2 Oct 2025

Why have the Vikings been limiting veteran safety Harrison Smith?

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WARE, England — Those who have been clamoring for the Vikings to give veteran safety Harrison Smith more playing time aren’t alone. While chatting with reporters after another picturesque practice in the English countryside on Thursday, defensive coordinator Brian Flores joked that even his sons Miles and Maxwell have been getting on him about it.

“My boys are like, ‘Why isn’t he playing as much?’ ” Flores said with a laugh. “I’m like, ‘Look man. You can’t just throw somebody into an NFL game.’ ”

The fact that Smith has seen his playing time limited as of late is all part of the process.

After missing most of training camp with a personal health issue, Smith also missed games against the Chicago Bears and Atlanta Falcons. He has been slowly working himself back since returning to the lineup, playing 22 defensive snaps against the Cincinnati Bengals, then 17 defensive snaps against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“We’re just building,” Smith said while noting that he hasn’t pushed his limits yet. “This was kind of the plan and we’re sticking to it.”

It’s been an adjustment for Smith considering he’s used to playing every snap.

“Normally, playing every snap, I tend to get in a flow a little bit easier,” Smith said. “I’m trying to figure that out. It’s not like rocket science or anything, just staying warm on the sideline and being alert and ready whenever I’m going in.”

It sounds as if Smith could see an uptick in his playing time when the Vikings play the Cleveland Browns on Sunday afternoon at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

“I think he’s gong to get pretty close to that normal workload,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said. “That will allow us to be a little bit more versatile.”

Though he credited the performance of safeties Josh Metellus and Theo Jackson for their play, Flores emphasized that Smith is the engine that makes everything go on defense, adding he’s eager to get the 14-year pro back in the mix on a more regular basis.

“He’s doing a great job,” Flores said. “He’s getting his wind and his conditioning and his strength back. He’s a guy that we need out on the field. When he’s ready, we’ll get him out there playing.”

Briefly

Much of offensive line missed practice on Thursday afternoon: left tackle Christian Darrisaw (rest), left guard Donovan Jackson (wrist), center Ryan Kelly (concussion), center Michael Jurgens (hamstring) and right tackle Brian O’Neill (knee). As for the rest of the team, quarterback J.J. McCarthy (ankle), tight end Ben Yurosek (knee), edge rusher Andrew Van Ginkel (neck) and edge rusher Dallas Turner (illness) were nonparticipants.

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2 Oct 2025

How the Bathroom Bill Weaponizes Transphobia Against Public Institutions

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On September 22, Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 8, Texas’ new “bathroom bill,” into law, marking another escalation in the Republican war on the rights of trans people. What may be less evident on first glance is how the law also represents an attack on public institutions—and on the legal system writ large. 

Andrea Segovia, senior field and policy analyst for the Transgender Education Network of Texas, said the law, which bans trans people from using their preferred bathrooms in certain public buildings, will make them feel less safe engaging in a basic biological function anywhere outside of their homes. “Every time that an anti-trans bill passes, it is another attempt at removing trans people from the public eye,” she told the Texas Observer.

Trans folks and LGBTQ+ advocates spent countless hours testifying against various iterations of the bathroom bill over the eight years since the first one was proposed in this state, only for the latest version to be fast-tracked through the Legislature during this year’s second special session. Major corporations, whose opposition to these kinds of laws historically helped prevent their passage, have largely gone silent on the 2025 versions of this law that have passed or been proposed around the country.

With anti-trans policies now openly backed by President Donald Trump’s federal government, it’s perhaps unsurprising that state officials feel confident passing more extreme measures. But beyond the harmful effects the law is likely to have on transgender and gender non-conforming people, it may also allow Republicans to weaponize transphobia against public institutions. The law enables the state to investigate and levy massive fines against schools, libraries or other entities that they suspect of violations. In addition, it’s designed to be especially difficult to challenge in court, in ways that experts say are likely to be unconstitutional. 

SB 8 forces transgender and gender non-conforming people to use the bathroom that matches the sex they were assigned at birth, in publicly operated institutions like schools, libraries, and even domestic violence shelters.

Segovia said that the law will inevitably make trans people less safe, especially thanks to its enforcement mechanism which encourages individuals to report purported violations to the attorney general’s office. “This is scary,” she said. “It’s adding to the vigilante state we live in.”

There are, however, important limits to the law, which goes into effect in December. Notably, it doesn’t affect private businesses, nor create any criminal penalties targeting bathroom users. The law also doesn’t obligate trans people to answer any questions about their identity or their gender. “It’s assumed that trans people are going to be fined, arrested or kicked out of places when in reality it’s the [public] entity that takes on the burden,” Segovia said.

Potential violations of the law will be investigated by the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which then gives the entities involved a 15-day grace period to take as yet unspecified steps to respond to the violation. If the institution is still found to be in violation, fines start at $25,000 for the first infraction and $125,000 for subsequent violations. According to the law, “Each day of a continuing violation of this chapter constitutes a separate violation.” As has become increasingly common in Texas, SB 8 also allows private individuals to sue parties—in this case, public entities—for alleged violations of the law. 

Zeph Capo, president of Texas AFT, a teachers’ union representing 66,000 members in the state, told the Observer he anticipates that many complaints would come from third parties who weren’t even present when the supposed infraction of the law occurred. “Are the complainants going to be chasing people down in bathrooms?” he asked. “That sounds hostile to me, and it’s not really clear.” 

Republicans included provisions in the law that could present significant obstacles to anyone seeking to challenge the legality of SB8. In what multiple legal experts said was highly unusual, and legally questionable, the law grants sovereign immunity to the state, governmental immunity to cities and other jurisdictions, and qualified immunity to government officials who carry out the law. This attempts to protect the state government, local municipalities, and their employees from being sued over their implementation of SB 8. As written, this immunity even extends to potential violations of constitutional rights under the law. 

This attempt to dodge legal accountability is “pretty wild,” said Dale Melchert, a senior staff attorney at the Transgender Law Center. “Typically, constitutional violations are highly protected in law, both at the state and federal level,” he said. “So I can’t imagine that it is constitutional, but we’ll see.”

It also prohibits state courts from issuing any sort of declaratory or injunctive relief from enforcement of the law or otherwise deem the law to be unconstitutional. SB 8 also grants the recently created Fifteenth Court of Appeals—which is filled with Abbott’s appointees—with exclusive jurisdiction over any appeals of civil action under the law. 

SB 8 is “the most plainly unlawful, undemocratic, legislation I’ve seen in recent history,” said Nicholas Hite, a senior attorney at Lambda Legal, a LGBTQ+ legal defense nonprofit. “It tries to shut down the basic right of every citizen to seek relief in our courts, which is one of the basic principles of American democracy.” 

Hite said many similar laws around the country are currently the subject of litigation, but Texas’ immunity clauses attempt to prevent this. The law also attempts to discourage legal challenges by making attorneys who sue jointly liable with their clients for any fines or legal fees incurred by the state or local government, if they lose their case. 

“Texas has chosen to go even further beyond the pale by [not only] saying we’re going to pass this unconstitutional law that targets trans and gender non-conforming people, or, frankly, anybody that a stranger on the street thinks is gender non-conforming,” he said. “We’re going to go one step beyond that, and try and close the courthouse doors to people who are just trying to defend their constitutional right.” 

In the aftermath of the second deadliest flood in the state’s history, Republicans used that emergency as an excuse for a special session that attacked democracy and the human rights of Texans. Jacob Reyes, the Texas representative for the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD, called it a “distraction from the real issues that we all care about.” As Reyes wrote in a statement, “SB 8 seeks to establish a precedent that treats marginalized communities in the Lone Star State as less than equal. In reality, trans folks are parts of Texas families, workplaces, schools, and communities, and we are here to stay.” 

It also mandates that prisoners be assigned to prison units that match their sex assigned at birth. Ash Hall, a policy analyst at the ACLU of Texas, said this portion of the law likely violates the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, which mandates more careful placement of transgender inmates. “I don’t think that we can afford to forget about those [incarcerated] folks, especially as we’re entering a time period where I suspect that our government is hoping that more and more trans people will end up in the carceral system.”

With SB 8 now on the books in Texas, it becomes part of an increasingly common trend in which Republican state legislatures have passed discriminatory laws that pass the responsibility of enforcement to the local level. 

“Those schools, those libraries, those domestic violence shelters, are now obligated to enforce a law that they don’t agree with, that they don’t want and that they maybe don’t think serves their community,” Hite said. But legislators have passed that buck onto them, and are in some ways holding them hostage, saying, ‘you have to do our dirty work.’”

The post How the Bathroom Bill Weaponizes Transphobia Against Public Institutions appeared first on The Texas Observer.

2 Oct 2025

Trump administration cuts nearly $8B in clean energy projects in blue states

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By MICHAEL PHILLIS and MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is cancelling $7.6 billion in grants that supported hundreds of clean energy projects in 16 states, all of which voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election.

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The cuts were announced in a social media post late Wednesday by Russell Vought, the White House budget director: “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled.”

The move comes as President Donald Trump threatens cuts and firings in his fight with congressional Democrats over the federal government shutdown.

These cuts are likely to affect battery plants, hydrogen technology projects, upgrades to the electric grid and carbon-capture efforts, among many others, according to the environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Energy Department said in a statement Thursday that 223 projects were terminated after a review determined they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable. Officials did not provide details about which projects are being cut, but said funding came from the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and other DOE bureaus.

The cuts include $1.2 billion for California’s hydrogen hub that is aimed at accelerating hydrogen technology and production, according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office. The private sector has committed $10 billion for the hydrogen hub, Newsom’s office said, adding that canceling the Alliance for Renewable Clean Hydrogen Energy Systems threatens over 200,000 jobs.

“Clean hydrogen deserves to be part of California’s energy future — creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs and saving billions in health costs,” the Democratic governor said.

California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla called cancelation of the project “vindictive, shortsighted and proof this administration is not serious about American energy dominance.”

The DOE said it has reviewed billions of dollars awarded by the Biden administration after Trump won the presidential election last November. More than a quarter of the rescinded grants were awarded between Election Day and Inauguration Day, the department said. The awards totaled more than $3.1 billion.

“President Trump promised to protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy. Today’s cancellations deliver on that commitment,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.

The Trump administration has broadly targeted climate programs and clean energy, and is proposing to roll back vehicle emission and other greenhouse gas rules it says can’t be justified. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed overturning a 2009 finding that climate change threatens public health. Many climate scientists have criticized the EPA effort as biased and misleading.

Democrats and environmental organizations were quick to slam the latest cuts, saying they would raise energy costs.

“This is yet another blow by the Trump administration against innovative technology, jobs and the clean energy needed to meet skyrocketing demand,” said Jackie Wong, a senior vice president at NRDC.

Vought said the projects being cut are in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state.

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

2 Oct 2025

A well-defined leadership hierarchy makes for no surprises in next president of Mormon church

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By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM and BRADY McCOMBS

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A former Utah Supreme Court justice is expected to be named the next president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after the recent death of President Russell M. Nelson.

Announcing his successor — Dallin H. Oaks — is largely a formality because the church has a well-defined leadership hierarchy that has governed it for decades. Nothing will change in the leadership body until some time after Nelson’s funeral, which is scheduled for Oct. 7.

FILE – Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles speaks during a news conference at the Conference Center, Jan. 27, 2015, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, file)

Here’s a closer look at how the leadership structure is arranged and how new members are chosen:

Who leads the church?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known widely as the Mormon church, is led by a president and his two top counselors, forming what is known as the First Presidency. They usually come from a governing body called the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which sits just below the First Presidency and helps set church policy while overseeing the faith’s business interests.

Together, these 15 top officials are all men in accordance with the church’s all-male priesthood.

How are the presidents chosen?

The longest-tenured member of the Quorum of the Twelve becomes the new president in a tradition established more than a century ago to ensure a smooth handover and prevent any lobbying internally or publicly.

The succession plan was created in 1889 following nearly two years of debate and some politicking among the apostles after the faith’s third president, John Taylor, died. Since then, the plan has been carried out without exception.

FILE – Church President Russell M. Nelson looks on during The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ conference on April 6, 2019, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

Nelson, the faith’s oldest-ever president, died Saturday at the age of 101. Per protocol, his successor won’t be formally announced until some time after his funeral next week. With his death, the First Presidency automatically dissolved and his two counselors rejoined the Quorum, bringing its number to 14.

Until a new president is announced, the Quorum, now led by Oaks, is in charge as the Utah-based faith prepares for its twice-annual general conference in Salt Lake City this weekend.

What does the president do?

He is considered a prophet, seer and revelator who leads the church through divine revelation from God along with two top counselors and members of the Quorum of the Twelve. He sets policy, interprets doctrine and manages church programs.

The president also oversees the church’s businesses, which include real estate, farms, publishing, life insurance, nonprofits, universities, a Polynesian cultural center in Hawaii and an upscale open-air shopping mall in Salt Lake City.

The church doesn’t disclose or discuss its finances, but the latest filings from its investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisors, Inc., value its portfolio at $58 billion.

How long do the presidents serve?

Presidents serve until they die, which is why the length of their tenures vary widely.

The longest was Brigham Young, who served nearly 30 years in the mid- to late 1800s. Other lengthy tenures include Heber J. Grant, with nearly 27 years from 1918 to 1945, and David O. McKay, with nearly 19 years from 1951 to 1970.

The shortest tenure was Howard H. Hunter, who served only nine months from 1994 to 1995. He and three other church presidents served less than five years, including an 18-month stint by Harold B. Lee from 1972 to 1973.

Nelson held the position for more than seven years. The two presidents before him, Thomas S. Monson and Gordon B. Hinckley, each had relatively long terms. Monson served nearly 10 years, and Hinckley was in the post for nearly 13.

How are the president’s two counselors chosen?

A new president usually chooses counselors from the Quorum of the Twelve. Sometimes, they are the same men who served the previous president. If they’re different, the previous counselors return to being members of the Quorum.

Most leaders of the faith known widely as the Mormon church assumed the presidency later in life. (AP Digital Embed)

Nelson kept Henry B. Eyring as a counselor and elevated Oaks as the other.

Being counselors does not put them ahead in line to become the next president. It is still the longest-tenured Quorum member who takes that role.

Oaks happens to be next in line. The 93-year-old joined the Quorum in May 1984, around the same time as Nelson.

Jeffrey R. Holland, 84, has the next highest seniority after Oaks.

How are new Quorum members chosen?

They can come from anywhere. In modern history, most were already serving in lower-tier leadership councils.

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The apostles tend to be older men who have achieved success in occupations outside the church. The last three chosen for the Quorum were a U.S. State Department official, an accountant for multinational corporations, and a board member of charities, schools and an enterprise agency.

Under Nelson, the church injected some diversity into the previously all-white leadership panel by selecting the first Latin American apostle and the first apostle of Asian ancestry. The appointments brought excitement to a contingent of members who for years had been hoping to see the top leadership become more representative of a religion with over half its more than 17 million members living outside the U.S.

Once Oaks becomes president and selects his two counselors, the Quorum will likely be left with one vacancy for him to fill — one way church presidents can leave their imprint.

What about women?

Nine highest-ranking women in the church oversee three organizations that run programs for women and girls. These councils sit below several layers of leadership groups reserved for only men.

The president and two counselors who oversee the Relief Society, which runs activities for women, are considered the top female leaders based on the organization’s historical cachet.