What to know about hospital deals with the Trump administration to avoid treating transgender minors

• September 22, 2026

By GEOFF MULVIHILL

At least six major hospitals have agreed to refuse gender-affirming hormones and surgery for transgender young people and agreed to make payments to the federal government, according to deals with the Department of Justice.

The most recent agreements came last week.

Most of the hospitals had already stopped offering the treatments because of state bans or previous pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration.

The DOJ agreements end investigations into care previously provided and stop the possibility of hospitals being forced to turn over patient records. The Justice Department says some providers have also agreed to help pay medical costs for children to “detransition.”

The hospitals have not admitted to doing anything wrong.

“It’s a really dangerous precedent when the federal government is allowed to politicize any one group of people’s care and end it,” said Eliel Cruz, a cofounder of the Gender Liberation Movement.

Here’s a look at the situation:

Ending the care has been a priority for Trump

The Justice Department announced settlements last week with New York University Langone Hospitals and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centers. The hospitals agreed not to provide puberty blockers, hormones or gender-affirming surgery — all of which the administration calls “sex-rejecting procedures” — for patients under 19.

“The Department of Justice is fighting to protect our nation’s children and working tirelessly to reach agreements with hospitals to end so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ for minors,” U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement last week.

NYU agreed to pay the federal government $8.5 million and UPMC agreed to pay $950,000 in the deals, which followed similar settlements reached since May with Cleveland Clinic, Connecticut Children’s Hospital, Mount Sinai Health System in New York and Texas Children’s Hospital.

The hospitals have said the deals will not impact how their pediatric mental healthcare programs treat transgender children.

The Trump administration last year published a review urging only therapy and not broader gender-affirming care for youth. But most major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, support keeping treatment available.

Mount Sinai is the only one of the six institutions to strike deals so far that had not previously announced its decision.

The hospitals in Texas and Ohio had already stopped care under state bans. The others had announced their policy changes since Trump returned to office in January 2025 and initiated a series of steps targeting the care. He signed an executive order in January 2025 calling to cut federal support for gender transitions for those under 19, and the administration has barred federal Medicaid dollars from covering the treatment.

The care is still available at a variety of hospitals, and clinics and through individual physicians.

The deals end federal investigations into the hospitals

One key action from the administration was to subpoena hospitals — first announced in July 2025 — requesting information on gender-affirming care for children, including patients’ names.

NYU Langone said in a statement that agreeing to the settlement protects patients and their families because it removes “the threat that NYU Langone would have to provide the confidential information previously demanded about patients under 18 who received gender-affirming care at our institution.”

Several hospitals have asked courts to block them from being forced to turn over the records, and most prevailed in district courts.

But a ruling last month from an appeals court gave the government’s case a boost.

A 2-1 ruling from the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the administration’s goal of ending gender-affirming care for youth is not improper and cannot be used as an argument to stop the subpoenas.

Gender-affirming youth care has become harder to find

At least 27 states have laws restricting or barring gender-affirming care for minors.

Additionally, more than two dozen hospitals, health systems and clinics in the states without bans have stopped offering the care since last year — including some in states with specific legal protections for it. A group of Democratic state officials have sued the Trump administration over that, saying its efforts unlawfully intimidate medical providers.

Transition surgery for people under 18 is rare, but many transgender youth receive hormones to block puberty or to trigger development of sex-linked characteristics consistent with their gender identity.

Cruz’s Gender Liberation Movement has protested hospitals that have ended the care. Cruz said some families have moved to other states for access to treatment, only to find providers stop it there. Some, he said, have left the country.

He said the agreements with the Trump administration show “who has the courage to do what their calling and education calls them to do — which is do no harm — and those (who do) not.”

​ Orange County Register 

Orange County girls athlete of the week: Annika Raja, Santa Margarita

• September 22, 2026

Support our high school sports coverage by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribe now

The Orange County girls athlete of the week:

Name: Annika Raja

School: Santa Margarita

Sport: Golf

Year: Junior

Noteworthy: Raja captured the Rainbow Sandals/Lady Triton Invitational in a one-hole playoff with a tournament, course record 8-under-par 65 at San Clemente Municipal Golf Course. She recorded eight birdies to lead Santa Margarita to a sixth consecutive team title and record score of 357. Later in the week, Raja shared medalist honors with a 3-under-par 33 in a 169-176 victory against Crean Lutheran at Coto de Caza Golf & Racquet Club. She recently committed to Vanderbilt University.

Please send nominees for girls athlete of the week to dalbano@scng.com or @ocvarsityguy on X

​ Orange County Register 

Hayden Panettiere’s death was accidental and involved fentanyl, coroner says

• September 22, 2026

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — Actor Hayden Panettiere died from an accidental overdose of several drugs including fentanyl, a coroner in South Carolina said Tuesday.

Panettiere, 36, was found unresponsive in an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, on Aug 16. Her on-and-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson and his brother Zach Hickerson were at the home.

According to a statement from the Greenville County Coroner’s Office, a combination of fentanyl and its chemical byproduct, as well as the anti-anxiety medication alprazolam, a muscle relaxer and a drug used to treat major depression and other serious mental health disorders, were found in Panettiere’s system.

The office did not release further details from the autopsy report of the onetime child star.

Asked for comment on the coroner’s report, Kasey Kitchen, a publicist for the family, told The Associated Press that “the investigation is still ongoing and the case is complex.”

​ Orange County Register 

States fight to inspect federal immigrant detention facilities

• September 22, 2026

By Shalina Chatlani, Stateline.org

Concerned about conditions in federal immigrant detention facilities but often barred from entering them, some Democratic-led states are fighting to enforce their own health and safety standards at the sites.

The Trump administration, citing the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, argues that states don’t have the authority to regulate federal facilities.

But states counter that because the federal government has contracted with private companies to operate the sites, they have the right — and the responsibility — to make sure those companies follow state health and safety rules.

Washington state, for example, is embroiled in legal fight with the Florida-based GEO Group over a 2023 law that directs state health officials to regularly inspect privately run detention facilities, including those holding immigrants. The GEO Group operates nearly two dozen immigrant detention facilities nationwide.

Despite the law, state health inspectors have repeatedly been denied access to a GEO Group facility in Tacoma, where there have been allegations of medical mistreatment, abuse and neglect and concerns about water quality and food. In an April legal filing, the state cited complaints of rotten, bug-riddled food and only two working bathrooms for 100 people.

The state health department says it has received more than 3,500 complaints about the Northwest ICE Processing Center, but has been denied access 10 times since 2023.

“Our point is that GEO is a private entity, and so it doesn’t get to claim these federal preemption defenses because those are reserved for the federal government,” said Ellen Range, a section chief in the Washington Office of the Attorney General.

“You can’t contract around the law,” Range added.

The GEO Group did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But during a May earnings call, George Zoley, the CEO, chairman and founder of the company, decried what he called “unwarranted litigation” and described state efforts to inspect the detention facilities as “fundamentally unconstitutional.”

“As some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities, I think the logical solution to much of that is federal ownership of the facilities. They are federal facilities to begin with, in my opinion,” Zoley said.

Federal ownership “will provide stronger credibility in the courts…that these are federal facilities carrying out the congressional priorities of immigration programs and policies that Congress has passed,” Zoley added, “and that states can only have very limited involvement in those policies and programs.”

At least two other states have enacted laws this year that are similar to Washington’s.

Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey last month signed a law that empowers the state auditor to inspect immigrant detention facilities to make sure they are following local health and safety rules. And in June, Colorado enacted a measure that strengthens the authority of state and local health officials to inspect immigrant detention facilities, ratchets up the frequency of unannounced inspections and specifies what inspectors must look for.

The Colorado law also includes a civil penalty of up to $50,000 for facilities that refuse to allow an inspection.

“Our community has been outraged by the conditions in these holding facilities and in these detention centers,” Colorado Democratic state Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, who authored the bill, said.

“I think that it’s important for the state to set guidelines and guardrails, and for contractors to follow the law,” Velasco said. “The issue is that they’re saying that they are exempted from the law because they are a federal contractor. So that has been very frustrating.”

Colorado and the GEO Group also have been facing off in court. Last month, Colorado sued the company for refusing access and information requests related to a confirmed tuberculosis case at its facility in Aurora. The next day, a federal judge blocked part of Colorado’s law in response to a GEO Group lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the measure.

And in California, Democrats are trying to renew a law that directs the state attorney general to regularly review conditions in detention facilities and report back to lawmakers and the governor. That law is scheduled to expire next year, but Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta is pushing legislation that would extend it indefinitely.

In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement “is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies.”

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, quality water, blankets, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the spokesperson wrote. “In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”

Disturbing reports

In May, the Trump administration shuttered the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman, created by Congress in 2019 to investigate detainee deaths, access to health care and other issues.

But another government watchdog, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, last week released a report on its January 2026 inspection of the Florida ICE facility widely known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” Inspectors found that detainees were kept in small metal enclosures for up to two hours, and didn’t have clean drinking water, daily showers, or safely stored food. The facility closed in June.

Earlier this year, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, issued a report citing “over a thousand credible reports of human rights abuses” in immigrant detention facilities since President Donald Trump began his second term. Investigators from Ossoff’s staff found 44 reports of family separation, including mothers being separated from their breastfeeding infants; 206 reports of medical neglect; 88 reports of physical and sexual abuse; and 139 reports of denial of adequate food and water.

The reports come as ICE, using new tactics and striving to meet daily arrest quotas, is detaining more people: Federal immigration authorities say they arrested 51,000 immigrants in July, more than any other month of the Trump administration.

The number of people in detention soared to more than 65,700 in mid-July, compared to 37,000 two years ago, an increase of about 70%, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University research group.

“It is worth saying that the detention system has changed a lot in the last year and a half. It’s roughly doubled in size,” said Scott Shuchart, who served as assistant director for regulatory affairs at ICE from 2022 to 2025.

“We’re basically holding people who either haven’t committed a crime or who aren’t being detained for having committed a crime as though they were criminals, and then we do it very badly,” he said. “ICE is not constituted or equipped to manage the contractor facilities well — it has never done it well.”

Taking responsibility

Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for low-income immigrants, said states that are trying to enforce health and safety rules in detention facilities are struggling to fill the oversight role that federal immigration authorities have abdicated.

“It has created this tricky litigation issue, where a state trying to protect the people in ICE facilities has to sue both the federal government — ICE — and a private prison company,” Whitlock said. “And what these two entities often do is it’s a little bit of like hot potato, where the private prison company says, ‘Oh, we’re not the right defendant.’”

Claire Trickler-McNulty, an assistant director in the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration who helped oversee ICE detention facilities, cautioned that there could be some unintended consequences of the new state laws.

Federal contractors might opt to move detainees out of a state where there are a lot of restrictions to one with fewer restrictions, said Trickler-McNulty, who is now an immigration policy fellow at Hyphen, a nonprofit group. That would make it more difficult for families of detainees to support or even find their loved ones from a distance.

She also suggested, as Zoley of the GEO Group did, that the federal government might buy more facilities to thwart state oversight. In that case, states would have to think creatively about what they can control.

For example, she said, federal facilities will still have to use local resources, such as sewage and water lines, and likely would have to hire private contractors to handle security.

“The actual facility is quite dependent on the state and local resources. So ideally, it would be a collaborative arrangement,” she said. “If you want it to be better and have improvements, you really need a willing partner on the other side.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

©2026 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

New York airport operations resume after disruptions across US Northeast due to technical problems

• September 22, 2026

By JOSH FUNK, AP Transportation Writer

Flights were taking off and landing at New York City-area airports Tuesday with some delays and cancellations, after hours of disruptions resulting from damaged communications lines at a key air traffic control facility in Philadelphia that were later repaired.

Hundreds of flights were canceled throughout the U.S. Northeast on Monday, including more than 600 into and out of Newark Liberty International Airport, as the outage hit every major airport in the New York City area. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also said in an online post that “it will take some time to clear all existing delays” despite the repairs.

The Newark airport showed about 40 delays and nearly 60 cancellations early Tuesday, according to Flightaware.com, a global flight tracking and aviation data site.

The primary communications line at the Federal Aviation Administration facility in Philadelphia had failed earlier Monday, while the backup fiber optic line was inadvertently severed by railroad construction workers. The failures left controllers without radar or communications for hours.

The outage brought commercial air traffic to a near-standstill at Newark for much of the day, with no commercial flights landing at the airport from about 9:40 a.m. to just after 5:20 p.m. local time, according to flight-tracking site Flightradar24.

More than 200 flights into and out of Philadelphia International Airport were also canceled, while disruptions hit LaGuardia and Kennedy airports in New York. Flights had resumed by Monday evening.

Some airlines were allowing customers to change flights without charge. The FAA advised travelers to check the status of their flights before heading to the airport.

The outage occurred just as President Donald Trump and numerous foreign leaders were flying into New York City for the U.N. General Assembly. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney missed an event Monday on the sidelines of the General Assembly because of the flight disruptions, but his office said he had arrived in New York by Monday night.

The technical problems stem from the same FAA facility in Philadelphia that caused numerous disruptions at the Newark airport last spring.

Regional control centers like these have two lines that carry radar and communications data in and out: the primary and the backup. The FAA said a circuit on the primary failed Monday morning, and when the system tried to switch to the backup, workers discovered that the fiber optic line had been cut.

Earlier in the day, Duffy said an Amtrak construction crew was to blame. Amtrak, however, pointed to a New Jersey Transit construction crew that was working in the area between Newark and New Brunswick, New Jersey.

AP reporters Rio Yamat and Jessica Hill contributed to this report from Las Vegas.

​ Orange County Register 

GOP Sen. John Curtis calls for probe of Trump Jr. after wedding party bankrolled by Russian oligarch

• September 22, 2026

By JOEY CAPPELLETTI

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah is calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Donald Trump Jr. used his proximity to the presidency for financial benefit, after his recent wedding party was partially bankrolled by a Russian oligarch.

In a letter sent Tuesday, Curtis called on the committee to subpoena Trump Jr. over his business dealings, relationships with foreign individuals and entities, gifts or other benefits he has received and any instances in which his relationship to President Donald Trump, a Republican, “was invoked or understood to provide value.” Curtis called for the same scrutiny of Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

“The country should not have to accept one standard for the family of a Republican president and another for the family of a Democratic president,” Curtis wrote in the letter addressed to GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the committee, and Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the committee.

The letter comes as a few Republicans have shown a growing willingness to criticize Trump after largely avoiding public breaks with the president during much of his second term. The unpopular war in Iran, high gas prices and mounting concerns about the GOP’s prospects in November’s midterm elections have brought increased scrutiny of the president from within his own party.

The Trumps say it was a generous gift from a dear friend

ProPublica first reported last week that Umar Kremlev, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, helped pay to rent a private island and for a fireworks show when Trump Jr. and socialite Bettina Anderson were married in the Bahamas in May.

In a subsequent post on her Instagram page signed by the couple, Bettina Trump wrote that Kremlev, head of the International Boxing Association, was a “dear friend” who “very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding.”

The president, who did not attend his son’s wedding, defended Kremlev’s involvement but said the money would be paid back.

Curtis calls the funding ‘corruption’

Curtis last Friday called the gift “corruption” and vowed to say more in the coming days.

“A Russian oligarch paid for a lavish wedding after-party for Donald Trump Jr., which to me just stinks. It’s corruption. I don’t like it,” Curtis said in a video posted on social media.

Curtis, first elected to the Senate in 2024, vowed upon taking office to not be afraid of disagreeing with Trump. While he has been critical in the past, the step of calling on the committee to investigate the president’s son is remarkable.

He wrote on social media that Republicans “nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships” and that they “should not unplug it now.”

Republicans investigated the Bidens

House Republicans spent much of 2023 and 2024 investigating whether Hunter Biden used his father’s name and political position to benefit his business dealings with foreign interests. The Biden family dismissed the investigations as politically motivated and denied any wrongdoing.

The GOP effort culminated in a report accusing Joe Biden of participating in a conspiracy to use his public office to enrich his family. But the House never voted on articles of impeachment against him.

“‘Trust us’ was not enough then, and it is not enough now,” Curtis wrote.

Associated Press reporter Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Polo strengthens to a Category 5 hurricane off Mexico’s Pacific coast

• September 22, 2026

MIAMI (AP) — Hurricane Polo grew into a Category 5 storm Tuesday in the eastern Pacific off southwestern Mexico and was forecast to bring heavy rain to southwestern Mexico but remain offshore.

It had maximum sustained winds of 160 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Polo was moving east at 6 mph and was forecast to sharply turn northwest and west-northwest. On that path, Polo would skirt the Mexican coast for a few days without directly making landfall.

A tropical storm watch was issued for part of the coast south of Manzanillo in Colima state to Tecpan de Galeana in Guerrero state, meaning tropical storm conditions were possible in the area within two days. Polo was centered about 360 miles (579 kilometers) south-southeast of Manzanillo.

Heavy rain with the potential for flooding and landslides was forecast for coastal Guerrero and Michoacán states through Thursday. Smaller amounts of rain were possible in coastal portions of Oaxaca, Colima and Jalisco states.

Category 5 is the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale, reflecting that the storm’s maximum sustained winds exceed 157 mph (253 kph).

Farther west in the Pacific Ocean, Tropical Storm Odalys was far from land but expected to become a hurricane by midweek. Odalys had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (105 kph) on Tuesday.

In the Atlantic Ocean, Tropical Storm Fay had weakened to 40 mph (65 kph) southwest of the Azores and was forecast to be a remnant low by late Tuesday.

No Atlantic hurricanes have formed yet this year, and this year has set a record for the longest a season has begun without a hurricane. The effects of this year’s El Nino crush storms before they get going.

​ Orange County Register 

Wall Street inches higher as oil prices, bond yields retreat for fifth consecutive day

• September 22, 2026

By YURI KAGEYAMA, AP Business Writer

Oil prices retreated for the fifth straight day Tuesday and Wall Street was poised to open modestly higher as pressure from the bond market eased.

With little in the way of corporate earnings or government economic data releases, markets were somewhat subdued in the early going. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 were up less than 0.1% before the bell, while Nasdaq futures rose 0.3%.

The price for a barrel of U.S. crude fell $2.38 and dipped below $90 for the first time this month. Brent crude, the international standard, slid $2.05 to $98.29 per barrel. There are reports that Saudi Arabia is working to re-open its east-west pipeline, which was damaged in attacks.

That is still almost $30 more per barrel compared with this time last year, and dozens of countries have implemented fuel switching and work-from-home programs to ease the burden for people living there. But prices are down from close to $110 reached last week.

Oil prices have been swinging as some crude passed through the Strait of Hormuz to get to customers, though nowhere near as much as the industry would like because of conflicts in the Middle East.

The recent decline in oil prices has helped relieve some of the pressure that rising bond yields had been putting on the market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased further to 4.93% early Tuesday after crossing above the 5% threshold last week for the first time since 2023.

Yields have been on the rise because of worries about inflation, big debt loads for governments worldwide and other factors. That hurts the economy because high yields make it more expensive not only for the U.S. government to borrow money to pay its bills but also for households and businesses.

Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, France’s CAC 40 and Germany’s DAX each rose 0.5%. Britain’s FTSE 100 was up less than 0.1%.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.3% to 8,757.80. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.2% to 7,017.91. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.2% to 25,087.75, while the Shanghai Composite was little changed, inching up less than 0.1% to 3,952.13. Tokyo markets were closed for an extended holiday and trading will resume Thursday.

Global markets are also getting a boost recently from AI stocks, which continue to strengthen after their worldwide slide at the start of last week. Leaders of the industry have recently warned a slowdown is needed in the industry’s development for the safety of humanity.

Alibaba rose 3.1% Tuesday after the Chinese tech giant unveiled new artificial intelligence chip technologies, including what it said was China’s most powerful AI chip. That comes just days ahead of a meeting between Chinese and U.S. leaders at which competition to lead on AI technology is expected to be a major theme.

Alibaba’s announcement came as U.S. AI leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, are warning that China’s development of AI poses a threat to the United States and calling for an overall slowdown on development of the technology.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to arrive in Washington on Wednesday for a state visit and meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. In addition to AI, the two leaders are expected to talk about trade and tariffs.

Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama

​ Orange County Register