News & Commentary

This week, President Trump announced that he has nominated Ronald Mortensen to be the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees, and migration, a move that further cements Trump’s extreme anti-immigrant agenda. Mortensen must be confirmed by the Senate to oversee the State Department’s

When I was growing up, I avoided dresses and had short hair. I was basically a happy-go-lucky kid, but I was also different. In seventh grade, I wrote a letter to my mom: “I don’t like my body. I don’t like what I have,” but I held off on giving it to her. Then while I was away at Bible camp, I blurted out over the phone: “Mom, I’m a dude.” She told me she loved me no matter what. I came out publicly as a boy in high school and went through therapy, hormone treatment, and surgery to help the body I sa

Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice recently announced yet another

I have spent the past 27 years of my life as a firefighter, most of it with the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department. In addition to serving the community where I grew up, my career took me to earthquake-damaged Haiti with the Urban Search and Rescue team. Later, I received an executive fellowship with the federal intelligence community and helped train fire departments across the country in how to respond to terrorism. In the course of my work, I became one of the most decorated first responders in the nation.  But now, because I called out the FRD for its discrimination against women and its culture of sexual harassment, my caree

Marion Hungerford has a severe form of borderline personality disorder that led to her numerous suicide attempts. As her mental state deteriorated, her husband of 26 years left her. Alone and unable to support herself, she began a relationship with a man whom she helped to commit a string of armed robberies. She never even touched the gun the man used for the robbery. Even though this was her first offense, Hungerford was sentenced to 159 years in federal prison. Her case tells us everything we need to know about a set of harsh sentencing laws, particularly one known as “924

The NFL’s new “anthem policy” requires players to “respect” the flag and the national anthem or stay in the locker room until it is played. The NFL refers to this as a compromise — it was anything but.  This was a mandate, not a decision arrived at through a collaborative process. Despite claiming that they would consult wit

Yesterday another federal court said what we’ve been arguing all along: Federal law protects transgender people.  For the past four years, Gavin Grimm has been seeking justice. For most of his time at Gloucester High Sc

On a December morning, Border Patrol agents confronted a 15-year-old high school student named Jahveel Ocampo at a rest stop in California while she and her friends were on their way to the mountains to see the winter’s first snow. Jahveel was a young child when she came to the United States from Mexico with her parents, and she grew up undocumented in southern California. She was a mother to a 2-year-old child, who was a U.S. citizen. An agent in a blue jacket asked whether Jahveel was an “illegal.” He handcuffed her and drove her to a Border P

We all know how representative democracy is supposed to work — each election cycle, citizens vote to determine which elected officials will represent them in Congress. That’s not what’s happening in Ohio, where Republicans designed the state’s redistricting map to keep their party in office in violation of voters’ constitutional rights. Today, the ACLU filed