Texas judges issue additional rulings blocking Title IX revisions

Rule change blocked in 15 states

Two federal judges have ruled in favor of Texas and Texas plaintiffs in separate lawsuits filed to block a Biden administration Title IX rule change from going into effect.

Texas is now the 15th state where the revisions are blocked from going into effect ahead of an Aug. 1 deadline.

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division on Friday granted the state’s request in a lawsuit filed by the state and two University of Texas at Austin professors. Kacsmaryk enjoined the U.S. Department of Education from “implementing, enacting, enforcing, or taking any action any manner to enforce” a new rule that revised Title IX pending the resolution of the case.

“The Final Rule inverts the text, history and tradition of Title IX: the statute protects women in spaces historically reserved to men; the Final Rule inserts men into spaces reserved to women,” Kacsmaryk said in his 32-page ruling.

In response, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, said, “Texas has successfully blocked Biden’s Department of Education from destroying Title IX protections for women and forcing radical ‘transgender’ ideology on Texas schools. Biden’s rule would have forced our schools to accommodate biological men on women’s sports teams and in female bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms, and required students and teachers to use incorrect pronouns. A federal judge has halted Biden’s rule pending a final ruling. It’s an honor to defend our State from Biden’s unlawful subversion of Title IX.”

Also on Friday, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor issued a preliminary injunction against the rule in favor of Carroll Independent School District. In May, the district’s board of trustees, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, passed a resolution denouncing the Title IX changes and sued asking the court to block it from going into effect.

Also in May, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott instructed the Texas Education Agency and Texas colleges and universities not to comply with the changes, The Center Square reported. In the last two legislative sessions, Abbott signed bills into law to strengthen student safety and “protect the integrity of women’s sports by prohibiting men from competing against female athletes.” Abbott said, “I will not let President Biden erase the advancements Texas has made.”

Judge O’Connor said in his ruling, “The compliance costs also go beyond monetary harm given the potential to infringe on constitutional rights. Privileging gender identity over biological sex is in no way authorized by the statutory text. And the consequences based on this statutory distortion appear limitless. For these reasons, and those stated by other federal courts, Carroll ISD is likely to succeed on the merits of their challenge to the final rule.”

The rulings were issued after O’Connor in June vacated a guidance issued by the DOE and the Department of Justice requiring schools to implement similar policies to the rule change before it was finalized. He also issued a permanent injunction against its enforcement in Texas, The Center Square reported.

Texas sued in June 2023 over the agencies’ mandates; the agencies are responsible for administering and enforcing Title IX.

At issue is Title IX, part of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

The law was enacted at a time when women and girls had limited athletic opportunities. Despite widespread opposition, including from women’s groups, the Biden administration began amending Title IX through several methods, arguing doing so would “advance educational equity and opportunity for women and girls across the country.”

It’s guidances and rule changes redefine biological sex to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

In response, 18 AGs argued the changes “demolished” women’s and girls’ rights, “making a mockery of Title IX’s fundamental organization principle – basic biology.”

After the Biden administration finalized the rule, multiple states sued. Texas sued on its own. Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho filed a lawsuit. Alaska, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming filed another. Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia filed a separate lawsuit. Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina filed another.

So far, federal judges have ruled against the Biden administration.

In June, Louisiana, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty was the first to rule against the administration, blocking the administration’s changes from going into effect in Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana and Idaho.

O’Connor also ruled against the agency Title IX mandates in June.

In Kansas, U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves blocked the rule change from going into effect in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

Then in July, in Kansas, District Judge John Broomes ruled against the administration, blocking the changes from going into effect in Alaska, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming. And Judge Kacsmaryk blocked the rule from going into effect in Texas.

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Ford’s EV Fiasco Fallout Hits Hard

Automotive

Ford’s EV Fiasco Fallout Hits Hard

Published on December 17, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

I’ve written frequently here in recent years about the financial fiasco that has hit Ford Motor Company and other big U.S. carmakers who made the fateful decision to go in whole hog in 2021 to feed at the federal subsidy trough wrought on the U.S. economy by the Joe Biden autopen presidency. It was crony capitalism writ large, federal rent seeking on the grandest scale in U.S. history, and only now are the chickens coming home to roost.

Ford announced on Monday that it will be forced to take $19.5 billion in special charges as its management team embarks on a corporate reorganization in a desperate attempt to unwind the financial carnage caused by its failed strategies and investments in the electric vehicles space since 2022.

Cancelled is the Ford F-150 Lightning, the full-size electric pickup that few could afford and fewer wanted to buy, along with planned introductions of a second pricey pickup and fully electric vans and commercial vehicles. Ford will apparently keep making its costly Mustang Mach-E EV while adjusting the car’s features and price to try to make it more competitive. There will be a shift to making more hybrid models and introducing new lines of cheaper EVs and what the company calls “extended range electric vehicles,” or EREVs, which attach a gas-fueled generator to recharge the EV batteries while the car is being driven.

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In an interview on CNBC, Company CEO Jim Farley said the basic problem with the strategy for which he was responsible since 2021 amounts to too few buyers for the highly priced EVs he was producing. Man, nobody could have possibly predicted that would be the case, could they? Oh, wait: I and many others have been warning this would be the case since Biden rolled out his EV subsidy plans in 2021.

“The $50k, $60k, $70k EVs just weren’t selling; We’re following customers to where the market is,” Farley said. “We’re going to build up our whole lineup of hybrids. It’s gonna be better for the company’s profitability, shareholders and a lot of new American jobs. These really expensive $70k electric trucks, as much as I love the product, they didn’t make sense. But an EREV that goes 700 miles on a tank of gas, for 90% of the time is all-electric, that EREV is a better solution for a Lightning than the current all-electric Lightning.”

It all makes sense to Mr. Farley, but one wonders how much longer the company’s investors will tolerate his presence atop the corporate management pyramid if the company’s financial fortunes don’t turn around fast.

To Ford’s and Farley’s credit, the company has, unlike some of its competitors (GM, for example), been quite transparent in publicly revealing the massive losses it has accumulated in its EV projects since 2022. The company has reported its EV enterprise as a separate business unit called Model-E on its financial filings, enabling everyone to witness its somewhat amazing escalating EV-related losses since 2022:

• 2022 – Net loss of $2.2 billion

• 2023 – Net loss of $4.7 billion

• 2024 – Net loss of $5.1 billion

Add in the company’s $3.6 billion in losses recorded across the first three quarters of 2025, and you arrive at a total of $15.6 billion net losses on EV-related projects and processes in less than four calendar years. Add to that the financial carnage detailed in Monday’s announcement and the damage from the company’s financial electric boogaloo escalates to well above $30 billion with Q4 2025’s damage still to be added to the total.

Ford and Farley have benefited from the fact that the company’s lineup of gas-and-diesel powered cars have remained strongly profitable, resulting in overall corporate profits each year despite the huge EV-related losses. It is also fair to point out that all car companies were under heavy pressure from the Biden government to either produce battery electric vehicles or be penalized by onerous federal regulations.

Now, with the Trump administration rescinding Biden’s harsh mandates and canceling the absurdly unattainable fleet mileage requirements, Ford and other companies will be free to make cars Americans actually want to buy. Better late than never, as they say, but the financial fallout from it all is likely just beginning to be made public.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

International

House Rejects Bipartisan Attempt To Block Trump From Using Military Force Against Venezuela

Published on December 17, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Adam Pack

The House of Representatives rejected a bipartisan attempt Wednesday evening to reign in President Donald Trump’s authority to use force against Venezuela.

Lawmakers voted 211 to 213 against a war powers resolution that would have blocked Trump from using military force against Venezuela absent congressional authorization. The failed vote comes a day after Trump designated the Maduro regime as a foreign-terrorist organization and ordered a “total and complete blockade” of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and exiting Venezuela.

Under U.S. law, Congress can restrict the president from using military force against a country or entity without the legislative branch’s explicit approval.

The resolution, sponsored by Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, attracted the support of two leading anti-foreign intervention voices in the Republican Party, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Republican Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, a retiring, moderate Republican who has frequently criticized Trump, also sponsored the war powers resolution.

Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar was the lone Democratic lawmaker to oppose the resolution checking Trump’s powers. On Dec. 3, Trump pardoned the embattled congressman, who was set to face trial in 2026 on federal bribery charges.

“When war-making power devolves to one person, liberty dissolves,” Massie wrote on X. “Congress needs to vote before the President attempts regime change.”

Republican Florida Rep. Brian Mast, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, countered that Trump does not need permission from Congress to execute “precise, limited strikes.”

Trump has ordered the military to rapidly build up its presence in the waters around Venezuela, amounting to more than 15,000 troops. The administration has also been engaged in a months-long campaign against alleged Venezuelan drug vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing nearly 100 reputed traffickers in more than two dozen strikes.

The president told Politico that socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro’s “days are numbered” and has suggested that land strikes on the country could commence soon.

The House also rejected a resolution Wednesday from Democratic New York Rep. Gregory Meeks that would block the president from using force on any “presidentially designated foreign terrorist organization in the Western Hemisphere” unless authorized by Congress. The measure failed 210 to 216.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune voiced approval Wednesday of the escalating pressure campaign against Maduro.

When asked by reporters whether the Trump administration is pursuing regime change in Venezuela, the majority leader said “I don’t know if that’s a publicly stated policy position, but I don’t — I would certainly not have a problem if that was their position. I mean, I think Maduro is a cancer on that continent.”

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles clarified Trump’s strategy toward Venezuela in an explosive set of interviews with Vanity Fair published Tuesday.

“He [Trump] wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle,” Wiles told the outlet. She also conceded that Trump would need approval from Congress for a land war with Venezuela.