Note: This article has been updated to take into account an executive order signed by President Trump to end the practice of family separation. You can read more on what that EO means for migrant families here. (TLDR; they now get to be in jails together, but like, the children are still in jail.) 

Unless you’ve been living in a good news bubble, you’ve probably heard of the horror that is happening with migrant children being separated from their parents at the Mexican border. Due to President Trump’s “zero tolerance policy” regarding anyone caught by Border Control for trying to enter the United States illegally, nearly 2,000 children have been separated from their parents. The Zero Tolerance Policy applies to absolutely everyone, even people seeking asylum and those traveling with children. Children are considered “unaccompanied minors” under this policy and while their parents are prosecuted, they are put under the care of the government. If this is starting to sound like a dystopian novel, remember it’s real life. Here’s how to help migrant children who have been separated from their parents by the U.S. government (can’t believe I just typed that…)

Donate Your Money

With ActBlue, you can donate money to multiple services at once to ensure that your dollars will go somewhere useful. The company donates to twelve different groups that fund liberal causes and has raise more than 1.6 million dollars this year. If you donate to ActBlue, your money will benefit: Al Otro Lado, The Florence Project, Neta, Innovation Law Lab, Fuerza Del Valle, The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, We Belong Together, United We Dream, The Women’s Refugee Commission, The ACLU, Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, Human Rights First, and La Union de Pueblo Entero.

Donate Your Time

If you want to help in a different way, you can interview migrants at the border by volunteering with The Texas Civil Rights Project or The Legal Aid Justice Center. If you have legal or paralegal experience, speak Spanish, Mam, Q’eqchi’, K’iche, or live in a border area this is a great way to join the effort.

Join the Legal Fight

If you choose to donate to The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES you can aid every step of legal support for immigrant families. Aiming to provide legal service to 13,000 unaccompanied children and help pay immigration bonds for asylum seekers, RAICES has raised more than four million dollars.

UPDATE: Now that Trump has signed his executive order, we need to focus on providing legal aid to the families in jail together, and helping the families who were separated be reunited. You can keep donating to RAICES, or take a look at UnLocal, a New York City-based immigration legal services provider that represents asylum-seeking families, unaccompanied minors, LGBTQ+ immigrant youth and other individuals in affirmative and defensive immigration proceedings. UnLocal is currently developing initiatives to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis at the border, and your donation will enable attorneys and volunteers to provide on-the0ground assistance to asylum seekers in, including pro-bono legal assistance, and helping parents locate and reconnect with their children.

Send Them Love

While most charities encourage financial donations over items, Baby2Baby and Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) set up a Target registry calling for toiletries and other necessities.

Other trustworthy groups that help people at the border are Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which has two shelters along the border of the Sonoran desert and Border Angels. Border Angels offers legal guidance, water, and other emergency services.

Call Your Senators!

The majority of the United States agrees that separating children from their parents is immoral and there are presently several bills in the works to stop this. In the meantime, the ACLU is advising people to call their senators and voice their concerns about Trump’s policies. The ACLU can connect you directly through their website and put you in touch with a congressional staffer. Here’s what to say:

“Hi, my name is and my zip code is . I’m urging the Senator to denounce Trump’s family separation policy and use all of Congress’ authority to stop it.”

 

Take It To The Streets!

Protests are being organized all across the country for June 30th, when you can join the fight in your city against child separation. The main rally, Families Belong Together, will be held in Washington, but you can make a difference wherever you are by going here and entering your zip code. Despite Trump’s executive order, this march is still scheduled. Here’s what MoveOn has to say about it: 

The executive order that Donald Trump signed today is not a solution to the crisis created by his administration; it keeps kids imprisoned indefinitely, and doesn’t reunite thousands of separated families. But it does show the administration is reacting to public pressure, so we will continue to increase our pressure for justice at hundreds of events on Saturday, June 30, to say that families belong together—and free.

Heads up, you need to keep up with the news. It’s not cute anymore. That’s why we’ve created a 5x weekly newsletter called The ‘Sup that will explain all the news of the week in a hilarious af way. Because if we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying. Sign up for The ‘Sup now!

We’ve all been in a long-term, possibly too codependent relationship with the media, and with that comes plenty of ups and downs. There are times that we feel like the media is being a fake friend, spreading alternative facts rumors, and sometimes, rarely, they tell you what is going on in the owlrd. Since the 2016 Election we’ve def had a “it’s complicated” status when it comes to which media sources to trust, but after you hear about what the conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group has been up to, you may change your status to “we’re on a break.” This Sinclair Brodcasting video has been making it’s way around the internet, which is millennial speak for, “you have to watch.”

WTF is Sinclair Broadcast Group?

The Sinclair Broadcast Group owns more than 190 TV stations across the country, more than any other media company. Sinclair is also seeking to acquire dozens more by purchasing Tribune Media, which is already a huge conglomerate on its own. The group has been conservative Trump supporters, going as far as making local stations run right-wing commentary segments by former Trump advisers. The network has stations across America, but what’s harder to see is the possible influence their messaging has had on people watching their local news.

WTF Did They Do?

Ok so Sinclair had a bunch of their network anchors read a scripted speech warning of fake news, the sites that post this news, and finished the dialogue by saying “this is extremely dangerous to our democracy.” Now that may not seem alarming at first, but Timothy Burke at Deadspin collected the video footage and combined it into a single video of the clips (below). It seriously straight out of an episode of Black Mirror. And of course to make matters worse Trump had to weigh in via Twitter.

If you’ve not yet seen the Sinclair Broadcasting propaganda video from @Deadspin, this should sufficiently creep you out. pic.twitter.com/M4LNhb6CQF

— James Michael Sama (@JamesMSama) April 2, 2018

Why TF Should You Care?

Besides from a total break down of the fourth estate and press being able to hold government accountable for its actions, you care because mainstream media is now being used like wartime propaganda. Of course different outlets have always had bias, but this network has been calling out other networks on fake news and inaccurate reporting, but then goes and has their anchors read a single message that may not reflect the individual stations stance. Now when you’re watching even your local news station you have to wonder if the messaging is meant to brainwash influence your opinions on government. We had a huge issue with this when Russia was the one behind it on FaceBook, so we should hold Sinclair accountable for using similar tactics.

Heads up, you need to keep up with the news. It’s not cute anymore. That’s why we’ve created a 5x weekly newsletter called The ‘Sup that will explain all the news of the week in a hilarious af way. Because if we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying. Sign up for The ‘Sup now!

The Great Orange Meanie himself can be so distracting that it’s easy (and more comforting at times tbh) to forget that he has an entire cabinet of shitheads facilitating his outlandish behavior and allowing him to Tweet come-ons at North Korea and Lavar Ball at 3:00AM. Sure, you know Kushner, Bannon, and Tillerson, but have you heard of these other shady monsters standing blindly standing on the sidelines as America goes down in flames? No? Well then let’s put them on blast.

Steven Mnuchin

You probably saw this picture recently and thought to yourself “Fuck, another God forsaken James Bond movie I’m going to have to endure this Christmas with my Dad.”

Well, I have good news and bad news. You won’t have to suffer through two hours of everyone pretending that Daniel Craig is God’s gift to the world because this is not the latest Bond villain. No, it’s former Goldman Sachs bro and current Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Louise Linton, his way-too-hot-for-him wife that for sure married him for love. Old Stevie here got his job by having no morals being rich af, and that’s basically it. He had no government experience before taking Alexander Hamilton’s old job, but he did design a mail opening system for Trump Tower and was an executive producer on The Devil Wears Prada, so there’s that. Steve is a major supporter of the Republican tax bill –  aka the bill that would give giant tax cuts to people who do shit like take tone deaf pictures holding giant stacks of money and looking slightly off camera – because fucking duh.

We also don’t have time to go into Louise Linton right now but like, shes basically a mashup between a Real Housewife and Cruella De Vil and you should really just Google her or something.

Scott Pruitt

Scott Pruitt is the Administrator of the Environmental Protection agency, AKA the guy in charge of saving the planet. Pruitt is a literal climate change denier, who went into office promising to back off the “overreaching” focus on climate change that was in place and “move towards things like cleaning up the air, land, and water.” So you’re going to stop focusing on climate change, but also save the environment? Sounds like those might go hand and hand, but I guess I’m not an environmental expert. Oh wait, neither is Pruitt. Scott Pruitt’s claim to fame isn’t that he’s like, a climate scientist or anything like that. It’s that when he served as Oklahoma Attorney General, he sued the EPA 13 times. That’s like, the political equivalent of making you Administor of the Protection Agency. 

Since taking office he’s held true to him promises, rolling back environmental protections, given the fossil fuel industry sway in public health decisions, and moved towards a system that will likely undermine actual pollution clean-up efforts. At least he’s honest? 

Dan Scavino

Dan Scavino is the White House Director of Social Media and I have only one question for him: What the fuck? What the actual fuck, Dan?

Trump is 71-years-old, are you really telling me that you can’t figure out some way into tricking him into thinking he isn’t tweeting? Remember how Jim opened a Word doc and made Creed think it was his blog? Literally do that. He’ll have no idea.

Better yet, about a month ago it was revealed that Scavino may actually be ghost writing some of Trump’s tweets when an identical tweet appeared on both their accounts at the same time. So, like, Trump’s tweets might actually be planned out by somebody? Sad! Whatever, Dan. Have fun being a 41-year-old social media director.

Ryan Zinke

As Secretary of the Interior, part of Zinke’s job is to “honor our nation’s responsibilities to tribal nations,” so you can probably guess how well that is going. One look at this guy tells me that that particular duty isn’t high on his priority list, probably because he’s too busy scamming old people and ensuring that Puerto Rico remains entirely powerless months after Hurricane Maria. Yeah, remember that shady two-man company that somehow snagged the $300 million contract for restoring power to Puerto Rico? That was Zinke’s friend.

Another one of his jobs is to sustain America’s water, lands, wildlife, and energy sources which makes that time he told a bunch of oil execs that “fracking is proof that God’s got a good sense of humor and he loves us,” extra poignant. Thanks, Zink!

Oh, and while serving as a Congressman to Montana, Zinke conveniently neglected to mention that he was living in California. I mean, we can’t really blame him for that one, but still. Sketch.

If there’s one thing we all can agree are amazing, it’s elephants. They make the cutest stickers/earrings/necklaces, and they’re probably like, cool in real life too. Sadly, it is getting more and more likely that our accidental children will one day ask us, “Mom, wtf is that animal delicately tattooed on your wrist with a long nose? That shit looks crazy.” To which we will reply, “It’s an elephant. And don’t curse so fucking much you little asshole.” Why? Because the softcore Neo-Nazi squad Trump administration announced on Wednesday that the remains of elephants legally hunted in Zimbabwe and Zambia can come back into the US as trophies. Because that’s actually a super pressing issue in our country rn. So glad he acknowledged this detrimental issue! Like, fuck gun control and stabilizing the Obamacare markets, amiright? Bring in the body parts of innocent endangered animals!

Wonder what would have prompted him to take on this issue, apart from just generally hating anything done by Barack Obama. Oh…wait…

Image via Gothamist

What’s that in Don Jr.’s tiny hand, you ask? Oh nothing. Just AN ELEPHANT’S TAIL. Why would anyone even *want* to hold an elephant’s tail? That has to be bad luck or something, right? **Thinks about Don Jr.’s impending indictment on Russia related crimes** Yeah, it’s def bad luck…

Several agencies argue that big game hunters, especially American ones, bring revenue to the countries they hunt in, as well as awareness for the endangered animal. Which is toootaly true – Nothing makes me more aware that an animal is endangered than seeing a bunch of old, rich, white pricks posing with their carcasses on dating apps.

Much like the Trans ban in armed forces, Trump has continued to do what he does best: avoid real problems and act like an asshole. It’s really inspiring.

Anyways, if you want to read more about this, which I suggest you do because I’m biased and don’t see a point in the slightest for killing a fucking elephant, you can check out The Washington Post for a full, not fake, news report.

God, it’s like a deranged billionaire runs our government or something. Oh…wait….

Update: (11/20/2017): President Trump now appears to be going back on his decision to let people chop up elephants and bring them into the United States. He tweeted “Big-game trophy decision will be announced next week but will be very hard pressed to change my mind that this horror show in any way helps conservation of Elephants or any other animal.” Wow. Finally, a president who is brave enough to say, “Maybe that photo of my son gleefully holding a chopped off elephants tail up for the camera was in poor taste.” 

The administration is set to announce its decision on this issue Sunday, so get ready for him to spend the entire next week congratulating himself for deciding not to kill elephants as trophies. 

Heads up, you need to keep up with the news. It’s not cute anymore. That’s why we’ve created a 5x weekly newsletter called The ‘Sup that will explain all the news of the week in a hilarious af way. Because if we weren’t laughing, we’d be crying. Sign up for The ‘Sup now!