The Standing Record
A non-partisan record of US democratic norms —47 entries from April 2025.
DHS announced on April 30, 2025 that it had partnered with Uzbekistan to deport more than 100 Uzbek, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz nationals on a single flight — the first third-country removal deal of the second Trump administration. Uzbekistan fully funded and organized the flight; a further six people were sent to Uzbekistan in March 2026.
On April 30, 2025, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed Senate Bill 154 into law, prohibiting public schools from providing instruction related to sexual orientation or gender identity and requiring school employees to report any student's request for recognition of a gender identity differing from their birth-certificate sex to administrators, who must then notify the student's parent or guardian. The law, codified at W.Va. Code 18-5-29, took effect July 11, 2025 and empowers the state Attorney General to enforce it, with violating school personnel subject to discipline or dismissal.
On April 30, 2025, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed Senate Bill 299, which amends the state's 2023 ban on gender-affirming care for minors by removing its narrow exception permitting hormone therapy and puberty blockers for transgender minors at documented risk of self-harm. The law imposes a near-total ban on such treatment for minors, with carve-outs only for intersex conditions or patients already receiving care, and takes effect July 11, 2025.
On April 30, 2025, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed Senate Bill 474 into law, eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, offices, trainings, and personnel across the state's executive branch, K-12 schools, and public colleges. The act also bars county boards and public charter schools from requiring teachers to use a transgender student's preferred pronoun when it differs from the student's sex at birth, and shields employees who refuse from civil liability or adverse employment action. The state Senate had passed the measure 32-2.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its contractor, LaSalle Corrections, denied Iris Dayana Monterroso Lemus, a pregnant Guatemalan detainee, adequate prenatal care during her detention at Richwood Correctional Center in Richwood, Louisiana, and she delivered a stillborn baby on April 29, 2025, after days of unaddressed complaints that she had stopped feeling fetal movement. Federal records later obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act request showed no completed ultrasound or OB-GYN visit, contradicting a later DHS public denial that she lacked care.
On April 28, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14287, "Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens," formally establishing a government-wide sanctuary jurisdiction designation-and-punishment mechanism. The order directed the Attorney General and DHS Secretary to publish a list of states and localities that obstruct federal immigration enforcement and instructed all federal department heads to identify grants and contracts flowing to listed jurisdictions "for suspension or termination." A federal court blocked the funding-withholding component within 11 days, ruling it could not be used as "an end run around" an existing preliminary injunction against earlier Trump sanctuary-city directives.
On April 28, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14288, directing the Attorney General to review and rescind DOJ Civil Rights Division consent decrees with local police departments and to pursue prosecution of local officials whose DEI-based policing policies the administration deems unlawful. The EO also directed the Department of Defense to identify how military assets and personnel could be used for domestic crime prevention. Implementation was immediate: the Civil Rights Division dismissed pending consent decrees in Minneapolis and Louisville, retracted violation findings in six other cities, and approximately 70 percent of Civil Rights Division staff were expected to resign or be removed.
On April 28, 2025, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed Senate Bill 1, the "Riley Gaines Act of 2025," into law. The act bars transgender girls and women from participating on female sports teams from K-12 through college, requires restroom, locker-room, and sleeping facilities at athletic events to be separated by birth-assigned sex, and defines "sex" in state law by birth-assigned sex. The measures end state recognition of transgender residents' gender identity in the covered contexts and create a private right of action against schools that do not comply.
The Justice Department on April 25, 2025 filed federal criminal charges against sitting Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, accusing her of obstructing ICE agents who sought to arrest a defendant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, following his hearing in her courtroom. Dugan was later convicted by a federal jury and, on July 8, 2026, sentenced to a $5,000 fine with no prison time.
USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service formally withdrew its proposed "Salmonella Framework for Raw Poultry Products" rule on April 25, 2025, days after the National Chicken Council publicly opposed it and after reporting revealed that member company Pilgrim's Pride had made a $5 million donation to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee, the single largest inauguration donation. The rule would have set the first enforceable Salmonella contamination limits in raw chicken and turkey and given FSIS authority to stop sale of contaminated poultry.
On April 24, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14284 requiring political appointees to affirmatively certify the retention of all probationary and trial-period federal employees before they receive career tenure. Under the prior framework established by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, new career employees automatically received tenure upon completing their probationary period without adverse action. The order made automatic separation the default in the absence of political-appointee certification, inserting a political approval gate over tenure for all competitive and excepted service employees across the executive branch.
On April 24, 2025, President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum directing Attorney General Pamela Bondi, in consultation with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, to investigate alleged straw-donor and foreign-contribution violations at ActBlue, the dominant Democratic online fundraising platform. The directive cited a partisan House Republican investigation that examined only ActBlue and not WinRed, the structurally identical Republican equivalent. Democratic party leaders called the memo "designed to undermine democratic participation."
On April 24, 2025, Indiana Governor Mike Braun signed Senate Bill 143, the "Parental rights" law, taking effect July 1, 2025. The law bars government entities — including public schools and the Department of Child Services — from advising, directing, or coercing a child to withhold information from a parent, or from denying a parent access to information about their child, absent a compelling interest. The ACLU of Indiana warned the measure can compel the forced outing of transgender and gender-nonconforming students to their parents.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee Police Department officer Zachary Gauthier was fired on April 24, 2025, after an internal investigation found he had used his mobile data terminal and the department's Accurint, State Link System, and Flock Safety license-plate-reader access for personal, non-law-enforcement purposes in March and early April 2025. An Anderson County grand jury later indicted Gauthier on 23 counts of official misconduct, and he pleaded guilty to all 23 counts and was sentenced to a term including 48 hours of incarceration and supervised probation.
On April 24, 2025, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the "Medical Ethics Defense Act" (SB0955/HB1044) into law as Public Chapter 266, giving health care providers, institutions, and payers a right of conscience to refuse to participate in or pay for any procedure, treatment, or service that violates their religious, moral, or ethical beliefs. The law took immediate effect and was enacted primarily to shield providers who object to abortion, contraception, and gender-affirming care. Opponents warned it keys refusal to conscience rather than a specific procedure, opening the door to care denials aimed at LGBTQ and transgender patients.
On April 23, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14281, "Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy," directing all federal agencies to deprioritize enforcement of disparate-impact liability across housing, lending, employment, education, and healthcare "to the maximum degree possible." The order instructed the Attorney General to repeal or amend all Department of Justice regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act that contemplate disparate-impact liability. Civil rights organizations described EO 14281 as the most sweeping rollback of federal civil rights enforcement since passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
President Trump granted Paul Walczak a full and unconditional pardon on April 23, 2025, for failing to remit roughly $7.5 million in employee payroll taxes and failing to file individual income tax returns, a total tax loss to the IRS of about $10.9 million. The pardon came 12 days after Walczak was sentenced to 18 months in prison and $4.4 million in restitution, and roughly three weeks after his mother, Trump fundraiser Elizabeth Fago, paid $1 million to attend a Mar-a-Lago candlelight dinner where Trump was the featured guest.
North Dakota Governor Kelly Armstrong signed House Bill 1181 into law on April 23, 2025, amending the North Dakota Century Code to define "gender" as a person's biological sex throughout state statute. The law governs how state-funded institutions, including public schools and state agencies, record and treat sex and gender on official forms and documents. The bill passed the North Dakota House 74-13, the Senate as amended 41-6, and cleared final House concurrence 79-11 before reaching the governor's desk.
On April 22, 2025, Arkansas enacted Act 979 (HB1916), signed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, amending the state's 2023 Protecting Minors From Medical Malpractice Act to include gender-affirming interventions as a right of action for medical malpractice. The law lets minors or their representatives sue health care professionals over puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and related care, singling out that treatment for a bespoke civil cause of action. Sponsored by Rep. Mary Bentley and Sen. Alan Clark, it passed 73-16 in the House and 29-6 in the Senate.
On April 22, 2025, Attorney General Pamela Bondi issued a memorandum titled "Preventing the Mutilation of American Children" directing the FBI to investigate gender-affirming care providers for criminal violations and directing DOJ's Consumer Protection Branch and Civil Division Fraud Section to pursue misbranding and False Claims Act cases against manufacturers and medical providers. The memo simultaneously announced the "Attorney General's Coalition Against Child Mutilation," a formal partnership with state attorneys general to coordinate criminal and civil enforcement against hospitals and practitioners. Gender-affirming care for minors was legal under federal law at the time the memo was issued.
On April 21, 2025, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed SB486, enacted as Act 955 of 2025, requiring multi-occupancy restrooms, changing rooms, and sleeping quarters in covered entities — including correctional facilities, domestic-violence shelters, and other public accommodations — to be designated for and restricted to a single biological sex. The law creates a private civil cause of action allowing individuals to sue covered entities for damages if they encounter a person of the opposite biological sex in such a facility, effectively barring transgender people from facilities matching their gender identity. Covered entities must take reasonable steps, such as signage and policy, to enforce the sex-based designation.
On April 21, 2025, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed SB444, enacted as Act 970 of 2025, amending the state's 2021 Medical Ethics and Diversity Act to broaden conscience-based refusal rights in health care. The amendment newly extends the right to decline to participate in health care services to insurers alongside practitioners and institutions, and protects refusing to take part in gender-transition procedures, abortion, assisted suicide, or any service that violates a conscience. It also lets religious health care institutions make staffing and privileging decisions consistent with their religious beliefs.
On April 21, 2025, EPA Assistant Deputy Administrator Travis Voyles sent reduction-in-force notices to 280 employees in the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR) and regional environmental justice divisions, with terminations effective July 31, 2025. An additional 175 employees performing statutory functions were reassigned within the agency. The action effectively closed the OEJECR — founded in 1992 under President George H.W. Bush and the primary federal enforcer of Title VI civil rights protections in environmental permitting — framed by EPA as terminating "Biden's environmental justice, DEI arms of the agency."
The New York Times reported on April 20-21, 2025 that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared details of the March 15 Yemen strikes, including warplane launch times, in a second, separate Signal group chat called "Defense | Team Huddle." The 13-member chat included Hegseth's wife Jennifer Hegseth, his brother Phil Hegseth (a Pentagon DHS liaison), and Hegseth's personal lawyer — none of whom held a national-security role.
On April 17, 2025, the FDA suspended the Proficiency Testing Program under the Food Emergency Response Network, which provided quality-control testing used by roughly 170 laboratories nationwide to screen for pathogens and contaminants, including Cyclospora in spinach and glyphosate residue in barley. The agency attributed the suspension to staffing shortages following earlier rounds of cuts.
On April 17, 2025, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed House Bill 1193, banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and offices in the state's K-12 public schools and public universities. The law separately bars teaching or promoting concepts described as "transgender ideology, gender-neutral pronouns, heteronormativity, gender theory, sexual privilege or any related formulation," and requires institutions to affirm a two-sex, chromosome-based definition of gender. A federal judge later found the law unconstitutionally vague and issued a preliminary injunction blocking its enforcement statewide.
On April 16, 2025, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed House Bill 1796, enacted as Act 711 of 2025, requiring that driver's licenses and state identification cards display gender information as only "M" for male or "F" for female. The law prohibits issuing an ID with an "X" designation or no gender information and ties the marker to the applicant's birth certificate or other identity document, requiring an amended birth certificate to change it. The statute codifies a state rule that had removed the nonbinary option and the pathway transgender and nonbinary Arkansans used to correct their sex designation.
On April 16, 2025, Arkansas enacted Act 677 (HB1615), the "religious nondiscrimination" law, signed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The statute bars the state from denying licenses, certifications, contracts, or employment consequences to individuals and organizations that decline to provide services conflicting with a "sincerely held religious belief, including a belief about biological sex or marriage," and expressly permits government employees authorized to license or solemnize marriages to recuse themselves on that basis. Civil-rights advocates say it authorizes identity-based refusals of public services and licensed professional care to LGBTQ+ Arkansans.
On April 14, 2025, the interagency Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced the freeze of approximately $2.2 billion in federal grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts to Harvard University — announced the same day Harvard President Alan Garber publicly refused to comply with a package of White House demands delivered April 11. The demands called for governance reforms, merit-based admissions and hiring, closure of DEI programs, a mask ban targeting pro-Palestinian protesters, and cooperation with immigration authorities. A federal court later ruled that the Harvard funding campaign constituted unlawful retaliation for First Amendment-protected activity.
On April 11, 2025, the Kansas Legislature gave final approval to Substitute for HB2007, the FY2026 omnibus budget, which included a proviso barring state agencies and state universities from permitting employees to include gender-identifying pronouns or "gender ideology" in email signature blocks or other communications and conditioning roughly $4 million in funding on ending diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, training, and positions. Gov. Laura Kelly subsequently signed the budget into law without line-item vetoing the proviso. Kansas Board of Regents institutions directed employees to remove pronouns from their communications by a July 31, 2025 compliance date.
On April 10, 2025, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed House Bill 1669, the "Keep Kids First Act" (Act 509 of 2025), barring the state from requiring faith-based adoption and foster-care providers to make placements that conflict with their sincerely held religious or moral beliefs. The law also prohibits the state from penalizing a provider for considering prospective parents based on the provider's religious beliefs about sexual orientation or gender identity. In effect, it lets state-contracted agencies decline to place children with same-sex couples and LGBTQ prospective foster and adoptive parents.
In April 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement terminated the SEVIS student status records of two international graduate students lawfully enrolled at Montana State University, effectively revoking their authorization to remain in the United States without legal basis. The ACLU of Montana filed suit against then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and ICE, challenging the terminations as unlawful. A federal judge issued an emergency order in April 2025 blocking the government from deporting the students; the U.S. government subsequently reinstated their records and changed its policy. The government settled the lawsuit in July 2026, formally committing to protect the students' immigration status.
On April 10, 2025, the Kansas Legislature overrode Governor Laura Kelly's veto to enact HB2311, barring the state's foster-care agency from adopting or enforcing placement policies that conflict with a prospective caregiver's sincerely held religious or moral beliefs about sexual orientation or gender identity. The law creates a private right of action allowing caregivers to sue the Department for Children and Families for damages and attorney fees. The House overrode 87-38 and the Senate 31-9 the same day, with enforcement provisions effective July 1, 2025.
On April 10, 2025, Kentucky House Bill 501 became law without Gov. Andy Beshear's signature after passing the House 97-0 and the Senate 38-0. The act codified that Kentucky Medicaid may not fund cross-sex hormones when they are prescribed primarily or solely to treat gender dysphoria, singling out transgender-related use for exclusion while allowing the same drugs for other conditions. It refined a companion measure, HB495, that had restricted Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care.
On April 9, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14263, directing the suspension of security clearances for Susman Godfrey LLP employees, termination of all federal contracts with the firm, and restriction of firm employees from accessing federal buildings. The order cited the firm's diversity fellowship and its representation of clients in election-related and civil rights cases as justification, framing Susman's legal work as a national-security threat. Susman Godfrey, which had represented Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation lawsuit against Fox News over 2020 election coverage, filed suit to block the order within two days.
President Trump's 2025 annual financial disclosure, released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and analyzed by CNBC and NBC News, shows that investment accounts he owns made 327 previously undisclosed stock purchases on April 8, 2025 — worth as much as $12.8 million, including $100,001–$250,000 blocks in each of Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The purchases came six days after Trump launched his "Liberation Day" tariffs, which had sent markets tumbling, and one day before he posted "THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!" and announced a 90-day tariff pause that sent the S&P 500 up roughly 9.5% in one of its best sessions on record. The trades were disclosed more than fourteen months after they occurred, past the deadlines the STOCK Act sets for reporting covered transactions.
On April 7, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a DOJ memo, "Ending Regulation by Prosecution," scaling back Biden-era cryptocurrency enforcement and disbanding the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team. A ProPublica investigation found Blanche personally held between $159,000 and $485,000 in crypto-related assets at the time, despite pledging in February 2025 to divest "as soon as practicable"; he did not begin selling or transferring the holdings until nearly two months after the memo, in late May and early June 2025.
President Trump signed Executive Order 14258, "Extending the TikTok Enforcement Delay," on April 4, 2025, directing the Department of Justice not to enforce the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act and extending the non-enforcement period to June 19, 2025. The order also retroactively immunized all past non-compliance dating back to January 19, 2025 — the statutory deadline — barring DOJ from ever taking enforcement action for violations during that period. It was the second consecutive executive order directing non-enforcement of the TikTok divestment statute, following EO 14166 issued on January 20, 2025.
On April 4, 2025, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed Senate Bill 1198 into law, banning diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, programs, mandatory diversity training, and diversity statements at all public colleges and universities in the state. The law, which took effect July 1, 2025, created a private right of action allowing students and faculty to sue institutions over alleged violations and expanded the Idaho Attorney General's authority to enforce it. Advocates said the measure eliminated programming that served LGBTQ+ and other marginalized students.
On April 4, 2025, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed House Bill 480, the fiscal-year 2025-2026 appropriation for the Department of Health and Welfare's Division of Behavioral Health. Section 5 of the law bars the division from using appropriated funds for training or programming that advances "diversity, equity, and inclusion; critical race theory; or transgender ideology," or that distributes or restricts funding based on race or gender. The restriction took effect July 1, 2025.
The U.S. and Costa Rica signed a Memorandum of Understanding on April 3, 2025 under which DHS funds and runs logistics for Costa Rica's own deportations of irregular migrants, primarily those transiting toward the United States. The State Department is redirecting up to $7.85 million from its Economic Support Fund — a foreign-aid line normally used for allied economic development — to DHS to pay for the program, modeled in part on a 2024 Biden-era deal under which the U.S. paid Panama to detain and deport migrants moving toward the U.S. border.
On April 3, 2025, the FDA suspended its Interlaboratory Comparison Exercise for detecting Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, a program improving testing reliability across more than 40 laboratories screening dairy products and pet food for H5N1. The agency's own suspension notice to participating labs attributed the halt to staff cuts in FDA's Human Food Program made earlier that year.
On April 3, 2025, Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed House Bill 96, which limits the flags that state and local government entities may display to an enumerated list — the U.S. flag, official state and municipal flags, U.S. military branch flags, Native American tribal flags, the POW/MIA flag, school flags, and foreign flags for special occasions — effectively barring LGBTQ+ pride flags from government property. The bill carried an emergency clause and took effect immediately on signing. Sponsors said the measure was meant to keep government entities from flying "flags of political causes," and legislators circulated fliers showing the pride flag at Boise City Hall before the votes.
On April 3, 2025, the Indiana General Assembly gave final passage to House Bill 1041 by a 42-6 Senate vote, extending the state's 2022 ban on transgender athletes in K-12 sports to public colleges and universities. Governor Mike Braun signed the measure in April 2025 and it took effect July 1, 2025, barring athletes assigned male at birth from women's college teams, requiring institutions to adopt grievance procedures, and creating a private right of action allowing students to sue over suspected violations.
On April 3, 2025, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed House Bill 0064 (Public Chapter 134), requiring residential educational programs that house minors overnight — including private residential schools, postsecondary institutions, and any program with overnight facilities for elementary or secondary students — to designate multi-occupancy restrooms, changing areas, and showers by immutable biological sex. Sponsored by Rep. Gino Bulso, the measure passed the House 74-18 and the Senate 25-4 and took effect immediately. It bars transgender students from facilities matching their gender identity.
Discovery material released in a federal lawsuit shows that between a March 12, 2025 meeting with National Endowment for the Humanities leadership and an April 1, 2025 completion, DOGE staff used brief ChatGPT prompts asking whether grants "relate at all to DEI" to screen and terminate more than 1,000 NEH grants — 97% of the agency's then- appropriated funding, about $100 million — while also eliminating 65% of NEH's staff. NEH's acting chair, Michael McDonald, yielded grant-termination authority to DOGE staff, who had no experience in humanities research or grant review.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed House Bill 264 on April 1, 2025, requiring correctional facilities, juvenile correctional centers, domestic-violence shelters, and state public colleges and universities to designate multi-occupancy restrooms, changing rooms, and sleeping quarters for the exclusive use of one biological sex, defined by statute rather than gender identity. The law creates a private civil cause of action — declaratory and injunctive relief plus attorney fees — for anyone who encounters a person of the opposite biological sex in a designated facility, and its framework functionally requires housing transgender inmates by birth sex. It took effect as Session Law Chapter 251 on July 1, 2025.