Trump Tells Iranians Help Is "On The Way," As Death Toll May Have Reached 20,000
Plus: Supreme Court Appears Ready To Back State Transgender Sports Bans
Good evening,
A record number of U.S. adults do not identify with either major political party — a trend driven partially by younger generations.
THE GENERATIONAL ABCs: All these stories got us at Mo News thinking about how generational labels came into being.
The Silent Generation, the label for those born before 1946, got its name because the generation was taught conformity and caution when they came of age during The Great Depression and World War II.
The Baby Boomers came next, born after World War II between 1946-1964.
Followed by Gen X, born roughly from 1965 to 1980, characterized as being caught between analog and digital worlds.Millennials, those born between 1981-1996, got their label because they experienced their formative years around the start of the new millennium. (Millennials are also known as Gen Y, because they're sandwiched between Generations X and Z.)
Then there’s Gen Z (born between 1997-2012), and then the alphabet resets with Gen Alpha (born between 2012-2024), and, most recently, Gen Beta (born in 2025 onwards)
As for the Cuspers — i.e. people who float on the edge of generational cutoff years? They sometimes get compound names, like Xillennial, Zillennials, or my favorite, Zalphas.
Sam,
Associate Producer
🚨 ONE IMPORTANT THING
Trump Scraps Talks With Iran Regime, Encourages Protesters With Promise That He Will Help Their Fight
President Trump on Tuesday encouraged protesters in Iran to continue demonstrating against the Iranian government, canceling any meeting with Iranian officials. He added on social media that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” but did not specify what that meant and did not clarify later when reporters asked.
Asked Tuesday by CBS what the president’s end game is in Iran, Trump said: “The end game is to win. I like winning.”
It’s a change of tone since Sunday, when Trump told reporters that he was open to Iranian overtures towards diplomatic talks. However, there is major concern among protest supporters that the U.S. engaging the regime could hurt the efforts to reform or overturn the Islamic regime.
The Trump post comes as Islamic Republic officials confirm that around 2,000 people have been killed in multi-week protests so far. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency confirmed the death count. CBS reports that the number of deaths could be much higher, ranging from 12,000 to 20,000, based on reports from medical personnel inside Iran.
ON THE GROUND
The Iranian government is violently cracking down on nationwide anti-regime protests, openly firing on demonstrations, which began more than two weeks ago to protest the country's collapsing currency.
Iranian state media has aired at least 97 “confession” videos on Iranian state media since protests began, according to a rights group tracking the broadcasts.
The Washington Post reports that the coerced confessions often include protesters making references to Israel or America, which Iran argues is proof that foreign plots are behind Iran's nationwide protests. The 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has made similar accusations.
The death toll from the current anti-regime protests appears to already e nearly four times larger than the toll from the 2022 protests, in which the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody sparked nationwide demonstrations against the Islamic regime.
MORE ON THE U.S.
White House officials met Tuesday morning to discuss response options to the protests. Back in June, the U.S. joined Israel in bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, a war that President Trump dubbed “The 12-Day War.”
Over the weekend, White House envoy Steve Witkoff met with exiled Iranian opposition figure Reza Pahlavi, according to Axios. It would mark the Trump administration’s first high-level contact with Pahlavi, who some protesters have called on to return to be a new leader. Notably, Pahlavi’s father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was the last Shah (monarch) of Iran until the Islamic revolutionaries brought down his regime in 1979.
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🚨 ONE THING WE’RE FOLLOWING
Supreme Court Majority Appears Ready To Uphold State Bans On Transgender Athletes
A majority of Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical of striking down state bans on transgender athletes competing in girls’ sports on Tuesday during oral arguments.
REWIND: The cases from Idaho and West Virginia. Idaho became the first state to enact a ban on athletes who are designated boys at birth from competing in girls sports in 2020, followed by West Virginia in 2021. Now, 27 states have similar bans.
Lower courts sided with the transgender athletes challenging the bans.
On Tuesday, at least five of the Supreme Court’s six conservative justices signaled they may uphold the state bans — signaling they do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which requires states to provide “equal protection of the laws,” or Title IX, the landmark civil rights law from 1972 that prohibits sex discrimination in education, which helped fuel the growth of girls’ and women’s sports.
INSIDE THE COURTROOM
In the case of Becky Pepper-Jackson, a West Virginia student, she socially transitioned in third grade and began puberty blockers before male puberty. She later started estrogen in sixth grade, meaning — according to her legal brief — she never underwent male puberty. Science supports that puberty catapults boys far ahead of girls in physical performance.
Here’s some from three of the courts’ conservative majority:
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a longtime girls’ basketball coach, pressed lawyers on the real-world impacts of transgender participation in sports, arguing that many teams are “zero-sum” — where an athlete’s opportunity can come at another’s expense.
Joshua Block, arguing for the American Civil Liberties Union, countered that West Virginia's ban denies equal opportunity — even in cases where there is no competitive advantage.
During arguments, Kavanaugh praised Title IX for helping “make girls’ and women’s sports equal,” and noted that he sees the law in effect “every night when I walk into my house as my daughters are getting back from lacrosse or basketball or hockey practice.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, the 2020 decision that protects transgender workers under Title VII. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's four liberal justices at the time. On Tuesday, Roberts indicated that Bostock may not apply in these cases: “The question here is whether a sex-based classification is necessarily a transgender classification.”
Roberts also cautioned that allowing challenges from a very small group “would have to apply across board and not simply to the area of athletics.”
Gorsuch was the only conservative justice who seemed open to the arguments of the student plaintiffs. He noted that transgender people have a documented history of discrimination in the U.S.
The three liberal justices suggested that even if the transgender sports bans are generally constitutional, the plaintiffs could still challenge them by showing they personally do not pose an unfair advantage.
BIGGER PICTURE
Sports have become a key battleground in broader legal and political fights over transgender rights in the U.S. Recent polling shows that the vast majority of Americans belive trans athletes should be required to compete on teams that match their sex at birth.
⏳ THE SPEED READ
🚨NATION
House Republicans move to hold Clintons in contempt after they refuse to testify on Jeffrey Epstein (MO NEWS)
DoJ officials quit in protest after division decided not to investigate ICE shooting (GUARDIAN)
Trump admin ends protected status for Somalis amid Minneapolis crackdown (POLITICO)
🌎 AROUND THE WORLD
China urges Canada to break from US influence as PM Carney visits Beijing (AP)
South Korean prosecutors demand death penalty for former president Yoon Suk Yeol (GUARDIAN)
French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s political future is at stake as her appeal trial opens (LE MONDE)
Rampaging elephant kills at least 20 people, including children, in India, officials say (CBS)
📱BUSINESS, SCIENCE & TECH
Inflation remained at 2.7% in December, as high prices continue to weigh on many Americans (CNN)
The Trevor Project, LGBT charity, receives $45M from MacKenzie Scott after difficult years and federal funding cuts (AP)
More people are living 5 years after cancer diagnosis, new data shows (ABC)
U.S. carbon pollution rose last year, new study shows (NBC)
🎬 SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT
ICYMI FROM THE 📲
In case you missed it… Zoe Saldaña, the 47-year-old star of the Avatar films, has become the highest-grossing actor of all time.
Saldaña has cemented over $16 billion in the global box office for the films she has starred in, driven in large part by her role as the character Neytiri in all three of Cameron’s blockbuster films. She surpassed Scarlett Johansson, who previously held the title after the success of Jurassic World: Rebirth last year.