By MARTHA BELLISLE, Associated Press

The Trump administration said Friday it’s investigating the Oregon Department of Education after receiving a complaint from a conservative nonprofit group alleging the state was violating civil rights law by allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams.

It’s the latest escalation in the Republican administration’s effort to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports teams nationwide. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February to block trans girls from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

The administration says transgender athlete policies violate Title IX, the 1972 federal law that bans discrimination in education based on sex. Proponents of Trump’s ban say it restores fairness in athletic competitions, but opponents say bans are an attack on transgender youth.

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The U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights opened the Oregon investigation based on a complaint by the America First Policy Institute that alleges high-school aged female athletes had lost medals and competitive opportunities to transgender athletes. It follows a probe launched earlier this year into Portland Public Schools and the state’s governing body for high school sports over alleged violations of Title IX for allowing trans girls to compete in girls sports.

Earlier this month, the administration sued the California Department of Education for allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams, alleging the policy violates federal law. Trump also filed a lawsuit in April alleging Maine violated Title IX by allowing trans girls and women to compete against other female athletes.

Oregon law allows trans students to compete on sex-segregated sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a release Friday that the administration won’t let educational institutions receive federal funds “to continue trampling upon women’s rights.”

“If Oregon is permitting males to compete in women’s sports, it is allowing these males to steal the accolades and opportunities that female competitors have rightfully earned through hard work and grit, while callously disregarding women’s and girls’ safety, dignity, and privacy,” Trainor said.

Messages seeking comment from the Oregon education officials were not immediately returned.

Nate Lowery, spokesman for the Oregon School Activities Association, said they were reviewing the administration’s notice with its legal counsel and doesn’t have additional comments at this time.

Three high school track-and-field athletes filed a lawsuit against Oregon in early July that seeks to overturn all sports records set by transgender girl athletes and prevent them from participating in girls sporting events.

The complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Oregon alleges the state policy prohibiting schools from excluding student athletes from events that align with their gender identity violates Title IX. The students say it has harmed them through loss of competition, placements, and opportunities to advance to higher-level events.

Jessica Hart Steinmann, executive general counsel at the America First Policy Institute, said the investigation is a step toward restoring equal opportunities for women’s athletics.

“Title IX was meant to protect girls — not to undermine them — and we’re hopeful this signals a return to that original purpose,” Steinmann said in a release.

More than two dozen states have enacted laws barring transgender women and girls from participating in certain sports competitions. Some policies have been blocked in court.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case over state restrictions on which sports teams transgender athletes can join.

Three inches of rainfall Wednesday in Blaine largely wiped out the 3M Open pro-am at TPC Twin Cities. But Timberwolves guard Mike Conley was in the early wave that was at least able to get out on the course.

Conley’s group played eight holes before the event was called, with the veteran guard delivering a few highlights along the way. He birdied the par-4, 5th hole and also stuffed his tee shot to within about eight feet on the par-3, 8th. It was redemption of sorts for Conley, who chopped it around the course in the same pro-am a year ago.

Wednesday’s performance was another signal that it’s a brand-new offseason for Conley, who’s healthy and able to do the things he wants to do — on and off the court — after he was largely debilitated by a wrist injury, which led to a rough first two-plus months of the campaign for the floor general last season before finally righting the ship.

In contrast, Conley hit the ground running this offseason, resuming his training regimen within 36 hours of Minnesota’s Western Conference Finals elimination.

The Pioneer Press caught up with Conley at this week’s 3M Open to chat Timberwolves, as well as his love of golf.

Q: What have you thought of the team’s offseason largely taking the continuity route?

A: Yeah, I’m big on continuity. When you are knocking on the door and you’re close, people always think you’ve got to add, add, add to something. But sometimes, in-house is how you get through it. And, for us, we’re developing guys that we’re going to be using this year that maybe didn’t play last year. We’ve got the young talents that we drafted that, I thought, have played very well and looked very good. I like the approach. Sometimes, you get a little bit too fancy and you’re no longer in the Western Conference Finals situation and you end up kind of taking steps back. We’ll see how it works, but I think everybody is excited still.

Q: It worked two years ago …

A: Yeah, it did. And we’ve got a team with guys who still have a lot of growth to them. We saw Ant get better every year — Jaden (McDaniels), Naz (Reid) and his development. You’re going to see TJ (Terrence Shannon Jr) next year, Rob (Dillingham), you can go down the list and guys have just gotten better and better. And if they can reach higher levels, there’s no point in trying to get somebody (to do) what we believe these guys can do.

Q: But it will take getting better, right? Because we’ve seen what other teams in the West have done; Houston looks more formidable, Denver looks more formidable …

A: Yeah, we will have to take a step in that direction as far as the individual growth. You’ve got to be able to grow, you’ve got to be able to learn from failures in the past, and that takes individuals going into the gym and trying to be better at reading things or shooting or defense, whatever it is in particular for our team. I think that guys have taken that this summer very seriously, and that’s what we have to do to be able to compete against these teams that have added so much power.

Q: What’s in been like for you to have a healthy summer where you can actually put your work in?

A: It’s great. Last year, I had a summer of no work because of injury, and this summer has been all work. (Two days) after we lost, I went in to go lift, get my routine going. The first person I see — it was like 7 in the morning — and I see Ant in there. And me and Ant looked at each other like, “You need to be taking some time off,” and I’m like, “I’m not taking time off.” It was funny. It was like the next morning we were in there lifting together. I said, “I love to see this.” He’s in there running, doing conditioning.

Q: We heard him working out on draft night, as well.

A: Yeah, well that’s it. He’s not joking. I think that’s the mindset for all of us. We’re all just taking this summer serious. And having the ability to work, for me, is awesome. Because I haven’t stopped since the season ended.”

Q: What do you like about golf?

A: Golf, ultimately, it’s the challenge. I’ve played a lot of things and done a lot of things, and I can get good at them over time and get to the point where I’m like, “Oh, I’m pretty good.” And golf is one where you just never get good enough. But you’re always reaching for something. So, that’s the thing — it’s this never-ending cycle. I’ll never be good at it, good enough. I go out there, I compete, I challenge myself all the time like, “How can I get better? What do I gotta do?” And then you play good one week, and the next week you don’t know how to play anymore. I almost gave the game up a month ago. I’d barely played, and I went out there and was like, “I’m terrible. I don’t like this feeling. If I can’t practice and get back to where I need to get to, there’s no point in me to be out here.” I was super frustrated. But then I played last week and I liked it again; I had a good day.

Q: What are you good at and what are you bad at?

A: I would say my strength is short game.

Q: Ok, well there’s a pun right there.

A: Yeah, chipping, putting — short game. It makes sense. When I hit my driver good, not even fairways, but I don’t hit it into trouble and I can see the green, I normally can score really well. But I lose strokes if I hit errant tee shots and I’m in pine trees or out of bounds or something. But I don’t lose strokes around the green area. I think that’s the biggest thing. I’ve been working on the driver, because that’s the one thing I want to hit good in front of people. I want to be able to at least let them think, “OK, he can hit the ball.” … If you can bomb one it’s like, “Yeah, he knows what’s going on.”

Q: It’s kind of cool having a PGA Tour event here, right?

A: It’s really cool. Really cool to experience it. I’ve had a few of these throughout my career where I’ve gotten to do it.

 

By CHRIS MEGERIAN and ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite the sun bearing down on him and the sweat beading across his face, President Donald Trump still lingered with reporters lined up outside the White House on Friday. He was leaving on a trip to Scotland, where he would visit his golf courses, and he wanted to talk about how his administration just finished “the best six months ever.”

But over and over, the journalists kept asking Trump about the Jeffrey Epstein case and whether he would pardon the disgraced financier’s imprisoned accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell.

“People should really focus on how well the country is doing,” Trump insisted. He shut down another question by saying, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

It was another example of how the Epstein saga — and his administration’s disjointed approach to it — has shadowed Trump when he’s otherwise at the height of his influence. He’s enacted a vast legislative agenda, reached trade deals with key countries and tightened his grip across the federal government. Yet he’s struggled to stamp out the embers of a political crisis that could become a full-on conflagration.

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, July 25, 2025, in Washington. The President is traveling to Scotland. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Trump faces pressure from his own supporters

The Republican president’s supporters want the government to release secret files about Epstein, who authorities say killed himself in his New York jail cell six years ago while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. They believe him to be the nexus of a dark web of powerful people who abused underage girls. Administration officials who once stoked conspiracy theories now insist there’s nothing more to disclose, a stance that has stirred skepticism because of Trump’s former friendship with Epstein.

Trump has repeatedly denied prior knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and claimed he cut off their relationship long ago. For a president skilled at manipulating the media and controlling the Republican Party, it has been the most challenging test of his ability to shift the conversation in his second term.

“This is a treadmill to nowhere. How do you get off of it?” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist. “I genuinely don’t know the answer to that.”

Trump has demanded his supporters drop the matter and urged Republicans to block Democratic requests for documents on Capitol Hill. But he has also directed the Justice Department to divulge some additional information in hopes of satisfying his supporters.

A White House official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said Trump is trying to stay focused on his agenda while also demonstrating some transparency. After facing countless scandals and investigations, the official said, Trump is on guard against the typical playbook of drip-drip disclosures that have plagued him in the past.

It’s clear Trump sees the Epstein case as a continuation of the “witch hunts” he’s faced over the years, starting with the investigation into Russian interference during his election victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton nearly a decade ago. The sprawling inquiry led to convictions against some top advisers but did not substantiate allegations Trump conspired with Moscow.

Trump’s opponents, he wrote on social media on Thursday, “have gone absolutely CRAZY, and are playing another Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax but, this time, under the guise of what we will call the Jeffrey Epstein SCAM.”

During the Russia investigation, special counsel Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors were a straightforward foil for Trump to rail against. Ty Cobb, the lawyer who served as the White House’s point person, said the president “never felt exposed” because “he thought he had a legitimate gripe.”

The situation is different this time now that the Justice Department has been stocked with loyalists. “The people that he has to get mad at are basically his people as opposed to his inquisitors and adversaries,” Cobb said.

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before departing on Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, July 25, 2025, in Washington. The President is traveling to Scotland. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

It was Trump’s allies who excavated the Epstein debacle

In fact, Trump’s own officials are the most responsible for bringing the Epstein case back to the forefront.

FBI Director Kash Patel and his deputy, Dan Bongino, regularly stoked conspiracy theories about Epstein before assuming their current jobs, floating the idea the government had covered up incriminating and compelling information that needed to be brought to light. “Put on your big boy pants and let us know who the pedophiles are,” Patel said in a 2023 podcast.

Attorney General Pam Bondi played a key role, too. She intimated in a Fox News Channel interview in February that an Epstein “client list” was sitting on her desk for review — she would later say she was referring to the Epstein files more generally — and greeted far-right influencers with binders of records from the case that consisted largely of information already in the public domain.

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Tensions spiked earlier this month when the FBI and the Justice Department, in an unsigned two-page letter, said that no client list existed, that the evidence was clear Epstein had killed himself and that no additional records from the case would be released to the public. It was a seeming backtrack on the administration’s stated commitment to transparency. Amid a fierce backlash from Trump’s base and influential conservative personalities, Bongino and Bondi squabbled openly in a tense White House meeting.

Since then, the Trump administration has scrambled to appear transparent, including by seeking the unsealing of grand jury transcripts in the case — though it’s hardly clear that courts would grant that request or that those records include any eye-catching details anyway. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has taken the unusual step of interviewing the imprisoned Maxwell over the course of two days at a courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida, where her lawyer said she would “always testify truthfully.”

All the while, Trump and his allies have resurfaced the Russia investigation as a rallying cry for a political base that has otherwise been frustrated by the Epstein saga.

Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who just weeks ago appeared on the outs with Trump over comments on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, seemed to return to the president’s good graces this week following the declassification and release of years-old documents she hoped would discredit long-settled conclusions about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The developments allowed Trump to rehash longstanding grievances against President Barack Obama and his Democratic advisers. Trump’s talk of investigations into perceived adversaries from years ago let him, in effect, go back in time to deflect attention from a very current crisis.

“Whether it’s right or wrong,” Trump said, “it’s time to go after people.”

By COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is releasing billions of dollars in grants to schools for adult literacy, English language instruction and other programs, the Education Department said Friday.

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President Donald Trump’s administration had withheld $6 billion in funding on July 1 as part of a review to ensure spending aligned with the White House’s priorities. Officials later said the department would release $1.3 billion of the money for after-school programs, days after 10 Republican senators sent a letter imploring the administration to allow frozen education money to be sent to states.

The Education Department said Friday the administration had completed its review of the programs and will begin sending the money to states next week.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.