WASHINGTON — Sidelined by political appointees, targeted over deep state conspiracies and derided by the president, career public servants have grown used to life in Washington under a constant state of assault.
But President Trump’s latest threat, to withhold back pay due to workers furloughed by an ongoing government shutdown, is adding fresh uncertainty to the beleaguered workforce.
Whether federal workers will ultimately receive retroactive paychecks after the government reopens, Trump told reporters on Tuesday, “really depends on who you’re talking about.” The law requires federal employees receive their expected compensation in the event of a shutdown.
“For the most part, we’re going to take care of our people,” the president said, while adding: “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”
It is yet another peril facing public servants, who, according to Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, Russ Vought, may also be the target of mass layoffs if the shutdown continues.
The government has been shut since Oct. 1, when Republican and Democratic lawmakers came to an impasse over whether to extend government funding at existing levels, or account for a significant increase in healthcare premiums facing millions of Americans at the start of next year.
White House officials say that, on the one hand, Democrats are to blame for extending a shutdown that will give the administration no other choice but to initiate firings of agency employees working on “nonessential” projects. On the other hand, the president has referred to the moment as an opportunity to root out Democrats working in career roles throughout the federal system.
Legal scholars and public policy experts have roundly dismissed Trump’s latest efforts — both to use the shutdown as a predicate to cut the workforce, and to withhold back pay — as plainly illegal.
And Democrats in Congress, who continue to vote against reopening the government, are counting on them being right, hoping that courts will reject the administration’s moves while they attempt to secure an extension of healthcare tax credits in the shutdown negotiations.
If the experts are wrong, thousands of government workers could face a profound cost.
“Senior leaders of the Trump administration promised to put federal employees in trauma, and they certainly seem intent on keeping that promise,” said Don Moynihan, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy.
“According to a law that Trump himself has signed, furloughed employees are entitled to back pay,” Moynihan said. “There is no real ambiguity about this, and the idea only some employees in agencies that Trump likes would receive back pay is an illegal abuse of presidential power.”
A day after the shutdown began, Trump wrote on social media that he planned on meeting with Vought, “of Project 2025 fame,” to discuss what he called the “unprecedented opportunity” of making “permanent” cuts to agencies during the ongoing funding lapse.
A lawsuit brought in California against Vought and the OMB, by a coalition of labor unions representing over 2 million federal workers, is challenging the premise of that claim, arguing the government is “deviating from historic practice and violating applicable laws” by using government employees “as a pawn in congressional deliberations.” But whether courts can or will stop the effort is unclear.
Sen. John Thune, the majority leader and a Republican from South Dakota, said last week that Democrats should have known the risk they were running by “shutting down the government and handing the keys to Russ Vought.”
“We don’t control what he’s going to do,” he told Politico.
The White House has sent mixed messages on its willingness to negotiate with Democrats since the shutdown began. Within a matter of hours earlier this week, the president’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters that there was nothing to negotiate, before Trump said that dialogue had opened with Democratic leadership over a potential agreement on healthcare.
Donald Kettl, professor emeritus and former dean at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, taught and trained prospective public servants for 45 years.
“What is happening is profoundly discouraging for young students seeking careers in the federal public service,” he said. “Many of the students are going to state and local governments, nonprofits, and think tanks, but increasingly don’t see the federal government as a place where they can make a difference or make a career.”
“All of us depend on the government, and the government depends on a pipeline of skilled workers,” Kettl added. “The administration’s efforts have blown up the pipeline, and the costs will continue for years — probably decades — to come.”
KYIV, Ukraine — Glide bombs and ballistic missiles struck a Ukrainian prison and a medical facility overnight as Russia’s relentless strikes on civilian areas killed at least 27 people across the country, officials said Tuesday, despite President Trump’s threat to soon punish Russia with sanctions and tariffs unless it stops.
Four powerful Russian glide bombs hit the prison in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, authorities said. At least 16 inmates were killed and more than 90 wounded, Ukraine’s Justice Ministry said.
In the Dnipro region of central Ukraine, authorities said Russian missiles partially destroyed a three-story building and damaged nearby medical facilities, including a maternity hospital and a city hospital ward. At least three people were killed, including a 23-year-old pregnant woman, and two other people were killed elsewhere in the region, regional authorities said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said overnight Russian strikes across the country hit 73 cities, towns and villages. “These were conscious, deliberate strikes — not accidental,” Zelensky said on Telegram.
Trump said Tuesday he is giving Russian President Vladimir Putin 10 days to stop the killing in Ukraine after three years of war, moving up a 50-day deadline he had given the Russian leader two weeks ago. The move meant Trump wants peace efforts to make progress by Aug. 8.
Trump has repeatedly rebuked Putin for talking about ending the war but continuing to bombard Ukrainian civilians. But the Kremlin hasn’t changed its tactics.
“I’m disappointed in President Putin,” Trump said during a visit to Scotland.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that Russia is determined to achieve its goals in Ukraine, though he said Moscow has “taken note” of Trump’s announcement and is committed to seeking a peaceful solution.
Zelensky welcomed Trump’s shortening of the deadline. “Everyone needs peace — Ukraine, Europe, the United States and responsible leaders across the globe,” Zelensky wrote in a post on Telegram. “Everyone except Russia.”
The Kremlin pushed back, with a top Putin lieutenant warning Trump against “playing the ultimatum game with Russia.”
“Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran,” former President Dmitry Medvedev, who is deputy head of the country’s Security Council, wrote on social platform X.
“Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country,” Medvedev said.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor, the Kremlin has warned Kyiv’s Western backers that their involvement could end up broadening the war to NATO countries.
“Kremlin officials continue to frame Russia as in direct geopolitical confrontation with the West in order to generate domestic support for the war in Ukraine and future Russian aggression against NATO,” the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said late Monday.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia launched two Iskander-M ballistic missiles along with 37 Shahed-type strike drones and decoys at Ukraine overnight. It said 32 Shahed drones were intercepted or neutralized by Ukrainian air defenses.
The Russian attack close to midnight Monday hit the Bilenkivska Correctional Facility with glide bombs, according to the State Criminal Executive Service of Ukraine.
Glide bombs, which are Soviet-era bombs retrofitted with retractable fins and guidance systems, have been laying waste to cities in eastern Ukraine, where the Russian army is trying to pierce Ukrainian defenses. The bombs carry up to 6,600 pounds of explosives.
At least 42 inmates were hospitalized because of serious injuries, and an additional 40 people, including one staff member, sustained various injuries.
The strike destroyed the prison’s dining hall, and damaged administrative and quarantine buildings, but the perimeter fence held and no escapes were reported, authorities said.
Ukrainian officials condemned the attack, saying that targeting civilian infrastructure, such as prisons, is a war crime under international conventions.
The assault occurred exactly three years after an explosion killed more than 50 people at the Olenivka detention facility in the Russia-occupied Donetsk region, where dozens of Ukrainian prisoners were killed.
Russia and Ukraine accused each other of shelling the prison. The Associated Press interviewed over a dozen people with direct knowledge of details of that attack, including survivors, investigators and families of the dead and missing. All described evidence they believed points directly to Russia as the culprit. The AP also obtained an internal United Nations analysis that found the same.
Russian forces also struck a grocery store in a village in the northeastern Kharkiv region, police said, killing five and wounding three civilians.
Authorities in the southern Kherson region reported one civilian killed and three wounded over the last 24 hours.
Alongside the barrages, Russia has also kept up its grinding war of attrition, which has slowly churned across the eastern side of Ukraine at a heavy cost in troop losses and military hardware.
The Russian Defense Ministry claimed Tuesday that Russian troops have captured the villages of Novoukrainka in the Donetsk region and Temyrivka in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Ukraine launches long-range drones
Ukraine has sought to fight back against Russian strikes by developing its own long-range drone technology, hitting oil depots, weapons plants and disrupting commercial flights.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday that air defenses downed 74 Ukrainian drones over several regions overnight, including 43 over the Bryansk region.
Yuri Slyusar, the head of the Rostov region, said a man in the city of Salsk was killed in a drone attack, which started a fire at the Salsk railway station.
Officials said a cargo train was set ablaze at the Salsk station and the railway traffic via Salsk was suspended. Explosions shattered windows in two cars of a passenger train and passengers were evacuated.
Arhirova and Novikov write for the Associated Press.
CLOVIS, Calif. — Overcoming intense pressure to quit from President Trump, dozens of local protesters and other prominent critics of transgender athletes in girls’ sports, 16-year-old AB Hernandez bounded past many of her peers to win multiple gold medals at California’s high school track and field championships Saturday.
The transgender junior from Jurupa Valley High School — who competed despite a directive from Trump that she be barred from doing so — won state titles in the girls’ triple jump and the girl’s high jump and took second place in the girls’ long jump.
Hernandez’s success at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships in Clovis came amid high heat — with temperatures above 100 degrees for much of the day — and under an intense spotlight.
Earlier in the week, Trump had said on social media that he was “ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow” Hernandez to compete, wrongly alleging she had won “everything” in a prior meet and calling her “practically unbeatable.” Protesters gathered outside the meet both Friday and Saturday to denounce her inclusion and the LGBTQ+-friendly state laws allowing it.
Despite all that, Hernandez appeared calm and focused as she competed. When her name was announced for the long jump, she waved to the crowd. When she was announced for the high jump, she smiled.
Hernandez beat out all other competitors in the triple jump, though the runner-up was also awarded 1st place under new rules established by the California Interscholastic Federation after Trump issued his threats.
Hernandez tied with two other girls in the high jump, with the three of them all clearing the same height and sharing the gold.
Hernandez’s mother, Nereyda Hernandez, heaped praise on her after the events in a statement provided to The Times, saying, “As your mother, I cannot fully express how PROUD I am of you.”
“Watching you rise above months of being targeted, misunderstood, and judged not by peers, but by adults who should’ve known better, has left me in awe of your strength,” her mother said. “Despite it all, you stayed focused. You kept training, you kept showing up, and now you’re bringing THE GOLD HOME!!!
During some of Hernandez’s jumps, a protester could be heard on a bullhorn from outside the Buchanan High School stadium chanting “No boys in girls’ sports!” California Interscholastic Federation officials banned protest signs inside the facility, but outside protesters held a range of them — including ones that read “No Child Is Born in the Wrong Body,” “Trans Girls Are Boys: CIF Do Better,” and “She Trains to Win. He takes the trophy?”
Josh Fulfer, a 46-year-old father and conservative online influencer who lives near the stadium, said he was the protester on the bullhorn. He said Hernandez should not have been competing — regardless of how she placed — because her presence in the competition had a negative “psychological effect” on her cisgender competitors.
“I stand with truth,” he said. “Males should not be pretending to be females, and they shouldn’t be competing against female athletes.”
Loren Webster, a senior from Wilson High School in Long Beach who beat Hernandez in the long jump, said she wasn’t giving Hernandez much thought — instead, she was focused on her own performance.
“It wasn’t any other person I was worried about. I knew what I was capable of,” Webster said. “I can’t control the uncontrollable.”
A child holds a protest sign alongside a family member and others opposed to transgender athlete AB Hernandez competing in the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships, at Veterans Memorial Stadium at Buchanan High School in Clovis.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
The intense focus on Hernandez over two days of competition Friday and Saturday reflected a broad rise in conservative outrage over transgender girls competing in sporting events nationwide, despite their representing a tiny fraction of competitors. It also reflected a concerted effort by Trump and other prominent conservative figures to single out Hernandez, individually, as an unwitting poster child for such concerns.
Recent polls, including one conducted by The Times last year, have shown that many Americans support transgender rights, but a majority oppose transgender girls participating in youth sports. California has long defended transgender kids and their right to participate in youth athletics, but other states have increasingly moved to limit or remove such rights entirely.
Marci Strange supports protestors as they protest against transgender athlete AB Hernandez competing In the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships, at Veterans Memorial Stadium In the campus of Buchanan High School in Clovis.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
Trump first latched onto transgender issues with fervor during his presidential campaign, spending millions of dollars on anti-transgender political ads. Since being elected, he has issued a wave of executive orders and other policies aimed at rolling back transgender rights and protections.
Again and again, Hernandez has been singled out in that discussion.
Earlier this week, Trump referenced Hernandez in a social media post in which he said his administration would cut federal funding to California if it didn’t block her from competing in this weekend’s state finals and more broadly get in line with his executive order purporting to ban transgender youth from participating in school sports nationwide.
The following day, U.S. Justice Department officials referenced Hernandez again, announcing the launch of an investigation into whether California, its interscholastic sports federation and the Jurupa Unified School District are violating the civil rights of cisgender girls by allowing transgender students such as Hernandez to compete in sports.
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez competed for Jurupa Valley High School in the high jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
At the meet Friday and Saturday, Hernandez often blended in with the hundreds of other athletes, hardly drawing attention. She was less conspicuous by far than the protesters there to denounce her for competing.
Hernandez’s mother has pleaded with Trump and other adults in recent days to show her daughter compassion, calling it heartbreaking “every time I see my child being attacked, not for a wrongdoing, but simply for being who they are.”
She has said her daughter “is not a threat,” while the harassment directed at her is “not just cruel, it’s dangerous.”
Local protesters — some with ties to national conservative organizations — cast Hernandez’s competing in girls’ events in starkly different terms.
Before being escorted out by police, Sophia Lorey, outreach director for the conservative California Family Council, walked around the stadium Saturday wearing a hat reading, “Women’s Sports, Women Only.” She told members of the crowd that Hernandez was a boy and handed out pink “Save Girls’ Sports” bracelets and fliers directing people to an online petition calling on the California Interscholastic Federation to change its policies to bar transgender athletes from competition.
Trump administration officials have taken a similar stance.
In a letter Wednesday to interscholastic federation executive director Ronald W. Nocetti, Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, who was appointed by Trump to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, called Hernandez’s success in recent track and field events “alarming.” And she said the California policies allowing Hernandez to compete are a potential violation of Title IX, the 1972 federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs and other activities that receive federal funding.
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez competed in three events including the high jump, triple jump and long jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
The remark came in a conversation on Newsom’s podcast in March, in which Hernandez was also singled out.
Kirk, a co-founder of the conservative organization Turning Point USA, asked Newsom whether he would voice his opposition to Hernandez competing in girls’ track and field events. Newsom said he agreed such situations were “unfair” but that he also took issue with “the way that people talk down to vulnerable communities,” including transgender people.
When Kirk suggested Newsom could say that he has “a heart for” Hernandez but still thinks her competing is unfair, Newsom again said he agreed.
Newsom has issued no such statement since. But, the playing field has shifted in California for transgender athletes since Trump started talking about Hernandez.
On Wednesday, the CIF announced a change in its rules for this weekend’s championships. Under the new rules, a cisgender girl who is bumped from qualifying for an event final by a transgender athlete will still advance to compete in the finals. In addition, the federation said, any cisgender girl who is beaten by a transgender competitor will be awarded whichever medal she would have claimed had the transgender athlete not been competing.
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez competed for Jurupa Valley High School in the high jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
The CIF did not mention Hernandez by name in announcing its policy change, but it did make direct reference to the high jump, triple jump and long jump — the three events in which she was to compete.
Under the new rules, Hernandez shared her place on each of the event podiums with other girls.
The CIF did not respond to a list of questions about its new policy. A spokesman for Newsom applauded the change, but others were unimpressed.
Critics of transgender athletes rejected it as insufficient and demanded a full ban on transgender athletes. Fulfer, the protester on the bullhorn, said the CIF was “admitting that they’ve got it wrong for a long time” while still not doing enough to fix it — which Trump would see clearly.
“I hope Donald Trump sees what happens this weekend, and I hope he pulls the funding away from California,” Fulfer said.
LGBTQ+ advocates also criticized the rule change, but for different reasons, calling it a crass capitulation that singled out a teenager to appease a crowd of bullies picking a political fight.
“The fact that these same political players continue to bully and harass one child, even after CIF changed its policy, shows this was never about sports or fairness,” said Kristi Hirst, co-founder of the public education advocacy group Our Schools USA.
“It was simply about using a child, while compromising their personal safety on a national scale, to score political points and distract from the serious issues families and communities in this country are actually concerned about,” Hirst said, “affording groceries, the loss of health care, and access to quality teachers and resources in their public schools.”
Transgender athlete AB Hernandez competed for Jurupa Valley High School in the long jump at the 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships at Buchanan High School in Clovis.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
Nereyda Hernandez said she hoped AB’s wins would serve as inspiration for other kids who feel “unseen.”
“To every young person watching, especially those who feel unseen or unheard, let AB be your reminder that authenticity, courage, and resilience shine BRIGHTER than hate,” she said. “It won’t be easy, but definitely worth it.”
