By FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Treasury Department has terminated its collective bargaining agreement with unionized workers employed at the Internal Revenue Service, the agency said Friday, in an escalation of President Donald Trump ’s push to exert more control over the federal workforce.

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The union contract for the Bureau of the Fiscal Service was also terminated this week, according to two people familiar with the decision. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.

Workers at the IRS and the fiscal service bureau, which processes payments for the government, are represented by the National Treasury Employees Union. They were informed by agency leadership that Treasury terminated their collective bargaining agreements, using an executive order President Donald Trump signed last March as the authority for the terminations.

In a letter to IRS workers Friday, viewed by The Associated Press, IRS Chief Human Capital Officer Alex Kweskin told employees the move “deepens our commitment of operating as one IRS, a collaborative team focused on serving American taxpayers.”

The contract terminations come after Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, issued a memo this month to agency heads calling on them to comply with Trump’s March order and notify labor unions “that they are terminating any applicable CBAs (collective bargaining agreements), whether represented by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) or another labor union.”

The union had sued the federal government last year over Trump’s executive order.

And while a D.C. court issued a preliminary injunction against the government, that was stayed pending an appeal. Meanwhile, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a decision in a separate case Thursday that cleared the way for the implementation of Trump’s executive order.

Doreen Greenwald, president of the Treasury employees union, said in a statement Friday that the IRS “cannot unilaterally end” its contract with the labor union. She said the federal sector labor statute requires the IRS to have a collective bargaining agreement “with the exclusive representative of its bargaining unit employees,” she said.

The National Treasury Employees Union represents roughly 150,000 employees in 37 departments and agencies.

Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper contributed to this report.

By COLLIN BINKLEY

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon will forbid members of the military from attending Columbia, Yale, Brown and other universities starting next school year amid a campaign to cut ties with institutions that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called “factories of anti-American resentment.”

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Hegseth announced the policy in a video posted to social media on Friday, three weeks after he said the military was cutting ties with Harvard University. Without citing evidence, Hegseth said the universities have become “breeding grounds of toxic indoctrination” that undermine military values.

“For decades, the Ivy League and similar institutions have gorged themselves on a trust fund of American taxpayer dollars, only to become factories of anti-American resentment and military disdain,” he said. “They’ve replaced the study of victory and pragmatic realism with the promotion of wokeness and weakness.”

Hegseth said the ban applies to Columbia, Princeton, Brown, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and “many others” without elaborating. He called for “complete and immediate cancellation of all Department of War attendance,” though it was not clear how broadly it would be applied.

A message seeking further details was not immediately answered by the Pentagon.

As of Friday, Columbia, Brown, MIT and Harvard were still listed as eligible institutions in a Pentagon database for its Tuition Assistance program, which covers the full cost of tuition for active-duty personnel. Harvard had 39 participants in 2023, according to the most recent data, while Columbia had nine and MIT had two.

The earlier action against Harvard aims to block members of the military from attending graduate-level professional military education, fellowships and certificate programs, according to a statement released at the time. There are still questions about whether it applies to programs such as Harvard’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps program.

Harvard has offered a series of professional development programs and a small number of degree programs tailored to the Pentagon. Last year, it created a new master’s degree in public administration for active-duty military members and veterans. Hegseth earned a master’s degree from Harvard but symbolically returned his diploma in a 2022 Fox News segment.

The military offers its officers a variety of opportunities to get graduate-level education, both at war colleges run by the military as well as civilian institutions like Harvard.

Campuses across the Ivy League have been a favorite target of President Donald Trump, who accuses them of becoming overrun by “woke” ideology. His administration has cut billions of dollars in research funding and attempted a number of other sanctions against the universities, often as part of investigations into allegations that officials tolerated antisemitism on campus.

Hegseth’s announcement is a rebuke to universities that had appeared to have reached a truce with the administration in recent months. Columbia and Brown were among the earliest universities to sign deals with the White House, agreeing to a range of demands in order to have their federal funding restored.

Harvard is fighting back against such demands, alleging in lawsuits that the government is illegally retaliating against the university for rebuffing its ideological views. Last summer, Trump said he was days away from reaching a deal with Harvard, but negotiations appear to have fallen apart. Earlier this month, Trump said Harvard must pay $1 billion to the government as part of any deal, twice what he had previously demanded.

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.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors said Friday they won’t appeal a judge’s ruling that bars them from seeking the death penalty against Luigi Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

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In a letter, Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean Buckley told Judge Margaret Garnett that the government will not ask the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse her decision, clearing the way for a trial beginning in September. His state murder trial is set to start in June.

Garnett last month dismissed a federal murder charge — murder through use of a firearm — that had enabled prosecutors to seek capital punishment, finding it legally flawed.

She wrote that she did so to “foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury” when it weighs whether to convict Mangione in the December 2024 killing in Manhattan.

The judge, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden, also threw out a gun charge but left in place stalking charges that carry a maximum punishment of life in prison.

To seek the death penalty, prosecutors needed to show that Mangione killed Thompson while committing another “crime of violence.” Stalking doesn’t fit that definition, Garnett wrote in a 39-page opinion, citing case law and legal precedents.

The ruling disrupted the Trump administration’s bid to see Mangione executed for what U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.” It was the first capital case brought by the Justice Department in President Donald Trump’s second term.

Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty in the federal and state cases. The state charges also carry the possibility of life in prison. At a recent court hearing, he spoke out against the prospect of back-to-back trials, telling a judge: “It’s the same trial twice. One plus one is two. Double jeopardy by any commonsense definition.”

Thompson, 50, was killed on Dec. 4, 2024, as he walked to a midtown Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

Mangione, a University of Pennsylvania graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later after he was spotted eating breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of Manhattan.

His lawyers have argued that authorities prejudiced his case by turning his arrest into a “Marvel movie” spectacle, including by having armed officers parade him up Manhattan pier after he was flown to New York, and by publicly declaring their desire to see him executed even before he was formally indicted.

Jury selection in Mangione’s federal case is scheduled for Sept. 8, followed by opening statements and testimony on Oct. 13. His state trial is scheduled to begin June 8, but the judge in that case, Gregory Carro, said it could have been pushed back until Sept. 8 if federal prosecutors appealed the death penalty ruling.

In her ruling, Garnett acknowledged that the decision “may strike the average person — and indeed many lawyers and judges — as tortured and strange, and the result may seem contrary to our intuitions about the criminal law.”

But, she said, it reflected her “committed effort to faithfully apply the dictates of the Supreme Court to the charges in this case. The law must be the Court’s only concern.”

By JOHN HANNA

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Two transgender men are suing Kansas over a new law that invalidated their driver’s licenses and about 1,700 others for reflecting people’s gender identities and not their sex assigned at birth, arguing that the measure is “dehumanizing.”

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The men filed their case Thursday, the same day the law took effect, and argue that it violates rights to privacy, personal autonomy and due legal process guaranteed by the Kansas Constitution. The men also are challenging the law’s tough, new enforcement provisions for the state’s 3-year-old policy of barring transgender people from using public restrooms or other single-sex facilities associated with their gender identities.

The men want to block the law, which also invalidated roughly 1,800 transgender people’s birth certificates. They filed their case in district court in Douglas County, where they live, which is home to the main University of Kansas campus and is a liberal bastion in a red-leaning state.

“The Kansas Constitution prohibits the Kansas Legislature’s targeting of transgender individuals for this discriminatory and dehumanizing treatment,” the lawsuit says.

The state Supreme Court declared in 2019 that the Kansas Bill of Rights confers and protects a right to bodily autonomy — a decision that protected abortion rights.

Small transgender and LGBTQ rights flags sit on the desks of Kansas state Reps. Tobias Schlingensiepen, right, D-Topeka, and Kirk Haskins, left, also D-Topeka, in the Kansas House chamber, protesting a new law that will prevent transgender people from changing their driver’s licenses and birth certificates to reflect their gender identities and nullify past changes, Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kansas. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

The new law was enacted last week when Republicans, who hold a supermajority in the Legislature, overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. The judge handling the lawsuit, James McCabria, was appointed to the bench in 2014 by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, and Douglas County residents have voted three times since to keep him on the bench.

A 2023 state law, also enacted over Kelly’s veto, defined male and female by a person’s “biological reproductive system” at birth. The Kansas Supreme Court hasn’t yet reviewed it.

This year’s law calls for stiff fines for cities, counties, public schools and state agencies that don’t restrict transgender people’s use of facilities, as well as fines and criminal prosecutions for transgender people who violate it. People also can sue trans individuals over alleged violations.

Republican legislators argued that the new law will protect girls and women and often described transgender women and girls as male.

Kansas State Reps. Susan Humphries, left, R-Wichita; Bob Lewis, center, R-Garden City, and Shannon Francis, right, R-Liberal, confer during a House debate on a measure to prevent transgender people from changing their driver’s licenses and birth certificates to reflect their gender identities and invalidate any past changes made for them, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

“Kansans expect clarity, not confusion,” House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, said after the law was enacted. “They expect leadership, not surrender to radical activists.”

The law bars any “sex” listing on driver’s licenses and birth certificates other than the one assigned at birth and invalidates existing records that don’t comply. The state has started notifying transgender people by mail that their licenses are invalid and they must get new ones immediately.

At least eight other states don’t allow transgender people to change one or both documents, but only Kansas has invalidated documents that were previously changed.

The two men suing over the new law are from Lawrence, about 40 miles west of Kansas City, and represented by American Civil Liberties Union attorneys. They’re identified as Daniel Doe and Matthew Moe, saying they fear discrimination, harassment and violence if they don’t remain anonymous.