A lawsuit was filed Monday against Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, Minnesota State High School League executive director Erich Martens and numerous others by a group representing three metro high school softball athletes centered on the state allowing an athlete to play high school softball who plaintiffs allege was born male.

The organization behind the suit is Female Athletes United, which is representing one softball player from Maple Grove and two from Farmington. The suit cites an unfair playing field.

The MSHSL voted in 2015 to allow the inclusion of transgender athletes into girls sports. That decision came back under fire on Feb. 5, when President Trump signed an executive order aimed at prohibiting transgender women and girls from competing in female sports.

At the time, the Minnesota State High School League said the executive order is at odds with the Human Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the Minnesota Constitution, which prohibits discrimination “against any person in any protected class, which includes sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The U.S. Department of Education then announced it was launching an investigation into the high school athletic associations in Minnesota and California.

Ellison filed a suit against the Trump administration last month, saying in part that the he viewed the President’s executive orders as “bullying” of transgender children.

The lawsuit states that Minnesota’s policy “expands opportunities for male athletes to compete and experience victory at the expense of female athletes. Minnesota’s female athletes suffer as a result — experiencing fewer opportunities to play, win, advance, and receive recognition in their own. And these female athletes also suffer the mental burden of knowing that their rights are secondary. Their hard work may never be enough to win.”

The lawsuit describes the three represented players’ interactions with the athlete it alleges to be male as one player’s team repeatedly losing to and struggling to score against the pitcher, one pitcher having to compete with the other athlete for playing time on a club team and the third athlete getting hit by a pitch thrown by the alleged male athlete.

The suit stated that the athletes didn’t believe it was “fair” that that would have to potentially compete against the alleged male athlete in postseason competition.

Section softball tournaments opened across the state this week.

By CHRISTINE FERNANDO, Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — Days after a bombing outside a Southern California fertility clinic, a White House official confirmed Tuesday that the Trump administration is reviewing a list of recommendations to expand access to in vitro fertilization.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February asking for ways to protect access and “aggressively” lower “out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the White House Domestic Policy Council wrote the list of recommendations over the last 90 days.

“This is a key priority for President Trump, and the Domestic Policy Council has completed its recommendations,” Desai said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Desai did not offer additional details about when the recommendations or a plan would be released or give details about the contents of the report.

The report was sent to the president days after an explosion damaged part of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. The FBI believes a 25-year-old man was responsible for the blast, and authorities said his writings suggest he held anti-natalist views that include a belief that it’s morally wrong for people to bring children into the world. Investigators have called the attack an act of terrorism.

Related Articles

Former FBI director James Comey calls controversy over Instagram post ‘a bit of a distraction’

‘Dried out prune’? ‘Corrupt’ and ‘incompetent’? It’s getting nasty between Springsteen and Trump

Trump expected to announce ‘Golden Dome’ space missile defenses that will cost billions

More tornadoes and fewer meteorologists make for a dangerous mix that’s worrying US officials

Elon Musk says he will cut back on political spending after heavily backing Trump in 2024

The explosion brought renewed attention to the common fertility treatment IVF after it became a major political talking point during the 2024 U.S. presidential race.

Dr. Brian Levine, a New York City reproductive endocrinologist and IVF specialist, said he expects the White House report will contain recommendations for the states and also hopes it calls for expanding IVF coverage for members of the military and federal government employees.

“As a fertility doctor who’s been practicing for the last 13 years, I don’t think I’ve ever had this level of excitement for what the government is going to do,” he said. “For the first time in my career, IVF is a priority at the highest levels of the government. It signals to patients that finally our advocacy is being heard. Both sides of the aisle are recognizing the problem we have in this country with access to IVF care.”

Trump called for universal coverage of IVF treatment while on the campaign trail, after his Supreme Court nominees helped to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had provided a constitutional right to abortion for half a century. That 2022 decision has led to a wave of restrictions in Republican-led states, including some that have threatened IVF access by trying to define life as beginning at conception.

During his campaign, Trump vowed to make the fertility treatment free for women but didn’t give details about how he would fund his plan or precisely how it would work. Abortion rights groups countered that IVF would not be threatened if not for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which Trump has proudly taken credit for.

IVF costs vary but range from about $12,000 to $25,000 per cycle, and people often need more than one cycle. Insurance coverage can be patchy. Some plans cover it, some partly cover it and some don’t cover it at all.

Most Americans want access to IVF protected. Last year, a poll from The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about six out of 10 U.S. adults support that.

Trump’s stance on IVF has put him at odds with the actions of much of his own party. While Trump has claimed the Republican Party has been a “leader” on IVF, many Republicans have been left grappling with the tension between support for the procedure and for laws passed by their own party that grant legal personhood not only to fetuses but to any embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process.

GOP efforts to create a national narrative that it is receptive of IVF also have been undercut by state lawmakers, Republican-dominated courts and anti-abortion leaders within the party’s ranks, as well as opposition to legislative attempts to protect IVF access.

Mini Timmaraju, CEO and president of the national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All, called Trump’s comments about IVF “lip service.”

“All Trump has done is stack his administration with extremists, restrict access to reproductive care, and implement the dangerous Project 2025 plan, which would threaten access to IVF nationwide,” she said.

Associated Press Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this report from Louisville, Kentucky.

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By JONEL ALECCIA, Associated Press

Molecules in blood and urine may reveal how much energy a person consumes from ultraprocessed foods, a key step to understanding the impact of the products that make up nearly 60% of the American diet, a new study finds.

It’s the first time that scientists have identified biological markers that can indicate higher or lower intake of the foods, which are linked to a host of health problems, said Erikka Loftfield, a National Cancer Institute researcher who led the study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine.

“It can potentially give us some clues as to what the underlying biology might be between an ultraprocessed food association and a health outcome,” Loftfield said.

Ultraprocessed foods – sugary cereals, sodas, chips, frozen pizzas and more – are products created through industrial processes with ingredients such as additives, colors and preservatives not found in home kitchens. They’re ubiquitous in the U.S. and elsewhere, but studying their health impacts is hard because it’s difficult to accurately track what people eat.

Related Articles

New Trump vaccine policy limits access to COVID shots

Medicaid payments barely keep hospital mental health units afloat. Federal cuts could sink them

Easily distracted? How to improve your attention span

Glioblastoma brain cancer research: Study provides glimmer of hope

Dum Dums lollipops stands by bright dyes, despite RFK Jr.’s push

Typical nutrition studies rely on recall: asking people what they ate during a certain period. But such reports are notoriously unreliable because people don’t remember everything they ate, or they record it inaccurately.

“There’s a need for both a more objective measure and potentially also a more accurate measure,” Loftfield explained.

To create the new scores, Loftfield and her colleagues examined data from an existing study of more than 1,000 older U.S. adults who were AARP members. More than 700 of them had provided blood and urine samples, as well as detailed dietary recall reports, collected over a year.

The scientists found that hundreds of metabolites – products of digestion and other processes – corresponded to the percentage of energy a person consumes from ultraprocessed foods. From those, they devised a score of 28 blood markers and up to 33 urine markers that reliably predicted ultraprocessed food intake in people consuming typical diets.

“We found this signature that was sort of predictive of this dietary pattern that’s high in ultraprocessed food and not just a specific food item here and there,” she said.

A few of the markers, notably two amino acids and a carbohydrate, showed up at least 60 times out of 100 testing iterations. One marker showed a potential link between a diet high in ultraprocessed foods and type 2 diabetes, the study found.

To confirm the findings, Loftfield measured the scoring tool with participants in a carefully controlled 2019 National Institutes of Health study of ultraprocessed foods.

In that study, 20 adults went to live for a month at an NIH center. They received diets of ultraprocessed and unprocessed foods matched for calories, sugar, fat, fiber and macronutrients for two weeks each and were told to eat as much as they liked.

Loftfield’s team found that they could use the metabolite scores to tell when the individual participants were eating a lot of ultraprocessed foods and when they weren’t eating those foods.

The results suggested the markers were “valid at the individual level,” Loftfield said.

It’s still early research, but identifying blood and urine markers to predict ultraprocessed foods consumption is “a major scientific advance,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, who was not involved in the study.

“With more research, these metabolic signatures can begin to untangle the biologic pathways and harms of UPF and also differences in health effects of specific UPF food groups, processing methods and additives,” he said.

Loftfield said she hopes to apply the tool to existing studies where blood and urine samples are available to track, for instance, the effect of consuming ultraprocessed foods on cancer risk.

At a time when support for government research is being cut, funding remains uncertain.

“There’s a lot of interest across the board — scientifically, public interest, political interest — in the question of: Does ultraprocessed food impact health and, if so, how?” she said. “How can we fund the studies that need to be done to answer these questions in a timely way?”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By MIKE CATALINI, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER and ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

Federal prosecutors alleged Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey pushed and grabbed officers while attempting to block the arrest of the Newark mayor outside an immigration detention facility, according to charges in court papers unsealed on Tuesday.

In an eight-page complaint, interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba’s office said McIver was protesting the removal of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka from a congressional tour of the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark on May 9.

The complaint says she attempted to stop the arrest of the mayor and pushed into agents for Homeland Security Investigations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She faces two counts of assaulting, resisting and impeding an officer.

McIver has denied any wrongdoing and has accused federal agents of escalating the situation by arresting the mayor. She denounced the charge as “purely political” and said prosecutors are distorting her actions in an effort to deter legislative oversight.

Rep. LaMonica McIver, center, demands the release of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka after his arrest while protesting outside an ICE detention prison, Friday, May 9, 2025, in Newark, N.J, (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Habba had charged Baraka with trespassing after his arrest but dismissed the allegation on Monday when she said in a social media post she instead was charging the congresswoman.

Prosecuting McIver is a rare federal criminal case against a sitting member of Congress for allegations other than fraud or corruption.

The case instantly taps into a broader and more consequential struggle between a Trump administration engaged in overhauling immigration policy and a Democratic party scrambling to respond.

Within minutes of Habba’s announcement, McIver’s Democratic colleagues cast the prosecution as an infringement on lawmakers’ official duties to serve their constituents and an effort to silence their opposition to an immigration policy that helped propel the president back into power but now has emerged as divisive fault line in American political discourse.

Members of Congress are authorized by law to go into federal immigration facilities as part of their oversight powers, even without advance notice. Congress passed a 2019 appropriations bill that spelled out the authority.

A nearly two-minute clip released by the Homeland Security Department shows McIver on the facility side of a chain-link fence just before the arrest of the mayor on the street side of the fence. She and uniformed officials go through the gate and she joins others shouting they should circle the mayor. The video shows McIver in a tightly packed group of people and officers. At one point her left elbow and then her right elbow push into an officer wearing a dark face covering and an olive green uniform emblazoned with the word “Police” on it.

It isn’t clear from bodycam video whether that contact was intentional, incidental or a result of jostling in the chaotic scene.

The complaint says she “slammed” her forearm into an agent and then tried to restrain the agent by grabbing him.

Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s top border adviser, said during an interview on Fox News Tuesday “she broke the law and we’re going to hold her accountable”

“You can’t put hands on an ICE employee. we’re not going to tolerate it,” he said.

Related Articles

Video of the Nottoway Plantation fire sparks jubilation. It’s about anger and pain over slavery, too

Southwest Airlines will require chargers be kept out while in use because of battery fire concerns

Caitlin Clark says it was too loud to hear alleged racial comments but supports WNBA investigation

Cassie’s mother says Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs demanded $10K because her daughter was seeing someone else

Organizations and companies are partnering to introduce Black students in Detroit to golf

House Democratic leaders decried the criminal case against their colleague in a lengthy statement, calling the charge “extreme” and “morally bankrupt” and lacking “any basis in law or fact.

On Tuesday Democratic lawmakers pushed back against the charges.

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone called the arrest “outrageous” and said the lawmakers “were met by unidentified masked agents with loaded weapons, and now they face charges? The department of justice and ICE are weaponizing this place.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Tuesday during a Congressional hearing that lawmakers can conduct oversight but accused those who visited the Newark detention facility of showing up with a “mob” intending to break in and attack law enforcement.

New Jersey Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, who along with Rep. Rob Menendez had joined McIver at the detention center, told reporters Tuesday that her and Menendez’s attorneys are scheduled to meet Wednesday with Habba’s office.

“That’s the first contact that we’ve actually had from her so we don’t know what she has intended, but we’re ready for whenever it might be,” she said.

Watson Coleman added that Habba’s office has indicated that charges are still on the table.

“It’s a possibility and it may be a probability. We shall see,” she said.

A message seeking comment Tuesday was left with Habba’s office.

McIver, 38, first came to Congress in September in a special election after the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. left a vacancy in the 10th District. She was then elected to a full term in November. A Newark native, she served as the president of the Newark City Council from 2022 to 2024 and worked in the city’s public schools before that.

Associated Press writers Matt Brown, Joey Cappelletti and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed.