I have not been posting my by Rev. Trevors. That is an error on my part. This is a video about why the church shouldn’t be bigots, shouldn’t be haters. It is about the distance such things cause in families and people. Hugs
Before I share the clips a personal note. I spend the morning with Ron. We went to get blood work done. Then we did some other things. Then he went shopping while I did housework. Then after he got home I started working on a computer project a friend asked me if I would do for him as he couldn’t do it. I agreed to. I still have a lot of work on it but I will get it done today I think.
The lab work came back and I think I have a reason while I have been so tired, short of breath, and not able to concentrate or think clearly. My blood work shows I am very anemic again. I once had it get so bad I collapsed as I was entering my allergist office. They thought I was having a heart attack and I ended up in the hospital. Turned out my heart is great, but my damaged large bones don’t produce enough red blood cells. Their solution was to eat more red meat and take iron supplements. For a long time they watched for it but as I always managed to stay right inside the ok zone they stopped worrying about it. But my diet changed, red meat got too expensive and I just don’t eat much anymore. But my lab work showed my hematocrit is very low. So I imagine the doctor will ask me to do some more tests. I hope I don’t need a blood transfusion, that sucks. Now on to the clips, enjoy.
Yesterday, 37 Democratic Senators voted to pass the anti-trans NDAA.Those same Dems refused to allow Senator Baldwin to advance an amendment to remove anti-trans provisions from the bill.EITM has released an easy to read list of Senators who voted for it.Subscribe to support our journalism.
This follows the Queensland and French reviews into care that found care to be safe and effective. The Cass Review was a political hatchet job. Guarantee the NYT and US media doesn't cover this.
In 2024, several New Hampshire Democrats, afraid that anti-trans attacks would work, voted in favor of a trans surgery ban and bathroom bill.They lost more seats than most other states. Now the R majority is ramping up targeting us.Capitulation didn't work.National Dems, take note.
There is no joy in taking health insurance coverage away from any of our constituents, including trans children of active duty service members here in Virginia.You can’t support our troops by making it harder for families to afford medically necessary health care prescribed by their doctors.
The result of puberty blocker bans means trans youth are just skipping to grey market hormones, not managed by a healthcare provider. So the result of bans is care that is not managed and worse for everyone involved. This is why gatekeeping doesn't work. People will get access anyways.
The only thing you do is make it less safe for trans people. Trans teens taking grey market hormones has been a thing for decades and had been declining until bans started kicking in. You'd think these idiots would learn that prohibitions never actually stops anything, you just make it less visible.
Rand Paul becomes the first to call for Elon Musk to replace Mike Johnson as Speaker. Which, if you listened to my podcast Uncovered yesterday, you already knew was going to happen before it just happened.
Mitch McConnell ran a playbook of total opposition after the 2008 election and it resulted in Republicans flipping 6 senate seats and 63 house seats two years after the biggest Dem victory since LBJwhat the fuck are you people doing
I don't think we're prepared for just how stupid things are about to get. The dumbest people on earth high on conspiracy theories will be making policy decisions like pandemic response based on disinformation from twitter.
"2025 Will Be the Year of Trump's Crackdown on Islam"What Trump’s hawkish anti-Muslim appointees mean for the Middle East – and beyond, writes @attackerman.bsky.social for @zeteo.com
Jeffries: That bipartisan agreement has now been detonated because House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt the very working-class Americans that many of them pretend to want to help
This is why police unions are not real unions and no one should view them as such. They exist to protect power and property. That's it. There's no solidarity to be found there.
The first entry may be a clue as to why Musk is supporting the Don; he could wish to turn the US into S. Africa. As hard as we worked when we were young until now, progress doesn’t seem to have stuck, here.
December 17, 1982 The U.N. passed a series of 4 resolutions attacking apartheid in South Africa: To organize an international conference of trade unions on sanctions against South Africa (approved 129 to 2); To encourage various international actions against South Africa (126 to 2); Support of sanctions and other measures against South Africa including international sporting events (139 to 1); Cessation of further foreign investments and loans for South Africa (138 to 1). The U.S. was the only country to have voted against all 4 resolutions (joined only by the United Kingdom on two).
December 17, 1990 Jean-Bertrand Aristide Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a radical Roman Catholic priest and opponent of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier who had been deposed in 1986, was elected president in the first free election in Haiti’s history. He was overthrown in 1991 in a military coup led by Brigadier-General Raoul Cedra. More about Jean-Bertrand Aristide Jean-Bertrand Aristide Fast Facts
December 17, 2010 In Tunesia jobless graduate Mohmad Bouazizi starts selling vegetables. When police seize his cart, he sets fire to himself and later dies. This event believed to be the ignition of Arab Spring. A UK Guardian interactive timeline
Rep. Nancy Mace’s former communications director isn’t buying Mace’s claims that she was attacked by a trans activist. On Tuesday night, Mace wrote that she was “physically accosted tonight on Capitol grounds over my fight to protect women.”
According to reports, James McIntyre, cofounder of the Illinois chapter of Foster Care Alumni of America, was arrested and charged with assaulting a government official after an event at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Tuesday night. Witnesses have said that what they saw does not match Mace’s claims.
Mace posted a picture of herself wearing a sling, writing on X “Just sitting here with your run-of-the-mill gentle ‘normal handshake,’” an apparent reference to the claim that she was assaulted.
Natalie Johnson, who served as former communications director for Mace during her first year in Congress, responded to Mace’s tweet. “This is the same woman who told staff, myself included, during Jan. 6 that she wanted to get ‘punched in the face’ by a rioter so she could get on TV,” Johnson wrote. “She’s full of shit and her prop of a sling is a pathetic ploy for attention.”
According to the Washington Post, Elliot Hinkle, a foster-care advocate from Wyoming, witnessed the interaction between Mace and McIntyre.
“What we witnessed was a handshake, a passionate shake, but it didn’t look like an assault or intended aggression,” Hinkle said, referencing several people they said also saw the encounter. They said McIntyre told Mace, “Trans youth are also foster youth, and they need your support.”
Johnson has been critical of her former boss in the past. Recently, the former staffer slammed Mace after the lawmaker promoted a bill, disingenuously called “Protecting Women’s Private Spaces Act,” that bans trans women from using single-sex federally owned bathrooms. (snip-MORE)
Unaccompanied children detained at the border are first processed by Customs and Border Patrol before being handed over to other US authorities.
Donald Trump’s incoming border tsar, Tom Homan, has said that the US government “can’t find” more than 300,000 migrant children – and that many have been lured into forced labour and sex trafficking.
President-elect Donald Trump and his political allies, including Vice-President-elect JD Vance, have repeatedly made similar claims.
Some experts have accused them of distorting statistics to suggest the children are “lost” and victims of crime, although there is agreement that aspects of the system need to be changed.
The incoming administration has made immigration enforcement a priority, promising to clamp down on the US-Mexico border and conduct mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Let’s take a look at the claims of missing migrant children.
What are the Trump team’s claims?
In an interview with Fox News on 26 November – just before a visit to the US-Mexico border in Texas – Homan accused the Biden administration of “bragging” about how quickly children are released from custody, as well as “not properly vetting” adult sponsors in the US.
“Shame on them,” he said of the Biden administration. “They have over 300,000 children that they have released [to] unvetted sponsors that they can’t find.”
“Many are going to be in forced labour. Many forced sex trade,” Homan added. “We need to save these children.”
In his October debate against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, JD Vance also said that the Department of Homeland Security “effectively lost” a total of 320,000 migrant children.
Concerns over the plight of migrant children were also starkly highlighted earlier this week when authorities in Texas shared an image of a two-year-old girl from El Salvador found at the border clutching a piece of paper with a phone number.
“Putting optics over safety has led to countless children in danger or unaccounted for,” Tennessee Republican representative Mark Green told the New York Post.
“This refusal to protect vulnerable alien children from abuse, exploitation, and human trafficking will be one of the defining failures of the Biden-Harris administration.”
Are the children actually missing?
According to immigration experts and attorneys, the claims largely stem from an August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general’s office, which found that 32,000 unaccompanied minors failed to show up for court dates at immigration courts from 2019-23.
The report noted that 291,000 migrant children received no court notices at all. It also called on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to “take immediate action to ensure the safety” of unaccompanied migrant children in the US.
Migrant children “who do not appear for court are considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor”, the inspector general’s office reported.
But Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a migrant advocacy group, told the BBC the figures are indicative of a bureaucratic “paperwork issue” rather than “anything nefarious”.
“When you hear the phrase ‘missing’, you think that there is a child that someone is trying to find and can’t,” he said.
“That’s not the case here. The government has not made any effort to find these children.”
Many of the children, experts say, may well be at the addresses that are on file with the government, but were simply unable to make their court dates.
“That doesn’t mean something bad happened to them,” Mr Reichlin-Melnick said. “It means you missed a court hearing.”
Mr Reichlin-Melnick added that there are “valid concerns” about exploitation.
“We cannot, however, suggest that all 320,000 of those children are being labour trafficked,” he said.
Eric Ruark, an immigration researcher with NumbersUSA – which calls for tighter border controls – said that the children are difficult to track “because of some combination of apathy, incompetence and bureaucratic inefficiency”.
“Many, hopefully even most, are safe with caring sponsors,” he added. “But the Biden administration can’t actually say one way or the other, and apparently doesn’t care enough to find out.”
What happens to children at the border?
Unaccompanied minors detained at the US-Mexico border go through a complicated process that begins with detention and processing by Customs and Border Patrol, or CBP.
If the child is from a foreign country that is not Mexico or Canada, they are placed into removal proceedings and transferred to the US Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS.
HHS, through its Office of Refugee Resettlement office, cares for the children in a network of state-licensed providers.
The office also seeks to reunify children with family members in the US or with individual or organizational sponsors – who in turn are obligated to ensure they arrive at immigration court dates.
What can the Trump administration do?
Homan and other Trump administration officials have so far not provided many details about how they plan to address the issues that plague the detention of undocumented minors.
Several immigration attorneys contacted by the BBC suggested that the administration is likely to make becoming a “sponsor” for undocumented children much more difficult, even if the sponsor is a member of their family.
In practice, this would mean that more undocumented children are kept in detention.
“They could do what the Obama administration did, and detain them,” said Alexander Cuic, an immigration attorney and professor at Case Western Reserve University.
The controversial “Remain in Mexico” programme could also be applied to children, forcing them to wait across the border for the outcome of immigration proceedings.
“I’m not sure even they know what they’re going to do with the kids,” Mr Cuic said of the Trump administration. “But there’s a border problem they’re trying to figure out first, and that’s the first concern before whether they’re going to be harsh to both children and adults.”
When the BBC asked the Trump transition team what plan they have for the undocumented migrant children, spokesman Taylor Rogers said only that “Democrats’ wide-open border policies” have led to the children going “missing”.
“President Trump and leaders in his administration will deliver on their promise to end the invasion at our southern border that puts innocent children in harm’s way,” she added.
Israeli strikes pounded the Gaza Strip overnight and into Wednesday, with one attack ripping through a home where displaced people were sheltering in the isolated north. The strikes killed at least 33 people including children, Palestinian health officials said.
Violence also flared in outside Jerusalem, where an Israeli bus came under fire from a suspected Palestinian attacker late Wednesday, wounding three people including a 10-year-old boy, according to the military and hospital officials. The attack took place on a highway near major Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, and the army was looking for the shooter in the area around Bethlehem.
The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza shows no end in sight, even after Israel reached a ceasefire with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants and attention shifted to the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad by insurgents. Both the current and incoming U.S. administrations have said they hope to end the war in Gaza before the inauguration in January, but ceasefire talks have repeatedly stalled.
The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved resolutions Wednesday demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and backing the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees that Israel has moved to ban.
General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, although they do reflect world opinion. The votes in the 193-nation assembly were 158-9 with 13 abstentions to demand a ceasefire. Israel and its close ally the United States were in the tiny minority voting against.
Israeli strike in north Gaza wipes out 3 generations
The strike on the home killed 19 people in the northern town of Beit Lahiya near the border with Israel, according to nearby Kamal Adwan Hospital, which received the bodies. Hospital records show that a family of eight was among those killed: four children, their parents and two grandparents.
The Israeli military said it targeted a Hamas militant in the vicinity of the hospital. It said reports about the number of casualties in the strike were inaccurate, without elaborating. The military says it tries to avoid harming civilians and accuses militants of hiding among them, putting their lives in danger.
The hospital said another strike near its entrance on Wednesday killed a woman and her two children.
The hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, said Israeli drones struck nearby residential blocks overnight, causing explosions that sparked panic among the facility’s more than 120 sick and wounded patients.
“We have received distress calls from neighbors and trapped people, but we’re not able to leave the hospital because of the continued risk,” he said. “We are witnessing a massive loss of life, with many martyrs in the targeted areas.”
Another strike in the decades-old Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza killed at least seven people, according to the Awda Hospital. The dead included two children, their parents and three other relatives, it said. Later, the hospital said another attack hit the same camp, killing four people and injuring 16 more.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the other strikes.
In Lebanon, where near-daily Israeli attacks have continued despite the ceasefire, at least five people died Wednesday in Israeli strikes in the south, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry and state news agency.
Elsewhere in southern Lebanon, Israeli forces withdrew from a strategic town and handed it back to the Lebanese army in coordination with U.N. peacekeepers, the two militaries said. It appeared to be the first Israeli pullout from a Lebanese border town captured during the ground invasion.
In Syria, the Israeli military estimates it has destroyed 70% to 80% of Syrian military assets in recent days, according to an official speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence assessment. The military has said it has carried out hundreds of airstrikes.
Evacuation orders in camp after rocket fire
Militants in central Gaza fired four projectiles into Israel on Wednesday, two of which were intercepted, the military said. The other two fell in open areas, and there were no reports of casualties.
The military ordered the evacuation of a five-block area of the built-up Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, saying the rockets had been fired from there. The orders indicated that Israel would soon carry out strikes in the area.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people, including children and older adults. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 44,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health officials. They say women and children make up more than half the dead but do not distinguish between fighters and civilians in their count. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
UN says Gaza civilians face ‘utterly devastating situation’
Israel has been waging a renewed offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza’s heavily destroyed north since early October. Troops have surrounded Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, allowing in almost no humanitarian aid and ordering tens of thousands to flee to nearby Gaza City.
Israeli officials have said the three communities are mostly deserted, but the United Nations humanitarian office said Tuesday it believes around 65,000 to 75,000 people are still there, with little access to food, water, electricity or health care. Experts have warned that the north may be experiencing famine.
Sigrid Kaag, the senior U.N. humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, told reporters on Tuesday that civilians trying to survive all across Gaza face an “utterly devastating situation.”
Kaag said she and other U.N. officials repeatedly ask Israel for access for convoys to northern Gaza and elsewhere, to allow in commercial goods, to reopen the Rafah crossing from Egypt in the south and to approve dual-use items.
The Israeli military says it allows in enough humanitarian aid and blames U.N. agencies for not distributing it, saying large amounts of aid have accumulated just inside Gaza’s borders. U.N. officials say Israeli restrictions, the breakdown of law and order and ongoing fighting make it difficult to access the aid and distribute it, and have repeatedly called for a ceasefire.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar have mediated talks between Israel and Hamas for nearly a year, and diplomats say those efforts have recently gained momentum.
But Hamas has said it will not release the remaining hostages without an end to the war and a full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all the hostages are returned and has said Israel will maintain a lasting military presence in some areas.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
