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The U.S. State Department has ordered non-essential U.S. embassy personnel and their family members to depart Saudi Arabia, following an uptick in attacks on the kingdom by Iran-backed Houthi militants.

The department “issued an ordered departure for non-emergency U.S. government employees and their family members in Saudi Arabia only,” spokesperson Tommy Pigott wrote in a Wednesday X post, pushing back on a report that orders could apply to other Gulf states.

WTX US News has learned several other embassies adjusted their staffing under “restricted operations” status, but have not gone on ordered departure, which involves the mandatory evacuation of designated diplomatic staff and accompanying family due to security risks.

The restricted operations status, which the department introduced in August amid flare-ups in the war with Iran, allows embassies to reduce staffing and services without fully suspending operations. 

The decision to draw down personnel in Saudi Arabia comes after U.S. embassies in the kingdom, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and other countries issued warnings over the weekend, urging Americans in the region to exercise caution and prepare for travel disruptions due to Houthi attacks.

“Iranian-supported Houthis have increasingly engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia, including attacks on civilian airports and other critical infrastructure resulting in civilian casualties and severe travel disruptions,” Pigott said Wednesday.

The Houthis have launched drones and missiles at airports and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia in recent weeks, including a strike on Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport earlier this month that killed 12 people and injured more than 300 others. One American was among those killed.

The attacks have continued, with a Saudi-led military coalition reporting that it intercepted multiple Houthi drones on Monday and Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry said Tuesday that air defenses blocked a drone attack on the country’s Shaybah oil field. Two people were killed and two were injured by falling debris, according to the agency, which did not specify who launched the drone.

Meanwhile, the Houthis have sought to expand their territorial control in Yemen. The group has controlled a large swath of the country for more than a decade, including the capital of Sanaa.

Some Saudi officials have blamed Iran for the conduct of the Houthis, which are aligned with the Islamic Republic. Iran has denied any role in the escalation.

The conflict could cause problems beyond Saudi Arabia due to the Houthis’ proximity to the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a key maritime chokepoint that a large share of the world’s oil flows through. The strait has become more important in recent months due to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz wrought by the U.S.-Iran war.

Ambassador Marwan Ali Noman, political adviser to the Foreign Minister of Yemen, warned in an interview with WTX US News on Tuesday that the Houthis could continue their attacks unless confronted.

“We are fighting on behalf of everyone, because the threat and risk of the Houthis will expand,” Noman said, adding that the Yemeni government is seeking international assistance.

The United Kingdom has offered support to Saudi Arabia, including defensive air operations. 

It’s not clear whether the Trump administration is also planning to assist Saudi Arabia. President Trump did not rule out strikes on the Houthis after the group’s deadly Oct. 10 attack on the Riyadh airport, telling reporters: “We may.”

Mr. Trump said earlier this month: “We have communication with the Houthis, and we’ll see what happens. But what they did was very bad.”

Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday left intact a lower court decision that blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a new Bureau of Prisons policy that would end certain medical interventions for transgender inmates.

In an unsigned, one-line order, the high court rejected an emergency appeal from the Justice Department asking it to freeze the district court order and revive the new rules. The policy would cut off surgical and hormone therapy treatments, as well as social accommodations, for inmates who have been or will be diagnosed with gender dysphoria. 

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said they would have allowed the Trump administration to enforce the change.

The Trump administration sought the Supreme Court’s intervention in the dispute last month and argued that the new policy for transgender inmates is needed to “maintain institutional security.” 

But lawyers for a transgender woman and two transgender men in federal prisons who challenged the rules said the Bureau of Prisons has provided hormone treatment to people with gender dysphoria since 1992. They said that the new policy required the end of treatment for nearly 1,000 inmates in the bureau’s custody.

The dispute before the Supreme Court stems from a lawsuit the inmates filed against the Trump administration last year on behalf of incarcerated people diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The suit was filed after President Trump issued an executive order that barred the use of federal funds for medical procedures or treatments for transgender inmates who are in Bureau of Prisons custody.

In response to Mr. Trump’s directive, the Bureau of Prisons issued a new policy in February stating that it would not provide surgeries or hormone therapy to address gender dysphoria. Inmates who were receiving hormone treatments could be put on a tapering plan that would eventually lead to a discontinuation of the interventions.

Under the new rules, the Bureau of Prisons will also no longer provide any social accommodations, such as breast padding, binders, wigs and makeup, to inmates with gender dysphoria.

In a memo accompanying the policy, the Bureau of Prisons cited Mr. Trump’s executive order and said it changed its rules to “reflect treatment for gender dysphoria that is more aligned with the latest scientific information, that is consistent with BOP’s longstanding policy of providing medical care that is tailored to the unique needs of the inmate, and that accounts for the complex security and administration concerns in the correctional environment.”

In June, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued an order preventing the Trump administration from enforcing the February policy. The judge required the Bureau of Prisons to continue providing medical interventions and social accommodations to a class of inmates with gender dysphoria.

“The court does not wade into the culture war being waged against transgender individuals,” Lamberth, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, wrote in a 31-page decision. “The court simply concludes that the government violated [federal law] when it issued a new policy restricting the provision of gender-affirming care to inmates diagnosed with gender dysphoria.”

Lamberth issued an order in August that continued to block the policy.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit then declined to lift the district court’s injunction. In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court said the Bureau of Prisons “did not adequately consider its own experience providing gender-affirming care under its prior policy” and failed to make a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits of the case.

In its emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the district court’s decision “prevents the application of the Executive’s chosen policy” on a broad basis.

Sauer defended the legality of the policy ending medical treatments for transgender inmates and said the Bureau of Prisons “seasonably considered its prior experience both in determining that such interventions are not medically necessary and in determining that security and prison-administration concerns independently justified a change in policy.”

But the challengers of the administration’s new rules argued the Trump administration failed to put forth any evidence indicating whether healthcare providers for the Bureau of Prisons found the now-restricted medical treatments to be effective, ineffective or harmful.

“BOP cut off treatment that its healthcare providers had recommended for decades and replaced it with psychotherapy — which its own expert acknowledges is backed by no evidence demonstrating its efficacy as a treatment for gender dysphoria — and psychotropic medications — which BOP’s Medical Director does not even claim treat gender dysphoria, only co-existing conditions,” lawyers for the transgender inmates wrote.

They also argued that the agency has not “pointed to a single security incident” relating to the provision of medical interventions to address gender dysphoria.

“Had BOP’s doctors found this treatment unhelpful or harmful to patients or had the agency found that the treatment compromised security, surely BOP would have mentioned it in the administrative record,” lawyers for the plaintiffs said. “That glaring omission, as well as the unreasonableness of its decision, make it clear that the rationales were contrived to support the demand President Trump made in the EO.”