A group of federal government employees on Jan. 1 filed a class action complaint against President Donald Trump's administration over a new policy that will eliminate coverage for gender-affirming care in federal health insurance programs. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation made the complaint against the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on behalf of the federal employees as the new policy took effect with the start of the new year. OPM in an August letter stated that in 2026 “chemical and surgical modification of an individual's sex traits through medical interventions” will no longer be covered under health insurance programs for federal employees and U.S. postal workers. OPM officials could not be reached for immediate comment. The complaint argues that the policy is discriminatory on the basis of sex. It asks that the policy be rescinded and seeks payment for economic damages and other relief. If the issue is not resolved with the OPM, the foundation said that plaintiffs will pursue class claims before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and potentially pursue a class action lawsuit in federal court. A group of Democratic state attorneys general last month sued the Trump administration to block proposed rules that would cut children’s access to gender-affirming care, the latest court battle over Trump’s efforts to eliminate legal protections for transgender people. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has proposed rules that would bar hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children from Medicaid and Medicare and prohibit the Children's Health Insurance Program from paying for it.

The U.S. Justice Department revealed it has 5.2 million pages of Epstein files left to review and needs 400 lawyers from four different department offices to help with the process through late January, according to a government document reviewed by Reuters on Dec. 30 This is likely to extend the final release of the documents to much later than expected after a December 19 deadline set by Congress, the document said. The White House and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. The Trump administration ordered the Justice Department to release the files tied to criminal probes of Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender, who was friends with U.S. President Donald Trump in the 1990s, in compliance with a transparency law passed by Congress last month. Collectively, the Criminal Division, the National Security Division, the FBI and the US Attorney's office in Manhattan are providing 400 attorneys to review the files, the document said, a more precise, and potentially much larger, figure than previous estimates from the department. The review will occur between January 5-23, the document added. Department leaders are offering telework options and time off awards as incentives for volunteers, the document said, adding that lawyers who assist will be expected to devote three to five hours a day to review about 1,000 documents a day. The DOJ said last week it had uncovered more than a million additional documents potentially linked to Epstein. So far, the disclosures have been heavily redacted, frustrating some Republicans and doing little to quell a scandal that threatens the party ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The law, approved by Congress with broad bipartisan support, requires all Epstein-related files to be made public, despite Trump’s months-long effort to keep them sealed. Under the statute, all documents were to be released by December 19, with redactions to protect victims. Trump knew Epstein socially in the 1990s and early 2000s. He has said their association ended in the mid-2000s and that he was never aware of the financier's sexual abuse. Epstein was convicted in Florida in 2008 of procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution. The Justice Department charged him with sex trafficking in 2019. Epstein was found dead in 2019 in a New York jail and his death was ruled a suicide. In a message shared on X last week, the Justice Department said, "We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible. Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks."

A federal judge on Dec. 30 rejected a claim by President Donald Trump's administration that it is legally barred from securing funding for the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, noting that a court order already bars the administration from shutting the agency down. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson came as the CFPB faced the imminent exhaustion of funds. The Trump administration has denied the CFPB additional funding since taking control of the agency in February. Officials say cash on hand could be exhausted in early 2026. CFPB representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency's supporters say that without it the public will be more exposed to predatory lending practices, scams and other abuse. Trump and others have accused it of politicized enforcement and called it a burden on free enterprise. The agency was started to protect financial services consumers after the financial crisis of 2008. It announced last month that an administration legal opinion held that, under the CFPB's governing statute, it could not seek additional funding from the Federal Reserve so long as the central bank is losing money. In her ruling on Dec. 30, Jackson rejected this as outcome-driven reasoning without basis in the law and said it would violate her March injunction against shutting down the agency so long as a lawsuit plays out in court. "It appears that defendants’ new understanding of 'combined earnings' is an unsupported and transparent attempt to achieve the very end the court’s injunction was put in place to prevent," she wrote, adding that the administration's "unilateral decision" to decline further CFPB funding was therefore a violation. Unlike many federal agencies, the CFPB is funded by the Federal Reserve, rather than through a budget set annually by Congress. But lawmakers this year slashed the CFPB's maximum allowable funding, meaning the agency may face tighter funding constraints regardless.