COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s Senate is debating a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors with just days left in a 2024 session where they have largely avoided social hot-button issues.

The bill, passed by the state House in January during the General Assembly’s opening days, would bar health professionals from performing gender-transition surgeries, prescribing puberty blockers and overseeing hormone treatments for patients under 18.

School principals or vice principals would have to notify parents or guardians if a child wanted to use a name other than their legal one, or a nickname or pronouns that did not match their sex assigned at birth.

Sen. Richard Cash started debate on the bill on Wednesday by asking the Senate to approve it. “We are talking about a serious subject. Nobody is taking this lightly,” the Republican from Powdersville said.

The bill’s passage seemed likely.

The Senate has 30 Republicans, 15 Democrats and one independent. Democrats last week did not force an on-the-record vote when the proposal would have needed two-thirds approval to move to the top of the list of bills to be taken up. After about an hour of debate, the Senate adjourned to likely take up the issue again Thursday.

The bill also would prevent people from using Medicaid to cover the costs of gender-affirming care.

Doctors and parents testified before committees in both the House and Senate that people younger than 18 do not receive gender-transition surgeries in South Carolina and hormone treatments begin only after extensive consultation with health professionals.

They said the treatments can be lifesaving, allowing young transgender people to live more fulfilling lives. Research has shown that transgender youth and adults are prone to stress, depression and suicidal behavior when forced to live as the sex they were assigned at birth.

That testimony was most important to Brent Cox, who was waiting to talk to a lawmaker in the Statehouse lobby Wednesday in a “Protect Trans Youth” T-shirt. He said his heart breaks for the way children are treated when they may be dealing with transgender or LGBTQ+ issues but this issue was especially galling because lawmakers were going against doctors.

“I think people who are unqualified when it comes to medical decisions need to consult with their physicians, just like people rely on and would listen to their doctor if they had a cancer diagnosis,” Cox said.

Supporters of the bill have cited their own unpublished evidence that puberty blockers increase self-harm and can be irreversible.

“This decision is of far greater consequences, for instance, than getting a tattoo, choosing a career or even a spouse,” Cash said.

The proposal is part of a broader push to roll back transgender rights from Republican lawmakers in statehouses across the U.S.

But it hasn’t been successful everywhere.

On Monday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes South Carolina, ruled that West Virginia’s and North Carolina’s refusal to cover certain health care for transgender people with government-sponsored insurance is discriminatory. The case is likely heading to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kansas also failed to become the 25th state to restrict or ban such care for minors when its Legislature was unable to override a governor’s veto the same day.

South Carolina’s General Assembly has taken a slower, more deliberate approach to social issues during a session dominated by debates that led to a law allowing the open carrying of guns and a broad bill to encourage more energy generation by loosening regulations on power plant approvals.

The American Civil Liberties Union is tracking 31 bills in South Carolina it said target the LGBTQ+ community. The ban on gender-affirming care is the only one likely to pass and is less strict than the bans in other states.

Other conservative proposals like new regulations giving the state Board of Education oversight on school library books or banning vaccine mandates for private businesses appear unlikely to pass before the regular session ends May 9.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed legislation Wednesday that would establish a broader definition of antisemitism for the Department of Education to enforce anti-discrimination laws, the latest response from lawmakers to a nationwide student protest movement over the Israel-Hamas war.

The proposal, which passed 320-91 with some bipartisan support, would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal anti-discrimination law that bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin. It now goes to the Senate for a vote.

Action on the bill was just the latest reverberation in Congress from the protest movement that has swept university campuses. Republicans in Congress have denounced the protests and demanded action to stop them, thrusting university officials into the center of the charged political debate over Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war was launched in October, after Hamas staged a deadly terrorist attack against Israeli civilians.

If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the bill would broaden the legal definition of antisemitism to include the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” Critics say the move would have a chilling effect on free speech throughout college campuses.

“Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said during a hearing Tuesday. “By encompassing purely political speech about Israel into Title VI’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly.”

Advocates of the proposal say it would provide a much-needed, consistent framework for the Department of Education to police and investigate the rising cases of discrimination and harassment targeted toward Jewish students.

“It is long past time that Congress act to protect Jewish Americans from the scourge of antisemitism on campuses around the country,” Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., said Tuesday.

The expanded definition of antisemitism was first adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental group that includes the United States and European Union states, and has been embraced by the State Department under the past three presidential administrations, including Joe Biden’s

Previous bipartisan efforts to codify it into law have failed. But the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas militants in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza have reignited efforts to target incidents of antisemitism on college campuses.

Separately, Speaker Mike Johnson announced Tuesday that several House committees will be tasked with a wide probe that ultimately threatens to withhold federal research grants and other government support for universities, placing another pressure point on campus administrators who are struggling to manage pro-Palestinian encampments, allegations of discrimination against Jewish students and questions of how they are integrating free speech and campus safety.

The House investigation follows several high-profile hearings that helped precipitate the resignations of presidents at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. And House Republicans promised more scrutiny, saying they were calling on the administrators of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to testify next month.

The House Oversight Committee took it one step further Wednesday, sending a small delegation of Republican members to an encampment at nearby George Washington University in the District of Columbia. GOP lawmakers spent the short visit criticizing the protests and Mayor Muriel Bowser’s refusal to send in the Metropolitan Police Department to disperse the demonstrators.

Bowser on Monday confirmed that the city and the district’s police department had declined the university’s request to intervene. “We did not have any violence to interrupt on the GW campus,” Bowser said, adding that police chief Pamela Smith made the ultimate decision. “This is Washington, D.C., and we are, by design, a place where people come to address the government and their grievances with the government.”

It all comes at a time when college campuses and the federal government are struggling to define exactly where political speech crosses into antisemitism. Dozens of U.S. universities and schools face civil rights investigations by the Education Department over allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Among the questions campus leaders have struggled to answer is whether phrases like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” should be considered under the definition of antisemitism.

The proposed definition faced strong opposition from several Democratic lawmakers, Jewish organizations as well as free speech advocates.

In a letter sent to lawmakers Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union urged members to vote against the legislation, saying federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment.

“H.R. 6090 is therefore not needed to protect against antisemitic discrimination; instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism,” the letter stated.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the centrist pro-Israel group J Street, said his organization opposes the bipartisan proposal because he sees it as an “unserious” effort led by Republicans “to continually force votes that divide the Democratic caucus on an issue that shouldn’t be turned into a political football.”

___

Associated Press writers Ashraf Khalil, Collin Binkley and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

ATLANTA (AP) — Jailers in Georgia must now check the immigration status of inmates and apply to help enforce federal immigration law, under a bill that gained traction after police accused a Venezuelan man of beating a nursing student to death on the University of Georgia campus.

Gov. Brian Kemp signed the bill into law Wednesday at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center in Forsyth. Most provisions take effect immediately.

The Republican governor signed a separate law that requires cash bail for 30 additional crimes and restricts people and charitable bail funds from posting cash bonds for more than three people a year unless they meet the requirements to become a bail bond company. That law takes effect July 1.

Kemp said Wednesday that the immigration bill, House Bill 1105, “became one of our top priorities following the senseless death of Laken Riley at the hands of someone in this country illegally who had already been arrested even after crossing the border.”

Jose Ibarra was arrested on murder and assault charges in the death of 22-year-old Laken Riley. Immigration authorities say Ibarra, 26, unlawfully crossed into the United States in 2022. It is unclear whether he has applied for asylum. Riley’s killing set off a political storm as conservatives used the case to blame President Joe Biden for immigration failings.

“If you enter our country illegally and proceed to commit further crimes in our communities, we will not allow your crimes to go unanswered,” Kemp said.

Opponents warn the law will turn local law enforcement into immigration police, making immigrants less willing to report crime and work with officers. Opponents also point to studies showing immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes.

The law lays out specific requirements for how jail officials should check with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to determine whether prisoners are known to be in the country illegally. Georgia law previously only encouraged jailers to do so, but the new law makes it a misdemeanor to “knowingly and willfully” fail to check immigration status. The bill would also deny state funding to local governments that don’t cooperate.

The law also mandates that local jails apply for what is known as a 287(g) agreement with ICE to let local jailers help enforce immigration law. It is unclear how many would be accepted because President Joe Biden’s administration has de-emphasized the program. The program doesn’t empower local law enforcement to make immigration-specific arrests outside a jail.

Republicans said Senate Bill 63, requiring cash bail, is needed to keep criminals locked up, even though it erodes changes that Republican Gov. Nathan Deal championed in 2018 to allow judges to release most people accused of misdemeanors without bail.

“Too many times we have seen some of our cities or counties, it’s been a revolving door with criminals,” Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones said.

Supporters said judges would still have the discretion to set very low bails. A separate part of the 2018 reform requiring judges to consider someone’s ability to pay would still remain law.

But the move could strand poor defendants in jail when accused of crimes for which they are unlikely to ever go to prison and aggravate overcrowding in Georgia’s county lockups.

It’s part of a push by Republicans nationwide to increase reliance on cash bail, even as some Democratic-led jurisdictions end cash bail entirely or dramatically restrict its use. That split was exemplified last year when a court upheld Illinois’ plan to abolish cash bail, while voters in Wisconsin approved an amendment to the constitution letting judges consider someone’s past convictions for violent crimes before setting bail.

By Clark Mindock

(Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday said a lawsuit filed by 21 young people claiming the U.S. government’s energy policies violate their rights to be protected from climate change must be dismissed, this time for good.

A three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a five-page order that the case should have been dismissed after the court first weighed in on the matter in 2020, when it said courts could not mandate broad policy changes that are better left to Congress and the executive branch.

While the young plaintiffs have since trimmed the lawsuit to seek only a declaration that their rights have been violated, the 9th Circuit said lawsuits must address harms that can be remedied by courts and such a declaration would not directly help the plaintiffs.

The panel’s order instructed a lower court overseeing the case to dismiss the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs plan to ask an 11-judge “en banc” panel of the 9th Circuit to reconsider the decision, Julia Olson, an attorney for the plaintiffs at the non-profit law firm Our Children’s Trust, said. A similar request after the 2020 ruling was denied.

“This is a tragic and unjust ruling, but it is not over,” Olson said. “A declaration of our constitutional rights is one of the few things that has moved our nation to greater justice and equality throughout history.”

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment.

The plaintiffs had argued in their 2015 lawsuit that the government has permitted, authorized and subsidized fossil fuel extraction and consumption despite knowing those actions cause catastrophic global warming.

They said climate change exacerbates things like wildfires, drought and flooding, which in turn jeopardizes their health and property. By contributing to climate change, the plaintiffs said U.S. energy polices violate their rights to due process and equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.

The young people were between the ages of 8 and 19 when they filed their lawsuit, Juliana v. USA.

After the 9th Circuit’s 2020 order dismissing the case, a federal judge in Eugene, Oregon, allowed the youth to amend their lawsuit.

The U.S. government opposed the plaintiffs’ bid, saying it was “substantially identical” to issues the parties already litigated.

Numerous other youth-led climate lawsuits have been filed in recent years by Our Children’s Trust, similarly arguing state and federal policies promoting fossil fuels violate the rights of young people.

While several of those have been dismissed, a Montana state judge last year ruled in favor of a group of young people who said the state’s permitting of fossil fuel projects violates a 1972 amendment to the Montana constitution requiring the state to protect and improve the environment.

A similar lawsuit by a group of young Hawaiians based on that state’s constitution is due to go to trial in June.

The U.S. Constitution contains no such explicit provision. A group of young people have also filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection accusing the agency of “intentionally” discriminating against U.S. children by allowing the release of dangerous levels of climate change-causing greenhouse gas pollution in California federal court.

(Reporting by Clark Mindock, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Michael Erman)

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Union Pacific managers undermined the U.S. government’s efforts to assess safety at the railroad in the wake of several high profile derailments across the industry by coaching employees on how to respond and suggesting they might be disciplined, federal regulators say.

The meddling was so widespread across Union Pacific’s 23-state network that the Federal Railroad Administration had no choice but to suspend its safety assessment of the company, the agency’s chief safety officer, Karl Alexy, told Union Pacific executives in a letter dated last week that labor groups posted online Tuesday.

The company indicated Wednesday that the issue was limited to one department. Its president told FRA in a response letter that Union Pacific“did not intend to influence or impede the assessment in any way.”

The agency launched safety assessments of all major railroads in the U.S. at the urging of congressional leaders after Norfolk Southern’s disastrous February 2023 derailment in eastern Ohio, and the episode with Union Pacific may prompt lawmakers to finally act on stalled railroad safety reforms.

“FRA has discovered that numerous employees were coached to provide specific responses to FRA questions if they were approached for a safety culture interview,” Alexy wrote. “Reports of this coaching span the UPRR (Union Pacific railroad) system and railroad crafts. FRA has also encountered reluctance to participate in field interviews from employees who cite intimidation or fear of retaliation.”

The chief of safety at the nation’s largest rail union, Jared Cassity, noted that the FRA is so small that it must rely on the railroads to police themselves and report safety issues.

“To think that a company the size of a Union Pacific is willing to go to great lengths to intimidate and harass their employees, so that they’re not honest in their assessment of a company’s safety culture. That begs the question of what else are you covering up?” said Cassity, who is with the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers’ Transportation Division, also known as SMART-TD.

A Union Pacific spokeswoman said the railroad believes regulators’ concerns center on a message that one manager sent out to employees in his department across the railroad with a copy of the questions FRA planned to ask to help prepare them for an interview.

“The steps we took were intended to help, not hinder, and were taken to educate and prepare our team for the assessment ethically and compliantly,” Union Pacific President Beth Whited said in a response letter to the FRA on Tuesday. “We apologize for any confusion those efforts caused.”

Last year, the FRA found a slew of defects in Union Pacific’s locomotives and railcars after sending out a team of inspectors, and the agency is still working to nail down what caused a railcar to explode in the railroad’s massive railyard in western Nebraska.

Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, who cosponsored the bipartisan railroad safety bill after the East Palestine derailment, called Union Pacific’s meddling “unacceptable.”

“The big railroads keep fighting efforts to improve safety,” Brown said. “We need much stronger tools to stop railroad executives from putting their own profits and greed ahead of basic safety.”

Brown pledged to fight for a vote in the Senate soon on the bill that would set standards for trackside detectors and inspections that are supposed to catch problems before they can cause a derailment along with other changes. The House has yet to take up a railroad safety bill because Republican leaders wanted to wait until after the National Transportation Safety Board’s final report on the East Palestine derailment that’s expected in late June.

Whited told the Federal Railroad Administration that Union Pacific plans to launch an internal safety assessment this month, as the agency suggested, because “our goal is to be the safest railroad in North America, a place we know we can get to even more quickly with the FRA’s assistance. ”

But Cassity said he doubts an internal survey would be accurate because many Union Pacific workers are afraid to speak out about safety concerns. He said the prevailing attitude seems to be “move the freight at any cost,” making another major derailment all the more likely.

BRENTWOOD, N.H. (AP) — Jurors who will decide whether to hold New Hampshire accountable for abuse at its youth detention center heard from the final witness in a landmark trial Wednesday: a psychiatrist who said the plaintiff has bipolar disorder, not post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dr. Harrison Pope is the director of the biological psychiatry lab at McLean Hospital, where he has worked for nearly 50 years and has specialized in treatment of bipolar disorder. Testifying on behalf of the state, he said he was confident in the diagnosis he made after reviewing David Meehan’s medical history and speaking to him for several hours this year.

“The most important thing in his case is his history of bipolar disorder,” Pope said.

Meehan, 42, went to police in 2017 with allegations that he had been beaten, raped and held in solitary confinement at the Youth Development Center in the 1990s. Since he sued the state in 2020, 11 former state workers have been arrested and more than 1,100 former residents of the Manchester facility have filed lawsuits alleging six decades of abuse.

Meehan, whose lawsuit seeking millions of dollars was the first to be filed and first to go to trial, says the state’s negligence enabled abuse so severe that he has been largely unable to work or enjoy life as an adult. His mental health providers over the past decade and experts who testified at the trial diagnosed him with severe PTSD, but Pope disagreed.

While many symptoms of PTSD overlap with the depressive episodes that are part of bipolar disorder, PTSD does not include the symptoms that show up in manic episodes, he said.

“The bipolar disorder is such a profound illness and can cause so many of his symptoms that it’s impossible to know, if you could lift off all of those symptoms that are attributable to bipolar disorder … how many symptoms would be left over,” he said. “Without being able to see the picture with the bipolar disorder properly treated, it’s just speculative as to how much of would be attributed to PTSD itself.”

Jurors heard testimony about a 2020 episode in which Meehan was hospitalized after making delusional statements, including believing he was a biblical figure. Pope called that a classic manic episode, though Meehan’s experts said it didn’t fit the definition because he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time.

Pope also disagreed with an earlier expert who said she believed Meehan’s account of abuse because he displayed physical symptoms, including elevated blood pressure and sweating, during the evaluation.

“We’re no better lie detectors than anybody else,” Pope said. “And if anybody was on the state who told you otherwise, they were misleading you.”

Over the course of three weeks, jurors heard from Meehan and more than a dozen witnesses called by his attorneys. In addition to the psychologists, they included former staffers who said they faced resistance and even threats when they raised or investigated concerns, a former resident who described being gang-raped in a stairwell, and a teacher who said she spotted suspicious bruises on Meehan and half a dozen other boys during his time there.

The state’s defense was considerably shorter, with just five witnesses over three days, including Meehan’s father and a longtime YDC school employee who said she neither saw nor heard about any abuse.

Attorneys are expected to make their closing statements Thursday.

By Howard Schneider and Ann Saphir

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday and signaled it is still leaning towards eventual reductions in borrowing costs, but put a red flag on recent disappointing inflation readings that could make those rate cuts a while in coming.

Indeed, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said that after starting 2024 with three months of faster-than-expected price increases, it “will take longer than previously expected” for policymakers to become comfortable that inflation will resume the decline towards 2% that had cheered them through much of last year.

That steady progress has stalled for now, and while Powell said rate increases remained unlikely, he set the stage for a potentially extended hold of the benchmark policy rate in the 5.25%-5.50% range that has been in place since July.

U.S. central bankers still believe the current policy rate is putting enough pressure on economic activity to bring inflation under control, Powell said, and they would be content to wait as long as needed for that to become apparent – even if inflation is simply “moving sideways” in the meantime.

The Fed’s preferred inflation measure – the personal consumption expenditures price index – increased at a 2.7% annual rate in March, an acceleration from the prior month.

“Inflation is still too high,” Powell said in a press conference after the end of the Federal Open Market Committee’s two-day policy meeting. “Further progress in bringing it down is not assured and the path forward is uncertain.”

Powell said his forecast remained for inflation to fall over the course of the year, but that “my confidence in that is lower than it was.”

Whether there are rate cuts this year or not remains in doubt.

“If we did have a path where inflation proves more persistent than expected, and where the labor market remains strong but inflation is moving sideways and we’re not gaining greater confidence, well, that would be a case in which it could be appropriate to hold off on rate cuts,” Powell said. “There are paths to not cutting and there are paths to cutting. It’s really going to depend on the data.”

Despite the uncertainty of the current economic moment, Powell’s characterization of rate hikes as “unlikely” cheered investors concerned about a newly hawkish Fed chief.

U.S. stock and bond prices turned higher as Powell preached patience that may delay rate cuts, but also means a high bar for any more hikes. The Fed raised its benchmark policy rate by 5.25 percentage points in 2022 and 2023 to curb a surge in inflation.

Powell’s remarks on Wednesday were “notably less hawkish than many feared,” said analysts at Evercore ISI. “The basic message was that cuts have been delayed, not derailed.”

Investors in contracts tied to the Fed’s policy rate increased bets that rate cuts could begin in September rather than later in the year as reflected in earlier market pricing.

BALANCE SHEET

The Fed’s latest policy statement kept key elements of its economic assessment and policy guidance intact, noting that “inflation has eased” over the past year, and framing its discussion of interest rates around the conditions under which borrowing costs can be lowered.

“The Committee does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably towards 2%,” the Fed repeated in its unanimously-approved statement.

That continues to leave the timing of any rate cut in doubt, and Fed officials made emphatic their concern that the first months of 2024 have done little to help the cause.

“In recent months, there has been a lack of further progress towards the Committee’s 2% inflation objective,” the Fed said in its statement.

The U.S. central bank also announced it will scale back the pace at which it is shrinking its balance sheet starting on June 1, allowing only $25 billion in Treasury bonds to run off each month versus the current $60 billion. Mortgage-backed securities will continue to run off by up to $35 billion monthly.

The step is meant to ensure the financial system does not run short of reserves, as happened in 2019 during the Fed’s last round of “quantitative tightening.”

While the move could loosen financial conditions at the margin at a time when the U.S. central bank is trying to keep pressure on the economy, policymakers insist their balance sheet and interest rate tools serve different ends.

The Fed maintained its overall assessment of economic growth, saying that the economy “continued to expand at a solid pace. Job gains have remained strong and the unemployment rate has remained low.”

Powell reconciled that with the relatively weak, 1.6% growth of gross domestic product in the first quarter by saying that the 3.1% increase in private domestic demand was a better gauge of where the economy stands, with output buttressed by a recent jump in immigration.

Asked about the risk the U.S. was entering a period of “stagflation” with stagnant growth and rising prices, Powell said current conditions are nothing like those seen in the late 1970s when prices were rising more than 10% annually at one point alongside high unemployment.

“Right now we have … pretty solid growth … We have inflation running under 3%,” Powell said. “I don’t see the ‘stag’ and I don’t see the ‘flation.'”

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Additional reporting by Lindsay Dunsmuir, Michael S. Derby and Ann Saphir; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Paul Simao)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah public schools have been rushing to prepare students and teachers as the state starts cracking down Wednesday on any school found not enforcing new bathroom restrictions for transgender people.

Residents and visitors are required under state law to use bathrooms and changing rooms in government-owned buildings that correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Although the law took effect when Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed it Jan. 30, it was not widely enforced before a key compliance mechanism began this week. Schools and government agencies now face steep fines of up to $10,000 per day for each violation.

The rollout has been roiled in confusion for Utah families amid a patchwork of plans that differ across districts. Their experiences are mirrored in many of the other 10 Republican-led states with similar restroom restrictions. Enforcement of one of those laws — in Idaho — has been put on hold by a court.

Utah state Rep. Kera Birkeland, a Morgan Republican and the bill’s primary sponsor, has argued it’s a necessary safeguard against people who might claim they’re transgender to infiltrate a gendered space. She pitched the law as a safety measure to protect the privacy of women and girls without citing evidence of threats or assaults by trans people against them. Trans residents say she has used a hypothetical to justify exclusion.

Legislators left it up to each school district to decide how it will communicate the changes. Some have held classroom presentations. Others have sent home fact sheets or met privately with families who might be affected.

Despite their different approaches, the state’s largest school districts say they share a common goal: make affected individuals feel safe while handling any issues in-house.

Principals in the Granite, Alpine, Davis and Salt Lake City school districts have been trained to address bathroom concerns on an individual basis, with discretion and empathy for LGBTQ+ students, spokespeople for the districts said.

The law requires schools to create “privacy plans” for those who do not feel comfortable using group bathrooms, but Graham Beeton, 11, said such accommodations can be isolating. The Salt Lake City fifth grader, who uses he/they pronouns, said he feels loved by his classmates and does not understand why the government cares which bathroom he uses.

“It hurts me,” Beeton said. “I might be uncomfortable going into that restroom, so I want to go into a different one, but the law doesn’t say that I can.”

Trans people in Utah may only use facilities that align with their gender identity if they’ve legally changed the gender on their birth certificate and undergone certain gender-affirming surgeries, which are rarely performed on minors.

Draped in an LGBTQ+ pride flag with rainbows painted on his cheeks, Beeton beckoned his classmates to a block party held just across the street from Bonneville Elementary School on Monday afternoon. With teachers in all Salt Lake City schools set to present about the bathroom law, his mom and many other parents pulled their kids out early and threw a party in support of affected students and staff.

Among them was Mia Norman, an emergency room technician and the mother of twins, who said she did not understand how the law could realistically be enforced on children. She worried kids and their parents might be encouraged to snitch on school administrators and vulnerable students.

Norman and other parents said the rollout this week has led to tough conversations with their kids about how politics can impact their lives at a young age.

Fourth grade students Lila and Sophia left the presentation confused about why the law existed and worried that it might make some of their peers feel bad about themselves. They were told to approach a teacher with any questions about which bathroom they should use and to report instances of bullying, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by The Associated Press.

“There shouldn’t be a law in place to tell people who they can be or to stop feeling how they want to feel,” said 10-year-old Lila Hathaway.

Bree Taylor-Lof, a transgender teacher, left school on the verge of tears Monday after having to present to students about a policy that affected them personally. They fought to keep their emotions in check while fielding questions from confused fifth graders who did not understand why the law had been passed.

Realizing that the restrictions would affect their teacher, many of the kids gave Taylor-Lof hugs and handwritten cards on their way out the door.

“Our youth today have a keen sense for justice and inclusion and looking out for each other,” Taylor-Lof said. “That was clear in the concern that they expressed about their fellow peers, and for me.”

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — President Joe Biden is expected to travel to North Carolina on Thursday to meet with the family members of four officers killed earlier this week in the deadliest attack on U.S. law enforcement since 2016.

The president is scheduled to visit Wilmington across the state that day and is planning to add a stop in Charlotte to meet with local officials and the families of officers shot Monday while serving a warrant, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The four officers were killed when a task force made up of officers from different agencies arrived in the residential neighborhood in the city of 900,000 to try to capture 39-year-old Terry Clark Hughes Jr. on warrants for possession of a firearm by an ex-felon and fleeing to elude in Lincoln County, North Carolina. Hughes was also killed.

Four other officers were wounded in the shootout, and an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a 40-caliber handgun and ammunition were found at the scene. Those killed were identified as Sam Poloche and William Elliott of the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections; Charlotte-Mecklenburg Officer Joshua Eyer; and Deputy U.S. Marshal Thomas Weeks.

After the attack, Biden expressed his condolences and support for the community, calling the slain officers “heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice, rushing into harm’s way to protect us.”

“We must do more to protect our law enforcement officers. That means funding them – so they have the resources they need to do their jobs and keep us safe. And it means taking additional action to combat the scourge of gun violence. Now,” Biden said in a statement, calling on leaders in Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons, among other gun control measures.

Outside the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department’s North Tryon Division on Wednesday, Eyer’s patrol car was draped with an American flag and covered with flower bouquets from community members who stopped to pay their respects.

The department called the vehicle a “solemn tribute” and “visible reminder of Officer Eyer’s sacrifice and service,” in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Eyer’s memorial service is scheduled for Friday at a Charlotte Baptist church.

Also on Wednesday, a local police chief said that an officer from his force who was shot Monday underwent surgery and is expected to make a full recovery. David W. Onley, the police chief of Statesville in the Charlotte metropolitan area, expressed condolences Wednesday and “unwavering solidarity with our law enforcement brethren during this difficult time,” according to a statement released by his office.

One of the four officers injured in the attack was Cpl. Casey Hoover of the Statesville Police Department, who served on the task force. He was shot in his upper torso — an area unprotected by his bulletproof vest.

Hoover was taken by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department to a Charlotte hospital, where he underwent surgery. Onley said the officer, who has worked for the Statesville police for eight years, is now stable and is expected to make a full recovery and “exemplifies the bravery and resilience of our law enforcement community.”

Law enforcement officers were still investigating Wednesday, attempting to determine a precise timeline of events and whether Hughes acted alone or with a second shooter.

Hughes’ criminal record in North Carolina goes back more than a decade. It includes prison time and convictions for breaking and entering, reckless driving, eluding arrest and illegally possessing a gun as a former felon, according to state records.

The attack was the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement in one incident since five officers were killed by a sniper during a protest in Dallas in 2016.

___ Miller reported from Washington.

MOUNT HOREB, Wis. (AP) — Witnesses described children fleeing after the sound of gunshots near a Wisconsin middle school where authorities said an active shooter was “neutralized” outside the building Wednesday. There were no reported injuries to those inside the school.

For panicked kids and their parents, the incident was terrifying. Parents described children hiding in closets, afraid to communicate on cell phones, and one middle schooler said his class initially fled the school gym on in-line skates.

Authorities in Mount Horeb said without giving details that the “alleged assailant” was harmed, and witnesses described hearing gunshots and seeing dozens of children running.

The district said in several Facebook posts starting around 11:30 a.m. that all district schools were on lockdown. More than four hours later, the district had only announced plans to release elementary schoolers and said remaining students would stay in schools “while the police continue their investigation.”

School buses remained lined up for blocks outside and authorities had used police tape to surround the middle school, the nearby high school and playing fields between the two buildings.

“An initial search of the middle school has not yielded additional suspects,” a post around noon said. “As importantly, we have no reports of individuals being harmed, with the exception of the alleged assailant.”

Earlier, the district posted that “the threat has been neutralized outside of the building” but didn’t elaborate on what had happened at the school in Mount Horeb, some 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the state capital of Madison.

Jeanne Keller said she heard about five gunshots while in her shop The Quilting Jeanne, just down the block from the campus that includes the middle school.

“It was maybe like pow-pow-pow-pow,” Keller told The Associated Press by phone. “I thought it was fireworks. I went outside and saw all the children running … I probably saw 200 children.”

One middle schooler said his class was in the school gym practicing in-line skating when they heard gunshots.

Max Kelly, 12, said his teacher told the class to get out of the school. He said they skated to a street, ditched their in-line skates and ran to a nearby convenience store and gas station and hid in a bathroom.

Kelly was reunited with his parents and sat on a hillside with them early Wednesday afternoon waiting for his younger siblings to be released from their own schools. He still wore socks, his shoes left behind.

“I don’t think anywhere is safe anymore,” said his mother, 32-year-old Alison Kelly.

Police in Mount Horeb said they could not immediately provide information. A person who answered the phone at the school district office declined comment. The Dane County Sheriff’s office directed reporters to a staging area but had not provided updates hours after the school district first alerted families about the incident.

The district had begun releasing some students of other schools by early afternoon and anxious parents gathered at a bus depot waiting for their kids.

Shannon Hurd, 44, and her former husband, Nathian Hurd, 39, sat in a car waiting for their 13-year-old son, Noah, who was still in the locked-down middle school.

Shannon Hurd said she first heard what happened via a text from Noah saying he loved her. She said she nearly fell down the stairs at her work as she ran to get to the school.

“I just want my kid,” she said. “They’re supposed to be safe at school.”

Stacy Smith, 42, was at the bank Wednesday when she saw police cars rush by and soon got a school district text warning of an active shooter.

She initially could not reach her two children — junior Abbi and seventh-grader Cole. Finally, she reached Abbi by phone but the girl whispered that she was hiding in a closet and couldn’t talk. She eventually connected with both children and learned they were OK.

“Not here,” she said in disbelief. “You hear about this everywhere else but not here.”

Schools nationwide have sought ways to prevent mass shootings inside their walls, from physical security measures and active shooter drills to technology including detailed digital maps. Many also rely on teachers and administrators working to detect early signs of student mental health struggles.

The Mount Horeb Area School District’s security protocols were not immediately clear Wednesday and there was no information known about the alleged assailant’s identity or condition.

The village is home to around 7,600 people and the central office of outdoor gear retailer Duluth Trading Company. Mount Horeb markets itself as the “troll capital of the world,” a reference to carvings of trolls stationed throughout its downtown district as a tribute to a Scandinavian gift shop that was a landmark for passing long-haul truckers in the 1970s.

Heidy Lange, owner of Firefly Events Decor & Flowers, said she was in her florist shop about two blocks from the school when she looked out and saw children running and “probably 50 cop cars from everywhere.”

“All of a sudden there was a whole bunch of parents running behind them,” Lange said. “All our phones were beeping with all the alerts. It would devastate the town if something happened to a child here.”

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Associated Press reporters Corey Williams in Detroit and Rick Callahan in Indianapolis contributed to this report.