BOSTON (AP) — A second federal judge on Friday ordered a temporary pause in Trump administration efforts to freeze federal funding in the latest twist over the spending of trillions of dollars in grants and loans.

Judge John McConnell sided with nearly two dozen states that requested an order preventing most federal agencies from halting funding until the court rules on a request from the states for a preliminary injunction.

“During the pendency of the Temporary Restraining Order, Defendants shall not pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate Defendants’ compliance with awards and obligations to provide federal financial assistance to the States, and Defendants shall not impede the States’ access to such awards and obligations, except on the basis of the applicable authorizing statutes, regulations, and terms,” wrote McConnell, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.

The federal government had opposed the order, arguing there was no basis for what they described as “sweeping relief.”

McConnell’s decision comes despite the Office of Management and Budget rescinding a memo that froze spending on federal loans and grants.

The memo, which was issued earlier this week by the OMB, had frightened states, schools and organizations that rely on trillions of dollars from Washington.

Michael Casey, 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.”

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.

___

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