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Lehrmann said she did not receive any warning that the floodwaters were coming. Her first inkling of trouble came when she was roused from her sleep at 4:30 a.m. on July 4 by a frantic phone from her general manager, Courtney Garrison, who lived above the store with her daughter, Stella.

Garrison told her there was water in the apartment.

“I was like, ‘What? Is there a leak?” Lehrmann said. “She said, ‘No, it’s the river. I was shocked. I was like, ‘y’all gotta get on the roof.’”

Garrison said she was already on the roof when she made the call after being awakened by unfamiliar noises coming from the ground floor. When she opened the door to go downstairs to investigate, “there was water.”

“I was absolutely stunned,” she said. “I had to take a beat.”

She woke up her daughter and told her, “We’re going out the window.”

“I feel so bad saying we lost everything, but I’m so thankful we’re alive,” she said.

Lehrmann, who lives in a home on higher ground, said The Hunt Store sits right by the river and all she could do was watch as it was inundated.

“I was stuck at my house because the river was going through my property,” she said. “It was so frustrating not being able to come out and help because you don’t know what was going on. It was complete devastation, complete shock.”

Lehrmann said she’s determined to rebuild.

“People come here from all over the world just to go camp,” she said of the summer camps dotted along the riverbanks. “Every person that walks into the store has a memory. And if they don’t have one, they make one.”

“We would have people walk in that were 90-plus years old and say they had been in there as a kid,” added Lehrmann, who took ownership of the store in March 2024. “It’s a very special place.”

It even has a local specialty called a French Taco, which is a beef patty with cheese wrapped in a flour tortilla and seasoned with pico de gallo.

“A woman, Mrs. French, who worked at the store more than 50 years ago, came up with it after she ran out of hamburger buns,” Lehrmann said. “It was just a hit. It’s been famous for 50 years.”

Ronnie Barker, who has lived in Hunt for 23 years with his wife, Kelly, said his daily ritual involves heading to The Hunt Store to “drink coffee with the guys.”

“That’s the center point for the whole community,” Barker said. “You hang out. Everybody knew everybody. If anyone needed anything, we were there to help each other.”

Moore, who has been playing gigs at the store for over a decade, said many of the locals call it “the center of the universe.”

“The people who come here are proud and resilient Texans,” he said. “I believe they will be rebuilding.”

Minyvonne Burke reported from Hunt, Texas. Corky Siemaszko reported from New York City.

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon is extending its annual Prime Day sales and offering new membership perks to Gen Z shoppers amid tariff-related price worries and possibly some consumer boredom with an event marking its 11th year.

For the first time, Seattle-based Amazon is holding the now-misnamed Prime Day over four days. The e-commerce giant’s promised blitz of summer deals for Prime members started at 3:01 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday and ends early Friday.

Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 and expanded it to two days in 2019. The company said this year’s longer version would have deals dropping as often as every 5 minutes during certain periods.

Prime members ages 18-24, who pay $7.49 per month instead of the $14.99 that older customers not eligible for discounted rates pay for free shipping and other benefits, will receive 5% cash back on their purchases for a limited time.

Amazon executives declined to comment on the potential impact of tariffs on Prime Day deals. The event is taking place two and a half months after an online news report sparked speculation that Amazon planned to display added tariff costs next to product prices on its website.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denounced the purported change as a “hostile and political act” before Amazon clarified the idea had been floated for its low-cost Haul storefront but never approved.

Amazon’s past success with using Prime Day to drive sales and attract new members spurred other major retail chains to schedule competing sales in July. Best Buy, Target and Walmart are repeating the practice this year.

Like Amazon, Walmart is adding two more days to its promotional period, which starts Tuesday and runs through July 13. The nation’s largest retailer is making its summer deals available in stores as well as online for the first time.

Here’s what to expect:

More days might not mean more spending

Amazon expanded Prime Day this year because shoppers “wanted more time to shop and save,” Amazon Prime Vice President Jamil Ghani recently told The Associated Press.

Analysts are unsure the extra days will translate into more purchases given that renewed inflation worries and potential price increases from tariffs may make consumers less willing to spend. Amazon doesn’t disclose Prime Day sales figures but said last year that the event achieved record global sales.

Adobe Digital Insights predicts that the sales event will drive $23.8 billion in overall online spending from July 8 to July 11, 28.4% more than the similar period last year. In 2024 and 2023, online sales increased 11% and 6.1% during the comparable four days of July.

Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, noted that Amazon’s move to stretch the sales event to four days is a big opportunity to “really amplify and accelerate the spending velocity.”

Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights and strategy at software company Salesforce, noted that July sales in general have lost some momentum in recent years. Amazon is not a Salesforce Commerce Cloud customer, so the business software company doesn’t have access to the online giant’s e-commerce sales and so is not privy to Prime Day figures.

“What we saw last year was that (shoppers) bought and then they were done, ” Schwartz said. “We know that the consumer is still really cautious. So it’s likely we could see a similar pattern where they come out early, they’re ready to buy and then they take a step back.”

Tariffs don’t seem to be impacting costs much (so far)

Amazon executives reported in May that the company and many of its third-party sellers tried to beat big import tax bills by stocking up on foreign goods before President Donald Trump’s tariffs took effect. And because of that move, a fair number of third-party sellers hadn’t changed their pricing at that time, Amazon said.

Adobe Digital Insights’ Pandya expects discounts to remain on par with last year and for other U.S. retail companies to mark 10% to 24% off the manufacturers’ suggested retail price between Tuesday and Friday.

Salesforce’s Schwartz said she’s noticed retailers becoming more precise with their discounts, such as offering promotion codes that apply to selected products instead of their entire websites.

Shoppers might focus on necessities

Amazon Prime and other July sales have historically helped jump-start back-to-school spending and encouraged advance planners to buy other seasonal merchandise earlier. Analysts said they expected U.S. consumers to make purchases this week out of fear that tariffs will make items more expensive later.

Brett Rose, CEO of United National Consumer Supplies, a wholesale distributor of overstocked goods like toys and beauty products, thinks shoppers will go for items like beauty essentials.

“They’re going to buy more everyday items,” he said.

A look at the discounts

As in past years, Amazon offered early deals leading up to Prime Day. For the big event, Amazon said it would have special discounts on Alexa-enabled products like Echo, Fire TV and Fire tablets.

Walmart said its July sale would include a 32-inch Samsung smart monitor priced at $199 instead of $299.99; and $50 off a 50-Inch Vizio Smart TV with a standard retail price of $298.00. Target said it was maintaining its 2024 prices on key back-to-school items, including a $5 backpack and a selection of 20 school supplies totaling less than $20.

Some third-party sellers will sit out Prime Day

Independent businesses that sell goods through Amazon account for more than 60% of the company’s retail sales. Some third-party sellers are expected to sit out Prime Day and not offer discounts to preserve their profit margins during the ongoing tariff uncertainty, analysts said.

Rose, of United National Consumer Supplies, said he spoke with third-party sellers who said they would rather take a sales hit this week than use up a lot of their pre-tariffs inventory now and risk seeing their profit margins suffer later.

However, some independent businesses that market their products on Amazon are looking to Prime Day to make a dent in the inventory they built up earlier in the year to avoid tariffs.

Home fragrance company Outdoor Fellow, which makes about 30% of its sales through Amazon’s marketplace, gets most of its candle lids, labels, jars, reed diffusers and other items from China, founder Patrick Jones said. Fearing high costs from tariffs, Jones stocked up at the beginning of the year, roughly doubling his inventory.

For Prime Day, he plans to offer bigger discounts, such as 32% off the price of a candle normally priced at $34, Jones said.

“All the product that we have on Amazon right now is still from the inventory that we got before the tariffs went into effect,” he said. “So we’re still able to offer the discount that we’re planning on doing.”

Jones said he was waiting to find out if the order he placed in June will incur large customs duties when the goods arrive from China in a few weeks.

Anne D’innocenzio and AP Business Writer Mae Anderson contributed to this report

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump at least temporarily to move ahead with plans to impose reductions in force and reorganize various government agencies.

The court imposed an administrative stay in the case at the request of the Trump administration. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to provide a written dissenting opinion.

At issue is a ruling by California-based U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, who ruled in May that while the president can seek to make changes, there are limits when done wholesale.

“Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a President may not initiate large-scale executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress,” she wrote.

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The justices made clear Tuesday that their order is not about the legality of any individual agency reduction in force or reorganization plan, only the legality of Trump’s executive order and an administration memo related to workforce plans.

In her dissenting opinion, Jackson wrote, “this decision is not only truly unfortunate but also hubristic and senseless.”

The decision affects 19 federal agencies as well as the White House-adjacent Office of Management and Budget, Office of Personnel Management and U.S. DOGE Service.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in court papers that Illston’s ruling is based on the “indefensible premise” that the presidents needs permission from Congress to carry out his duties as delineated in Article II of the Constitution.

“Controlling the personnel of federal agencies lies at the heartland of this authority,” he wrote. “The Constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the President does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers.”

The legal challenge was brought by various unions and nonprofit groups, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, as well as certain local jurisdictions including the cities of Chicago and Baltimore.

Their lawyers said that if the court granted Trump’s request “statutorily required and authorized programs, offices, and functions across the federal government will be abolished” with some departments “radically downsized.” As such, they urged that the court allow the litigation to conclude before deciding whether Trump can implement his plan.

President Donald Trump expressed mounting frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, promising during a lively cabinet meeting to boost U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

“We get a lot of bull— thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told reporters, who attended a nearly two-hour stretch of the meeting. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

The comments echoed his remarks from Monday, when he described himself as “not happy” and “disappointed” with Putin’s actions. The last known conversation between the two leaders was on July 3.

When asked about a reported pause for some weapons shipments to Ukraine, Trump seemed to dismiss the idea, saying he wanted to equip “brave” Ukrainians with defensive arms. Putin “is not treating human beings right,” he said. “He’s killing too many people, so we’re sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine, and I’ve approved that.”

At last month’s NATO summit at The Hague, Trump suggested the U.S. was exploring options to send Patriot air defense missiles to Ukraine. “They do want to have the anti-missile missiles,” Trump said of Kyiv at the time. “As they call them, the Patriots, and we’re going to see if we can make some available.”

However, a subsequent shipment that included dozens of Patriot interceptors capable of defending against incoming Russian missiles was paused over concerns about low U.S. stockpiles, according to two defense officials, two congressional officials and two sources with knowledge of the decision. When pressed on who ordered the pause, Trump responded sharply: “I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?”

Trump also said on Tuesday that he was closely eyeing a sanctions bill targeting Russia, saying that he might support it.

U.S. officials had been attempting to broker a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, but negotiations have stalled in recent weeks. Trump had promised to resolve the conflict on the first day of his second term, though he has since claimed he was joking or exaggerating.

The cabinet meeting, Trump’s sixth since taking office, covered a broad range of topics, including the recent Texas floods, tariff negotiations, U.S. strikes on Iran, Hunter Biden’s laptop and the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. He also launched into an extended screed about wind farms and a lengthy discussion about the artwork in the room.

Trump also discussed a recent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he defended against his ongoing criminal trial. The two plan to meet again to focus on the Gaza conflict.

“He’s coming over later and we’re going to be talking about, I would say, almost exclusively, Gaza,” Trump said. “It’s a tragedy. And he wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved, and I think the other side wants to get it solved.”

The meeting highlighted the absence of Elon Musk, once a key adviser who drove an initiative to streamline government efficiency. Musk, who spent a quarter-billion dollars to help elect Trump in 2024, according to campaign finance reports, has since parted ways with the administration and threatened to launch a third political party, a move that could challenge Republican prospects.

Trump appeared unfazed, responding, “I think it’ll help us.”

“It’ll probably— third parties have always been good for me, I don’t know about Republicans, but for me,” the president added.

MEXICO CITY — A fierce protest in Mexico City railing against gentrification and mass tourism was fueled by government failures and active promotion to attract digital nomads, according to experts, who said tension had been mounting for years.

The criticism comes after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum alleged that Friday’s protest was marked by xenophobia, reviving a debate over an influx of Americans in the city.

Many Mexicans say they’ve been priced out of their neighborhoods — in part because of a move made by Sheinbaum in 2022, when she was the Mexico City mayor and signed an agreement with Airbnb and UNESCO to boost tourism and attract digital nomads despite concern over the impact short-term rentals could have.

‘Gringo: Stop stealing our home’

On Friday, that came to a head. A largely peaceful protest of hundreds of demonstrators marched through tourism centers of the city with signs reading “Gringo: Stop stealing our home” and “Housing regulations now!”

Near the end of the march, a group of protesters turned violent, breaking the windows of storefronts and looting a number of businesses. In one case, a protester slammed a butter knife against the window of a restaurant where people were hiding, and another person painted “kill a gringo” on a nearby wall.

“The xenophobic displays seen at that protest have to be condemned. No one should be able to say ‘any nationality get out of our country’ even over a legitimate problem like gentrification,” Sheinbaum said Monday. “We’ve always been open, fraternal.”

The frustrations were built upon years of mass tourism and rising rent prices in large swathes of the city. The influx of foreigners began around 2020, when Americans flooded into the Mexico City to work remotely, dodge coronavirus restrictions and take advantage of cheaper living costs.

In the years since, choice neighborhoods like Roma and Condesa, lush central areas dotted with cafes and markets, have grown increasingly populated by foreign tourists and the remote workers known as digital nomads, and there are more temporary housing units rented through companies like Airbnb that cater to tourists.

As they have, rent and living prices have soared and English has been increasingly common on the streets of those areas. Some groups have described the phenomenon as a sort of “neo-colonialism.”

Mounting tensions

The Mexico City Anti-Gentrification Front, one of the organizations behind the protest, it was “completely against” any acts of physical violence and denied that the protests were xenophobic. Instead, the organization said the protest was a result of years of failures by the local government to address the root of the problems.

“Gentrification isn’t just foreigners’ fault, it’s the fault of the government and these companies that prioritize the money foreigners bring,” the organization said in a statement. Meanwhile “young people and the working class can’t afford to live here.”

In its list of demands, the organization called for greater rent controls, mandates that locals have a voice in larger development projects in their area, stricter laws making it harder for landlords to throw out residents and prioritizing Mexican renters over foreigners.

Mexico’s protest comes on the back of a wave of similar protests across Europe railing against mass tourism. Tensions in Mexico have also been compounded by wider inequalities and the Trump administration targeting Latino communities in the U.S. as it ramps up deportations.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security took a jab at protesters Sunday, writing in a post on the social media platform X: “If you are in the United States illegally and wish to join the next protest in Mexico City, use the CBP Home app to facilitate your departure.”

Government failures

Protesters’ cries against government failures were echoed by experts, who said that surging gentrification is a product of both shortage of affordable housing in the city and longtime government failures to regulate the housing market.

Antonio Azuela, lawyer and sociologist and others said that they do see the protest as a xenophobic backlash, and around 2020 the core of the problem was the influx of “digital nomads” in the city, but it grew out of hand because of lax housing laws.

“What has made this explode is lack of regulation in the market,” Azuela said.

Mexico City’s government over the course of decades has made a few efforts to control development and create affordable housing.

Legislators estimated there are about 2.7 million houses and apartments in the city, but it needs about 800,000 more. But such affordable housing developments that have popped up often are pushed off to the fringes of the city, said Luis Salinas, a researcher at National Autonomous University of Mexico who has studied gentrification in Mexico City for years.

Taking advantage of ‘insufficient’ laws

Controls, meanwhile, have been marked by lack of enforcement, which developers travel services companies like Airbnb take advantage of, he said.

Today, more than 26,000 properties in Mexico City are currently listed on Airbnb, according to the Inside Airbnb, an advocacy organization that tracks the company’s impact on residential communities through data. That’s compared to 36,000 properties in New York City and 19,000 in Barcelona, where protests have also broken out.

“The government has treated housing like it’s merchandise,” Salinas said. The actions the government is taking “are completely insufficient. The federal government needs to be intervening far more nowadays.”

Airbnb said it helped contribute more than a billion dollars in “economic impact” to Mexico City last year and that spending by guests has supported 46,000 jobs in the city. “What’s needed is regulation based not on prohibitions, but on respect for rights and transparency of obligations,” it said in a statement.

Last year, Mexico City’s government approved the most ambitious rent control law since the 1940s in an effort to control prices and also set caps on short-term rentals to 180 nights a year, but Salinas said that enforcement of short-term rental legislation has been put on pause until after the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

And even then, the country’s government will have to take far greater actions to get the situation under control, said Azuela.

“This isn’t going to end by just reigning in Airbnb,” he said. “They’re going to have to do a whole lot more.”

President Donald Trump said Tuesday there would be “no extensions” granted to the new August 1 deadline he set Monday for U.S. trading partners to negotiate new deals or face significantly higher tariffs on goods imported from their countries.

In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote:

“As per letters sent to various countries yesterday, in addition to letters that will be sent today, tomorrow, and for the next short period of time, TARIFFS WILL START BEING PAID ON AUGUST 1, 2025. There has been no change to this date, and there will be no change. In other words, all money will be due and payable starting AUGUST 1, 2025 — No extensions will be granted. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Stocks, already on edge after Trump began sending out warning letters Monday, fell meaningfully into the red after the post went live, though returned to nearly flat on the day shortly after noon Tuesday.

In remarks to the press around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Trump clarified that “We can do things over the years too … we’re not hard-line.”

He also appeared to back pedal on announcing deals that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday would materialize in 48 hours.

“The deals are mostly my deal to them,” Trump said. “We’re picking a number that’s low.”

In a note to clients published shortly before Trump’s midday remarks titled “Markets are (probably) right to ignore Trump’s latest tariff flip-flop” Capital Economics Deputy Chief Markets Economist Jonas Goltermann, wrote that his group ultimately expects U.S effective tariff rates to remain around their current levels.

“While continued noise around tariffs could well generate some volatility in the near term, we think the bar for another major sell-off remains quite high,” he said.

Trump announced the new deadline while publishing more than a dozen new letters warning countries their goods would be subject to tariff levels close to the eye-watering ones he laid out in his shock “Liberation Day” speech in April.

“The tariff rollercoaster ride continues,” ING analysts wrote in a note Monday. “While the ‘letters’ leave some more room for continued frontloading — although shipping times need to be considered — and negotiations, they also mean that the tariff saga continues.”

“The ongoing uncertainty could do almost as much economic harm as actual tariffs,” they added.

Other Wall Street analysts estimated that the tariff rates contained in the 14 letters sent out so far could add slightly to consumer inflation, even though many of the recipients are small trading partners.

The Yale Budget Lab noted that the letters sent Monday would hike the effective tariff rate on U.S. consumers to the highest since 1934.

Bank of America analysts said in a note that they “don’t think the tariffs announced on Monday are a done deal,” adding that — despite Trump’s assertions — they view the deadline extension to August 1 as a suggestion that “there is still room for negotiation.”

With passage of his controversial tax cut and spending bill now behind him, Trump is once again stoking the fires of his trade war. He remains fixated on closing the U.S.’s trade gap — or the difference in how much America imports versus how much it exports — with other nations.

It’s a preoccupation many economists dismiss as simplistic, since it merely reflects the fact that the U.S. is a large, advanced economy that no longer needs to produce goods, from clothing to school supplies, that can be made more cost-effectively elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the economies of the smaller nations that the U.S. relies on to supply it with those lower-cost goods stand to be devastated by any changes to trade flows.

Nations around the world have responded by signaling resistance to the latest round of Trump’s threats. Chinese state media warned the Trump administration Tuesday against striking deals that sideline China, especially tariffs on transshipments aimed at circumventing China’s duties. Meanwhile, Germany’s finance minister warned that the European Union would impose retaliatory measures on U.S. goods if a “fair” deal does not materialize.

“We want an agreement with the Americans but I also say very clearly that this deal must be fair,” Lars Klingbeil told German parliament members Tuesday. “And if we do not succeed in reaching a fair deal with the United States, then the European Union will have to take countermeasures to protect our economy.”

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will terminate deportation protections for thousands of Hondurans and Nicaraguans living in the United States, according to U.S. government notices posted on Monday, part of President Donald Trump‘s broad effort to strip legal status from migrants.

The action, effective on September 6, will end Temporary Protected Status for an estimated 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans who have had access to the legal status since 1999, according to a pair of Federal Register notices.

The Republican president has sought to end temporary legal status for hundreds of thousands of migrants in the United States, including some who have lived and worked in the country legally for decades. The Trump administration already had moved to end TPS for 348,000 Venezuelans and 521,000 Haitians, as well as thousands from Afghanistan and Cameroon.

The administration has said deportation protections were overused in the past and that many migrants no longer merit protections. Democrats and advocates for the migrants have said that TPS enrollees could be forced to return to dangerous conditions and that U.S. employers depend on their labor.

TPS provides deportation relief and work permits to people already in the United States if their home countries experience a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event.During his first term as president from 2017-2021, Trump sought to end most TPS enrollment, including the designations covering Honduras and Nicaragua, but his attempts were blocked by federal courts as unlawful.

The initial TPS designations for Honduras and Nicaragua were based on destruction caused by Hurricane Mitch, which tore through Central America in 1998 and killed at least 10,000 people, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in the termination notices that the countries had made significant recoveries, citing tourism in both countries, real estate investment in Honduras and the renewable energy sector in Nicaragua.

“Temporary Protected Status was designed to be just that — temporary,” Noem said in a statement.

Democratic former President Joe Biden’s administration renewed TPS for Honduras and Nicaragua in 2023, saying the effects of Hurricane Mitch still reverberated and that political instability, economic issues and damage from other storms warranted extending the protections.

The U.S. State Department currently warns Americans to reconsider travel to Honduras due to crime and to Nicaragua due to the risk of wrongful detention and limited healthcare, while also raising concerns about crime. The Honduran government issued a state of emergency in 2022 that allows police to suspend constitutional rights in much of the country. The United Nations has accused Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega of repression after new constitutional reforms in effect this year expanded his powers.

Antonio Garcia, the Honduran deputy foreign minister, said the U.S. decision reflected Trump’s broader effort to end TPS and was not targeting Hondurans specifically.“It has happened to all countries … and now us,” Garcia said.

While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in May that the Trump administration could proceed with ending the status for Venezuelans, a federal judge last week blocked the termination for Haitians.

MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for the state to institute a ban on conversion therapy in a ruling that gives the governor more power over how state laws are enacted.

The court ruled that a Republican-controlled legislative committee’s rejection of a state agency rule that would ban the practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ people was unconstitutional. The decision, which has a broad impact far beyond the conversion therapy issue, takes power away from the Legislature to block the enactment of rules by the governor’s office that carry the force of law.

The 4-3 ruling from the liberal-controlled court comes amid the national battle over LGBTQ+ rights. It is also part of a broader effort by the Democratic governor, who has vetoed Republican bills targeting transgender high school athletes, to rein in the power of the GOP-controlled Legislature.

What is conversion therapy?

What is known as conversion therapy is the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.

The practice has been banned in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ rights think tank. It is also banned in more than a dozen communities across Wisconsin. Since April 2024, the Wisconsin professional licensing board for therapists, counselors and social workers has labeled conversion therapy as unprofessional conduct.

Advocates seeking to ban the practice want to forbid mental health professionals in the state from counseling clients with the goal of changing their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in March to hear a Colorado case about whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.

What is happening in Wisconsin?

The provision barring conversion therapy in Wisconsin has been blocked twice by the Legislature’s powerful Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules — a Republican-controlled panel in charge of approving state agency regulations.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling means the conversion therapy ban can be enacted. The court ruled that the legislative committee has been overreaching its authority in blocking a variety of other state regulations during Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ administration.

The lawsuit brought by Evers targeted two votes by the joint committee. One deals with the Department of Safety and Professional Services’ conversion therapy ban. The other vote blocked an update to the state’s commercial building standards.

Republicans who supported suspending the conversion therapy ban have insisted the issue isn’t the policy itself, but whether the licensing board had the authority to take the action it did.

Evers has been trying since 2020 to get the ban enacted, but the Legislature has stopped it from going into effect.

Evers and legislative leaders did not immediately respond to messages seeking reaction to the ruling.

Legislative power weakened by ruling

The Legislature’s attorney argued that decades of precedent backed up their argument, including a 1992 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling upholding the Legislature’s right to suspend state agency rules.

Evers argued that by blocking the rule, the legislative committee is taking over powers that the state constitution assigns to the governor and exercising an unconstitutional “legislative veto.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed with Evers.

The court found that the Legislature was violating the state constitution’s requirement that any laws pass both houses of the Legislature and be presented to the governor.

Instead, in this case the Legislature was illegally taking “action that alters the legal rights and duties of the executive branch and the people of Wisconsin,” Chief Justice Jill Karofsky wrote for the majority. She was joined by the court’s three other liberal justices.

Conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn, in a dissent, said the court’s ruling is “devoid of legal analysis and raises more questions than it answers.”

Hagedorn argued for a more narrow ruling that would have only declared unconstitutional the legislative committee’s indefinite objection to a building code rule.

Fellow conservative justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley also dissented, saying the ruling shifts too much power to the executive branch and holds the Legislature to a higher legal standard.

Bradley said the ruling “lets the executive branch exercise lawmaking power unfettered and unchecked.”

The issue goes beyond conversion therapy

The conversion therapy ban is one of several rules that have been blocked by the legislative committee. Others pertain to environmental regulations, vaccine requirements and public health protections.

Environmental groups hailed the ruling.

The decision will prevent a small number of lawmakers from blocking the enactment of environmental protections passed by the Legislature and signed into law, said Wilkin Gibart, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates.

The court previously sided with Evers in one issue brought in the lawsuit, ruling 6-1 last year that another legislative committee was illegally preventing the state Department of Natural Resources from funding grants to local governments and nongovernmental organizations for environmental projects under the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Monday threatened the state of California with legal action after the state refused to ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports as demanded by President Donald Trump’s administration.

“@CAgovernor, you’ll be hearing from @AGPamBondi,” McMahon wrote, using the handles for California Governor Newsom and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

McMahon’s statement on X was the latest salvo in the culture wars over transgender youth and ratchets up the personal rivalry between Trump and Newsom. Trump has made reversing advances in transgender rights a priority since returning to office on January 20, while California law has allowed student-athletes to participate in sports in alignment with their gender identity since 2013.

The Justice Department declined to comment and the Education Department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for clarification on the meaning of McMahon’s comment.

California’s state Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Newsom’s office and the California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports, declined to comment.

The U.S. Education Department issued a statement in June declaring California in violation of the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IV, the education law banning sex-based discrimination, and demanding the state alter its policy.The state rejected the federal government’s directive, and in June filed a pre-enforcement lawsuit against the U.S. Justice Department in anticipation of legal action.

With controversy brewing ahead of the state high school track and field championship in June, the CIF allowed girls displaced from the finals by a transgender athlete to also be granted space to compete. The CIF also allowed girls to appear on the winners’ podium if they would have won a medal without a transgender athlete competing.

As a result, the CIF crowned two champions in the girls’ high jump and triple jump after transgender girl AB Hernandez won both events.