New Hampshire
Opinion: NH means memory – Concord Monitor
When people think of New Hampshire, they usually think of granite, mountains, old white
churches, town greens and long winters. When I think of New Hampshire, I think of our people. I think of the feeling of growing up somewhere where history is not locked away behind museum glass. I think about the feeling of growing up somewhere that teaches you who you are before you are old enough to realize it.
I spent almost my entire childhood in Concord. Every important version of myself exists somewhere in this city. The awkward middle schooler wandering Main Street after school beneath strings of glowing lights. The nervous freshman trying to figure out who he wanted to become. The kid at the Concord Community Music School performing at recitals, hands shaking before walking onstage, discovering that playing guitar could make life feel bigger, brighter and more meaningful.
I think about early mornings rowing on the Merrimack with Concord Crew, the river covered in fog while the oars cut clean lines through the water. Some mornings the river felt silver and still; other mornings the current churned dark beneath us after rain. Watching the seasons change from the water taught me how slowly life transforms without you noticing. Green summer banks fading into fiery October trees, then bare branches outlined against cold winter skies.
The older I get, the more I realize how lucky I was to grow up in a place like Concord. It is not loud about what it offers you. Instead, it gives you something more lasting: community. A kind of closeness that settles into you over time until it becomes part of the way you move through the world.
Some of my strongest memories are simple ones. Walking downtown at sunset when the brick buildings glowed orange in the summer light. The smell of old wood, clay and paint inside Kimball Jenkins after shaping it into a small cup with my hands. Hearing music drift down the halls at the music school before a recital, notes echoing softly through the worn staircases. Sitting outside during Market Days while the streets filled with food vendors, kids running around with lion and fairy face paint, and musicians playing songs that bounced between the old buildings late into the evening air.
There is something deeply comforting about a city that respects its own history. Concord has always felt alive with memory to me. The old houses, white church steeples and worn wooden floors in certain buildings remind you that generations of people have passed through before you. It feels like people here understand that preserving history is care. They protect what matters because they believe future generations deserve to experience it too.
I think that shaped me more than I realized at the time.
New Hampshire taught me to slow down enough to notice things. The sound of leaves moving in the woods by my house. Snow falling silently outside during the winter, making the entire world pause for a moment. Long walks downtown where you somehow always recognized someone. Even the “between places” mattered: the trails, forests, rivers and back roads that reminded you the world was larger than your own worries.
As a senior in high school, I’m getting ready to leave for Dartmouth College this fall, and it doesn’t feel like I’m stepping away from home so much as moving deeper into it. I chose Dartmouth because it’s still rooted in the same landscape that shaped me. The woods, the cold rivers, the long winters and the quiet sense of space that feels so distinctly New Hampshire. Growing up in Concord, so many of the people I met, families at the YMCA, volunteers at the planetarium, friends of friends, teachers and mentors, seemed to have some connection back to Dartmouth, as if it were part of the state’s shared geography rather than something separate from it. Because of that, it already felt present in my life long before I applied. Leaving for Hanover feels like a continuation: not like leaving home, but like walking along the same trails I’ve always known, just farther into the trees.
Concord gave me my first experiences with art, music, friendship, independence and becoming part of something larger than myself. It gave me room to grow while still making me feel supported. It taught me that community is built through ordinary moments repeated over time until they become the foundation of who you are.
To me, New Hampshire means roots. It means history that still breathes. It means creativity, kindness, old buildings, deep winters, rivers at sunrise, summer festivals and long walks through the woods. Most of all, it means home.
Vaibhav Rastogi is a senior a Brady Bishop High School. He lives in Concord.
New Hampshire
Trans athletes drop lawsuit to gain access to girls’ sports in New Hampshire after SCOTUS ruling
Fighting the transgender sports ban is ‘utterly misogynistic’: Riley Gaines
Fox News discusses the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold transgender sports bans. Former NCAA All-American Riley Gaines states it’s ‘insane’ to challenge biological sex in sports, asserting boys should not compete in girls’ sports. She calls the opposing movement ‘misogynistic,’ advocating for female athletes’ rights and fair competition, a view echoed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon. This highlights the contentious issue in women’s sports.
A pair of trans athletes in New Hampshire have dismissed their lawsuit to challenge the state law that protects girls’ sports after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Title IX ruling on June 30.
The trans teenage plaintiffs, Parker Tirrell and Iris Turmelle, originally filed the lawsuit in 2024 to challenge a current New Hampshire state law prohibiting trans athletes from participating in girls’ sports. The lawsuit later expanded to add President Donald Trump’s administration to the defendants after Trump signed the “No Men in Women’s Sports” executive order on Feb. 5, 2025.
The lawyers for the trans athletes claimed Trump’s executive order, along with parts of a Jan. 20 executive order that forbids federal money from being used to “promote gender ideology,” subjects the teens and all transgender girls to discrimination in violation of federal equal protection guarantees and their rights under Title IX.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM
A transgender athlete and the Supreme Court (Getty Images)
The U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire then ruled last year that female athletes represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys were permitted to intervene in the case to defend the state’s women’s sports law and the administration’s executive orders.
Now, after the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling, which protects state laws that ensure only females compete in girls’ sports, there is no room for the trans teens to fight the law in New Hampshire.
“Women and girls deserve privacy, safety, and equal opportunities. That can’t happen when males are competing in women’s sports, taking spots on women’s athletic teams, and winning women’s championships,” ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Litigation Strategy Jonathan Scruggs said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital.
USA POWERLIFTING, ONCE IN TRANS ATHLETE LAWSUIT, SUPPORTS SCOTUS RULING: ‘LAW HAS CAUGHT UP WITH THE SCIENCE’
“President Trump’s executive orders and New Hampshire’s law recognize common sense and track Title IX, the federal law that ensures equal opportunities for women in athletics. We are grateful this case is coming to an end and that New Hampshire is free to protect its female athletes.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Tirrell and Turmelle’s attorneys at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) for a response.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
A protester waves a transgender pride flag outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Building on June 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. Advocates organized a rally in response the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in US v. Skrmetti, in which the justices ruled to uphold state bans on gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The SCOTUS rulings in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, the high court upheld state laws requiring student-athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond with their biological sex at birth rather than their gender identity, in a 6-3 decision.
However, there are still 23 states, including California, New York and Massachusetts, that don’t have any such laws, and some of those have laws to protect trans athletes in girls’ sports.
New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte (Getty Images)
New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte has signed legislation requiring public school employees to disclose information about transgender students to their parents or legal guardians, reversing a 2024 state Supreme Court ruling that upheld students’ privacy rights in certain circumstances.
Ayotte’s office announced on 2 July that the legislation had been signed into law. Under SB 430, educators must respond to written requests from parents for “material information” about their child, even if a student has asked that the information be kept confidential or fears negative consequences at home.
Supporters of the legislation, such as Republican state Senator Tim Lang, argue the measure strengthens parental rights and enables families to better support children who may be struggling. “If you don’t tell the parent, the parent can’t watch for the signs of self-harm,” Lang told New Hampshire Public Radio.
Educators and LGBTQ+ advocates, however, say the law places teachers in an impossible position by forcing them to choose between complying with the law and protecting vulnerable students. Megan Tuttle, president of NEA-New Hampshire, the state’s largest teachers’ union, said in a statement that the legislation is “vaguely written and risks putting educators in a position of outing a student.” She added that schools should remain places where every student feels “safe, seen, and free to be themselves.”
Aimee Terravechia, executive director of LGBTQ+ advocacy group 603 Equality, warned the law could erode trust between students and educators while speaking with New Hampshire Public Radio. “Schools should be a place of learning… and a place of critical self-examination,” she said. “Placing educators into a role of monitoring and reporting removes the trust necessary for a thriving academic environment.”
The legislation also effectively overturns a 2024 New Hampshire Supreme Court decision, in which justices ruled that keeping a student’s gender identity confidential did not unlawfully interfere with parents’ rights, noting that parents still retained numerous ways to support and communicate with their children outside the classroom.
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