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Utah Republican risks political career by speaking out against party's transgender sports bill

Utah Republican risks political career by speaking out against party's transgender sports bill

Robert Gehrke/YouTube

Utah state senator Daniel Thatcher voted against overriding the governor's veto of an anti-trans bill.

We live in an era of hyperpartisanship in the U.S., one that is shaking the very foundations of our democratic experiment. It's exactly the scenario George Washington tried to warn us about in his farewell address when he called "the Spirit of Party" our "worst enemy," which would eventually lead to "the ruins of public liberty."

Politicians are so entrenched in partisanship that it's rare to see an elected official take a moral stand that goes against the party line. When we do see it, it's often from a politician who doesn't have much to lose—someone who is retiring or isn't up for reelection soon enough for their going against the grain to impact their career.

But every once in a while we see an elected official truly take a risk to do what they believe is right. Such is the case with Utah state senator Daniel Thatcher, who is up for reelection this year and who spoke out against a state bill banning transgender kids from playing sports that align with their gender identity.

The bill, which did not receive any public input or debate, was amended in the final hours of the legislative session to create the all-out ban on transgender girls competing in girls' sports, and was passed in the Utah House and Senate earlier in March. However, it hit a road bump when Utah's Republican governor Spencer Cox vetoed it, citing multiple issues with the bill, including the fact that out of the 75,000 high school athletes in Utah, four are transgender—and only one is a trans girl.

"Four kids and only one of them playing girls sports," Governor Cox wrote. "That’s what all of this is about. Four kids who aren’t dominating or winning trophies or taking scholarships. Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day. Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few."

He also pointed out that 86% of trans youth report suicidality and 56% of trans youth have attempted suicide.

"I am not an expert on transgenderism," he wrote. "I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting. When in doubt however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion. I also try to get proximate and I am learning so much from our transgender community. They are great kids who face enormous struggles … I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live."

Supporters of transgender rights praised Governor Cox for vetoing the bill, despite knowing the veto would most likely be overridden by the legislature. Four out of Utah's 74 Republican legislators voted against overriding the veto, but of those four, only Daniel Thatcher is up for reelection. He already has three opponents from his own party lined up to run against him in the primaries, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, so going against the party line—especially on a highly visible issue—poses a real political risk for him.

But Thatcher shared that he was willing to take that risk and explained his reasons for opposing the veto on several grounds. For one, he said, it's unconstitutional. He pointed out that the conservative-weighted Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision written by Neil Gorsuch, ruled that sex includes gender identity. Second, he said it would be a waste of money, especially since there's no way it would stand. Third, it harms the transgender community—people he has worked closely with and has grown to love in his work as a suicide prevention advocate. Fourth, despite attempting to protect girls and competition integrity, this bill actually harms girls, putting them in a position to constantly have their femininity called into question and their bodies put under more scrutiny than they already are.

Watch him speak on the bill to his colleagues in the Senate:

“And if I lose my race, I lose my race standing for what I believe in, like I always have,” he said. “In my world, conservative doesn’t mean turning your back on your principles.”

Thatcher knew his vote wasn't going to change the outcome, and he could easily have voted along with his party or even simply abstained. But he chose the path of integrity. With multiple states proposing and passing legislation specifically targeting transgender people in various ways, we need to see more of this kind of open-heartedness and moral courage. Imagine how different our country would be with more politicians who stand for principle before political party, and more elected officials willing to put what's right ahead of their own political ambitions.

The Utah bill goes into effect July 1.

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Florida teacher fired for giving zeros to students who didn't turn in assignments

The lowest grade that teachers are allowed to give students is a 50.

Diane Tirado/Facebook

Left: Teacher Diane Tirado. Right: The note she left for students after being fired.

If you're of the mind that kids today are being coddled and not properly prepared for the real world, well, you might want to buckle up for this one. The story out of a public school in Florida has parents and teachers alike up in arms.

A Florida teacher was fired for giving her students zeros for missing assignments. Diane Tirado has been a teacher for years. Most recently, she was an eighth-grade history teacher at Westgate K-8 School in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Diane recently gave her students two weeks to complete an Explorer notebook project, but several students simply didn't hand it in. Since there was zero work done, Diane gave them zeros.

She got fired for it.

schools, teachers, education, grades, students, parents Michael Scott from The Office saying "What?"Giphy

The elementary school has a rule called the “no zero policy."

The lowest possible grade that teachers can give students is a 50, even if they don't turn anything in. That means that an extremely poor completed assignment is worth the same number of points as no assignment at all.

Hardly seems fair, right? Westgate is far from the only school that has such a policy, however.

whiteboard, education, classroom, teacher, middle school, 8th grade A message written on the whiteboard for her students after Diane Tirado was firedDiane Tirado/Facebook

It's a rule that Diane, unsurprisingly, does not agree with. After she was fired for disobeying, she left her students a charming goodbye message on the whiteboard.

"Bye kids. Mrs. Tirado loves you and wishes you the best in life. I have been fired for refusing to give you a 50 percent for not handing anything in. Love, Mrs. Tirado"

The scale, as outlined by the school, reads as follows:

A = 90 to 100
B = 80 to 89
C = 70-79
D = 60-69
F = 50-59

Diane later shared the story on Facebook, hoping to spread awareness about the school's policy.

“A grade in Mrs. Tirado's class is earned," she said.

“I'm so upset because we have a nation of kids that are expecting to get paid and live their life just for showing up and it's not real."

Diane's post has gone viral, and most commenters agree with her position – it's not fair to hand out grades for work that doesn't exist.

No zero policies are common in many schools, and teachers notoriouslyhate them. But it's at least worth considering why they exist. Some educators say it's because when a student earns a zero, it's very difficult for them to ever recover their grade in that class. In other words, it may be too harsh. Others argue that, if you don't want a zero, don't turn in nothing! Getting an earned-zero is a great way to learn to at least try.

A follow up statement from the school stated: "Ms. Tirado was released from her duties as an instructor because her performance was deemed sub-standard and her interactions with students, staff, and parents lacked professionalism and created a toxic culture on the school’s campus. ... During her brief time of employment at West Gate, the school fielded numerous student and parent complaints as well as concerns from colleagues. Based on new information shared with school administrators, an investigation of possible physical abuse is underway."

However, school representatives did not deny the existence of the no zero policy, and Tirado claims the school engaged in a smear campaign after she became a "whistleblower" on their policies. She's currently considering legal action against the district.

Still, the debate over the grading policy rages on.

“The reason I took on this fight was because it was ridiculous. Teaching should not be this hard," Diane said.

This article originally appeared 6 years ago.

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Modern Families

Richard Dreyfuss shares intimate photos from moment he realized his son has a congenital disorder

"As these pictures show, we slowly realized there was a problem with our son."

Images via Wikicommons and Twitter

Richard Dreyfuss and his son Ben Dreyfuss

Actor Richard Dreyfuss (star of “Jaws” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) shared intimate photos of the birth of his son Ben that showed the shock and confusion parents experience when realizing their newborn has a birth abnormality.

On June 14, 1986, Dreyfuss and his wife Jeramie Rain had their second child and they could tell something was wrong shortly after his delivery. “Your eyes are not the same,” Ben would later write about his birth. “One is blue, the other is grey. One is hiding under a partially opened eye-lid; the other is extending far beyond it, like a potato exploding out of an egg cup.”

It was the “most traumatic and emotional moment of my life,” Richard wrote on Twitter. “My wife Jeramie gave birth to our second amazing child. And, as these pictures show, we slowly realized there was a problem with our son.”

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The actor’s photos are touching because they show the parents experiencing the incredible beauty of the birth while struggling to make sense of the unexpected.

“I held him and promised him that I would do everything I could [to] save him. That I would love him no matter what,” the “Mr. Holland’s Opus” star wrote.

Ben would later be diagnosed with Peters anomaly, a rare genetic condition that causes a clouding of the cornea and eye-structure abnormalities. Over the first year of Ben’s life, he would have multiple eye operations and would eventually lose all sight in his left eye.

Richard Dreyfuss, Ben Dreyfuss, parenting, family, illness, fatherhood, peters anomaly Richard Dreyfuss and his son Ben DreyfussImages via Wikicommons and Twitter

He explained what life’s like with one eye in a blog post his father shared at the end of his tweet thread. It’s a raw open letter to himself that details how his struggles with being different evolved as he developed.

It’s a revealing glimpse into the interior monologue of someone who knows he’s being stared at but everyone is too polite to bring it up.

“Eventually you come around to the idea that much more noticeable than the eye itself is your reaction to it,” he writes. “You couldn’t make eye contact with anyone for decades. Upon this realization, you decided to make piercing eye contact with everyone.”

Ben is a journalist who was in charge of audience development at Mother Jones for eight years. He has a popular Substack blog called “Good Faith” where he discusses the intersection of politics and social media from the unique perspective of a liberal with no problem pointing out progressive excesses.

Richard Dreyfuss’ photos of his son’s birth show that all the fame and acclaim in the world can be quickly dispatched when we see that there is something wrong with a child. But on a deeper level, they are an intimate look at the faces of parents whose lives have been upended in a moment they expected would be wholly joyous.

It’s a moment that many parents have unfortunately had to weather and hopefully, the photos will give them comfort knowing that the despair will soon be overcome by love.

This article originally appeared two years ago.

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'Wheel of Fortune' fans left shocked after contestant wins $50,000 solving impossible puzzle

“How in the world did you solve that last one?” asked host Ryan Seacrest.

Wheel of Fortune/Youtube

That was quite impressive.

Listen, while we all love a hilarious Wheel of Fortune fail, watching an epic win can be just as entertaining. And that’s exactly what recently happened on The Wheel when a contestant named Traci Demus-Gamble made a winning puzzle solve so out-of-nowhere that it made host Ryan Seacrest jokingly check her for a hidden earpiece.

In a clip posted to the show’s YouTube account Friday, Jan. 17, Demus-Gamble waved to her husband who was standing on the sidelines before going up to the stage for her next challenge: guess a four-word “phrase.”

Demus-Gamble wasn’t off to a great start, as only two of her given letters (“T” and “E”) made it to the board. And the odds didn’t improve much after Demus-Gamble, admittedly “nervous,” gave the letters “M,” “C,” “D,” and “O” and only two of those letters showed up once on the board.

“Again, not too much more, but who knows, you’ve had a lot of good luck tonight,” Seacrest said. “Maybe it’ll strike you.”

Then, all in under ten seconds (more like in 1.5 seconds), Demus-Gamble correctly guessed, “They go way back” like it was nothing.

Watch the incredible moment below:

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

"How in the world did you solve that last one?" Seacrest asked.

"I just dug deep, I dug deep," Demus-Gamble said.

Yeah, you dug real deep," Seacrest replied. "Congratulations, great, great work."

“Now THAT was an amazing solve.”

“Wow! That was impressive!”

“I couldn't solve that one to save my life, but Demus-Gamble got it like it was nothing.”

“There's only one way to describe this to me: 😦”

At the end of the clip, Seacrest opened the envelope to reveal that Demus-Gamble’s puzzle solve won her $50,000, earning her a total win of $78,650. Certainly not chump change.

As for her winning strategy—Demus-Gamble assured no cheating was involved. “I just dug deep," she told Seacrest. We’ll say.

This article originally appeared in January

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Single dad gets suspicious letter from his late wife and rushes to get a DNA test

"She told me how sorry she was that she didn’t have the guts to tell me this to my face when she was alive.”

via Nathan Cowley/Pexels

A devastated man sitting by the ocean.

Ten months after a man’s wife passed away, he finally got the courage to read a letter she left him, which contained a devastating admission. The 4-year-old son they had together may not be his.

“My ‘darling’ wife passed away 10 months ago,” the man wrote on Reddit’s Off My Chest forum. “She wrote a letter for me before she died, but I couldn’t bring myself to read it until now. She told me how sorry she was that she didn’t have the guts to tell me this to my face when she was alive.”

In the letter, the wife revealed that there was a “good chance” that the son he thought was his wasn’t his biological child. A few weeks before their wedding day, the wife got drunk at her bachelorette party and had a one-night stand with another man. Soon after that night, she became pregnant but was unsure who the father was.

DNA, DNA test, paternity test, letter from deceased spouse, Reddit, family, parenting A man reads a lettterImage via Canva

The man was torn whether or not to have the paternity test done. The child had only one parent in this world, and he would have to take care of him regardless. He also thought it was cowardly that his former wife would wait until she was no longer around to share the truth with him.

“So she thought she’d rather drop this bomb on my life when I could no longer confront her about it,” the man wrote. “Now that my son would only have one parent looking out for him, and she’d have no idea how I would even react. Maybe I should not have got the paternity test done. Maybe it might be better to live in ignorance. But I just had to know.”

The man took the paternity test and learned he wasn’t the child’s biological father.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

“I’m devastated. This doesn’t change how I feel about my son,” he wrote. “He’s my whole world and he’s innocent. But boy, does it hurt. There’s so much going on in my head right now. I haven’t stopped crying. Thank god my son is at my parents' place for the day. I’d hate for him to see me like this.”

Facing a pain nearly too much for him to bear, the only outlet he had at the moment was reaching out to Reddit to find some solace. “I just needed to let this all out. Don’t have it in me to tell anyone in my life about this right now,” he wrote.

DNA, DNA test, paternity test, fatherhood, parenting, life advice, Reddit A man holds his head in his handsImage via Canva

The commenters send him hundreds of messages of support to get him through the shock of first learning the truth about his family.

The most popular message was straightforward and honest.

"All your feelings are valid, a lot of people will react with some kind of toxic positivity to things like these. Your feelings are valid. Each and everyone," femunndsmarka wrote.

Another commenter added that someday, his son will appreciate how he stepped up and did what was right in a very trying circumstance.

“He is going to find out the truth one day. Imagine how much more he will love you knowing you didn’t leave him, even though he wasn’t yours,” ImNotGoodatThis6969.

Another commenter provided valuable insight from the son’s perspective.

"As an adopted child, I just want to thank you on behalf of your son. I deeply believe it changes nothing, family is not about blood, its about who you love, want to have by your side, and care for the most. Sending hugs, strength and gratitude," Mariuuq wrote.

The father at the heart of this story is understandably devastated because his life was upended almost overnight. But the hope in the story is that his trials also taught him a powerful truth—his love for his son goes much deeper than blood.

This article originally three years ago.

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California man buys a small island in Finland because it's cheaper than the deposit on a house

"Our plan is to build a log cabin completely by ourselves."

Photo credit: Canva

Couple buys small island because it was cheaper than a house

The cost of living is getting quite ridiculous. Pretty soon people will feel like they need to take a loan out just to buy basic groceries. But there's one area that has people struggling beyond compare and that's the extreme cost of not only rent but purchasing a home. Many people are being completely priced out of the market causing people to rent longer than they'd like while some are having to move back in with their parents.

Due to the rising price of housing in American specifically, more people are choosing to relocate outside of the country in hopes to maintain a better quality of life on less money. There are entire Reddit channels dedicated to expat living and Americans looking to become expats.

Oliver Russell, 24 was slightly ahead of the curve with his exit from the United States. Though he is American, he's also half Finnish giving him dual citizenship with ties to the country through friends and family that he visited often.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Russell grew up in Laguna Beach, California but after moving Colorado, he was denied in-state tuition which made affording business school nearly impossible. That's when he decided to take advantage of the free college education Finland offers for it's citizens, he had always dreamed of moving to Helsinki anyway.

It just so happened after getting settled into his second homeland, he met a girl. Helena Tomaszewska, 20 is Dutch and once the two got serious about dating the started looking at getting a summer home, which is standard in Finland. But during their search for the perfect home, the two discovered houses were expensive. The down payment alone seemed like entirely too much money for the young couple.

"In Finland, the summer cottage life is a huge part of the culture and I would come out here every summer. I loved the summer cottage life and wanted one of my own," Russell tells SWNS.

ocean, life, islands, life hack, life hacks, abandoned island, finland, california A man relaxes in a chair in front of the oceanImage via Canva

They continued their search, checking out different real estate websites for something in their price range. Just when it seemed like the pair was having a run of bad luck locating an affordable property for to serve as their summer home, Russell came across an island. Yes, an island. By the time the new Finnish resident came across the island, it had been on the market for 10 years and lucky for them it was within their budget. The couple only paid $31k for the 2.5 acre island.

Unlucky for them, the island was completely overgrown with tries, bushes and moss. No one had lived there for more than 10 years so if they were going to build their summer home there, they had a lot of work cut out for them. That big detail didn't deter them one bit. The two young adults got to work.

"Our plan is to build a log cabin completely by ourselves with no experience and transform it into a fully functioning summer cottage," the man shares in a video that shows him chopping down trees and shaving bark off of logs.

finland, island, life hacks, life hack, california A couple walks along the beach on an islandImage via Canva

Russell and Tomaszewska purchased the island in March 2024 and have made several trips to ready the land for a permanent structure. But have so built a platform deck to camp out on and an out house so they have somewhere to rest when they're continuing their work.

Russell tells Lad Bible, "We made a frame out of logs that we felled from trees and I got some decking from a hardware store. We then built an outhouse and I am now trying to build a shower structure so we can wash while we're on the island. We wanted to get the base camp set up so we have a comfortable place to stay while the big building happens next year."

There's a requirement for the island, and it's that a certain portion of it needs to be a sauna. It's unclear if this is a requirement by the Finnish government or a deal between Russell and his girlfriend. Either way, that's the portion they want to focus on after they get the shower built, while their hope is to have the entire cabin built by next summer.

sauna, island, finland, california, life hack, life hacks Two women sit in a sauna next to the oceanImage via Canva

A 2025 finish date might be a little lofty since both island owners are full time students at college leaving little time to trek out to the island to spend days building But there's no doubt they'll finish this massive project and have plenty of time to enjoy it.

Living on an island with no neighbors really cuts down on the chances of unexpected visitors. But a trip to town get a gallon of milk or toilet paper would require a boat ride so hopefully they're also including a large storage area.

How about you, would you live on a deserted island?

This article originally appeared last year.

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