MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine Senate president said Thursday the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte will begin after Congress reopens in June and vowed to avoid a repeat of stalled 2001 impeachment proceedings that sparked massive protests and forced a president to step down.
The previous day, the House of Representatives impeached Duterte, daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, on a range of accusations that include plotting to assassinate the president, large-scale corruption, and failing to strongly denounce China’s aggressive actions against Filipino forces in the disputed South China Sea.
At least 215 of the House's more than 300 legislators signed the complaint — significantly more than the required number — allowing it to be transmitted immediately to the Senate, which will serve as the impeachment court. The impeachment came on the last day of congressional session before a four-month break.
Sara Duterte didn’t immediately comment, but her brother Rep. Paolo Duterte said the impeachment was “a clear act of political persecution.” Rival lawmakers maneuvered to quickly collect signatures and push a “baseless impeachment case” to the Senate, he said.
Senate President Francis Escudero said under the law an impeachment court can only be convened and senators sworn in as jurors when the Senate resumes its session on June 2.
"Legally, it cannot be done,” Escudero said in a news conference when asked if a special Senate session could be called to start the impeachment trial earlier.
Nonetheless, many activists and critics argue the body could do more to provide a swift trial.
“The Senate’s foot-dragging on the impeachment process vs. Sara Duterte will be a roadblock to the pursuit of accountability,” said Cristina Palabay, a leader of a human rights alliance.
The move by House legislators, many of them allies of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., deepens a bitter political rift between the two highest leaders of one of Asia’s most rambunctious democracies.
The signatories included the president’s son, Rep. Sandro Marcos, and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, the president’s cousin. The petition asks the Senate remove Duterte from office and ban her from holding public office for life.
In a Southeast Asian country long plagued by political divisions, impeachment trials can become politically volatile. In early 2001, an impeachment trial of then President Joseph Estrada on allegations including bribery and corruption stalled over a vote not to open an envelope containing records of his suspected bank account.
Massive protests ensued, eventually forcing Estrada to step down.
Asked how that could be avoided in the impeachment trial of Duterte, Escudero said steps were being taken early to ensure “the credibility and impartiality of the impeachment court.” No side should be prevented from expressing their positions, he added.
The impeachment complaint against the vice president focused on a death threat she made against the president, his wife and the House speaker last year, irregularities in the use of her office’s intelligence funds and her failure to stand up to Chinese aggression in the disputed South China Sea, according to proponents of the petition.
She told a Nov. 23 online news conference that she had contracted an assassin to kill Marcos, his wife and Romualdez if she were killed, a statement she said wasn’t a joke. She later said it wasn't a threat, but an expression of concern for her own safety.
Allegations of graft and corruption against her also emanated from a monthslong and televised House investigation last year on the alleged misuse of 612.5 million pesos ($10.5 million) of confidential and intelligence funds received by Duterte’s offices as vice president and education secretary. She later left the education post as her political differences with Marcos deepened.
She has denied any wrongdoing but refused to respond to questions in detail during the tense televised hearings.
The impeachment complaint accused Duterte of undermining the Marcos government’s policies, including by describing the administration’s handling of territorial disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea as a “fiasco.” The complaint also mentioned her silence over China’s increasingly assertive actions in the disputed waters.
FILE- Lawmakers listen as new Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. delivers his first state of the nation address in, Quezon city, Philippines, Monday, July 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)
FILE -Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte gestures as she attends a hearing at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines, Nov. 25, 2024.(AP Photo/Aaron Favila), File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
