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President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Wednesday designed to prevent people who were biologically assigned male at birth from participating in women’s or girls’ sporting events.The order, which Trump is expected to sign at an afternoon ceremony, marks another aggressive shift by the president’s second administration in the way the federal government deals with transgender people and their rights.The president put out a sweeping order on his first day in office last month that called for the federal government to define sex as only male or female and for that to be reflected on official documents such as passports and in policies such as federal prison assignments.Trump found during the campaign that his pledge to “keep men out of women’s sports” resonated beyond the usual party lines. More than half the voters surveyed by AP VoteCast said support for transgender rights in government and society has gone too far.He leaned into the rhetoric before the election, pledging to get rid of the “transgender insanity,” though his campaign offered little in the way of details.Wednesday’s orderwhich coincides with National Girls and Women in Sports Daywill involve how his administration will interpret Title IX, the law best known for its role in pursuing gender equity in athletics and preventing sexual harassment on campuses.“This executive order restores fairness, upholds Title IX’s original intent, and defends the rights of female athletes who have worked their whole lives to compete at the highest levels,” said U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina.Every administration has the authority to issue its own interpretations of the landmark legislation. The last two presidential administrationsincluding Trump’s firstoffer a glimpse at the push-pull involved.Betsy DeVos, the education secretary during Trump’s first term, issued a Title IX policy in 2020 that narrowed the definition of sexual harassment and required colleges to investigate claims only if they’re reported to certain officials.The Biden administration rolled back that policy last April with one of its own that stipulated the rights of LGBTQ+ students would be protected by federal law and provided new safeguards for victims of campus sexual assault. The policy stopped short of explicitly addressing transgender athletes. Still, more than a half-dozen Republican-led states immediately challenged the new rule in court.“All Trump has to say is, ‘We are going to read the regulation traditionally,'” said Doriane Lambelet Coleman, a professor at Duke Law School.How this order could affect the transgender athlete populationa number that is incredibly difficult to pin downis uncertain.The Associated Press reported in 2021 that in many cases, the states introducing a ban on transgender athletes could not cite instances where their participation was an issue. When Utah state legislators overrode a veto by Gov. Spencer Cox in 2022, the state had only one transgender girl playing in K-12 sports who would be affected by the ban. It did not regulate participation for transgender boys.“This is a solution looking for a problem,” Cheryl Cooky, a professor at Purdue University who studies the intersection of gender, sports, media and culture, told the AP after Trump was elected.Yet the actual number of transgender athletes seems to be almost immaterial. Any case of a transgender female athlete competingor even believed to be competingdraws outsized attention, from Lia Thomas swimming for the University of Pennsylvania to the recently completed season of the San Jose State volleyball team. AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports Will Graves, AP National Writer
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Shares in Googles parent company, Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG), are down nearly 7% in premarket trading at the time of this writing. The fall comes a day after Google announced its fourth-quarter 2024 earnings results. Heres what you need to know about those results and the likely reasons why GOOG stock is falling this morning. Google Q4 2024 results were a mixed bag Google saw both its revenue and earnings per share (EPS) increase in Q4 versus the quarter a year earlier. For the Q4 2024 quarter, Google posted nearly $96.5 billion in revenue12% growth from Q4 2023. However, in that previous Q4 2023 quarter, Googles revenue growth had been 13%, suggesting that growth is now slowing at the company, at least when comparing this quarter to the year-earlier quarter. Here are some of the most salient results from Googles Q4: Total revenue: $96.47 billion Diluted earnings per share (EPS): $2.15 Google Cloud revenue: $11.96 billion YouTube ad revenue: $10.47 billion Google Services total revenue: $84.1 billion Despite growing at a slower rate in Q4 2024 than the same quarter a year earlier, Googles revenue is still trending in the right direction. Yet, as CNBC notes, analysts expected Google to bring in $96.56 billion for the quarter. Google also missed analyst expectations regarding its all-important Google Cloud revenue. For the quarter, Google posted cloud revenue of $11.96 billion, while analysts had expected to see around $12.19 billion. While Google Cloud revenue was up 30% year over year, Reuters notes that the sector had grown 35% in Q4 of 2023. This, too, shows that the growth of one of Googles primary revenue sources is slowing. Massive capital expenditure increase rattles investors In addition to missing analyst expectations on many fronts, the main thing that has rattled investors is Google’s announcement that it will significantly expand capital expenditures in an effort to maintain any competitive lead it has in the artificial intelligence sector. Announcing the company’s fourth-quarter 2024 results, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that the company expects to invest approximately $75 billion in capital expenditures in 2025. As Reuters pointed out, most analysts had expected Google to grow capital expenditures to $58 billiona modest rise from the $52.5 billion it spent on capital expenditures in fiscal 2024. The $75 billion in expected capital expenditures for fiscal 2025 represents a massive capex growth of 29%. Google said that the majority of the capital expenditure will go into building data centers and servers. These resources are to a large part aimed at helping Google expand its AI capabilities. Yet many investors seem to have balked at this significant capex increase in the wake of DeepSeek. Last month, the Chinese AI startup claimed that it trained superior artificial intelligence models for less than $6 million, stunning both Wall Street investors and American artificial intelligence experts. American tech giants like Google have spent billions developing their artificial intelligence offerings. Many investors now are questioning whether Google’s plans for additional expenditure are prudent considering what DeepSeek has achieved. On the companys financial call, Pichai conceded that the costs for using AI were coming down, but he argued that meant there would be more demand for AI in the future, and Google needs the infrastructure expansion to meet the demand. “The cost of actually using (AI) is going to keep coming down, which will make more use cases feasible,” he said. “The opportunity space is as big as it comes, and that’s why you’re seeing us invest to meet that moment. GOOG is still up for 2025 Despite GOOGs nearly 7% stock price fall in premarket trading this morning, the companys share price is still up slightly year-to-date. As of yesterday’s close Google’s shares were up nearly 7.8% since the beginning of January. The companys stock price has risen more than 44% in the past 12 months.
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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. On a nationally aggregated basis, U.S. single-family home prices, as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index, are up 2.8% year-over-year, while U.S. condo prices have risen 0.4% over the same period. In much of the Midwest, Northeast, and Southern California, regional home prices have seen even stronger gains. However, some areasparticularly around the Gulfare experiencing greater softness, with a few even undergoing home price corrections. Look no further than Florida. Among the 26 major Florida condo markets that ResiClub tracks, condo prices are falling on a year-over-year basis in 24 metro area markets. In other words, condo prices are falling in 92% of Floridas markets. The biggest year-over-year condo price declines are in these Florida markets: Punta Gorda, FL: -11.4% North Port, FL: -8.9% The Villages, FL: -8.4% Panama City, FL: -8.4% Cape Coral, FL: -8.2% Tampa, FL: -7.9% Sebastian, FL: -7.7% Port St. Lucie, FL: -7.3% Naples, FL: -7.2% Deltona, FL: -6.6% Condo prices are also down in Floridas three largest metros: Miami (-3.4%); Tampa (-7.9%), and Orlando (-4.7%). !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r
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