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With Trump's travel ban still in flux, these lawyers created a brilliant way to help.

When President Trump passed an executive order temporarily banning travelers from "terror-prone" countries, Seattle attorney Takao Yamada hurried to the airport.

He was one of the first lawyers on the scene to lend a helping hand to innocent people who might be affected by the order.

"It was chaos," Yamada says. Families waiting on loved ones, panicked. Not knowing if they were stuck in extensive interviews, being sent home, or worse.


No one knew what exactly the order meant or how it was being enforced.

All the disorder made it hard to really help anyone, Yamada says. Without knowing who was coming into the country, where they were coming from, and which kinds of papers they had, well-meaning attorneys were left scrambling.

Photo by Konrad Fiedler/AFP/Getty Images

Yamada got together with some fellow attorneys and had an idea: What if there was a way for us to get all of that information ahead of time?

Any good lawyer knows they're a lot more effective with the proper preparation.

Yamada along with co-founders Greg McLawsen and Tahminda Watson, worked with some software developers to (quickly) create an app.

The app "Airport Lawyer" connects travelers coming into the U.S. with volunteer attorneys who can help them navigate U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

AirportLawyer.org

Using a nationwide network of thousands of volunteers — Yamada said there are hundreds of attorneys in Seattle alone willing to help, free of charge — travelers from abroad can arrange to have a lawyer meet them at the airport when they land.

Sometimes, the lawyers will be prepared with extra papers and documentation to avoid any holdups at Customs and Border Protection. Other times, they'll simply be a calm, informed presence that can keep tabs on the process and communicate with U.S. family members.

Though a federal court temporarily struck down Donald Trump's travel ban, the administration is fighting back. Yamada expects more confusion and chaos as the chips continue to fall.

Here's how you and your loved ones can use Airport Lawyer to help ensure safe and fair travels.

Step 1. Go to AirportLawyer.org and click "Get help now for an arriving immigrant."

Provide as much information as you can on behalf of the traveler, including arrival date, airport, airline and flight number, visa type, and how the attorneys can get in touch with family members on the U.S. side.

Step 2. Once you do that, Airport Lawyer supervisors get notified of the arrival and match you with a volunteer attorney.

All the information is stored on a secure system, where the team will connect you with a volunteer lawyer near your airport (most of the big ones are covered, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.). If they can match you with an attorney, that person will reach out and help you come up with a plan for arrival.

Step 3. Stick it to Donald Trump.

Arrive safe. Clear Customs. Embrace your family. Show Donald Trump that his bigoted and unconstitutional policies won't stand without a fight.

"It's just been so amazing seeing how many people want to help," Yamada says.

He recalls witnessing many powerful reunions between long-lost relatives, made possible in large part by the hard work of thousands of whip-smart attorneys during their precious free time.

Yamada himself wears several professionals hats, along with volunteering. And, oh yeah, his wife is pregnant. But he makes the time because he knows this is important.

"Most people are just trying to get back here to see their family," he says. That's nothing something Donald Trump should be allowed to take away from us.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

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Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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