The Trump administration is abandoning its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally, according to an official document obtained by NPR.
The proposed rule: The document shows that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing a proposed rule that would have blocked all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care.
What's next: Normally, HHS would propose a rule, accept public comment for 60 days, and then finalize the rule so that it could take effect. In this case, after proposing the rule in December and receiving more than 30,000 comments, the administration is abandoning the rule. At least in the next year, it will not be finalized and will not take effect.
The Trump administration is abandoning its most aggressive attempt to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally, according to an official document obtained by NPR.
The document shows that the Department of Health and Human Services will not be finalizing a proposed rule that would have blocked all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told NPR in a statement: "CMS does not comment on future rulemaking or speculate on potential actions. The Trump Administration rejects ideologically driven surgical interventions on vulnerable children."
(Surgery is very rare among transgender people under age 18, and the rule applied to all gender-affirming care, which is mainly therapy and medications for children.)
A "victory" for trans rights, but not a "retreat" by HHS
The fact that the Trump administration is backing off from this action is "a victory for people who are defending the rights and interests of trans people," says Sam Bagenstos, a professor at Michigan Law who served as general counsel at HHS under the Biden administration. "But I don't think it indicates a more general retreat from the aggressive posture of the Trump administration."
Bagenstos notes that this type of leverage — a "conditions of participation" rule for the Medicare and Medicaid program — has historically been used by HHS to compel states and hospitals to meet basic health and safety standards. Things like "making sure that you have stockpiles of certain kinds of equipment, making sure that you have certain kinds of emergency protocols, making sure that you have certain staffing ratios," he explains.
The proposed rule was unprecedented, Bagenstos says, because it instead would have prohibited certain kinds of treatments for a certain population. He says it seemed unlawful in a variety of ways. For one, "it violates the Medicare Act, which says that Medicare and Medicaid can't be used to control the practice of medicine within the state — states get to regulate the practice of medicine," Bagenstos says.
Medical groups opposed the change
Normally, HHS would propose a rule, accept public comment for 60 days, and then finalize the rule so that it could take effect. In this case, after proposing the rule in December and receiving more than 30,000 comments, the administration is abandoning the rule. At least in the next year, it will not be finalized and will not take effect.
The American Medical Association and the Children's Hospital Association both submitted comments urging the agency to rescind or withdraw the proposed rule. Major U.S. medical groups say that puberty blockers and sex hormones are safe and can be effective for transgender young people.
Even so, gender-affirming care for youth is banned in 27 states after a flurry of laws passed over the last several years. In the remaining 23 states, many hospital clinics that offer gender-affirming care have continued to operate, while others have shuttered in the past year citing pressure from the Trump administration.
That pressure has come in the form of this proposed rule, another rule that would bar federal Medicaid reimbursement for transgender pediatric patients, and a declaration from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that aimed to redefine the standard of care. (Interestingly, the press release issued when those actions were unveiled in December is now missing from the HHS website, as is the Kennedy declaration document.)
The Medicaid rule is currently in the final stage of review and appears to be on track to take effect in the coming weeks. A coalition of Democratic-led states sued over the so-called Kennedy declaration and succeeded in blocking it in federal court in Oregon. The Trump administration has not appealed that decision so far.
Protesters who are against gender-affirming care for young people gathered outside Boston Children's Hospital in September 2022.
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Carlin Stiehl for The Boston Globe
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Getty Images
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At the same time, the Department of Justice has issued administrative and criminal subpoenas to hospitals seeking full personal medical files for transgender youth and employment files for their medical providers, although many of those attempts have been blocked in court so far. The Trump administration has also reached settlements with hospitals in Texas and Ohio that involved establishing "detransition" clinics.
And last month, when the Supreme Court allowed states to bar young transgender girls from sports, the White House issued a press release saying that the decision "Bolsters President Trump's Push to Eliminate Transgender Insanity." The release listed actions targeting transgender people across the federal government, from passport markers to military service to research funding.
Will hospitals that ended care for trans youth restart it?
While the Trump administration does not appear to be backing down from anti-transgender actions broadly, its decision not to finalize its most aggressive healthcare rule is significant, says Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at Georgetown University who also worked in the Biden administration. Those other efforts are not nearly as durable as a finalized rule that takes effect, she notes.
The decision of the Trump administration not to finalize this rule "should give hospitals more confidence to either resume or continue offering the care," she says. Because the rule was never in effect, "I would argue that they should have been doing this all along anyway."
Kellan Baker agrees. He's a senior adviser for health policy at the Movement Advancement Project think tank, which focuses on LGBTQ issues. "This administration may have checked itself in one of the most extreme expressions of its agenda and I think people should take solace in that," he says. "But at the same time, this administration is continuing to show that its ultimate goal is eliminating healthcare for trans people and that it is apparently prepared to use almost any means necessary to do so."
The Medicare and Medicaid rule could theoretically be revived at some point, since it has not been formally withdrawn. An entry in the Trump administration's recent unified agenda sets a final action date for the proposed rule as December 2028, just before President Trump leaves office.
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
is an arts and general assignment reporter on LAist's Explore LA team.
Published September 19, 2026 5:00 AM
Guadalupe Rosales, center, was part of the L.A. party crew scene in the mid-1990s.
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Guadalupe Rosales collection
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Courtesy Penguin Random House
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Topline:
Guadalupe Rosales, who was at the center of the ’90s LA party crew scene, felt her joyful experiences and those of her friends were being erased, overshadowed by a narrative of gang violence. So she wrote East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood to make sure their stories would not be forgotten.
Why it matters: The '90s party crew scene was a multi-faceted movement that involved mostly Latino youth in Southern California. It involved music, fashion, flier art and the commerce of staging parties.
What it drew on: The memoir’s foundation was the online archive Veteranas and Rucas, a repository of Rosales’ photos from the party crew scene, and photos, largely from women, from those times.
The backstory: Rosales began documenting the party crew scene years after being in it, while she was earning an MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Read on… to read about the party crew names and the women’s dominant fashions in the scene.
In the '90s, Guadalupe Rosales was a teenager in Los Angeles, part of the party crew scene. She remembers it as beautiful and empowering — but that’s not what she saw years later when she searched for stories about the scene online.
“I noticed that anything that was about Latino culture, '90s culture in L.A. specifically, [focused on] gang violence, everything that was mostly criminalizing,” Rosales said.
Rosales’ new memoir, East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood, is her effort to correct the absence of personal histories of people who were a key part of that scene.
The book is part historical archive, and part personal narrative. It’s also a log of her efforts to bring the scene to life for people in the 21st century, using her training as an artist and a scholar, three decades after the scene’s heyday.
Street Beat magazine documented the California party crew scene in the '90s.
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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection
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Rosales's artistic work today is in demand. Her most recent solo show was "Tzahualli: Mi memoria en tu reflejo"in 2025 at the Palm Springs Art Museum. The Broad acquired a piece by Rosales that it's including in a group show titled "Has the myth been shattered"opening in November.
Her pieces are in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Hammer, LACMA and others. Rosales has taught at UCLA and UC Riverside.
She brings that sensibility to the book. “I really wanted to think about something that could live on hundreds of years from now, something that could be studied, something that could feel empowering, especially for women,” she said.
A recent photo of artist and scholar Guadalupe Rosales.
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Fabian Guerrero
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Courtesy Penguin Random House
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The new memoir, East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood is about the 1990s party crew scene in L.A.
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Courtesy Penguin Random House
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The party crew scene in a nutshell
The ‘90s party crew scene was a multi-faceted movement that involved mostly Latino youth in Southern California. The center of the phenomenon was the party, which could take place in small backyards or large empty warehouses.
Photos from the scene.
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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection
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The music was variations of underground techno far from the pop mainstream. DJs played and mixed records on analog turntables, from people like DJ Irene and DJ Attack.
The scene also generated a lot of business activity. Partygoers paid entrance fees, and for alcohol, party organizers paid venues to hold the party and for the DJs to keep people dancing.
It was common to go out with the same group of people. The groups came up with names for their crews, such as Chicanos With Pride, Firme Hinas, Aztek Nation, Frek Show Tribe, Hispanics Causing Panic, and Playerz Cauzin’ Pleazure, among many, many others.
It was all covered by Street Beat, an independent publication loaded with photos of party crews and parties, while individuals honed graphic design styles for the fliers used to promote each party.
Fashion was another essential component of the scene.
Photos from Street Beat magazine in 1992 show the party crew scene in Southern California.
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Courtesy Adolfo Guzman-Lopez collection
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In the book, Rosales describes the mesmerized feeling she had when she saw her first house party. She was about 13 years old and watched the young women show off their style through the window of her house in East L.A.
“They wore tank tops and baggy pants with puffed-out front pockets or overalls. Their sneakers — Adidas or Converse Chuck Taylors,” she said. “Two of the girls wore oversized shirts that hung loosely on their frames, and they had short hair like Demi Moore in the movie Ghost. The others wore their hair longer, styled in that wet, wavy look that was so popular, half pulled up with a clip. One took out a travel-size Aqua Net hairspray and mousse, then scrunched up her hair with one hand while spraying her hair with the other.”
The style and dance moves wowed her, she said, but what captivated her then, and to this day, was these young women’s confidence in who they were. It was magnetic, pointed her in a direction she wanted to go.
A photo of Guadalupe Rosales on her 15th birthday, her quinceañera.
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Guadalupe Rosales collection
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Courtesy Penguin Random House
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The stories
For photos, Rosales drew on her online archive Veteranas and Rucas, (which roughly translates as “experienced ladies and broads“) which she’d kept going through the years, a repository of her own photos from the scene, and other photos from the time, largely from women. She began the project while earning an MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
A photo from Guadalupe Rosales' collection of 1990s ephemera.
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Credit: Guadalupe Rosales collection
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Courtesy Penguin Random House
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The book includes CD covers from popular bands at the time, Dr. Dre and Eazy-E, as well as photos of youth at protests against Prop. 187, the anti-immigrant California ballot measure.
“Youth culture exists for everyone. It might look different depending on where you live and who you are. And for us, as teenagers, we're living in that moment,” she said.
In the book Rosales connects a student walkout at her high school in Montebello with memories of her mother taking her and her sister to protests years before.
“Being an adult, working on this book, being an artist is also about reflecting back and also learning a lot of things that I wasn't aware of,” she said.
East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood is published by One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House and is available Sept. 8.
Maira Solis is the show’s architect — as well as the director of Mariachi Tierra Mia, the L.A.-based group that will perform a mariachi program the night of Sept. 27 before launching into a set of Smiths covers with the band, The Last Line of Defense.
As to the enduring love Mexican Angelenos have for The Smiths, Solis will be the first to admit she didn’t know.
“This was, like, not intentional at all,” she said of the crossover.
Learning about The Smiths
The inadvertent mash-up happened in December 2024, just hours before Mariachi Tierra Mia was set to play a house gig — a “lucha libre-themed Christmas party” — when their client asked if the group knew any songs by The Smiths.
That would be the ‘80s Manchester band — led by singer-lyricist (and the Pope of Mope himself) Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr — that crafted songs as gorgeous and achy as they are wry and over-the-top. “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” and “Girlfriend in a Coma” are popular titles.
“I was like, ‘I don't think so,’” Solis said. She double-checked with her husband, Ivan Peña, guitarist and singer.
“He turned around, and he's like, ‘I f—ing love The Smiths,’” she recalled.
The Smiths tour posters photographed in London this month. The band and its lead singer remain very popular with Mexican Americans.
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Carl Court
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Getty Images
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A few hours later, Peña, with a serape draped over his Charro suit and little preparation, belted out “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now” — and brought down the house.
“Like, the mariachis were jamming out, the taco people, the bar people, everyone in attendance was just like, ‘Yeah,’” Solis said.
That performance, captured on video, went viral on social media. Then the requests started to flood in.
“Hey, we love all your traditional songs,” her clients would tell Solis. “But can you put a Smiths song in there?”
Learning mariachi's centuries-old songbook one gig at a time
Solis picked up the violin in middle school and continued on in high school. Both schools in Boyle Heights offered mariachi programs that exposed her to the music.
Some of the students, she said, were already doing paid gigs and took her under their wing.
Solis was very much humbled at her first backyard gig, armed with a repertoire of about 20 songs learned from school, around age 14.
“I realized, ‘Oh my God, I don't know anything,’” she said, comparing her knowledge to the music’s vast songbook that has been passed down for generations.
Then there are the subgenres. “People will ask for a bolero, a huapango, a son, a ranchera,” she said.
And the music keeps adding new numbers, such as “Risk It All” by Bruno Mars.
Is it really so strange (yes, that’s indeed a Smiths reference) then, that mariachi would meet The Smiths?
“A lot of mariachi songs stand the test of time because they're very poetic,” she said, as they are commonly about heartbreak and hardships. “The melodies really give life to those words.”
Just like the music of The Smiths.
“That's why they're timeless,” Solis said. “The whole purpose of our ‘Mariachi Meets The Smiths’ — it’s gonna blend that.”
How to go
Mariachi Meets The Smiths
Where: The Ford, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Los Angeles When: 7:30 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 27 Tickets and info: theford.com
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Los Angeles Dodgers owner and chairman Mark Walter speaks during a ceremony to honor the Major League Baseball 2024 World Series Champion team in the East Room of the White House, April 7, 2025, in Washington.
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Evan Vucci
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Associated Press
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Topline:
Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and multiple insurance companies he owns have been sued, alleging they failed to disclose an ongoing federal probe to customers while directing policyholders’ money into Walter’s other companies.
Who's behind the suit: Ira Rosner, a 67-year-old Florida man, brought the class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Miami on Wednesday. He purchased a policy from Delaware Life in April and he had until late May to withdraw his money without penalty. However, the company did not disclose the investigation to him until June, Rosner is seeking a jury trial in the lawsuit that seeks damages for negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract and aiding and abetting fraud.
The backstory: Walter has been under investigation since last year by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission following a whistleblower complaint regarding alleged misrepresented loans made between companies within his business portfolio.
Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and multiple insurance companies he owns have been sued, alleging they failed to disclose an ongoing federal probe to customers while directing policyholders’ money into Walter’s other companies.
The lawsuit lists Walter, Delaware Life Insurance Co., Clear Spring Life and Annuity, TWG Global Holdings and Walter’s Guggenheim Partners investment firm as defendants.
Ira Rosner, a 67-year-old Florida man, brought the class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Miami on Wednesday. He purchased a policy from Delaware Life in April and he had until late May to withdraw his money without penalty. However, the company did not disclose the investigation to him until June,
Rosner is seeking a jury trial in the lawsuit that seeks damages for negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract and aiding and abetting fraud.
TWG Global didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
Walter has been under investigation since last year by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and the Securities and Exchange Commission following a whistleblower complaint regarding alleged misrepresented loans made between companies within his business portfolio.
TWG Global Holdings is the holding company through which Walter controls Delaware Life, Clear Spring Life and Annuity Co. and his stake in Guggenheim Partners. TWG Global denied any wrongdoing involving the probe in a statement last month.
Walter and co-owner Todd Boehly sold their stakes in English Premier League club Chelsea this week. Last month, Walter agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers in a surprise move less than a year after buying the NBA franchise from the Buss family. The deal is under review by the league.
The Dodgers have been adamant that Walter has no plans to sell the baseball team.
Compton Unified Superintendent Darin Brawley has won a national education prize recognizing his leadership in improving student achievement in the district. Brawley will receive the 2026 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, which includes a $50,000 award, at a ceremony in New York City in November.
Why it matters: The McGraw Center for Education Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, which administers the prize, cited the “extraordinary impact” of Brawley and the two other recipients. Brawley won for his work in K-12; prizes are also awarded for higher education and lifelong learning.
Why now: With about 20,000 predominantly low-income Black and Hispanic students, Compton was singled out nationally for test scores in math and reading that did not fall back during the COVID-19 epidemic and continued to exceed the national and state averages since. The center noted that Compton’s graduation rates increased from 58% to 94%, and college acceptance rates exceeded 95% during Brawley’s 14 years as superintendent. It also highlighted the district’s expanded college and career pathways and innovative industry and community partnerships.
Compton Unified Superintendent Darin Brawley has won a national education prize recognizing his leadership in improving student achievement in the district.
Brawley will receive the 2026 Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education, which includes a $50,000 award, at a ceremony in New York City in November.
The McGraw Center for Education Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, which administers the prize, cited the “extraordinary impact” of Brawley and the two other recipients. Brawley won for his work in K-12; prizes are also awarded for higher education and lifelong learning.
“At a time when schools and communities are confronting profound educational challenges, three visionary leaders are demonstrating what meaningful change can look like,” the McGraw Center said.
With about 20,000 predominantly low-income Black and Hispanic students, Compton was singled out nationally for test scores in math and reading that did not fall back during the COVID-19 epidemic and continued to exceed the national and state averages since.
The center noted that Compton’s graduation rates increased from 58% to 94%, and college acceptance rates exceeded 95% during Brawley’s 14 years as superintendent. It also highlighted the district’s expanded college and career pathways and innovative industry and community partnerships.
Last year, EdSource detailed an unusual drama program at Compton’s Dominguez High. Another EdSource article this year highlighted the inclusion of student-centered “calming corners” and learning stations in school renovations.
The McGraw prize, named after the CEO of the McGraw-Hill education publisher, has been awarded since 1988. Other recent California recipients have included Debra Duardo, Los Angeles County schools superintendent; Jody Lewen, president of Tamalpais College, who introduced academic programs at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center; Stanford University professor and researcher Roy Pea; and Sol Khan, creator of a worldwide free online education and tutoring platform.
The higher education prize went to Shai Reshef, who founded the University of the People, the first nonprofit, tuition-free, accredited online university, and the lifelong learning prize was awarded to Michael Webber, a nationally recognized professor of mechanical engineering and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin.
