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California became the first state in America to legally recognize a third gender after Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown signed the legislation Sunday. State drivers' licenses, birth certificates, and other identity documents will now allow residents to check "non-binary" rather than just male or female, the Sacramento Bee reported Monday. [Snip] Many in the transgender community reported difficulty traveling when the gender on licenses and other identification conflicted with their appearance ...

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean on Thursday slammed President Trump for having "no clue" how to lead the federal recovery effort in Puerto Rico, suggesting that the Clinton Foundation — run by the family of Trump's former opponent Hillary Clinton — handle it instead. "What we should do is turn over the rehab of Puerto Rico to the Clinton Foundation. They know what they are doing," said Dean, a Hillary Clinton supporter. Dean's tweet was in response to a comment made by President Trump earlier on Thursday in which he said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the...

California can now start jailing people that refuse to use the preferred gender pronouns of nursing home residents after Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill Thursday. The law’s effect is limited to nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, but mandates that those who “willfully and repeatedly” refuse “to use a transgender resident’s preferred name or pronouns” can be slapped with a $1,000 fine and up to one year in prison, according to the California Heath and Safety code. Known as the “LGBT Senior Bill Of Rights,” the legislation also requires nursing homes and care facilities to allow residents...

My kids didn’t have school the day after Donald Trump won the presidential election and eventually, near noon, they came into my room to see what was wrong with me. Perhaps they’d come to me at their father’s prompting. Perhaps they’d heard me weeping. They’d never seen me this way before. Inconsolable. “Hillary didn’t lose!” I insisted, as they sat on the bed around me, even as Hillary’s voice drifted into the room — her concession speech, on the radio downstairs, my husband shouting up, “Honey, you should come listen to this!” I would not listen. I would never listen....

Pope Francis flew to Bologna, Italy, Sunday and met with a large group of migrants and refugees, calling them “warriors of hope” while insisting that nations open broader avenues for immigration. During a full day in Bologna, Francis spent an hour meeting hundreds of migrants personally while posing with them for selfies under light drizzle. Later, the pontiff hosted a luncheon for asylum-seekers and prisoners in the St. Petronius basilica. He even donned a yellow plastic ID bracelet used by asylum-seekers to express his solidarity with them. “Do you know what you are? You are ‘warriors of hope’!” Francis exclaimed...

Despite President Trump’s reversal of Obama-era policies on transgenderism, his administration still is spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on transgenderism research, the government watchdog Judicial Watch warns. In August, Trump rescinded an Obama-era policy allowing the military to recruit transgender people. The president also banned the Department of Defense from using its resources to provide medical regimens for transgenders currently serving in the military, citing the “medical costs” as the primary driver of his decision. In February, the Trump administration ended Obama’s order that public schools open their bathrooms and locker rooms to people according to gender “identity.”...

Since Donald Trump was elected, marginalized communities have understood that life could become more difficult, but no one could have imagined just how difficult. From the moment Trump was inaugurated, we have borne witness to the ways in which his presidency has negatively affected our lives. From instituting a Muslim ban to emboldening and supporting white supremacists; from banning transgender people from serving in the military to ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, it’s clear to anyone looking that this administration isn’t acting in the best interests of marginalized communities.

A Florida teacher's request for students to use gender-neutral pronouns has left parents divided in opinion. Math and science teacher Chloe Bressack, who teaches at Canopy Oaks Elementary in Tallahassee, Florida, sent the letter home to the 5th grade class at the beginning of the year.

This weekend, leaders from Ole Miss Greek life convened upon Camp Hopewell in Lafayette County for a three-day retreat designed to build leaders and bring campus closer together. The retreat was cut short Saturday night, however, after three black students found a banana peel in a tree in front of one of the camp’s cabins. The students shared what they found with National Pan-Hellenic Council leaders, sparking a day’s worth of camp-wide conversation surrounding symbolism, intended or not. In the midst of the open and sometimes heated discussion, senior accounting major Ryan Swanson said he put the banana peel in...

A 5-year-old named Leo sat surrounded by toys on the floor of his bedroom in Brooklyn this week marked with some classic little-boy touches: hair in his eyes and a scab on one knee.

French authorities warn farmers of Jewish thieves ahead of Yom Kippur Municipal veterinary service says Jews and Muslims may try to steal chickens and sheep to use in ‘unauthorized sacrifices’ for holidays Veterinarians in a municipality near Paris warned farmers of an elevated risk of theft of sheep and fowl ahead of the Muslim and Jewish holidays of Eid al-Adha and Yom Kippur, respectively. Get The Times of Israel's Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories FREE SIGN UP! The warning, which provoked angry reactions on the part of communal leaders who felt it was discriminatory, came...

Baltimore’s 225-year-old monument to Christopher Columbus, said to be the oldest in the country and the world dedicated to the explorer that is still standing, has been severely vandalized. A video posted today shows someone smashing the inscription at the base of the 44-foot-tall obelisk located at the intersection of Harford Road and Walther Avenue, across from Herring Run Park. This morning the words on the statue – Sacred to the Memory of Chris. Columbus Oct. XII MDCC VIIIC – were unreadable, a hole smashed in the stone. “Racism: Tear it down,” one sign leaning on the monument base says....

By now, even those without two brain cells to rub together, have heard the news that President Trump's Chief of Strategy, Steve Bannon, is out of the White House. Initial reports were that he was fired; later, reports came out that he tendered his resignation some ten or eleven days ago, and that he and Gen. Kelly (the new chief of staff) mutually agreed that this would be his last day. (Not to worry about Bannon, though; by the early evening, it was announced that he had landed back at Breitbart News from whence he came.) Reaction from the usual...

R. C. Sproul's popular lecture on Protestant Reformer Martin Luther.

As the left mobilizes mobs to tear down confederate statues (and peace monuments) from city-to-city, it was only a matter of time before they would be going after our Founding Fathers. On CNN Thursday morning, liberal analyst Angela Rye argued that our nation’s first president was as detestable as Robert E. Lee because he was a slave owner. “To me, I don't care if it's a George Washington statue or Thomas Jefferson, they all need to come down,” she said before ranting about America’s “very violent past.” In a panel discussion with the Daily Beast’s John Avlon, journalist Farai Chideya...

A group of anti-Confederate protesters aren’t happy enough with the declaration by the city of Memphis that it wants to dig up and move the remains of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. They want it done now. A group surrounded a shovel Wednesday and ceremoniously removed a chunk of grass and soil. “We are going to bring the back hoe, the tractors and the men with the equipment to raise Bedford Forrest from the soil of Memphis,” Isaac Richmond with the “Commission on Religion and Racism” declared to awaiting TV cameras, CBS 3 reported.

I will wager that some politician or media person will claim that the "catastrophic" 8/21 solar eclipse will be caused by global warming.

A good one-sentence summary of the current American political divide is this: Republicans think that Democrats are wrong, but Democrats think that Republicans are evil. I mean, if you believe that all human problems -- poverty, racism, inadequate healthcare, income inequality, whatever -- can be solved, and that the world can be perfected, by another government program and some more spending and coercion, then who could be so evil as to stand in the way? And, if our opponents are evil, shouldn't we be angry? Really angry? We just need someone to articulate and channel that anger to rev up...

Democrat lawmakers and climate change scientists warn that Trump’s disastrous environmental policies will culminate in the destruction of the Sun on August 21, 2017. Since taking office, Donald Trump has been rolling back Obama-era policies that curbed climate change on the pretense of liberating business owners from unnecessary job-killing regulations. However we now know that President Obama’s environmental regulations were the only thing keeping the world from being plunged into total darkness.

President Trump posed for a photo on Monday with the White House's summer intern class. While some outlets seized on Trump rolling his eyes and shushing a reporter for asking questions about his policies, the Twitterverse erupted, pointing out the lack of racial and gender diversity in the class.