By JEFF AMY

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge has permanently ordered Georgia’s prison system to keep providing some kinds of gender-affirming care for transgender prisoners, although the state plans to appeal.

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U.S. District Judge Victoria Marie Calvert last week ruled that a new state law denying hormone therapy to inmates violated their protection against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. She ordered the state to keep providing hormones to inmates who had been receiving therapy and to allow others medically diagnosed as needing hormone therapy to begin receiving treatment.

“The court finds that there is no genuine dispute of fact that gender dysphoria is a serious medical need,” Calvert wrote in her order. “Plaintiffs, through their experts, have presented evidence that a blanket ban on hormone therapy constitutes grossly inadequate care for gender dysphoria and risks imminent injury.”

Calvert had already issued a preliminary order in September blocking the law before finalizing it.

It is the latest turn in legal battles over federal and state efforts to regulate the lives of transgender people, including which sports competitions they can join and which bathrooms they can use. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. President Donald Trump’s administration in April sued Maine for not complying with the government’s push to ban transgender athletes in girls sports.

The Republican president also has sought to block federal spending on gender-affirming medical care for those under age 19 — instead promoting talk therapy only to treat young transgender people. And the Supreme Court has allowed him to kick transgender service members out of the military, even as court fights continue.

The Georgia case was brought on behalf of transgender inmates by the Center for Constitutional Rights after Georgia enacted a law in May banning the use of state money to pay for hormone therapy, gender-transition surgery or other methods to change the appearance of sexual characteristics.

“It is not a health care issue that should be the responsibility of the taxpayers,” said Sen. Randy Robertson, a Cataula Republican who sponsored Senate Bill 185.

Lawyers for the state have already filed a notice of appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Attorney General Chris Carr, an elected Republican running for governor, has vowed to fight the lawsuit “all the way to the Supreme Court,” calling it ”absurd.”

The measure roiled the 2025 Georgia legislative session, with most House Democrats walking out of their chamber to boycott the final vote on the bill. But Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law in May, and prison medical officials began making plans to gradually reduce and then end hormone therapy to inmates who were receiving it by October.

Georgia had begun providing hormone therapy in 2016 after a lawsuit by another inmate represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Prison officials counted more than 340 inmates who had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria in custody in mid-August, and said 107 inmates were receiving hormone therapy as of June 30.

The state presented studies to argue that denying or removing people from hormone therapy doesn’t meet the legal standard of “deliberate indifference,” but Calvert rejected their consideration. Calvert also rejected testimony from physicians in the prison system, saying they weren’t deciding that inmates had no medical need for hormone therapy but instead were just following the law’s directives. She said the counseling and monitoring promised by the state was inadequate.

“Defendants cannot deny medical care and then defeat an injunction by saying nothing bad has happened yet,” Calvert wrote.

Lawyers for the state argued Calvert was ignoring recent court decisions, including the Tennessee ban, as well as a recent 11th Circuit decision deciding that a Georgia county didn’t have to pay for a sheriff deputy’s gender-transition surgery.

“It is crystal clear the state legislatures have wide deference to enact laws regulating sex-change procedures like the cross-sex hormonal interventions at issue in this case,” lawyers for the state wrote in November.

By MARK VANCLEAVE and STEVE KARNOWSKI

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal agents used pepper spray to push through an angry crowd that blocked their vehicles as they checked identifications in a heavily Somali neighborhood of Minneapolis on Tuesday, amid the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown targeting the community.

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City Council Member Jamal Osman, a Somali American who represents the neighborhood, witnessed the confrontation, as did an Associated Press videographer.

Minnesota’s Somali community — the largest in the U.S. — has been on edge the past couple of weeks since President Donald Trump said in a social media post Thanksgiving night that he was terminating Temporary Protected Status for them.

It is not clear how many Somali community members have been arrested, temporarily detained or asked to show documents as part of the crackdown, which has also netted people of other nationalities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said via email that they made no arrests in the neighborhood Tuesday, but provided no further details.

Osman said armed ICE agents went to East African restaurants in the neighborhood Tuesday, closed the doors and demanded people’s IDs. They found only U.S. citizens and made no arrests, Osman said.

“Luckily everyone had their passport, because I’ve been telling them to have their passport with them,” Osman said.

After checking the IDs of some people stopped at random on the street and temporarily detaining at least one U.S. citizen, Osman said, the agents went in seven to 10 vehicles to a nearby city-owned senior housing complex. There, he said, a group of mostly white young people he called “heroes” blew whistles to sound the alarm and confronted the agents, who responded with pepper spray.

“Thank God so many people showed up there,” Osman said. “(The agents) couldn’t get out of there because people showed up with their cars and whistles.”

Osman said he saw people suffering from the effects of pepper spray. He also said he spoke with one young Somali American who was dragged to a vehicle, detained and taken to an ICE detention center. There, officials finally looked at his U.S. passport, fingerprinted him, and released him but told him to find his own way home, about 6 miles away in snowy weather.

Activists confronted a group of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in the largely Somali neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Vancleave)

“I just don’t know what they accomplished today other than the chaos,” Osman said.

Trump further stoked tensions last week when he called Somalis “garbage” and said he does not want them in the country. At the same time, federal agents launched the crackdown targeting Minnesota Somalis.

The president’s moves have drawn denunciations from leaders of the Somali community and Democrats including Gov. Tim Walz, amid relative silence from top state Republicans.

About 84,000 of the 260,000 Somalis in the country live in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, the overwhelming majority of them U.S. citizens. Almost 58% were born in the U.S., and 87% of those born elsewhere are naturalized citizens.

A new website launched by the Department of Homeland Security lists at least six Somalis arrested in Minnesota in recent weeks. The site says it is “highlighting the worst of worst criminal aliens” arrested by ICE to show how agents are “fulfilling President Trump’s promise and carrying out mass deportations.”

ICE released a statement Friday listing three other arrested Somalis who did not appear on the website, along with people of other nationalities who it said were arrested in Minneapolis as part of Operation Metro Surge. ICE said they had all been convicted of crimes including sexual abuse minors, robbery and domestic assault.

“Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey protected these criminals at the expense of the safety of Americans,” the statement said. “President Trump and Secretary (Kristi) Noem have a clear message for criminal illegal aliens: LEAVE NOW. If you don’t, we will find you, arrest you, and deport you.”

By MICHAEL R. SISAK

NEW YORK (AP) — Pluck eyebrows. Buy less conspicuous shoes. Take a bus or a train west toward Cincinnati and St. Louis. Move around late at night. Stay away from surveillance cameras.

A to-do list and travel plans found during Luigi Mangione’s arrest and revealed in court this week shed new light on the steps he may have taken — or planned to take — to avoid capture after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killing last year.

“Keep momentum, FBI slower overnight,” said one note. “Change hat, shoes, pluck eyebrows,” said another.

The notes, including a hand-drawn map and tactics for surviving on the lam, were shown on Monday at a pretrial hearing as Mangione’s bid to prevent prosecutors from using evidence seized during his Dec. 9, 2024, arrest at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Excerpts of body-worn camera footage of the arrest, previously unseen by the press or the public, were released on Tuesday.

Police said they discovered the notes in Mangione’s backpack, along with a 9 mm handgun that prosecutors said matches the one used to kill Thompson five days earlier; a loaded gun magazine and silencer; and a notebook in similar handwriting which he purportedly described his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive.

Mangione’s lawyers haven’t disputed the authenticity of the notes or the provenance of the gun, pocket knife, fake ID, driver’s license, passport, credit cards, AirPods, protein bar, travel toothpaste, flash drives and other items seized from him and his backpack.

But they argue that anything found in the bag should be barred because police didn’t have a search warrant and lacked the grounds to justify a warrantless search. Prosecutors contend the search was legal — officers said they were checking for a bomb — and that police eventually obtained a warrant.

The notes, along with other evidence highlighted at the pretrial hearing, underscore that Mangione’s stop in Altoona, a city of about 44,000 people about 230 miles west of Manhattan, was only meant to be temporary.

One note said to check for “red eyes” from Pittsburgh to Columbus, Ohio or part way to Cincinnati (“get off early,” it reads). The map drawn below shows lines linking those cities, as well as other possible destinations, including Detroit, Indianapolis and St. Louis.

Thompson, 50, was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for his company’s investor conference on Dec. 4, 2024. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind and then fleeing the area. Over the next hours and days, police released photos of a suspect — first showing him in a mask and hooded coat and then his face and thick eyebrows.

Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. The pretrial hearing, which resumes for a sixth day on Thursday, applies only to the state case. His lawyers are making a similar push to exclude the evidence from his federal case, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – DECEMBER 09: Luigi Mangione appears with defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo for a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court on December 9, 2025 in New York City. Mangione’s lawyers will argue to have the evidence thrown out because police officers allegedly did not read Mangione his Miranda rights and did not have a proper warrant when they searched his backpack at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s last December. He is accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and faces state and federal murder charges. (Photo by John Angelillo-Pool/Getty Images)

Among the notes revealed this week was one with a heading “12/5” and a starred entry that said: “buy black shoes (white stripes too distinctive).”

Another, also written in to-do list style, suggested spending more than three hours away from surveillance cameras and using different modes of transportation to “Break CAM continuity” and avoid tracking. Below that, it said: “check reports for current situation,” a possible reference to news reports about the search for Thompson’s killer.

According to prosecutors, Mangione fled to Newark, New Jersey, immediately after the shooting and took a train to Philadelphia. Among the evidence shown at the pretrial hearing was a Philadelphia transit pass purchased at 1:06 p.m. — a little more than six hours after the shooting — and a ticket for a Greyhound bus, booked under the name Sam Dawson, leaving Philadelphia at 6:30 p.m. and arriving in Pittsburgh at 11:55 p.m.

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A note with the heading “12/8” lists a number of tasks, including an apparent trip to Best Buy to purchase a digital camera and accessories, “hot meal + water bottles,” and “trash bag(s).” Under “12/9,” the day of Mangione’s arrest, the note lists tasks including “Sheetz,” an Altoona-based convenience store chain, “masks” and “AAA bats.” Under “Future TO DO,” it listed “intel checkin” and “survival kit.”

Mangione had a Sheetz hoagie in his backpack when he was arrested, along with a loaf of Italian bread from a local deli, according to police officers testifying Monday and Tuesday. It had been raining, and the bag and items inside it were wet, the officers said. They were heard on body-worn camera footage played in court theorizing that Mangione had gotten soaked walking from the city’s bus station.

Police responded to the McDonald’s after a manager called 911 to relay concerns from customers who thought that Mangione, eating breakfast in a back corner, resembled the man wanted for killing Thompson. On the call, played in court, the manager could be heard saying that because Mangione was wearing a medical mask, she could only see his eyebrows and that she searched online for a photo of the suspect for comparison.

Altoona Police Officer Stephen Fox testified on Tuesday that Mangione, the Ivy League-educated scion of a wealthy Maryland family, expressed concern for the 911 caller’s wellbeing. Fox said Mangione asked if police had planned on releasing her name, which they didn’t. The officer recalled him saying: “It would be bad for her and “there would be a lot of people that would be upset.”

At another point, Fox said, a shackled Mangione stumbled while trying to keep up with the brisk-moving officer. Fox said he apologized and said, “I forgot you were shackled.”

He said Mangione responded: “It’s OK, I’m going to have to get used to it.”

The Lumineers, Matchbox Twenty and the Strokes will headline the third annual Minnesota Yacht Club Festival, which returns to St. Paul’s Harriet Island Regional Park July 17 through 19.

Ticket prices start at $150 for a single day general admission and $275 for all three days, with numerous other options available including VIP, Riverboat VIP and Platinum. A presale starts at 10 a.m. Thursday and concertgoers can sign up for a code at minnesotayachtclubfestival.com.

The festival debuted in 2024 with headliners Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gwen Stefani and Alanis Morissette and was a hit with critics and crowds. It returned in July with an expanded three-day lineup led by Green Day, Hozier and Fall Out Boy. The festival has drawn about 35,000 people each day.

The Lumineers filled the former Xcel Energy Center in July and Matchbox Twenty nearly sold out the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand in August 2024. The Strokes played the biggest stage in the metro when they opened for Red Hot Chili Peppers in April 2023.

Local and other acts

Semisonic is the biggest local name in the lineup. The “Closing Time” trio was booked to play the festival last year, but had to cancel after bassist John Munson suffered a stroke. Other Minnesota acts on the bill include Marcy Playground, Night Moves and Prize Horse (July 17); Yam Haus and Porch Light (July 18); and Atmosphere and Heart to Gold (July 19).

Other highlights include the Black Keys, Mt. Joy, Lord Huron, Cage the Elephant, Passion Pit and Geese, whose fourth album “Getting Killed” generated plenty of buzz this year.

As in previous years, the festival will feature two stages and 10 hours of music each day.

Live Nation owns 51 percent of Yacht Club organizers C3 Presents, an Austin, Texas, company that’s also behind Austin City Limits Music Festival, Voodoo Music + Arts Experience and the modern-day Lollapalooza. But Live Nation apparently allows C3 to follow its own path and use a more personal touch in staging festivals. Concertgoers have praised much about the festival, but complained about long concessions lines and inflated prices for beer and alcohol.

Minnesota Yacht Club Festival lineup

The full 2026 lineup includes:

Friday, July 17: The Lumineers, the Black Keys, Mt. Joy, the Fray, Dashboard Confessional, Shakey Graves, Marcy Playground, Night Moves, Prize Horse and Pat Kennedy.

Saturday, July 18: Matchbox Twenty, Lord Huron, Geese, the All-American Rejects, Lucy Dacus, Matt and Kim, Jensen McRae, Devon Gilfillian, Yam Haus and Porch Light.

Sunday, July 19: The Strokes, Cage the Elephant, Atmosphere, Passion Pit, Semisonic, Dope Lemon, Die Spitz, Couch, Heart to Gold and Common People.

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