BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu announced his resignation on Monday, a day after the governing coalition’s joint candidate failed to advance to the runoff in the closely watched rerun of the presidential election.
The coalition’s candidate, Crin Antonescu, was third in Sunday’s first round, far behind top finisher hard-right nationalist George Simion and pro-Western reformist Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan.
“Rather than let the future president replace me, I decided to resign myself,” the prime minister told reporters after a meeting at the headquarters of his Social Democratic Party, or PSD.
Sunday’s rerun underscored strong anti-establishment sentiment among Romanians and signaled a power shift away from traditional mainstream parties. It also renewed the political turmoil that has gripped the European Union and NATO member country.
The rerun took place months after a top court annulled the previous race following allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference, which Moscow has denied. The unprecedented decision plunged Romania into its worst political crisis in decades.
The prime minister had said one aim of forming the coalition last December — after the failed election — was to field a common candidate to win the presidency. After Sunday's vote, he said, the coalition now “lacks any credibility." It is made up of the leftist PSD, the center-right National Liberal Party, the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party and national minorities.
Ciolacu said his party would not officially support either candidate in the final presidential vote on May 18. “Every PSD supporter will vote as they wish, according to their own conscience,” he said.
An interim prime minister will be selected from the current Cabinet of ministers and appointed by interim President Ilie Bolojan, who noted Ciolacu's resignation and is expected to make an appointment on Tuesday.
Sunday’s vote was the second time in Romania’s post-communist history, including the voided election cycle, that the PSD party did not have a candidate in the second round of a presidential race.
As in many EU countries, anti-establishment sentiment is running high in Romania, fueled by high inflation, a large budget deficit and a sluggish economy. Observers say the malaise has bolstered support for nationalist and far-right figures like Calin Georgescu, who won the first round in the canceled presidential election. He is under investigation and barred from the rerun.
Cristian Andrei, a Bucharest-based political consultant, says Ciolacu may have resigned to give his party “negotiation options” for a future coalition after the runoff.
“The decision can defuse some anti-coalition sentiment before the presidential runoff,” he said, but added that any negotiations to form a new Cabinet would "increase the sentiment that the older political parties are struggling to keep control of power.”
Simion, the 38-year-old frontrunner in Sunday's vote and the leader of the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, will face Dan in a runoff that could reshape the country's geopolitical direction.
In 2019, Simion founded the AUR party, which rose to prominence in a 2020 parliamentary election by proclaiming to stand for “family, nation, faith, and freedom." It has since become Romania’s second-largest party in the legislature.
Dan, a 55-year-old mathematician and former anti-corruption activist who founded the Save Romania Union party in 2016, ran on a pro-EU ticket. He told the media early Monday that “a difficult second round lies ahead, against an isolationist candidate.”
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu gestures at the PSD headquarters before announcing his resignation, in Bucharest, Romania, Monday, May 5, 2025, the day after the governing coalition's candidate failed to advance to the runoff in the presidential election rerun. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu is surrounded by media at the PSD headquarters as he announces his resignation, in Bucharest, Romania, Monday, May 5, 2025, the day after the governing coalition's candidate failed to advance to the runoff in the presidential election rerun. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu speaks to media at the PSD headquarters as he announces his resignation, in Bucharest, Romania, Monday, May 5, 2025, the day after the governing coalition's candidate failed to advance to the runoff in the presidential election rerun. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)
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)
