![]()
Arturo Hernandez Garcia with his family during 2015, when he was in sanctuary at a Denver-area church.
Arturo Hernandez Garcia Temporarily Freed After ICE Detention: New Hope?
Arturo Hernandez Garcia with his family during 2015, when he was in sanctuary at a Denver-area church.
Arturo Hernandez Garcia Temporarily Freed After ICE Detention: New Hope?
Last night, May 2, Arturo Hernandez Garcia, a Mexican immigrant and former sanctuary seeker who was detained on April 26 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, received a temporary reprieve that will allow him to attend his daughter’s graduation from high school. During this brief period of freedom, his attorney hopes to convince an appeals court to take another look at his case, which his supporters see as representing everything that’s wrong and unjust about the current U.S. immigration system.
Hernandez Garcia, who owns a small flooring business that employs up to nine people, was the subject of the February 2015 Westword feature article “A Denver Church Joins a Nationwide Movement to Provide Sanctuary to Undocumented Immigrants.” At the time, he was living in sanctuary at the First Unitarian Society in Denver — the same church at which fellow immigrant and Time magazine honoree Jeanette Vizguerra is currently staying — to avoid being deported.
According to an ICE statement released after his April detention, Hernandez Garcia first entered the U.S. in January 2003 on a six-month visitor visa, and he stayed off the agency’s radar until March 2010, “following his arrest on local criminal charges.” Specifically, he was busted after a white window installer said that he’d pulled a knife on him — a claim that flew in the face of witness testimony and was quickly rejected by a jury at trial. …
Keystone XL: the final leg and the myth of Trump’s job promise
Part three: The Guardian’s pipeline road trip ends in Nebraska, where Trump has sold the project as a creator of ‘a lot of jobs’, but facts don’t support his claims
Words by Oliver Laughland, photos and video by Laurence Mathieu-Léger, graphics by Monica Ulmanu
“Nebraska is the last hope for stopping this,” says Art Tanderup, sitting on the lawn close to the solar panels that provide most of the energy to his farm. Spring comes a little earlier here than in South Dakota and Montana. The 2ft deep snow drifts that had blanketed the farmland melted a month ago, revealing acres of harvested corn stubble that is now being readied for replanting.
This year’s crop cycle brings with it a sense of unprecedented foreboding for Tanderup and his wife Helen, who returned to the century-old family farm in 2011, hoping for a quiet retirement.
The night of Donald Trump’s election brought tears here. “I thought: ‘Here we go again,’” says Helen. “We’re going to be fighting the Keystone pipeline again.”
The Tanderups’ farm, like many properties in the XL’s pathway in this state, sits above the Ogallala aquifer, which they depend on for their drinking and farm water. The pipeline would also come within 600ft of their farmhouse. …
After Trump’s revival of the Keystone XL pipeline project, some communities along its route are getting ready to fight back.
Others see the US president keeping his promise to ‘make America great again’. The Guardian drove along the proposed route of the pipeline, through three red states – Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska – to hear what those who will be affected have to say about it.
Should Taxpayers Sponsor Attorneys for Undocumented
A handful of cities and states are funding pro-bono legal counsel for deportation proceedings—and making a political statement about the Trump administration in the process.
March’s Solidarity Rally Against Deportation in New York City, near the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices
Unlike most criminal defendants in the United States, undocumented immigrants facing potential deportation are not constitutionally guaranteed counsel if they aren’t able to afford a private attorney. While for years attorneys and advocates have pressed for publicly funded lawyers in immigration courts, it wasn’t until Donald Trump’s political ascendency that immigrant-friendly local governments began turning those calls into policy—by allocating funding for pro-bono legal services.
While it’s still unclear how sustainable these programs will be, each one offers a one-two punch: a benefit for people lawmakers at least ostensibly want to assist, and another show of defiance against an administration these cities and states largely oppose. Trump’s repeated pledge to deport millions, as well as executive orders widening enforcement authorities’ net, “brought the need into focus,” said Seattle City Councilmember Lorena Gonzalez, who sponsored a unanimously passed bill to offer legal representation within city limits.
When Mayor Ed Murray signed that legislation late last week, allocating $1 million to local legal organizations, Seattle joined a handful of other cities and states who’ve started similar programs. Lawmakers in Los Angeles; San Francisco; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; and New York City have likewise designated public dollars for counsel in immigration courts, and Austin’s city council is temporarily drawing money from its emergency-relief fund for the same purpose. New York recently created the first statewide immigrant-defense fund, and California is poised to do the same.
The jurisdictions taking these steps aren’t exactly a surprise. The governors of New York and California vehemently oppose Trump’s policies. The major cities have long been the destination of immigrants, and tend to be run by Trump-opposing Democrats, too. And all of them, except for Los Angeles, have “sanctuary” status: Broadly speaking, their law enforcement doesn’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities. …
House Republicans plan Thursday vote on bill to repeal and replace Obamacare
Republicans expressed confidence that they had the votes to pass it after Donald Trump won over two key Republican skeptics in a White House meeting
House majority leader Kevin McCarthy: ‘Do we have the votes? Yes. Will we pass it? Yes.’
House Republicans are planning to hold a vote on Thursday on a controversial plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, expressing confidence that they had the votes to pass it.
Majority leader Kevin McCarthy, emerging from a meeting in the office of House speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday evening, told reporters that Republicans had at least 216 yes votes and would vote on the bill on Thursday.
“Do we have the votes? Yes. Will we pass it? Yes,” McCarthy told reporters with a broad smile.
The House rules committee was due to debate the bill on Wednesday night, allowing it to move to the full House floor the following day.
The frenetic push to fulfill a signature campaign promise gained momentum on Wednesday as lawmakers tinkered with the bill to try to address concerns that the plan would hurt people with preexisting medical conditions. …
Political Malfeasance
Passing Trumpcare 2.0 will be an unmitigated disaster for the GOP.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi during a rally in Los Angeles on April 9.
Under pressure from the Trump administration, House Speaker Paul Ryan and his allies are still fighting to pass the American Health Care Act, more than a month after a first attempt crashed against a wall of grassroots opposition and reticent Republican lawmakers.
This latest push centers on two amendments, one to win over conservative opponents, the other to win over more moderate holdouts. The first amendment, crafted by New Jersey Rep. Tom MacArthur and introduced in April, would allow states to waive key requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Under MacArthur’s proposal, states could opt to allow insurers to sell plans that lacked essential health benefits such as maternity care and mental health services and let them charge sick people more for health insurance than those with fewer complications and conditions. The MacArthur amendment satisfied demands from House Freedom Caucus, winning key conservative support.
At the same time, these provisions alienated more moderate Republicans who wanted help for those Americans with pre-existing conditions. Which brings us to the second amendment, introduced by Reps. Fred Upton of Michigan and Billy Long of Missouri. This proposal would open $8 billion in funding for state-crafted high-risk pools to help insure individuals with pre-existing conditions. With this amendment attached, Upton—a surprise no vote on the bill earlier in the week, but now a yes—predicted the AHCA would pass the House. …
Can the Democrats Convince Millennials to Vote in 2018?
The party has a boom-and-bust coalition: Some of its most reliable voters during presidential elections—young people and minorities—don’t turn out as enthusiastically for midterms.
President Trump’s historically low approval ratings provide Democrats legitimate reasons for optimism about their prospects in the 2018 elections, especially in the House. But that confidence rests on a contradiction: Minorities and Millennials, the groups most alienated from Trump, are traditionally the constituencies least likely to vote in midterm elections.
The contrast between the electorate’s composition in presidential and midterm elections has confounded Democrats since the 1990s. Over the past two decades, the party has grown more reliant on a coalition revolving around college-educated whites (especially women), minorities, and Millennials. That new configuration has left Democrats with a boom-and-bust coalition, because the latter two groups are much more likely to vote in presidential elections than midterms; that off-year falloff has been particularly severe among young people. As those Democratic-leaning groups recede in midterms, the older whites who increasingly favor the GOP cast a larger share of ballots.
That dynamic helped fuel the GOP sweeps in both the 2010 and 2014 contests under former President Barack Obama, and offers a warning for the next one. “If the 2018 electorate resembles a typical midterm electorate, Democrats won’t take back the House,” said Tom Bonier, chief executive of the Democratic voter-targeting firm TargetSmart. “The question of millennial turnout is the biggest question to that end, and it will remain an open question until Election Day 2018.”
The challenge is especially urgent for Democrats because Trump divides younger and older Americans so sharply. Though Trump showed strength among blue-collar white Millennials, he carried just 36 percent of young people overall last November. Polls show he’s lost ground since. Both the CNN/ORC and NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys released last week found his approval rating among adults ages 18 to 34—almost exactly the Millennial generation’s boundaries—falling below 30 percent. That’s much lower than his ratings among older adults, especially those 50 or older. …
Sean Spicer clashes with press over definition of a wall
White House press secretary faces challenge from journalists over whether images showed walls or fences as he insists Trump is fulfilling his promise
When is a wall not a wall? When it’s a fence.
That was the question on many minds on Wednesday when Sean Spicer, the accident-prone White House press secretary, gave a presentation on border security with the aid of TV screens.
“This is what exists right now throughout our country,” he declared, gesturing towards four images of ageing, flimsy defences. “You see a place where cars can literally create little things and drive over. You’ve got places that can get burrowed under. That one they’ve created. That one doesn’t seem to be effective at keeping people in it.”
These sorry images represented the country’s current border security, he said, adding that every time someone broke through, it cost just under $1,000 to fix. “Now to the next slide,” he said, teasing a reporter: “You had no idea you were getting this, did you?” …
When Internet Memes Infiltrate the Physical World
Deplorable frogs and “nasty women” aren’t just online for comic relief. They’re central to how people engage with political issues.
A protester holds up a sign that evokes “This Is Fine,” a widely remixed meme based on an illustration by the artist KC Green.
In addition to people of all genders at the Women’s March on Washington and Inauguration Day, there were a number of creatures: octopi, frogs, honey badgers, and cats. No, people hadn’t brought a variety of exotic pets—they were bringing along memes, and those memes appeared on signs, pins and other physical media. The octopus was the famous “Nope nope nope” octopus; the frog was Pepe and his leftist counterpart Kermit; the honey badger, known on the internet for not caring, decided to care deeply about the country’s direction; and cats like Grumpy Cat registered their dismay, or approval, with the events of the weekend.
Today, in many global movement contexts, our meme lifecycles now include physical objects. In addition to protest signs, people now imbue hats, pins, cloth bags, pillow cases, and T-shirts with political meme material.
A group of women at the 2017 Women’s March on Washington hold up a series of signs evoking the “nope octopus” meme.
Objects are worn or brought to events, and when people take pictures of them, they circulate back on the internet, thus continuing the meme’s lifecycle online and offline. This creates a visual and verbal language that crosses geographies, uniting protests large and small around the country and internationally. …
Super-rich private equity stars rue ‘lousy’ reputation, say they are misunderstood
Stephen Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone, speaks during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 2, 2017.
Ultra-wealthy private equity managers lamented their reputation as ‘lousy’ corporate profiteers at a plush Beverly Hills hotel on Tuesday, arguing their value to society was greater than the public realized.
Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive and co-founder of the Blackstone Group, touted the fact that companies owned by his private equity business employed about 600,000 people and had grown 50 percent faster, on average, than the S&P 500 Index.
“The idea that you can do all that and have great success and be perceived at best in a marginal way in terms of contribution to society, you’ve got to really wonder who’s doing the PR,” Schwarzman said during a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference at the Beverly Hilton hotel.
“People mistake us for financial people. I don’t know exactly why,” said Schwarzman – worth some $12 billion, according to Forbes – drawing a distinction between private equity investors which own businesses and mere financiers. “If you had 600,000 employees, you might be a company. A responsible company. And that’s what we are.” …
5 Reasons You Should Join My Cul- Er, Be My Friend
I know how scary it is to move to a new town. Ever since that back-alley game of Liar’s Dice got out of hand and you had to stab your buddy Steve to death with a serrated plastic spork, and consequently cut ties with all the lives that you’ve been living in, and flee San Fransisco to disappear into the screaming metropolis of Los Angeles, it’s felt like your life might never be normal again. How are you going to find a job? How will you survive the crushing guilt known only to men who have watched the light leave their best friend’s eyes? And how will you make new friends?
Well, I dunno about those first two, but I can say that the last one is actually easier than you think. Making friends is only intimidating in your mind — in action, it’s as easy as boiling an egg or writing a radio-friendly late-90s rock song. In fact, if you follow my instructions here, you’ll be able to make friends with anyone you want. Even those guys over there.
See? They look so friendly! Just walk right up to them and say hello. And remember …
#5. If You’re Not Confident, Fake It!
Here’s a tip they don’t teach you at Friend School: Confidence is a choice. The only one stopping you from believing in yourself is you, and I’m not talking about it in the sense of those diabetes-inducing song tropes. Think about how children love to sing, but then their voices slowly fade away. Just look at Third Eye Blind: The lead singer can barely talk and the guitar player’s hands are just deflated flesh-tubes, but they still managed to have a few hits in the late 90s because they believed in themselves and at that point we were pretty much taking what we could get. Anybody harder than the Goo Goo Dolls was considered “alternative.” Not our finest hour, culturally speaking. The point is, everyone is shy, but if you take on the role of a character who isn’t shy, nobody will know the difference! This comes with the added bonus that if you screw up and embarrass yourself, it’s not you who’s embarrassed, it’s your character!
If it helps, try reminding yourself that life is just a waking shadow. A poor player, one might say, who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It’s a tale told by an idiot, to be frank. Full of plenty of what you might call “sound and fury” but, ultimately, signifying nothing.
That’s how I’d describe it, anyway.
So walk right up to those black-robed strangers (soon to be your friends, smiling in pictures you would take!) and crack a joke, or just smile and introduce yourself. I bet they’re friendlier than you think! Most people are. …
Does a Woman’s High-Status Career Hurt Her Marriage? Not If Her Husband Does the Laundry
While women who win the Academy Award for Best Actress are celebrated for reaching a pinnacle of career achievement, several of them also share another distinction – divorce. Known as the “Oscar Curse,” Best Actress award recipients are more likely to file for divorce than are their nominated counterparts or Best Actor winners. Sandra Bullock, Julie Andrews, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Halle Berry, Emma Thompson, and Kate Winslet all share this experience. Patterns like this led us to ask whether womens’ high status careers affect marital stability, and if so, why. Our research on the matter was recently published in the journal Organization Science.
While men continue to occupy the upper echelons of most organizations, women have made considerable progress in acquiring high status roles in organizations. According to U.S. Department of Labor Data, women now hold at least 50% of management and professional positions, outnumbering males in roles such as financial managers, accountants, and medical and health services managers. These workplace changes have affected household roles as well: whereas U.S. women were the primary breadwinners in 18% of marriages in 1987, that number rose to 29% in dual-income marriages by 2014. …
Tourist attacked by Komodo dragon in Indonesia
Komodo dragons have toxic bites, which can prove fatal if not treated quickly
A tourist has been attacked by a Komodo dragon in Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara province.
Park rangers said the incident was “the first in the past five years”.
Native to a small group of Indonesian islands, Komodo dragons are the world’s largest lizards and have venomous bites.
The 50-year-old victim, identified as Singaporean Lon Lee Alle, had reportedly ignored warnings not to get too close to take pictures.
He was then “severely bitten” on his left leg.
“A Komodo doesn’t like to be disturbed when eating. He must have been too close,” Komodo National Park chief Sudiyono told the Jakarta Post. …
China’s Tencent is a sleeping giant in the global artificial intelligence race
Real Smarts
As internet giants all over the world herald their advances in AI, one company has been conspicuously absent—Tencent, the Chinese social media giant, now worth over $300 billion. But the company’s relative silence in matters of artificial intelligence looks set to change quickly.
On May 2 Tencent confirmed that it would open an laboratory in Seattle dedicated solely to artificial intelligence research, to be headed by Yu Dong, a former scientist at Microsoft Research. The news is the latest in a steady stream of announcements indicating the company is making a foray into artificial intelligence. In March the company announced that it had poached Zhang Tong, former head of Baidu’s Big Data Lab in Beijing. And in December 2016, the company confirmed it had established an AI lab in Shenzhen, the company’s home city, earlier that year.
Tencent, at least insofar as it has discussed its efforts publicly, has arrived to AI relatively late. Baidu, China’s Google analog, established its first US-based AI lab in 2013, and has two more in China. Like its American counterpart, the company has poured resources into researching artificial intelligence, image recognition, and self-driving cars. …
Bombay Sapphire gin recalled across Canada for containing too much alcohol
Gin’s alcohol content may be as much as 77%, not 40% as claimed
Liquor authorities across Canada are recalling a brand of gin that may contain almost twice as much alcohol as claimed on the bottle.
The Liquor Control Board Of Ontario was the first to issue a recall after its internal quality assurance team discovered that some bottles of Bombay Sapphire London Dry Gin had not been properly diluted, resulting in an alcohol content of 77 per cent, not 40 per cent as listed on the bottle.
Bermuda-based alcohol conglomerate Bacardi owns Bombay Sapphire (and other brands including Grey Goose vodka and Dewar’s whisky) and the company told CBC News in a statement that, at most, 1,000 cases worth of 1.14-litre Bombay Sapphire bottles were impacted.
The mistake happened when some bottles “inadvertently entered the bottling line during a short period of time (max 45 minutes) when they were switching from one bottling tank to another bottling tank,” Bacardi said. …
Oops…
You can now buy a 1,000 pack of beer in Finland
Look at this 1,000 pack of beer, ye mighty, and despair: it’s only available in Finland.
Created by the Finnish brewery Nokian Panimo, this behemoth of a party pack actually contains 1,080 cans of Keisari, made by combining five stacks of beer, each 12 beers wide by 18 beers long according to GrubStreet.
This behemoth of a package is quite the monument to behold, and it was all constructed in the name of being petty.
Rival beer Karjala released a 100-pack of beer last month which, obviously, now pales in comparison to this lifetime supply. …
5 Famous Self-Help Books (That Are Complete BS)
In an ideal universe, trained educators and/or leading experts in their field would exclusively write self-help books. Unfortunately, in our universe, self-help books are written by sad sacks of shit for much sadder sacks of shit who buy them as last-minute gifts for the world’s saddest sacks of shit. Let’s discuss a few of them!
#5. Kevin Trudeau’s Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You To Know About Is Borderline-Criminal Insanity
Kevin Trudeau won’t let The Man keep him down. Despite spending two years in a federal prison for impersonating a physician in order to commit credit-card fraud, becoming the only person ever banned by the Federal Trade Commission from selling products on television, and getting kicked out of multiple states for running a pyramid scheme, Trudeau is always able to bounce back. Of course, as of press time, he is back in jail serving another ten years. But surely he’ll rebound soon! Possibly in author form.
The Shiv Stabbing Treatments They Don’t Want You To Hear About!
See, Kevin decided that a few years of impersonating a physician was basically the same as decades of medical training, so he wrote a medical advice book called Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You To Know About. It’s about secret magical cures suppressed by the medical industry, those greedy bastards. But while pharmaceutical companies might do questionable things for money, Kevin certainly does questionable things for money. …
MCREFUGEES AND THE CYBER-HOMELESS
With rents for even the smallest quarters exceeding the equivalent of $1000 monthly, a relatively large number of working class people in Asia’s largest cities have become, essentially, homeless. Rather than being completely destitute, as many homeless are, a not inconsiderable number of these individuals earn enough to otherwise support themselves outside of being able to afford housing. To solve the problem of lack of funds for more traditional accommodations, many have turned to 24-hour establishments for a place to spend the night and catch a few Zs, including, in particular, McDonald’s and Manga cafes.
The McDonald’s crowd is particularly prevalent in China and Hong Kong, where they are sometimes called McRefugees or McSleepers; photographs of people slumped over in booths or on table tops, surrounded by the remains of their purchases, abound.
Some overnight businesses seem to encourage the practice – particularly as McSleepers tend to be consistent customers who otherwise cause no trouble. As a McDonald’s Hong Kong representative officially noted: “We welcome all walks of life to visit our restaurants any time.” …
Video Goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
and not-so-goodnesses
American reporters are too afraid to demand answers.
Despite a barrage of tough talk from President Donald Trump, North Korea keeps launching ballistic missiles and threatening to use nuclear weapons against the United States. Trump has pledged to rein in Kim Jong Un’s regime, and called on China to help address the situation, but tensions are running high and there’s no easy solution in sight.
VICE News editor Keegan Hamilton speaks with Ankit Panda, a senior editor at The Diplomat, and Dave Schmerler, a research associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, about North Korea’s weapons program, what conflict would mean for the region, and Trump’s options for negotiating with Pyongyang.
THANKS to HBO and VICE News for making this program available on YouTube.
Seth takes a closer look at FBI Director James Comey’s defense of his last-minute election revelations and the latest on the Republicans’ disastrous health care bill.
Seth Meyers’ monologue from Wednesday, May 3.
THANKS to NBC and Late Night with Seth Meyers for making this program available on YouTube.
Introducing the cast from the scariest thing you’ve ever seen: the GOP’s attempt to pass a health care bill.
FBI Director James Comey says the thought that his actions may have impacted the 2016 election makes him ‘nauseous.’ Talk about relatable!
THANKS to CBS and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for making this program available on YouTube.
After demonstrators protest the Trump administration’s anti-environmental stance, Trevor explains why it’s in the president’s best interest to care about global warming.
THANKS to Comedy Central and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah for making this program available on YouTube.
It’s very possible Batman got hooked on Scarecrow’s hallucinogens then killed The Joker. Why else would the good doctor be included in every movie?
Well, Mr. Watson, we have your lab results back. And, well…
Max continues to be the tough bird and show the yellow rabbit who is boss.
From the bell that hasn’t stopped ringing, to observing evolution in action, SciShow presents 6 of the Longest Experiments Ever.
These remarkable Dolphins in Western Australia display incredible ingenuity when hunting for fish in the shallows. With little room for error, it would appear fortune does indeed favour the brave.
FINALLY . . .
International Church of Cannabis Faces Opposition From Washington Park Neighbors
Inside the International Church of Cannabis.
Washington Park residents are not happy about the International Church of Cannabis. About forty people came to the West Washington Park Neighborhood Association’s board meeting on May 2; most of them were there to talk about the church, and only twenty minutes of the meeting had been set aside for that discussion.
Sheliah Reynolds, who lives about 25 feet from the church property, at 400 South Logan Street, had reached out to the board in advance, requesting a chance to speak about the church. At the meeting, board president Nicholas Amrhein said that Reynolds was representing the voice of concerned neighbors.
Reynolds’s voice cracked and she held back tears as she talked about not feeling safe in her neighborhood since the church opened its doors last month. “This situation affects a lot of us personally,” she said. “For the first time since I’ve lived here in the neighborhood, I have not felt safe in my own neighborhood, and that does make me feel emotional, because it’s not okay. It’s not okay that I should feel unsafe in my home, in my own neighborhood, where I live with a preschooler, because of outside influences who have come into our community to use a church structure for their own purposes.” …
Ed. More tomorrow. Possibly. Maybe?