The Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for California schools to tell parents if their children identify as transgender without getting the student's approval, granting an emergency appeal from a conservative legal group.

The order blocks for now a state law that bans automatic parental notification requirements if students change their pronouns or gender expression at school.

The split decision comes after religious parents and educators challenged California school policies aimed at preventing schools from outing students to their families. Two sets of Catholic parents represented by the Thomas More Society say it caused schools to mislead them and secretly facilitate the children's social transition despite their objections.

California, on the other hand, argued that students have the right to privacy about their gender expression, especially if they fear rejection from their families. The state said that school policies and state law are aimed at striking a balance with parents' rights.

The high court majority, though, sided with the parents and reinstated a lower-court order blocking the law and school policies while the case continues to play out.

"The parents who assert a free exercise claim have sincere religious beliefs about sex and gender, and they feel a religious obligation to raise their children in accordance with those beliefs. California's policies violate those beliefs," and burden the free exercise of religion, the majority wrote in an unsigned order.

The court's three liberal justices publicly dissented, saying the case is still working its way through lower courts and there was no need to step in now. "If nothing else, this Court owes it to a sovereign State to avoid throwing over its policies in a slapdash way, if the Court can provide normal procedures. And throwing over a State's policy is what the Court does today," Justice Elena Kagan wrote.

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, meanwhile, noted they would have gone further and granted teachers' appeal to lift restrictions for them.

The Thomas More Society called the decision "the most significant parental rights ruling in a generation."

California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office defended the law, saying teachers should be focused on instruction, not required "to be gender cops."

The order "undermines student privacy and the ability to learn in a safe and supportive classroom, free from discrimination based on gender identity," said Marissa Saldivar, a spokesperson for the Democratic governor.

The Supreme Court has ruled for religious plaintiffs in other recent cases, including allowing parents to pull their children from public-school lessons if they object to storybooks with LGBTQ+ characters.

The California order comes months after the court upheld state bans on gender-identity-related healthcare for minors. The justices also seem to be leaning toward allowing states to ban transgender athletes from playing on girls sports teams.

School policies for transgender students, meanwhile, have also been on the court's radar in other cases. The court rebuffed another similar case out of Wisconsin in December, but three conservative justices indicated they would have heard the case. Justice Samuel Alito called the school policies "an issue of great and growing national importance."

The justices have been weighing whether to hear arguments in cases out of states like Massachusetts and Florida filed by other parents who say schools facilitated social transition without informing them.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, found in January that California's policies violated parents' right to access their children's education records. The Justice Department also sued after determining the states' transgender athlete policies violate federal civil rights law.

FBI agents searched a Washington Post reporter’s home on Wednesday as part of a leak investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of taking home classified information, the Justice Department said.

Hannah Natanson, who has been covering President Donald Trump’s transformation of the federal government, had a phone, two laptops and a Garmin watch seized in the search of her Virginia home, the Post reported. Natanson has reported extensively on the federal workforce and recently published a piece describing how she gained hundreds of new sources — leading one colleague to call her “the federal government whisperer.”

While classified documents investigations aren’t unusual, the search of a reporter’s home marks an escalation in the government’s efforts to crack down on leaks. The Post was told that Natanson and the newspaper are not targets of the probe, executive editor Matt Murray said in an email to colleagues.

“Nonetheless, this extraordinary, aggressive action is deeply concerning and raises profound questions and concern around the constitutional protections for our work,” Murray wrote. “The Washington Post has a long history of zealous support for robust press freedoms. The entire institution stands by those freedoms and our work.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the search was done at the request of the Defense Department and that the journalist was “obtaining and reporting classified and illegally leaked information from a Pentagon contractor.”

“Leaking classified information puts America’s national security and the safety of our military heroes in serious jeopardy,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X. “President Trump has zero tolerance for it and will continue to aggressively crack down on these illegal acts moving forward.”

The warrant says the search was related to an investigation into a system engineer and information technology specialist for a government contractor in Maryland who authorities allege took home classified materials, the Post reported. The worker, Aurelio Perez-Lugones, was charged earlier this month with unlawful retention of national defense information, according to court papers. He has not been charged with sharing classified information, and he has not been accused in court papers with leaking.

Perez-Lugones, who held a top secret security clearance, is accused of printing classified and sensitive reports at work. In a search of his Maryland home and car this month, authorities found documents marked “SECRET,” including one in a lunchbox, according to court papers.

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on Wednesday. The Washington Post said Wednesday that it was monitoring and reviewing the situation. An email seeking comment was sent to lawyers for Perez-Lugones, who is expected to appear in court on Thursday for a detention hearing.

First Amendment groups expressed alarm at the search, saying it could chill investigative journalism that holds government officials to account.

“Physical searches of reporters’ devices, homes, and belongings are some of the most invasive investigative steps law enforcement can take,” Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press president Bruce Brown said. “While we won’t know the government’s arguments about overcoming these very steep hurdles until the affidavit is made public, this is a tremendous escalation in the administration’s intrusions into the independence of the press.”

The Justice Department over the years has developed, and revised, internal policies governing how it will respond to news media leaks.

In April, Bondi rescinded a policy from President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that protected journalists from having their phone records secretly seized during leak investigations — a practice long decried by news organizations and press freedom groups.

The moves again gave prosecutors the authority to use subpoenas, court orders and search warrants to hunt for government officials who make “unauthorized disclosures” to journalists. A memo she issued said members of the press are “presumptively entitled to advance notice of such investigative activities,” and subpoenas are to be “narrowly drawn.” Warrants must also include “protocols designed to limit the scope of intrusion into potentially protected materials or newsgathering activities,” the memo states.

The aggressive posture with regard to The Washington Post stands in contrast to the Justice Department’s approach to the disclosure of sensitive military information via a Signal chat last spring involving senior Trump administration officials. A reporter was mistakenly added to that chat. Bondi indicated publicly at the time that she was disinclined to open an investigation, saying she was confident that the episode had been a mistake.

A defiant Nicolás Maduro declared himself “the president of my country” as he protested his capture and pleaded not guilty Monday to federal drug trafficking charges that the Trump administration used to justify removing him from power in Venezuela.

“I was captured,” Maduro said in Spanish as translated by a courtroom interpreter before being cut off by the judge. Asked later for his plea to the charges, he stated: “I am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.”

Maduro’s court appearance in Manhattan, his first since he and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized from their Caracas home Saturday in a stunning middle-of-the-night military operation, kicked off the U.S. government’s most consequential prosecution in decades of a foreign head of state. She also pleaded not guilty.

The criminal case is unfolding against a broader diplomatic backdrop of an audacious U.S.-engineered regime change that President Donald Trump has said will enable his administration to “run” the South American country.

Maduro, 63, was brought to court under heavy security early Monday — flown by helicopter to Manhattan from Brooklyn, where he is jailed, and then driven to the courthouse in an armored vehicle. He and Flores were led into court just before noon. Both were in leg shackles and jail-issued garb, and both put on headsets to hear the English-language proceeding as it was translated into Spanish.

As Maduro left the courtroom, a man in the audience denounced him as an “illegitimate” president.

As a criminal defendant in the U.S. legal system, Maduro will have the same rights as any other person charged with a crime in the country — including the right to jury trial. But, given the circumstances of his arrest and the geopolitical stakes at play, he’ll also be nearly — but not quite — unique.

That was made clear from the outset as Maduro, who took copious notes throughout the proceedings and wished Happy New Year to reporters as he entered the courtroom, repeatedly pressed his case that he had been unlawfully abducted.

“I am here kidnapped since Jan. 3, Saturday,” Maduro said, standing and leaning his tall frame toward a tabletop microphone. “I was captured at my home in Caracas.”

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 92-year-old jurist who was appointed to the federal bench in 1998 by Bill Clinton, interrupted him, saying: “There will be a time and place to go into all of this.” Hellerstein added that Maduro’s lawyer could do so later.

“At this point in time, I only want to know one thing,” the judge said. “Are you Nicolás Maduro Moros?”

“I am Nicolás Maduro Moros,” the defendant responded.

Maduro’s lawyer, Barry Pollack, said he expects to contest the legality of his “military abduction.”

Pollack, a prominent Washington lawyer whose clients have included WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, said Maduro is “head of a sovereign state and is entitled to the privileges and immunities that go with that office.”

Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega unsuccessfully tried the same immunity defense after the U.S. captured him in a similar military invasion in 1990. But the U.S. doesn’t recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state — particularly after a much-disputed 2024 reelection.

Flores, who identified herself to the judge as “first lady of the Republic of Venezuela,” had bandages on her forehead and right temple. Her lawyer, Mark Donnelly, said she suffered “significant injuries” during her capture.

A 25-page indictment accuses Maduro and others of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. They could face life in prison if convicted.

Among other things, the indictment accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders of those who owed them drug money or undermined their drug trafficking operation. That included the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas, the indictment said.

Outside the courthouse, police separated those protesting the U.S. military action from pro-intervention demonstrators. Inside the courtroom, as the proceeding wrapped up and Maduro prepared to leave, 33-year-old Pedro Rojas stood up and began speaking forcefully at him in Spanish.

Rojas said later that he had been imprisoned by the Venezuelan regime. As deputy U.S. marshals led Maduro from the courtroom, the deposed leader looked directly at the man and shot back in Spanish: “I am a kidnapped president. I am a prisoner of war.”

Demands for Maduro’s return

Trump said Saturday the U.S. would “run” Venezuela temporarily and reiterated Sunday night that “we’re in charge,” telling reporters “we’re going to run it, fix it.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to strike a more cautious tone, telling Sunday morning talk shows that the U.S. would not govern the country day-to-day other than enforcing an existing ” oil quarantine.”

Before his capture, Maduro and his allies claimed U.S. hostility was motivated by lust for Venezuela’s rich oil and mineral resources.

Trump has suggested that removing Maduro would enable more oil to flow out of Venezuela, but oil prices rose 1.7% on Monday. There are uncertainties about how fast oil production can be ramped up in Venezuela after years of neglect, as well as questions about governance and oversight of the sector.

Venezuela’s new interim leader, Delcy Rodríguez, has demanded that the U.S. return Maduro, who long denied any involvement in drug trafficking — although late Sunday she struck a more conciliatory tone in a social media post, inviting collaboration with Trump and “respectful relations” with the U.S.

Mexican authorities said they arrested former soccer player Omar Bravo, 45, on suspicion of child sexual abuse.

The Jalisco state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that investigations indicate Bravo allegedly abused a teenage girl on several occasions in recent months and may have committed similar acts before.

He was arrested during an operation in the municipality of Zapopan and was expected to appear in court soon.

Bravo rose to fame playing as a forward for Chivas de Guadalajara, where he became the club’s all-time leading goal scorer. He also played for Mexico’s national team in the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

The Associated Press could not immediately reach a lawyer for Bravo.

On Bravo’s Instagram account, fans commented on his latest post from Sept. 8, which made no reference to the accusations. Some expressed sadness, while others said he was their idol and hoped the allegations were not true.

The prosecutor’s office said it will continue its investigation.