role in wildfire recovery going forward. 'If I'm trying to build my portion of the railroad track to meet them, I don't know how far to go,' he said. 'And I think that that lack of communication down to the local level is putting lives and recovery at risk.' So he called on the WGA to create a formal agreement between Western states, one that could help states help each other deal with the aftermath of devastating wildfires amid uncertainty about what type of aid could come from the federal government. 'We have these peer-to-peer networks because I have their cell phone numbers,' Haffey said. 'But that's not necessarily the best.' In response, Cox, who on Tuesday was named the new WGA chair, said he would spearhead an effort to create a regional partnership. 'Even if we weren't, you know, seeing FEMA reform and changes happening there, we should have been doing this anyway,' he said. 'And so let's do it anyway.'
Associated Press
4 days ago
- Politics
- Associated Press
GOP plan to sell more than 2 million acres of federal lands is found to violate Senate rules
WASHINGTON (AP) — A plan to sell more than 2 million acres of federal lands has been ruled out of Republicans' big tax and spending cut bill after the Senate parliamentarian determined the proposal by Senate Energy Chairman Mike Lee would violate the chamber's rules. Lee, a Utah Republican, has proposed selling public lands in the West to states or other entities for use as housing or infrastructure. The plan would revive a longtime ambition of Western conservatives to cede lands to local control after a similar proposal failed in the House earlier this year. The proposal received a mixed reception Monday from the governors of Western states. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, called it problematic in her state because of the close relationship residents have with public lands. Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, voiced qualified support. 'On a piece-by-piece basis where states have the opportunity to craft policies that make sense ... we can actually allow for some responsible growth in areas with communities that are landlocked at this point,' he said at a news conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the Western Governors' Association was meeting. Lee, in a post on X Monday night, said he would keep trying. 'Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that,'' he wrote, adding that a revised plan would remove all U.S. Forest Service land from possible sale. Sales of sites controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management would be significantly reduced, Lee said, so that only land within 5 miles of population centers could be sold. Environmental advocates celebrated the ruling late Monday by Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, but cautioned that Lee's proposal was far from dead. 'This is a victory for the American public, who were loud and clear: Public lands belong in public hands, for current and future generations alike,'' said Tracy Stone-Manning, president of The Wilderness Society. 'Our public lands are not for sale.' Carrie Besnette Hauser, president and CEO of the nonprofit Trust for Public Land called the procedural ruling in the Senate 'an important victory in the fight to protect America's public lands from short-sighted proposals that would have undermined decades of bipartisan work to protect, steward and expand access to the places we all share.' 'But make no mistake: this threat is far from over,' Hauser added. 'Efforts to dismantle our public lands continue, and we must remain vigilant as proposals now under consideration,' including plans to roll back the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act and cut funding for land and water conservation, make their way through Congress, she said. MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, also ruled out a host of other Republican-led provisions Monday night, including construction of a mining road in Alaska and changes to speed permitting of oil and gas leases on federal lands. While the parliamentarian's rulings are advisory, they are rarely, if ever, ignored. Lawmakers are using a budget reconciliation process to bypass the Senate filibuster to pass President Donald Trump's tax-cut package by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline. Lee's plan revealed sharp disagreement among Republicans who support wholesale transfers of federal property to spur development and generate revenue, and other lawmakers who are staunchly opposed. Land in 11 Western states from Alaska to New Mexico would be eligible for sale. Montana was carved out of the proposal after lawmakers there objected. In states such as Utah and Nevada, the government controls the vast majority of lands, protecting them from potential exploitation but hindering growth. 'Washington has proven time and again it can't manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands,' Lee said in announcing the plan. Housing advocates have cautioned that federal land is not universally suitable for affordable housing. Some of the parcels up for sale in Utah and Nevada under a House proposal were far from developed areas. New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich, the ranking Democrat on the energy committee, said Lee's plan would exclude Americans from places where they fish, hunt and camp. 'I don't think it's clear that we would even get substantial housing as a result of this,' Heinrich said earlier this month. 'What I know would happen is people would lose access to places they know and care about and that drive our Western economies.'
E&E News
4 days ago
- Business
- E&E News
‘A devastating blow': Western governors wary of public land sales
SANTA FE, New Mexico — Bipartisan leaders of Western states cautioned Congress on Monday against broad mandates to sell public lands to help pay for Republicans' tax cuts, energy and border security megabill. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) said during a news conference here, ahead of the Western Governors' Association annual meeting, that cutting public land access to hunters, anglers and other recreationists in Colorado through sales 'would be a devastating blow to the quality of life, as well to our economy.' Republican governors were more open to the idea of selling off some federal land but said those decisions should be driven by local and state leaders, not Congress. Advertisement Wyoming's Republican Gov. Mark Gordon said public lands are important to Wyomingites but that he was open to case-by-case proposals for sales. 'Those kinds of decisions should be made on a local level with a very robust process that does not say we're going to wholesale get rid of our public lands, but we're going to look at certain places where the adjustments that we can make just make better sense than what we have today,' he said. He noted there are areas in Wyoming that have a 'checkerboard' of private, state and federal land ownership that make them difficult to manage. New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the current chair of the Western Governors' Association, said a sweeping auction of public lands would be a 'nonstarter' for New Mexico. 'The process that has been described so far is a problem for a state like New Mexico,' she said at the news conference. Land sales proposed as part of the Republican 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' currently under consideration have faced opposition from environmental groups, hunters and anglers, as well as several prominent Republican lawmakers in states like Montana. Recently, GOP Sens. Jim Risch and Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo, both from Idaho, joined the chorus of critics. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) has been adamant that sales will be included in the budget reconciliation package. Lee originally called for the sale of 1.5 percent of the federal estate, exempting protected areas and saying there would be local input on what plots to sell. New draft language states that land owned by the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service would only be sold for 'development of housing or to address associated infrastructure to support local housing needs.' Grisham said that she was open to the idea of using some public land for housing but that the essence of public lands should be protected. 'They belong to all of us and selling that to the private sector without a process, without putting New Mexicans first, is at least for me as a governor going to be problematic,' she said. She said: 'We want flexibility. We want opportunities at the federal level, but a one size fits all typically doesn't work for most governors.' South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden (R) praised the Trump administration leadership on Western land issues so far but also echoed the need for national policies that are guided by states. 'The solutions for the United States' problems are not going to come from D.C. They're going to come from the states and the governors and the legislators,' he said. The meeting in Santa Fe will include speeches from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and, on Tuesday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. Grisham said Monday that the governors would push the administration on the issues they are united on. 'Particularly at the beginning of a new administration, I think we lean in a little bit harder,' she said. A local protest and march against the sale of public lands, organized by conservation groups, was scheduled to coincide with Burgum's address to governors. 'Our cherished public lands are the backbone of the West and the core of our identity as Americans. It's disgusting that anyone would back this plan to permanently privatize and bulldoze these beautiful places,' said Laiken Jordahl, Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement Monday. 'Every Western governor should publicly oppose this reckless proposal and pledge that their states won't participate in dismantling our public lands if this monstrosity becomes law.'
Associated Press
5 days ago
- Business
- Associated Press
Governors of Western states give mixed reactions to proposed federal land sell-off
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A Republican-sponsored proposal before Congress to mandate the sale of federal public lands received a mixed reception Monday from the governors of Western states. A budget proposal from Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee would mandate the sale of more than 2 million acres of federal lands to state or other entities. It was included recently in a draft provision of the GOP's sweeping tax cut package. At a summit Monday of Western state governors, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said the approach is problematic in New Mexico because of the close relationship residents have with those public lands. 'I'm open' to the idea, said Lujan Grisham, a second-term Democratic governor and former congresswoman. 'Except here.' 'Our public lands, we have a very strong relationship with the openness, and they belong to all of us,' said Lujan Grisham, who was announcing written recommendations Monday on affordable housing strategies from the Western Governors' Association. 'And selling that to the private sector without a process, without putting New Mexicans first, is, for at least for me as a governor, going to be problematic.' Interior Department Secretary Doug Burgum is among the leaders from several federal agencies scheduled to attend the meeting of the association on Monday and Tuesday. Conservation groups vowed to stage public protests over plans to cede public land to development. Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon voiced qualified support for plans to tap federal land for development. 'On a piece-by-piece basis where states have the opportunity to craft policies that make sense ... we can actually allow for some responsible growth in areas with communities that are landlocked at this point,' he told a news conference outside the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in downtown Santa Fe. 'There may be value there.' Lee has said federal land sales under his proposal would target 'isolated parcels' that could be used for housing or infrastructure, and would not include national parks, national monuments or wilderness. Land in 11 Western states from Alaska to New Mexico would be eligible for sale. Montana was carved out of the proposal after its lawmakers objected. In some states, such as Utah and Nevada, the government controls the vast majority of lands, protecting them from potential exploitation but hindering growth.
