WASHINGTON (AP) — Schools and universities responding to complaints of sexual misconduct must return to policies created during President Donald Trump’s first term, with requirements for live hearings and more protections for accused students, according to new guidance issued Friday by the Education Department.

In a memo to education institutions across the nation, the agency clarified that Title IX, a 1972 law barring discrimination based on sex, will be enforced according to a set of rules created by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The rules govern how complaints of misconduct are investigated and how to settle cases where students present differing accounts.

Colleges already have been returning to DeVos’ 2020 rules in recent weeks since a federal judge in Kentucky overturned the Biden administration’s Title IX rules. The court’s decision effectively ordered a return to the earlier Trump administration rules.

A statement from the Education Department called Biden’s rules an “egregious slight to women and girls.”

“Under the Trump Administration, the Education Department will champion equal opportunity for all Americans, including women and girls, by protecting their right to safe and separate facilities and activities in schools, colleges and universities,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor.

The Biden administration sought to overhaul the rules and expand Title IX to protect LGBTQ+ students. It expanded the type of behavior that’s considered sexual harassment — a reversal of the DeVos policy, which used a narrower definition.

But a federal judge in Kentucky overturned Biden’s rule on Jan. 9, saying it was a presidential overstep and violated constitutional free speech rights by telling schools to honor students’ preferred pronouns. The judge, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves, said there was nothing in Title IX suggesting it should cover anything more than it did when Congress created it.

Even before the decision, Biden’s rule had been halted in half the states amid legal challenges from Republicans.

The full text of the Title IX law is just 37 words long, but the federal government has added rules over the years explaining how it’s interpreted. DeVos’ policy adds 500 pages detailing how schools must address complaints and how the Education Department makes sure schools comply.

Already, the Trump administration has taken a hard turn on its enforcement of Title IX: On Tuesday the Education Department said it opened an investigation into Denver schools after the district converted a girl’s restroom into an all-gender restroom while leaving another bathroom exclusive to boys.

The new memo says even investigations that started when Biden’s rules were in effect “should be immediately reoriented to comport fully with the requirements of the 2020 Title IX Rule.”

The change was celebrated by advocates who said Biden’s rules did too little to protect accused students. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said the 2020 rules will ensure fairness, highlighting a requirement that both parties be able to have a lawyer at campus hearings and to review all evidence.

“The return to the 2020 rules ensures that all students — whether they are the accused or the accuser — will receive fair treatment and important procedural safeguards,” said Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs at FIRE.

Victims’ rights groups called it a step backward that will deter students from reporting assaults.

“Schools must step up to protect students in the absence of adequate federal guidance,” said Emma Grasso Levine, senior manager of Title IX policy and programs at Know Your IX, a student-led group.

Among the most controversial elements of DeVos’ policy is a requirement to hold live hearings where accused students can cross-examine their accusers through an adviser. The Biden rule had eliminated the requirement and made live hearings optional, though some courts had previously upheld an accused student’s right to cross examination.

More broadly, the 2020 policy narrows the definition of sexual harassment and the scope of cases that schools must address. It also reduces the liability for colleges, holding them responsible only if they acted with “deliberate indifference.”

Trump’s new pick for education secretary is Linda McMahon, a longtime Trump ally known for building the World Wrestling Entertainment professional wrestling empire with her husband, Vince McMahon. Her Senate confirmation hearing has yet to be scheduled.

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Collin Binkley, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Trump administration officials are moving to fire FBI agents engaged in investigations involving President Donald Trump in the coming days, two people familiar with the plans said Friday.

It was not clear how many agents might be affected, though scores of investigators were involved in various inquiries touching Trump. Officials acting at the direction of the administration have been working to identify individual employees who participated in politically sensitive investigations for possible termination, said the people who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.

The terminations would be a major blow to the historic independence from the White House of the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency and would reflect the Trump’s determination to bend the law enforcement and intelligence community to his will. It’s part of a startling pattern of retribution waged on federal government employees, following the forced ousters of a group of senior FBI executives earlier this week as well as a mass firing by the Justice Department of prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team who investigated Trump.

The FBI Agents Association called the planned firings “outrageous actions by acting officials are fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents.

“Dismissing potentially hundreds of Agents would severely weaken the Bureau’s ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and will ultimately risk setting up the Bureau and its new leadership for failure,” the association said in a statement.

The FBI and Smith’s team investigated Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Both of those cases resulted in indictments that were withdrawn after Trump’s November presidential win because of longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the federal prosecution of a sitting president.

The Justice Department also brought charges against more than 1,500 Trump supporters who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, though Trump on his first day in office granted clemency to all of them — including the ones convicted of violent crimes — through pardons, sentence commutations and dismissals of indictment.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment, and an FBI spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

The firings would be done over the will of the acting FBI director Brian Driscoll, who has indicated that he objects to the idea, the people said.

Eric Tucker And Alanna Durkin Richer, The Associated Press

President Donald Trump is meeting Friday with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose company designs and supplies the advanced computer chips that play an integral role in developing artificial intelligence.

The meeting at the White House was confirmed by a person familiar who insisted on anonymity to discuss the conversation between Huang and Trump. The person said the meeting was set up weeks ago and would enable them to get acquainted and talk about AI policy. Nvidia, based in Santa Clara, Calif., declined to comment on the meeting.

Nvidia had loudly protested a last-minute move by the Biden administration in January to expand AI chip restrictions beyond adversaries like China to more than 100 other countries, including Singapore. But it remains to be seen if Trump will follow through with or drop those proposed rules.

Trump signed an order on his first day in office last week that said his administration would “identify and eliminate loopholes in existing export controls,” signaling that he might continue and harden Biden’s approach.

The Republican president is banking on AI to foster economic growth and draw hundreds of billions of dollars in investments, but he also saw the performance of China’s DeepSeek AI technology as a sign that the technology can be developed more cheaply.

Speaking Monday to House Republicans in Miami, Trump called the DeepSeek news “positive” if it’s accurate because “you won’t be spending as much and you’ll get the same result.”

Trump said it was a “wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win.”

DeepSeek has said its recent models were built with Nvidia’s lower-performing H800 chips, which are not banned in China. DeepSeek began attracting more attention in the AI industry last month when it released a new AI model that it boasted was on par with similar models from U.S. companies such as ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and was more cost-effective in its use of expensive Nvidia chips to train the system on troves of data. The chatbot became more widely accessible when it appeared on Apple and Google app stores early this year.

The meeting between Trump and Huang comes as leaders of a special House committee focused on countering China have urged Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, to consider the potential national security benefits of placing export controls on Nvidia semiconductor chips used by DeepSeek. They said the examination should be part of a review that Trump ordered on his first day in office that called on the secretaries of State and Commerce to review the U.S. export control system.

Rep. John Moolenaar, the chairman of the committee, and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said DeepSeek made extensive use of a Nvidia chip designed specifically to fall outside U.S. export controls. The lawmakers said that the committee supports American AI innovation, and that support “includes imposing reasonable safeguards” to protect those innovations from China.

“This demonstrates what the Select Committee has long argued: frequently updating export controls is imperative to ensure (China) will not exploit regulatory gaps and loopholes to advance their AI ambitions,” the two lawmakers wrote in letter dated Wednesday.

The pair asked that Waltz look for ways to strengthen controls on shipments through third countries “that pose a high risk of diversion.” Singapore, the letter said, represented 22% of Nvidia’s revenue in its most recently quarterly statement, “despite the company itself revealing most of these shipments ultimately went to users outside of Singapore.”

Countries such as Singapore, they added, should be subject to strict licensing requirements if they aren’t willing to “crack down” on China using their country as an intermediary for shipments.

In an emailed statement, Nvidia said that its revenue associated with Singapore “does not indicate diversion to China.”

“Our public filings report ‘bill to’ not ‘ship to’ locations of our customers,” a Nvidia spokesperson said. “Many of our customers have business entities in Singapore and use those entities for products destined for the U.S. and the west. We insist that our partners comply with all applicable laws, and if we receive any information to the contrary, act accordingly.”

Josh Boak, Kevin Freking And Sarah Parvini, The Associated Press

Former “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd is leaving NBC News after nearly 18 years at the network.

Todd said in a memo to NBC News colleagues that Friday was his last day. He’ll continue doing his podcast and said he’s considering new projects, but offered no details.

He joined NBC News as political director in 2007 and was “Meet the Press” moderator from 2014 to 2023, before giving way to Kristen Welker. The role made him one of the more visible journalists in Washington and, as such, an occasional target of President Donald Trump and his supporters.

Todd was a leader in the on-air protest last year that scuttled the hiring of former Republican Party chair Ronna McDaniel as an NBC News contributor.

In his memo to colleagues, Todd said the news media has much work to do in winning back the trust of consumers, “and I’m convinced the best place to start is from the bottom up” with entrepreneurship.

“National media can’t win trust back without having a robust partner locally and trying to game algorithms is no way to inform and report,” he wrote. “People are craving community and that’s something national media or the major social media companies can’t do as well as local media.”

Reporting is key to winning back public support, he said. “If you do this job seeking popularity, or to simply be an activist,” he said, “you are doing this job incorrectly.”

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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

David Bauder, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Schools and universities responding to complaints of sexual misconduct must return to policies created during President Donald Trump’s first term, with requirements for live hearings and more protections for accused students, according to new guidance issued Friday by the Education Department.

In a memo to education institutions across the nation, the agency clarified that Title IX, a 1972 law barring discrimination based on sex, will be enforced according to a set of rules created by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The rules govern how complaints of misconduct are investigated and how to settle cases where students present differing accounts.

Colleges already have been returning to DeVos’ 2020 rules in recent weeks since a federal judge in Kentucky overturned the Biden administration’s Title IX rules. The court’s decision effectively ordered a return to the earlier Trump administration rules.

A statement from the Education Department called Biden’s rules an “egregious slight to women and girls.”

“Under the Trump Administration, the Education Department will champion equal opportunity for all Americans, including women and girls, by protecting their right to safe and separate facilities and activities in schools, colleges and universities,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor.

The Biden administration sought to overhaul the rules and expand Title IX to protect LGBTQ+ students. It expanded the type of behavior that’s considered sexual harassment — a reversal of the DeVos policy, which used a narrower definition.

But a federal judge in Kentucky overturned Biden’s rule on Jan. 9, saying it was a presidential overstep and violated constitutional free speech rights by telling schools to honor students’ preferred pronouns. The judge, U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves, said there was nothing in Title IX suggesting it should cover anything more than it did when Congress created it.

Even before the decision, Biden’s rule had been halted in half the states amid legal challenges from Republicans.

The full text of the Title IX law is just 37 words long, but the federal government has added rules over the years explaining how it’s interpreted. DeVos’ policy adds 500 pages detailing how schools must address complaints and how the Education Department makes sure schools comply.

Already, the Trump administration has taken a hard turn on its enforcement of Title IX: On Tuesday the Education Department said it opened an investigation into Denver schools after the district converted a girl’s restroom into an all-gender restroom while leaving another bathroom exclusive to boys.

The new memo says even investigations that started when Biden’s rules were in effect “should be immediately reoriented to comport fully with the requirements of the 2020 Title IX Rule.”

DeVos’ rules were welcomed by advocates who said colleges had become too quick to punish students accused of sexual misconduct without a fair trial. But the rules were condemned by victims’ rights groups who said they retraumatized victims and would deter many from reporting assaults.

Among the most controversial changes was a rule requiring colleges to hold live hearings where accused students could cross-examine their accusers through an adviser. The Biden rule eliminated the requirement and made live hearings optional, though some courts had previously upheld an accused student’s right to cross examination.

More broadly, the 2020 policy narrowed the definition of sexual harassment and the scope of cases that schools must address. It also reduced the liability for colleges, holding them responsible only if they acted with “deliberate indifference.”

Trump’s new pick for education secretary is Linda McMahon, a longtime Trump ally known for building the World Wrestling Entertainment professional wrestling empire with her husband, Vince McMahon. Her Senate confirmation hearing has yet to be scheduled.

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Collin Binkley, The Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro will deliver his third budget proposal to lawmakers next week, a plan that’s expected to seek substantially more aid for the poorest public schools, emphasize frugality and press the politically fraught topics of bailing out public transit and legalizing marijuana.

The plan to be unveiled Tuesday also is expected to carry aid for rural hospitals, boost pay for workers who care for the elderly or disabled and introduce taxes on skill games that are seen as competitors to casinos and lottery contests.

It comes at a time when Pennsylvania has an enormous surplus. It’s projected to have $10.5 billion in reserve when the fiscal year ends June 30.

But the state also faces growing deficits, a slow-growing economy, a fast-growing retirement-age population that is costly to care for and cost pressures from a range of human services.

Passage will require approval from Pennsylvania’s Democratic-controlled House of Representatives and the Republican-controlled Senate.

Here’s what to watch for:

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SPENDING

Lawmakers approved a $47.6 billion spending plan for the current fiscal year. That represented a 6% increase over the prior year’s approved budget and held the line on sales and income tax rates, the state’s two major revenue sources.

Big increases went toward public schools, nursing homes and services for the intellectually disabled. However, it required about $3 billion of surplus cash to balance, eliciting warnings from Republicans that the state must slow the pace of spending or risk depleting its surplus within several years.

The state is expected to bring in $46 billion in tax collections this fiscal year — likely well below what Shapiro will propose in spending.

Lawmakers say they expect Shapiro’s forthcoming plan to emphasize cost savings and scraping up unused cash in program accounts to help offset spending increases elsewhere.

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PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Public schools are expected to be a top priority again.

Shapiro is under pressure from education allies and Democratic lawmakers to marshal billions more for schools in response to a court decision that found that Pennsylvania’s system of public school funding violates the constitutional rights of students in the poorest districts.

Lawyers for the schools that sued the state are asking for a $1 billion increase in “adequacy” money for schools that have been disadvantaged by the funding system, plus another $325 million for instruction and special education to help all districts keep pace with rising costs. That’s almost 13% more.

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PUBLIC TRANSIT

Shapiro has been adamant about preventing cutbacks by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, the Philadelphia region’s public transit agency, which hasn’t regained ridership lost during the pandemic.

Republican lawmakers have insisted on finding a new revenue source and packaging transit aid with more cash for highway projects in their districts.

Last year, Shapiro proposed a $150 million tax on the skill games that are popular in bars, convenience stores, pizzerias and standalone parlors around the state. Lawmakers are again eyeing it as a way to raise the money.

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HUMAN SERVICES

Organizations that provide home care for the elderly and disabled are seeking increases in Medicaid reimbursement rates.

Direct care workers’ pay rates have fallen far behind, and it’s getting harder to find workers, making the services harder to get for people who need them, said Mia Haney of the Pennsylvania Homecare Association.

The association is seeking about $500 million in rate increases, around 7% more. Pennsylvania has among the lowest in reimbursement rates among its neighbors and comparable states, it says.

Separately, nursing home operators want at least $139 million more, or about 7%, to help keep beds open, and a $20 million increase, or about 10% more, for day programs that help the elderly get medical, nutrition, rehab and other needs met.

Gary Pezzano of LeadingAge PA said nursing home operators are taking beds offline because they can’t affording staffing costs, and that’s causing emergency rooms to get backed up because there’s a lack of beds to accept people in need of rehab or nursing care.

Counties are seeking another $100 million for the mental health services they administer — about a 33% increase — and say the network that serves its social services and criminal justice system is on the verge of collapse.

Shapiro, meanwhile, has said he’ll propose more money to support health care in rural Pennsylvania.

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ENERGY

Shapiro wants to fast-track the construction of big power plants and offer hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks amid an energy crunch that threatens to raise electricity bills across Pennsylvania.

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LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

Sen. Sharif Street, D-Philadelphia, said he believes passage of forthcoming legislation he’ll sponsor to legalize marijuana is possible by July 1, although getting enough Senate Republicans on board has been a challenge. Shapiro supports legalizing marijuana.

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VIOLENCE PREVENTION

The anti-gun violence group CeaseFirePA said it found big drops in gun violence — a 42% drop in victims and a 38% drop in deaths since 2022. It urged lawmakers to “double down” on $56.5 million it budgeted this year for violence prevention.

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Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter

Marc Levy, The Associated Press

Robert Santos, who emphasized inclusivity and outreach to overlooked communities, has decided to resign as director of the U.S. Census Bureau, midway through his five-year term and in the midst of planning for the 2030 census, which will determine political power and federal funding nationwide for another decade to come.

Santos, who was appointed by former Democratic President Joe Biden, said in a letter Thursday evening that he had made the decision “after deep reflection.” Santos was sworn in as the bureau’s 26th director, and its first Hispanic leader, in 2022.

His planned departure clears the way for Republican President Donald Trump to reshape the agency’s leadership as his allies in Congress and among GOP state attorneys general renew efforts to exclude people in the U.S. illegally from the numbers used to divvy up congressional seats and Electoral College votes among states.

A Republican redistricting expert wrote that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites. The census numbers also guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in federal dollars to the states for roads, health care and other programs.

Civil rights groups on Friday urged Trump to appoint an impartial leader to head the nation’s largest statistical agency.

“The integrity of the U.S. Census Bureau must remain above partisan influence, ensuring that data collection and reporting continue to serve the American people with accuracy, transparency, and fairness,” The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said in a statement.

During his term, Santos emphasized restoring trust to the Census Bureau following Trump’s first term. Many census-watchers felt Trump’s administration tried to politicize the 2020 census by installing large numbers of political appointees at the agency and through failed efforts to keep people in the U.S. illegally from being counted for apportionment.

The Fourteenth Amendment says that “the whole number of persons in each state” should be counted for the numbers used for apportionment.

Before joining the Census Bureau, Santos was a vice president and chief methodologist at the Urban Institute and had spent four decades in survey research, statistical design and analysis and executive-level management. The Texas native said in his letter that he planned to spend time with his family in retirement.

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The story has been corrected to show that Robert Santos has decided to resign as director of the U.S. Census Bureau instead of has resigned from the agency.

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Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform X: @MikeSchneiderAP.

Mike Schneider, The Associated Press