Wagner College, a small, private liberal arts college on Staten Island in New York has agreed to comply with the Trump administration’s restrictions on transgender student-athletes following a federal investigation that stemmed from an incident at a women’s fencing competition in March, the Education Department announced Friday. 

The department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) launched an investigation into Wagner after USA Fencing officials disqualified a woman from a tournament at the University of Maryland on March 30. Stephanie Turner, 31, had refused to compete against Red Sullivan, a 19-year-old Wagner student, taking a knee to protest Sullivan’s participation in violation of the competition’s rules. 

A video of Turner’s disqualification quickly went viral, amplified by conservative activists, political figures and Fox News.

“This is heroic on her part,” Rep. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wrote in a post on social platform X, responding to a video of the exchange posted by Riley Gaines, a frequent critic of transgender women in women’s sports. 

In May, the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency held a hearing on the incident and invited Turner to testify. 

Participation in the University of Maryland’s Cherry Blossom Open, hosted annually during springtime, is not limited to college students, according to the school’s fencing club, of which Turner, who now lives in suburban Philadelphia, is a former member. 

Sullivan, a sophomore at Wagner, entered the competition individually. She had competed for the college’s women’s fencing team until February, when the NCAA said it would comply with President Trump’s executive order to ban transgender student-athletes from girls’ and women’s sports. 

In an interview with Rolling Stone in April, Sullivan said the exchange with Turner left her bewildered. “Nothing close to this has ever happened. No one has ever had a problem with me fencing in a women’s event,” said Sullivan, who became medically eligible for women’s tournaments last year. 

USA Fencing, the sport’s governing body, announced in July that it would amend its transgender and nonbinary participation policy to align with a new U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee policy barring transgender women from competing in Olympic women’s sports. 

As part of its deal with the Trump administration, Wagner will formally amend its athletic policies to reflect “biology-based” definitions of the words “male” and “female,” consistent with an executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office proclaiming that the U.S. recognizes only two unchangeable sexes. 

The college will also issue a public statement pledging to comply with Title IX, the federal civil rights law against sex discrimination in schools that the Trump administration has said prohibits transgender students from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. 

The University of Pennsylvania, Trump’s alma mater, agreed to a nearly identical resolution in July. 

In a statement on Friday, Wagner College President Jeffrey Doggett said the school would continue to foster a welcoming and supportive community but that it has a responsibility to comply with federal laws as the government interprets them. He apologized to any student-athletes who were negatively impacted by the school allowing transgender women to compete. 

The college’s agreement with the administration, Doggett said, is “markedly different” from those of other universities found to have violated Trump’s orders.

“Working cooperatively with the OCR investigators, we were able to negotiate terms that are limited, minimally intrusive and tailored to the particular facts of Wagner’s situation,” he said. 

Doggett added that the college had been following NCAA and USA Fencing rules applicable at the time when it allowed Sullivan, whom the statement does not name directly, to participate on the women’s fencing team. The agreement with the OCR “makes clear that there was no admission or finding of any wrongdoing by the College,” he said. 

“As we know, higher education is in the midst of great change,” Doggett continued. “Like many institutions, Wagner College is doing what it must to advance its mission during this period of turbulence. I believe that it is of the utmost importance that Wagner set a course that ensures its long-term success, and part of that is to continue to foster an open and supportive community that follows the laws and regulations with which it must comply. In bringing an end to this investigation I believe we can continue to do both.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), head of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced Friday afternoon that the chamber will be moving forward to pass its first tranche of government funding bills for fiscal year 2026.

The chamber will vote on three full-year funding plans that cover the departments of Veterans Affairs and Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, legislative branch operations, military construction and rural development.

Senators will first vote on a series of amendments from both sides of the aisle as part of the process, and a final vote is expected Friday night.

“It’s taken a great deal of work, good faith and negotiation to get to this point,” Collins said upon announcing the development from the Senate floor on Friday.

The deal comes after days of uncertainty on both sides of the aisle over whether the chamber would be able to pass any funding bills before its August recess.

The evolving package had undergone several revisions this week. Republican leaders dealt with frustration in their ranks over some of the funding levels in the legislative branch funding bill, while Democratic resistance to the Trump administration’s relocation plans for the FBI’s headquarters weighed down efforts to pass the annual Justice Department funding bill.

In remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, called the bills “the best chance we have to get the best outcome for folks back home,” while pushing members against another funding stopgap, also known as a continuing resolution (CR), like what the party was forced to swallow in March to keep the government open.

“We cannot have another slush fund CR that gives away more power to Trump,” she said.

Together, the bills would provide more than $180 billion in discretionary funding for the agencies for fiscal 2026 – well over half of which would go toward the annual VA and military construction funding plan.

Lawmakers are hoping to pass further funding legislation when they return from recess in September, as Congress braces for what could be a messy funding fight to keep the government open beyond the start of the fiscal year in October.

Several Senate Democrats are calling for an investigation into the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to settle a lawsuit blocking Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks. 

Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Cory Booker (N.J.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) raised concerns to the DOJ inspector general Friday about the circumstances surrounding the proposed settlement. 

Two top officials in the agency’s antitrust division — Roger Alford, principal deputy assistant attorney general, and Bill Rinner, deputy assistant attorney general and head of merger enforcement — were recently fired for insubordination. 

The firings reportedly followed internal disagreements over merger policy, in which Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff overruled the antitrust division’s head, Gail Slater, to approve the HPE-Juniper settlement. 

“In all, these events reflect a concerning pattern of behavior within the DOJ and point to possible politicization of the process by which the DOJ analyzes proposed mergers and acquisitions, as well as undertakes and resolves enforcement actions,” the senators wrote in a letter to acting DOJ Inspector General William Blier. 

“We are concerned that, in addition to improper interference in the enforcement of our laws, the full extent and parties involved in this coercive campaign are not known and that other improper conduct could have occurred,” they continued. 

The Justice Department sued to block the merger between the nation’s second- and third-largest wireless network providers in January, shortly after President Trump took office. The lawsuit marked a key point of continuity with the Biden administration, which had been preparing to challenge the merger. 

HPE and Juniper pushed back on the lawsuit at the time, arguing the DOJ’s analysis was “fundamentally flawed” and the merger would allow the companies to “more effectively compete with global incumbents.” 

In late June, the agency announced a settlement, allowing the acquisition to go forward as long as HPE divests its division for small and medium businesses and licenses Juniper’s software to independent competitors. 

Axios reported Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence community weighed in on the lawsuit, urging the DOJ to allow the merger to proceed to boost American companies competing with China’s Huawei. 

The senators argued the settlement fails to address the issues raised in the DOJ’s initial lawsuit, which suggested the merger would essentially result in a duopoly in the market between HPE-Juniper and Cisco. 

They also underscored HPE’s reported decision to hire lobbyists with close ties to the Trump administration, as well as the subsequent firings of antitrust officials. 

The same four senators raised concerns to Hewlett Packard president and CEO Enrique Lores in a separate letter Friday about what they described as the company’s “hiring of political consultants in an apparent attempt to assert undue influence, if not coercion” to settle the DOJ lawsuit. 

“HPE’s hiring of these consultant close to the Trump family and White House creates the appearance that it sought to use outside political pressure and retaliation against the Antitrust Division to end its lawsuit and reporting suggests that the full scope of HPE’s consultants or influence campaign has not been disclosed,” they wrote. 

They pressed the company for information about the consultants, the nature of their work and any discussions they had with the DOJ’s antitrust division or members of the Trump family. 

HPE spokesperson Adam Bauer said in a statement that the company is confident the Juniper acquisition is “in the public interest and will promote further competition” in the market. 

“The transaction was appropriately approved with certain remedies by the U.S. Department of Justice, and it was unconditionally approved by 13 other antitrust regulators around the world,” Bauer added. “We respect the role our regulators play in maintaining competitive markets and appreciate the professional and constructive way in which the DOJ engaged with us in approving the deal.” 

President Trump on Friday said he directed his team to fire the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following a dismal jobs report he blamed squarely on the Biden appointee.

Trump said on Truth Social that the commissioner, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, had “faked the Jobs Numbers” before the 2024 election in order to boost his then-political rival Kamala Harris.

He cited revisions both during the Biden administration of labor statistics that at the time boosted job numbers ahead of the election. The jobs report released Friday showed a significant downturn during Trump’s administration in May and June that showed the U.S. added 258,000 fewer jobs during those months.

“No one can be that wrong?” Trump said. “We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”

McEntarfer was nominated by Biden in 2023 and confirmed by the Senate in 2024 as the 16th commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is part of the Department of Labor.

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