OXON HILL, Md. (AP) — Democrats, desperately seeking a new message and messengers to push back against the Trump administration, will elect a new leader Saturday in a low-profile Democratic National Committee election that could have big implications for the party’s future.

More than 400 DNC members from every state and U.S. territory have gathered in suburban Washington for the election, which features a slate of candidates dominated by party insiders. Outgoing Chair Jaime Harrison is not seeking reelection.

Most of the candidates acknowledge that the Democratic brand is badly damaged, but few are promising fundamental changes. Indeed, nearly three months after Donald Trump won the popular vote and gained ground among key Democratic constituencies, there is little agreement on what exactly went wrong.

Facing an emboldened Trump presidency, however, the leading candidates are talking tough.

“As we reel with shock at the horror that Trump is visiting on communities across this country, we need a DNC and a DNC chair who’s ready to bring the intensity, the focus and the fury to fight back,” said Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic chairman and a top candidate for DNC chair.

The election comes less than two weeks after Trump’s inauguration as Democratic leaders struggle to confront the sheer volume of executive orders, pardons, personnel changes and controversial relationships taking shape in the new administration. The next DNC chair would serve as a face of the Democratic response, while helping to coordinate political strategy and repair the party’s brand.

Just 31% of voters have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released this week that offers a dramatic contrast with Trump’s GOP. Forty-three percent of voters have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party.

The leading candidates for DNC chair, Wisconsin’s Wikler and Minnesota’s Ken Martin, are low-profile state party chairs. They’re promising to refocus the Democratic message on working-class voters, strengthen Democratic infrastructure across the country and improve the party’s anti-Trump rapid response system.

They have promised not to shy away from the party’s dedication to diversity and minority groups, a pillar of the modern-day Democratic Party. But if Martin, 51, or Wikler, 43, is elected, as expected, either would be the first white man to lead the DNC since 2011.

Also in the race: Marianne Williamson, the activist and author; former Maryland governor and Biden administration official Martin O’Malley; and Faiz Shakir, who managed Bernie Sanders’ last presidential campaign.

Shakir has called for sweeping changes within the party, such as more coordination with labor unions and less focus on minority groups sorted by race and gender. The only Muslim seeking the chairmanship, Shakir was alone during a candidate forum this week in opposing the creation of a Muslim caucus at the DNC.

But he has struggled to gain traction.

Shakir declined to raise money for the contest, decorating his modest booth at this week’s gathering with pictures drawn by his young children with crayons. By contrast, Martin and Wikler hosted would-be supporters in large hotel suites adorned with dozens of professionally printed signs and offered T-shirts, sunglasses and food.

Wikler has faced questions about his relationship with Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn. But he cast his fundraising connections as an asset. Indeed, the DNC chair is expected to raise tens of millions of dollars to help Democrats win elections.

Some Democratic leaders remain concerned about the direction of their party.

“As positive as I am and as hopeful as I am, I’m watching this in real time, thinking to myself, ‘We’re in real trouble because I don’t see a desire to change,’” said Kansas Democratic Chair Jeanna Repass, a candidate for DNC vice chair.

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Steve Peoples, The Associated Press

President Donald Trump has targeted transgender and nonbinary people with a series of executive orders since he returned to office.

He has done it with strong language. In one executive order, he asserted “medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex.”

That’s a dramatic reversal of the policies of former President Joe Biden’s administration — and of major medical organizations — that supported gender-affirming care.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Sruti Swaminathan said that to be put into effect, provisions of the orders should first go through federal rulemaking procedures, which can be years long and include the chance for public comment.

“When you have the nation’s commander-in-chief demonizing transgender people, it certainly sends a signal to all Americans,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director at Human Rights Campaign.

Things to know about Trump’s actions:

Recognizing people as only men or women

On Trump’s first day back in office, he issued a sweeping order that signaled a big change in how his administration would deal with transgender people and their rights.

It questions their existence by saying the government would recognize only two unchangeable sexes: female and male.

The stated purpose is to protect women. “Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the order says.

The document calls on government agencies to use the new definitions of the sexes, and to stop using taxpayer money to promote what it calls “gender ideology,” the idea broadly accepted by medical experts that gender falls along a spectrum.

Federal agencies have been quick to comply. Andrea Lucas, the acting chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for example, announced this week that she would remove identity pronouns from employees’ online profiles and disallow the “X” gender marker for those filing discrimination charges.

“Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters,” Lucas said in a statement.

On Friday, information about what Trump calls “gender ideology” was removed from federal government websites and the term “gender” was replaced by “sex” to comport with the order. The Bureau of Prisons stopped reporting the number of transgender incarcerated people and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed lessons on building supportive school environments for transgender and nonbinary students.

Researchers have found less than 1% of adults identify as transgender and under 2% are intersex, or born with physical traits that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female.

Requests denied for passport gender markers

In the order calling for a new federal definition of the sexes, Trump included some specific instances in which policy should be changed, including on passports.

The State Department promptly stopped granting requests for new or updated passports with gender markers that don’t conform with the new definition.

The agency is no longer issuing the documents with an “X” that some people who identify as neither male nor female request and will not honor requests to change the gender markers between “M” and “F” for transgender people.

The option to choose “X” was taken off online passport application forms Friday.

The ACLU says it’s considering a lawsuit.

Transgender women moved into men’s prisons

Trump’s initial order called for transgender women in federal custody to be moved to men’s prisons. Warbelow, from Human Rights Campaign, said her organization has received reports from lawyers that some have been.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to requests for information about such moves.

There have been at least two lawsuits trying to block the policy. In one, a federal judge has said a transgender woman in a Massachusetts prison should be housed with the general population of a woman’s prison and continue to receive gender-affirming medical care for now.

Opening the door to another ban on transgender service members

Trump set the stage for a ban on transgender people in the military, directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to come up with a new policy on the issue by late March.

In the executive order, the president asserted that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

Trump barred transgender service members in his first term in office, but a court blocked the effort.

A group of active military members promptly sued over the new order this week.

Defunding gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth

Trump called for halting the use of federal money to support gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth under 19 years old.

The care in question includes puberty blocking drugs, hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgery, which is rare for minors.

If fully implemented, the order would cut off government health insurance including Medicaid and TRICARE, which serves military families, for the treatments.

It also calls on Congress to adopt a law against the care, though whether that happens is up to lawmakers.

Twenty-six states already have passed laws banning or limiting gender-affirming care for minors, so the change could be smaller in those places.

Some hospitals have paused some gender-affirming care for people under 19 following the executive order while they evaluate how it might apply to them.

Barring schools from helping student social transitioning

Another executive order this week seeks to stop “radical indoctrination” in the nation’s school system.

It calls on the Education Department to come up with a policy blocking schools from using federal funds to support students who are socially transitioning or using their curriculum to promote the idea that gender can be fluid, along with certain teachings about race.

The order would block schools from requiring teachers and other school staff to use names and pronouns that align with transgender students’ gender identify rather than the sex they were assigned at birth.

Some districts and states have passed those requirements to prevent deadnaming, the practice of referring to transgender people who have changed their name by the name they used before their transition. It is widely considered insensitive, offensive or traumatizing.

Geoff Mulvihill, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump White House issued a proclamation Friday recognizing February as Black History Month around the same time the Defense Department issued guidance declaring “identity months dead.”

The conflicting messages came as President Donald Trump has been targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs for removal in the first weeks of his administration. He has referred to DEI initiatives as “discrimination” and insisted that the country must instead move toward a merit-based society.

The White House proclamation calls for “public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities,” though there is no elaboration on what constitutes “appropriate.”

A news release from the Defense Department titled “Identity Months Dead at DOD” says official resources, including working hours, will no longer be used to mark cultural awareness months. Black History Month, Women’s History Month and National Disability Employment Awareness Month were among the events listed as now barred.

“We are proud of our warriors and their history, but we will focus on the character of their service instead of their immutable characteristics,” the Defense Department release read.

In his first two weeks in office, Trump has moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal DEI workers be put on paid leave before eventually being laid off. On Thursday, hours after a midair collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines plane killed 67 people just miles from the White House, Trump baselessly blamed diversity initiatives for undermining air safety, despite no evidence of that.

Gerald Ford in 1976 became the first president to issue a message recognizing February as Black History Month. Since then, presidents have made annual proclamations marking the month as a celebration of Black history, culture and education.

Trump’s proclamation Friday specifically noted the contributions of abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, conservative economist Thomas Sowell and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. It said their achievements “have monumentally advanced the tradition of equality under the law in our great country” and are a continued inspiration.

The declaration also listed golfer Tiger Woods as an American great, saying he was among those who have “pushed the boundaries of excellence in their respective fields, paving the way for others to follow.”

“This National Black History Month, as America prepares to enter a historic Golden Age,” the proclamation said, “I want to extend my tremendous gratitude to black Americans for all they have done to bring us to this moment, and for the many future contributions they will make as we advance into a future of limitless possibility under my Administration.”

Ashley Thomas, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Massachusetts woman who told police that she went to the U.S. Capitol to kill members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet said she was influenced by Luigi Mangione, the man charged with fatally shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, prosecutors said in a court filing.

Ryan Michael English, who goes by Riley English, was arrested Monday and remained in custody after her initial court appearance on Thursday. English didn’t immediately challenge her pretrial detention, court records show.

English, 24, of South Deerfield, Massachusetts, told police that she felt like she was “on a mission” and “had been thinking about for this for a while because of Luigi Mangione,” prosecutors said. Mangione pleaded not guilty in December to state murder and terror charges in a Manhattan court.

“I pushed that away because I was thinking like that is so stupid, that accomplishes nothing, that poor kid just threw his life away for like a minute of vengeance,” English said, according to prosecutors.

English was arrested on weapons charges after she approached police at the Capitol and said she came there to kill billionaire investor Scott Bessent on the day that the Senate confirmed the South Carolina resident as Trump’s treasury secretary, according to a Tuesday court filing.

Investigators said they found a folding knife, two homemade firebombs and a lighter in English’s possession.

English also said she traveled from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., intending to kill other Republican political figures — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and House Speaker Mike Johnson — and to burn down the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, according to police. English changed her target to Bessent after reading an internet post about his confirmation hearing, police said.

English told officers that she was terminally ill and “wanted to do something before I go,” according to prosecutors.

“The criminal conduct for which she is before the Court is not a momentary lapse in judgment; rather, it was a premeditated and calculated attempt to commit violence,” they wrote.

Defense attorney Maria Jacob said English only went to the Capitol “as a cry for help” and didn’t intend to harm anybody.

“She was not aggressive when she approached the Capitol Police Officers. She never brandished any of the items as weapons and assisted police to retrieve the items on her person immediately,” Jacob wrote.

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Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press

CBS says it will turn over an unedited transcript of its October interview with Kamala Harris to the Federal Communications Commission, part of President Donald Trump’s ongoing fight with the network over how it handled a story about his opponent.

Trump sued CBS for $10 million over the “60 Minutes” interview, claiming it was deceptively edited to make Harris look good. Published reports said that CBS’ parent company, Paramount, has been talking to Trump’s lawyers about a settlement.

The network said Friday that it was compelled by Brendan Carr, Trump’s appointee as FCC chairman, to turn over the transcripts and camera feeds of the interview for a parallel investigation by the commission. “60 Minutes” has resisted releasing transcripts for this and all of its interviews, to avoid second-guessing of its editing process.

The case, particularly a potential settlement, is being closely watched by advocates for press freedom and by journalists within CBS, whose lawyers called Trump’s lawsuit “completely without merit” and promised to vigorously fight it after it was filed.

The Harris interview initially drew attention because CBS News showed Harris giving completely different responses to a question posed by correspondent Bill Whitaker in clips that were aired on “Face the Nation” on Oct. 6 and the next night on “60 Minutes.” The network said each clip came from a lengthy response by Harris to Whitaker’s question, but they were edited to fit time constraints on both broadcasts.

In his lawsuit, filed in Texas on Nov. 1, Trump charged it was deceptive editing designed to benefit Harris and constituted “partisan and unlawful acts of voter interference.”

Trump, who turned down a request to be interviewed by “60 Minutes” during the campaign, has continued his fight despite winning the election less than a week after the lawsuit was filed.

The network has not commented on talks about a potential settlement, reported by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. Paramount executives are seeking Trump administration approval of a sale of the company to another entertainment firm, Skydance.

ABC News in December settled a defamation lawsuit by Trump over statements made by anchor George Stephanopoulos, agreeing to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library rather than engage in a public fight. Meta has reportedly paid $25 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the company over its decision to suspend his social media accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

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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

Just a day before a deadly midair collision at Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C., employees at the Federal Aviation Administration were sent an offer to resign with eight months’ pay.

The union for air traffic controllers recommended to its members that they not accept Tuesday’s offer, because the FAA had not decided which positions would be included in the resignation plan. An official for the Office for Personnel Management, the U.S. government’s human resources arm, said Friday that controllers weren’t eligible for the resignation plan or subject to the hiring freeze across much of the rest of federal government.

The crash Wednesday that killed all 67 people on board an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter has renewed focus on the real-world implications of President Donald Trump’s push to slash the federal bureaucracy.

There’s no evidence that the White House effort to downsize government played any role in the collision, with shortages of air traffic controllers long predating Trump taking office. But those who’ve worked in air safety say that those who try to dramatically shake up the federal workforce need to remember that lives are on the line.

“It concerns me that there are people who don’t want to reform or restructure institutions, they want to destroy institutions,” said James Hall, who was head of the National Transportation Safety Board under President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. “The American people enjoy the safest aviation system in the world. I don’t doubt there should be changes in government, but someone should remember the old adage to look before you leap.”

On Thursday, as the investigation into the crash was well underway, FAA employees were among the federal workers who received an email telling them to quit and find more useful work.

“The way to greater American prosperity is encouraging people to move from lower productivity jobs in the public sector to higher productivity jobs in the private sector,” read the memo from OPM.

An official with OPM, which made the resignation offers, said air traffic controllers are exempt from a hiring freeze that Trump announced on taking office on Jan. 20 and they are not eligible for a buyout even though they were sent the offer. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal government operations.

It was unclear if the controllers themselves have been notified by OPM whether they are exempt. After the initial offer went out, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association recommended in an email to its union members not to submit a request for the resignation until more information was available. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the union email.

NATCA President Nick Daniels said officials had not explained to the union the details of how its employees would be affected by the retirement program.

“NATCA has not received a briefing on how or whether the deferred resignation program will be implemented in the FAA,” Daniels said in a statement provided to the AP Friday.

“It is not yet clear how this program will affect aviation safety workers represented by our Union,” he added. “However, we are concerned about the potential effect to public safety and the efficiency and capacity of the air traffic control system if FAA were to lose experienced aviation safety personnel during a universally recognized air traffic controller staffing shortage.”

Though the new administration insists its cost-cutting will exempt public safety workers and keep citizens safe, its rhetoric and approach have been more sweeping than surgical.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the technology mogul Trump tapped to lead the effort, has said “bureaucracy is killing America” and repeatedly called for massive, across-the-board reductions in the federal workforce. Trump and his supporters have made personal loyalty to the president a top priority in hiring new workers or keeping existing ones.

During the campaign, Musk demanded the resignation of FAA administrator Michael Whitaker, who clashed with Musk over regulating SpaceX and stepped down the day before Trump took office. That left the FAA leaderless until Trump, at a Thursday press conference after the crash, named an acting head of the agency.

Trump blamed diversity hiring after the crash — despite no evidence about the qualifications of anyone involved in the collision — and alleged that former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama lowered standards to meet racial or other quotas. He decried an FAA diversity policy that existed during his first administration.

Though the Trump administration talks about the need to shed federal workers, the government has been desperate to hire air traffic controllers for nearly a decade. The FAA has struggled to keep up with the rapidly increasing number of commercial flights, even as there had been no fatal air accidents since 2009. Last year, Biden pushed for funding to hire 2,000 more controllers and announced the hiring of 1,800 controllers in September.

An FAA report obtained by the AP said that air traffic control staffing at the airport Wednesday “was not normal,” with one person doing the work normally assigned to two people at the time of the collision. A person familiar with the matter noted that the positions are regularly combined when controllers need to step away from the console for breaks, during shift changes or when air traffic is slow. That person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal procedures.

Don Kettl, an emeritus professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, warned that it is likely to become even harder to recruit those sorely needed air traffic controllers now.

“The fact that there’s so much uncertainty in such a short time period and the fact that the president personally seems to have blamed them,” Kettl said, “is bound to make it more difficult to hire more controllers.”

Kettl warned that there are many critical, demanding and high-skilled government jobs that are already tough to fill — from food safety inspectors to surgeons at Veterans Administration hospitals — and that may get even tougher now.

“The fiber of government is woven throughout our lives,” Kettl said. “If you downgrade the capacity, you downgrade what you get.”

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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa; Gomez Licon reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida; and Riccardi reported from Denver.

Thomas Beaumont, Adriana Gomez Licon And Nicholas Riccardi, The Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued a ban on Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek for government-issued devices, becoming the first state to restrict the popular chatbot in such a manner. The upstart AI platform has sent shockwaves throughout the AI community after gaining popularity amongst American users in recent weeks.

The governor also prohibited popular Chinese-owned social media apps Xiaohongshu, or what some are calling RedNote, and Lemon8 from all state-issued devices.

“Texas will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate our state’s critical infrastructure through data-harvesting AI and social media apps,” Abbott said in a statement. “Texas will continue to protect and defend our state from hostile foreign actors.”

The governor’s office declined to comment further for this story.

AI startup DeepSeek has rocked markets upon demonstrating its capacity to compete with industry leader OpenAI.

U.S. also users flocked to Xiaohongshu in the days leading up to TikTok’s short-lived ban. It’s a popular app in China and surrounding countries — such as Malaysia and Taiwan — with roughly 300 million active users that many Americans were using as a replacement doe TikTok, and as a form of protest against the ban.

Lemon8 is also a Chinese company owned by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. The social media app also gained traction in the days leading up to the original TikTok ban on Jan. 19.

Texas, along with many other states and the federal government, has banned TikTok on government devices. The app’s future remains in limbo after President Trump issued an executive order to give ByteDance more time to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations.

ByteDance did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

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Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Nadia Lathan, The Associated Press