Like Dario Angulo, for example.

At his home on the misty slope of Costa Rica’s tallest mountain, Dario Angulo keeps a set of photographs from the years he tended the rolling fairways and clipped greens of a faraway American golf resort.

Angulo learned to drive backhoes and bulldozers, carving water hazards and tee boxes out of former horse pastures in Bedminster, N.J., where a famous New Yorker was building a world-class course. Angulo earned $8 an hour, a fraction of what a state-licensed heavy equipment operator would make, with no benefits or overtime pay. But he stayed seven years on the grounds crew, saving enough for a small piece of land and some cattle back home.

See this is … Read the rest

Oh gee will you look at that, a federal judge says Trump doesn’t have total absolute power after all.

A federal judge today halted the Trump administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy, which forces certain non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico during their court proceedings.

The plaintiffs — a group of asylum seekers and organizations represented by the American Civil Liberties Union — argued the policy violates U.S. asylum law, international treaty obligations and federal regulatory requirements.

But doesn’t Trump have the absolute right and power to ignore all that? No? Huh.

ACLU asserted in a February court filing that the policy — formally known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols” — put migrants at risk of kidnapping, sexual assault,

Prosecutor in the house.

You seem confused, Mr. Mulvaney.

When the law says the IRS “shall” provide tax returns upon the request of the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, it doesn’t mean:

Unless the President fears it,

Tweets about it,

Or his lawyer complains about it.

Shall means shall. https://t.co/CoNsZthgE9

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) April 8, 2019

 … Read the rest

Trump just really really really wants to take children away from people who try to move to the US without his permission.

President Donald Trump has for months urged his administration to reinstate large-scale separation of migrant families crossing the border, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of meetings at the White House.

Trump’s outgoing Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, resisted — setting her at odds with the president.

According to two of the sources, Nielsen told Trump that federal court orders prohibited the Department of Homeland Security from reinstating the policy, and that he would be reversing his own executive order from June that ended family separations.

Federal court orders, pah! Why should Trump care about that? … Read the rest

The @NewYorker on cats and dogs. pic.twitter.com/bnHsdumPZm

— Martin O'Neill (@martin_oneill) April 8, 2019

… Read the rest

More firings from the White House:

United States Secret Service director Randolph “Tex” Alles is being removed from his position, multiple administration officials tell CNN.

President Donald Trump instructed his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to fire Alles. Alles remains in his position as of now but has been asked to leave.

The USSS director was told two weeks ago there would be a transition in leadership and he was asked to stay on until there was a replacement, according to a source close to the director.
Secret Service officials have been caught by surprise with the news and are only finding out through CNN, according to the source.

Like the day Trump fired Comey and the first … Read the rest

Be careful not to complain of noise if you’re in Indonesia:

The Supreme Court has upheld a blasphemy verdict against a Buddhist woman convicted for complaining about the volume of adzan (call to prayer).

In a ruling dated March 27 and posted on the court’s website on Monday, the panel of justices rejected the appeal by Meiliana, a women of Chinese descent and resident of Tanjung Balai, North Sumatra, and upheld her 1.5-year prison sentence.

A year and a half in prison for objecting to a loud “call to prayer.” Too bad for people who work the night shift or the swing shift in Indonesia; they just have to put up with being woken up a lot.

Meiliana’s case

Lucy Bannerman reports that five specialists have quit the Tavistock for reasons of conscience over the past three years.

The clinic used to get about 50 referrals a year, mostly boys, but now thousands of girls are turning up wanting to change their sex.

Until now the specialists struggling to keep up with caseloads have stayed silent, but alarm over the number of adolescents being prescribed body-altering drugs, has prompted five former clinicians to speak out for the first time.

All five have resigned from the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in the past three years as a matter of conscience.

“This experimental treatment is being done not only on children, but very vulnerable children, who have experienced mental health

The Times (the London one):

As a self-proclaimed “leftie liberal”, Tracy Shaw, 44, a mother of three, had not taken much notice of the rise of transgender activism — but that all changed in the space of a few weeks last summer.

Her nine-year-old daughter brought home a notice from her gymnastics club in south Oxfordshire informing her that she would have to share changing rooms with trans children. Then a friend, who had to attend a rape crisis centre, was told that she had to be prepared to share details of her assault with self-indentifying women.

The final straw came when another friend’s teenage daughter, who has short hair and wears trousers, was approached by a teacher who asked

The myriad ways women are treated differently from men, not in a good way, are so myriad they’re hard to exhaust. We keep learning of new ones. Jill Filipovic points out that young men have promise while young women are incompetent.

There are several youngish men jostling for the presidential slot, and maybe this is why.

But whether a youngish candidate is bright, brilliant and promising or inexperienced, off-putting and ruthlessly ambitious depends on whether the young thing in question is male or female.

“Promise” itself is gendered. Research consistently shows that in American workplaces, women tend to be promoted once their managers see them perform well; men are promoted if managers believe in their potential to do well.

More on the trans women running with women in the Boston marathon last year issue:

Transgender women will race in next week’s Boston Marathon, officials say — a decision sparking controversy among experts who disagree on whether runners who identify as women but were born male might hold a competitive advantage.

At least five openly transgender women are signed up to run April 16. And while they aren’t the first, they’re helping bring clarity to the race’s stance on transgender runners.

“We take people at their word. We register people as they specify themselves to be,” said Tom Grilk, chief of the Boston Athletic Association, the group behind the race. “Members of the LGBT community have had a lot to

Trump called asylum seekers at the southern border “animals” yesterday and yet

As President Trump threatened to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border in recent days, his Department of Homeland Security nearly doubled the number of temporary guest worker visas available this summer.

Well, that’s different. That’s cheap labor; that’s a whole other story.

DHS and the Labor Department plan to grant an additional 30,000 H-2B visas this summer on top of the 33,000 H-2B visas they had planned to give out, the agencies confirmed.

The H-2B visa is for foreign workers to come to the United States and work for several months at a company such as a landscaper, amusement park or hotel. About 80 percent of these visas went

This has happened before.

The FBI has joined the investigation into a string of suspicious fires at historically black churches in Louisiana. Three churches have burned in less than two weeks in St. Landry Parish near Baton Rouge.

The fire at Greater Union Baptist Tuesday burned from the roof to the pews. For Pastor Harry Richard, whose grandfather helped start the church more than 100 years ago, the damage is personal.

“He left a legacy for me and I was trying to fulfill that to the best of my ability,” he said.

The suspicious fires began early last week, with the most recent one on Thursday. All three historically black baptist churches are just a few miles apart in

Speaking of the ACLU…

FACT CHECK: Supporting trans athletes hurts no one.https://t.co/zQ9peh1zwt

— ACLU (@ACLU) April 2, 2019

They say, captioning a photo of two boys who Identify As girls winning a race against girls.

Women and girls do not need protecting from the same people who are pushing abortion bans, removing Title IX protections for all girls, and rolling back the clock on gender justice.

— ACLU (@ACLU) April 2, 2019

Girls who are trans are girls. PERIOD.

— ACLU (@ACLU) April 2, 2019

No one is hurt when trans people live authentically.

Not in the restroom.

Not in the locker room.

Not on the court, field or track.

— ACLU (@ACLU) April 2, 2019

FACT CHECK: Many

I’m sensing a pattern.

Trans women are women.
Trans women are women.
Trans women are women.
Trans women are women.
Trans women are women.
Trans women are women.
Trans women are women.#EqualityAct

— Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) April 2, 2019

TRANS PEOPLE WON'T BE ERASED.
TRANS PEOPLE WON'T BE ERASED.
TRANS PEOPLE WON'T BE ERASED.
TRANS PEOPLE WON'T BE ERASED.
TRANS PEOPLE WON'T BE ERASED.
TRANS PEOPLE WON'T BE ERASED.
TRANS PEOPLE WON'T BE ERASED.
TRANS PEOPLE WON'T BE ERASED.
TRANS PEOPLE WON'T BE ERASED.

— ACLU (@ACLU) April 2, 2019

… Read the rest