The federation didn’t specify whether the change applies to all events or only events where a trans athlete has qualified for the final. The change only applies to this weekend’s competition. The organization didn’t say how many students will be affected by the change.
“I want to make sure the foreign students are people that can love our country,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.The action on Chinese students renews a priority from Trump’s first administration to clamp down on academic ties between the United States and China, which Republicans have called a threat to national security. In April, Trump ordered the Education Department to ramp up enforcement of a federal rule requiring colleges to disclose information about funding from foreign sources.
During his first term, the Education Department opened 19 investigations into foreign funding at U.S. universities and found that they underreported money flowing from China, Russia and other countries described as foreign adversaries.Hours before Rubio announced the change, Eastern Michigan University announced it was ending engineering partnerships with two Chinese universities, responding to Republican pressure. Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, recently urged Eastern Michigan and other universities to end partnerships with Chinese universities.Around 1.1 million international students were in the United States last year — a source of essential revenue for tuition-driven colleges. International students are not eligible for federal financial aid. Often, they pay full price.
Northeastern University, which has more than 20,000 international students, has set up “contingency plans” for those who hit visa delays, said spokesperson Renata Nyul, without elaborating.“This is a very dynamic situation, and we are closely monitoring the developments in real time to assess any potential impacts,” she said.
In his announcement on China, Rubio said the government also will “revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.”
Visa applicants have been required to provide social media handles to the State Department since 2019. The cable Tuesday did not indicate what kind of additional scrutiny the new guidelines would cover, but suggested the new reviews may be more resource-intensive.The ruling follows Trump’s vow to boost drilling and shift away from former President Joe Biden’s focus on renewable energy to combat climate change. The administration announced last month it’s speeding up environmental reviews of projects required under the same law at the center of the Utah case, compressing a process that typically takes a year or more into just weeks.
“The court’s decision gives agencies a green light to ignore the reasonably foreseeable consequences of their decisions and avoid confronting them,” said Sambhav Sankar, senior vice president of programs at Earthjustice.Wendy Park, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said opponents would continue to fight the Utah project. “This disastrous decision to undermine our nation’s bedrock environmental law means our air and water will be more polluted, the climate and extinction crises will intensify, and people will be less healthy,” she said.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, said the ruling affirms a “balanced approach” to environmental oversight. He praised the railroad expansion as a critical infrastructure project that will help “restore America’s energy independence” and bolster the state’s rural economy.The project’s public partner also applauded the ruling. “It represents a turning point for rural Utah — bringing safer, sustainable, more efficient transportation options, and opening new doors for investment and economic stability,” said Keith Heaton, director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition.