The Supreme Court cleared the way for the State Department to require people to state their biological sex on new or renewed passports, a victory for the Trump administration as it aims to tighten policies involving transgender people.

The high court found in a 6-3 order temporarily greenlighting the policy that a lower court in Massachusetts had erred in blocking it. 

‘Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment,’ the majority wrote in the unsigned order.

The three liberal justices dissented. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden appointee, blasted her Republican-appointed colleagues in a lengthy dissent for what she said had become a ‘routine’ of siding with the Trump administration on the emergency docket.

The majority ‘fails to spill any ink considering the plaintiffs, opting instead to intervene in the Government’s favor without equitable justification, and in a manner that permits harm to be inflicted on the most vulnerable party,’ Jackson wrote, adding that transgender people have been permitted to state their preferred gender on passports for more than three decades.

The class action lawsuit, brought by a dozen self-described transgender, nonbinary or intersex people on behalf of themselves and others in their situation, will continue to proceed through the lower courts.

The plaintiffs had argued in court papers that passports should ‘reflect the sex [people] live as and express, rather than the sex they were assigned at birth.’

Solicitor General John Sauer wrote on behalf of President Donald Trump that passports effectively communicate information to foreign governments and private citizens cannot force the president to communicate in a way that defies his foreign policy preferences and ‘scientific reality.’

The policy, which reversed the Biden administration’s allowance of an ‘X’ gender option on passports, was implemented as part of a string of executive orders Trump issued when he took office aimed at requiring transgender people to identify as their biological sex in certain situations, including in gender-exclusive sports and in the military.

Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated that the high court had handed the Department of Justice roughly two-dozen wins this year on the emergency docket, sometimes referred to as a shadow or interim docket, where cases are fast-tracked so that the Supreme Court can potentially offer temporary resolutions until the merits of the cases are examined.

‘Today’s stay allows the government to require citizens to list their biological sex on their passport,’ Bondi said on social media. ‘In other words: there are two sexes, and our attorneys will continue fighting for that simple truth.’

Any optimism either side of the aisle had that the government shutdown could end this week appeared to fade on Capitol Hill, as Senate Democrats appear ready to hold out longer for a deal on expiring Obamacare subsidies.

Senate Democrats left another long closed-door caucus lunch on Thursday, signaling a unified front as the shutdown entered its 37th day amid Republican demands to make a deal to reopen the government.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus are still riding high after a successful Election Day Tuesday that saw Democratic candidates pummel their Republican opponents. While there are bipartisan talks among centrist Senate Democrats and Republicans on a way out, the majority of the caucus appeared ready to hold the line.

‘We had a very good, productive meeting,’ Schumer said as he exited the lunch.

Others espoused messages of unity among the ranks and bristled that they were holding out from reopening the government.

‘It’s not about holding out,’ Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said. ‘We fight for access to healthcare for millions of people across this country. Affordability is a giant issue for American families. They told us that at the polls on Tuesday, but they tell us that every day of their lives.’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., plans to put the House-passed continuing resolution (CR) on the floor again Friday to test Democrats’ resolve. It’s expected they’ll block the bill once again.

Thune and Republicans have remained firm in their position that the Obamacare issue would be considered after the government reopens, and he has offered Senate Democrats a vote on the matter, which is also expected to fail.

But Senate Democrats demand that President Donald Trump get involved and negotiate a deal on the expiring subsidies. Democrats also brushed aside comments from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who earlier in the day said he would not promise a vote in the House on the expiring subsidies.

‘I can tell you that Mike Johnson is only going to do what one person tells him, and that one person is Donald Trump, who has declared himself basically the Speaker of the House,’ Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said.

Still, Senate Republicans hope that Senate Democrats will accept the offer, along with the plan to pair the CR with a trio of spending bills to jump-start the government funding process.

‘I think the clear path forward here with regard to the [Obamacare] issue, open up the government, and we head down to the White House and sit down with the president and talk about it,’ Thune said. ‘But I just, right now there is hostage taking, as you all know. The consequences are getting more pronounced.’

There is also the question of whether the Senate stays in over the weekend ahead of a scheduled recess for Veterans Day next week.

Senate Democrats want to remain, but Republicans aren’t keen to stick around unless there are signs of real progress toward reopening the government.

‘I do expect to be here this weekend,’ Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said.

Top Democrats emerged from a classified Capitol Hill briefing Wednesday expressing confidence in the intelligence behind recent U.S. strikes on suspected narco-trafficking vessels near Venezuela. But they also faulted the Biden administration for what they called a failure to confront Nicolás Maduro after Venezuela’s disputed 2024 election.

The Office of Legal Counsel presented lawmakers with its written justification for a series of missile strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that U.S. officials say have killed 63 suspected traffickers. Lawmakers from both parties said the briefing reassured them the targets were legitimate, even as some voiced unease about the broader strategy.

‘The final comment I’ll make is just that nothing in the legal opinion even mentions Venezuela,’ said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

‘I think they do have visibility into drug trafficking,’ Warner added, saying he trusted U.S. intelligence assessments but would prefer traffickers be ‘interdicted and taken to court rather than blown up.’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, War Secretary Pete Hegseth and senior Pentagon lawyers led the closed-door briefing for congressional leaders and the chairs and ranking members of the Intelligence, Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees.

Lawmakers have complained for days about being left in the dark as the Pentagon launched multiple maritime strikes without first consulting Congress. Officials declined to discuss the intended scope or duration of the campaign and provided few details about who was killed or what evidence tied the targets to narcotics trafficking.

‘Lots of mistakes could get made,’ said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. ‘But, again, they are applying the eyes and ears of our intelligence community to these boats. I don’t worry too much that there will be a strike on a fishing boat or a pleasure boat, but that’s always possible.’

Himes said the administration described ‘the process by which these boats are selected’ but did not share photographs or the identities of those killed.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also backed the intelligence underpinning the operation.

‘We have exquisite intelligence about these strikes on these vessels,’ Johnson said. ‘We know the contents of the boats. We know the personnel almost to a person.’

Officials told lawmakers there were no plans to expand the maritime campaign to land operations or to target Maduro directly.

‘There are no apparent plans to expand this beyond what they say they are doing,’ Himes said.

Reports that the administration was considering potential strikes on Mexico did not appear to come up in the briefing, which lawmakers said focused almost exclusively on cocaine — some of which is trafficked through Venezuela — rather than fentanyl, Mexico’s top export.

‘It’s as described — to stop the flow of drugs, and, to be clear, to stop the flow of cocaine,’ said Himes.

Still, several Democrats said the Biden administration missed a critical moment last year to rally Latin American allies after Venezuela’s contested election, when independent monitors and several Western governments recognized opposition candidate Edmundo González as the rightful winner.

‘I frankly think the Biden administration didn’t go far enough after the Venezuelan people voted overwhelmingly to get rid of Maduro,’ Warner said. ‘We missed a huge opportunity when Venezuelans — in numbers probably in the mid-sixties percent — came out against Maduro, even under threat of violence. The fact that we didn’t rally the region at that point was, in retrospect, a huge mistake.’

After the July 2024 vote, the Biden administration imposed sanctions on high-level Maduro officials but stopped short of reimposing broad restrictions on Venezuela’s oil sector, a move officials said could have driven up global fuel prices and worsened migration pressures.

By contrast, the Trump administration has taken a harder line. It reimposed sweeping sanctions on Maduro during Trump’s first term and has since increased pressure on the South American strongman in his second. The Justice Department has offered a $50 million bounty for information leading to Maduro’s arrest, and officials have not ruled out whether the current strikes could be intended to pressure him to step aside.

Asked in a CBS interview over the weekend whether Maduro’s days were numbered, Trump said, ‘I would say yeah. I think so.’

Pressed on whether the U.S. would go to war with Venezuela, he added, ‘I doubt it. I don’t think so.’

Kazakhstan is expected to join the Abraham Accords, officials confirmed to Fox News on Thursday.

The Abraham Accords, first signed in 2020, currently include three countries that have formalized normalization agreements with Israel: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco.

Sudan signed a U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords declaration in January 2021 but efforts to formalize diplomatic relations with Israel have since been derailed by internal political unrest.

U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff told Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier that he would return to Washington, D.C., on Thursday night to announce the addition of another country to the accords. Witkoff shared the update during his remarks at the America Business Forum in Miami.

‘This is going to show that the Abraham Accords is a club that many countries want to be a member of and it will be a step for turning the page on the war in Gaza and moving forward towards more peace and cooperation in the region,’ a U.S. official told Axios.

The outlet also reported that Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is expected to make the announcement during a meeting with President Donald Trump.

Trump had recently signaled that more nations may soon be joining the Abraham Accords, with Syria and Saudi Arabia at the forefront of efforts to expand the historic Israel-Arab normalization pact.

Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa is expected to meet with Trump at the White House next week, followed by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman on Nov. 18.

Justice Department officials in Miami and Washington, D.C., are actively preparing to issue several grand jury subpoenas relating to an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan, Fox News has learned.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones is supervising the probe, Fox News is told.

Fox News reached out to the Justice Department, but sources there declined to comment. 

Fox News first reported that Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey were under investigation as of early July 2025. Thursday’s development intensifies that investigation. Comey is fighting his case in court with a trial set for January.

Brennan has not been indicted, and it’s unclear if a grand jury would indict him, but evidence will be presented in South Florida. 

Last month, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, referred Brennan to the DOJ, saying that the former CIA chief ‘willfully and intentionally’ made false statements to Congress. 

Jordan accused Brennan of lying in his 2023 Judiciary Committee testimony by denying that the CIA used the Steele dossier in prepping the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian election interference, and falsely claiming the CIA opposed including the dossier.

The Steele dossier was a series of reports detailing President Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. It was compiled and delivered to the FBI in 2016 by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.