The Loudoun County school board on Tuesday voted 6-3 to maintain policies allowing transgender students to use restrooms and sex-segregated facilities consistent with their gender identity, rejecting a demand from the U.S. Department of Education to rescind it.

The agency last month announced that schools in the district — along with schools in four other Democratic leaning D.C. suburbs — violated federal Title IX rules against sex-based discrimination.

After President Donald Trump returned to the White House, his administration argued that inclusive policies and practices, such as allowing trans student athletes to compete in sports, constitute unlawful infringements upon the rights of cisgender peers.

The position was a reversal from that which was held by the Biden-Harris administration.

“Although this type of behavior was tolerated by the previous Administration, it’s time for Northern Virginia’s experiment with radical gender ideology and unlawful discrimination to come to an end,” Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement.

Investigations into the five districts came pursuant to a complaint filed by America First Legal, a right-wing group founded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, which argued that their inclusive policies provide “greater rights to students whose ‘gender identity’ does not match their biological sex than it does to students whose ‘gender identity’ matches their biological sex.”

After announcing the results of its investigation, the department asked the school districts to to “voluntarily agree” to changes like rescinding the existing gender identity policies and adopting “biology-based definitions of the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ in all practices and policies relating to Title IX.”

Failure to meet the administration’s demands, Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said, will jeopardize the schools’ federal funding. The agency also raised the scepter of referrals to the Justice Department.

Chased and threatened at gunpoint, a married Black lesbian couple in Spotsylvania County, Va., was nearly killed in a potentially racially motivated hate crime around 6:30 p.m. on July 20. 

Giving its full attention to the case on the attack on Amylah Majors and Jamaria Gaskins, Commonwealth’s Attorney Ryan Mehaffey said he immediately requested a thorough investigation of all facts and circumstances. 

“All relevant charges, including potential hate crime charges, will be considered upon completion of the investigation. Our office vigorously prosecutes crimes,” Mehaffey, top prosecutor in Spotsylvania, said. 

Spotsylvania County is roughly 65 miles south of D.C.

On the day of the attack, Majors and Gaskins were driving on Partlow Road when they hit debris and checked out the damage. Soon after, Majors said three white people, two men and one woman, appeared from their home and began threatening them with firearms and shouting racial slurs. 

“Two of them physically attacked my wife while brandishing a gun and shouting threats,” Majors said in a public GoFundMe post, which has raised just over $5,000. “They called us the (‘N-word’), told us we didn’t belong there, and one of them even exposed himself while screaming hate and slurs at us.”

While trying to leave, Majors said the three attackers got into their cars and chased Majors and Gaskins down the road. Driving side by side, Majors said one of them pointed a gun directly at her head.  

“In that moment, we truly believed we weren’t going to make it out alive,” Majors said. 

During their escape, the couple ended up crashing their car, with Majors ejecting from the vehicle. She was in the hospital soon after with a fractured spine, broken clavicle, a severe concussion, a broken rib, and multiple head injuries. 

“I am beyond grateful to be alive,” Majors said. “But we were both assaulted, traumatized, and nearly killed. This was not just an accident — this was an attempted act of violence meant to harm and silence us. We will not be silent.”

Two of the attackers, Mark Goodman and Elizabeth Wolfrey, have been charged with misdemeanor charges after the incident. 

Wolfrey was charged with one count of pointing and brandishing a firearm, with Goodman facing a charge of indecent exposure for recording his backside to the couple. A third person recorded during the incident was not charged with a crime “at this time,” Spotsylvania Sheriff’s Office Maj. Delbert Myrick said.

“The investigation includes all individuals observed in the video,” Myrick said in a written response to the Advocate. “No one will be excluded from potential charges until the investigation is fully concluded.” 

Myrick went on to say Spotsylvania County is a diverse and safe community, and this incident evoked fear, anxiety, and frustration in the community. 

“We at the Sheriff’s Office share these feelings and stand united with our community in condemning all forms of hate, racism, and the use of racial slurs,” Myrick said. “This behavior has no place in Spotsylvania County or any other community.”

Goodman and Wolfrey both have a hearing scheduled for Nov. 20 in Spotsylvania General District Court.

On Tuesday, Virginia Commonwealth University announced it would stop providing and researching gender-affirming care at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU for anyone under the age of 19.

In a post on the hospital’s website, it said the decision was made to stay within federal and state directives and was a result of “a thoughtful and thorough assessment that revealed no other viable options at this time.”

VCU staff — part of one of the largest healthcare providers in the state — were notified by email of the change, which announced they would “wind down these services,” a claim the hospital has made before.

In January, President Donald Trump signed the “Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” executive order which is, at its core, designed to vilify transgender people. Since then, VCU stopped providing trans-specific care, then backtracked, allowing doctors to prescribe puberty blockers and hormone therapy, according to Axios.

Wyatt S. M. Rolla, a senior transgender rights tttorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, spoke with the Washington Blade about the negative impact VCU’s decision will have on trans children’s healthcare.

“I think a really important starting point is that gender-affirming care is legal in the state of Virginia, including for individuals under the age of 19, and there are doctors, nurses, clinicians across the state that are committed to still providing that care to patients,” Rolla said.

Rolla went on to explain that even though providing gender-affirming care for minors is legal in Virginia, this executive order has a chilling effect on hospitals and is preemptively causing institutions like VCU to stop offering it.

“The primary impact of that executive order was to threaten the disruption of federal funding to hospitals that were providing that care,” they added. “There have been multiple pieces of litigation filed to challenge that threat to disrupt grants to institutions that are providing this care, and the executive order — that provision of it — is actually enjoined by multiple federal courts right now and cannot be used as a basis to terminate federal funding.”

They continued, explaining that this is not the only method of control the Trump-Vance administration is using.

“The Trump administration is weaponizing the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Trade Commission, [and] other federal agencies to try to bully healthcare providers into discriminating against their patients, and that should disturb everyone, because it won’t stop at trans people.”

These other fears, Rolla explained, could encroach on broader issues of bodily autonomy and safety that Republicans deem “controversial” — especially if medical boards, which are supposed to be non-political, are affected by orders like this one.

“I mean, it is setting a really dangerous precedent for all Virginians,” Rolla said. “And I think it’s not just a question of how other hospitals in Virginia will respond regarding gender-affirming care. Tomorrow, this could be a conversation about reproductive health services or HIV treatment or other vital health care that someone has decided is politically controversial. It’s really important to recognize the threat of undermining public trust in our medical institutions and endangering the communities that they’re meant to serve by refusing to provide medical care that providers have determined is necessary.”

When asked what the ACLU of Virginia hopes children seeking gender-affirming care will know, Rolla said:

“I want those young people and their families to know that again, there are doctors, nurses, clinicians across the state that are working around the clock to make sure they are able to provide you the care that you need, and there are advocates [and] community members that are going to fight on every terrain necessary to preserve the legal ability of those health care providers to do that. So while those young people are being cynically targeted for political advantage, I want them to know that they’re not alone and that there is a deep bench of people that are fighting to have for them to access the resources they need to thrive and grow into the beautiful adults that we know they deserve to be.”

The ACLU also sent a statement condemning the actions of VCU.

Equality Virginia, He She Ze and We, Side by Side, Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, the Transgender Assistance Program of Virginia, Seven Hills Family Medicine, Health Brigade, Thriving Trans Men of Color, Virginia LGBTQ+ Bar Association, the Calos Coalition, the Shenandoah LGBTQ Center, Progress Virginia, and the Campaign for Southern Equality co-signed the statement. They claim VCU’s decision is a direct result of Trump and the Republican Party’s “hateful political agenda” and has nothing to do with healthcare.

“We see the political strategy. We reject it. We’ll keep fighting for trans youth, their families, and providers who support them,” reads the statement.