In March, she posted about the need for comprehensive sex education and mourned the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the abortion precedent abandoned by the court. In May, she posted videos touting the need for affordable health and reproductive care.
The fact that Bishop has professed her liberal views on race, abortion, immigration, voting, same-sex marriage, school shootings and comprehensive sex education — which Texas public schools don’t require — may not be surprising considering she’s 26.
What is startling is that Bishop has spoken out while competing for, and as, Miss Texas. The perch has normally been occupied by apolitical women, but in Bishop’s case, the pageant queen has used it to push back against the far-right policies supported by Texas’s White male leaders...
Her platform — diversity and inclusion — represents much of what Texas has been outlawing. In June alone, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed laws banning diversity offices and training at state universities, “sexually explicit” books at public schools, drag shows and gender-affirming care for youths.
The first Asian contestant to win the crown in the pageant’s 85 years, Bishop is an avatar for a rapidly diversifying state, one that despite its historic image is now majority minority, a change that is remaking cities, rural areas and political alliances, if not state leadership...
She's got a law degree, too. Run, Averie, run!
...As Earth's climate continues to change from heat-trapping gases spewed into the air, ever fewer people are out of reach from the billowing and deadly fingers of wildfire smoke, scientists say. Already wildfires are consuming three times more of the United States and Canada each year than in the 1980s and studies predict fire and smoke to worsen.
While many people exposed to bad air may be asking themselves if this is a “new normal,” several scientists told The Associated Press they specifically reject any such idea because the phrase makes it sound like the world has changed to a new and steady pattern of extreme events.
“Is this a new normal? No, it’s a new abnormal,” University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann said. “It continues to get worse. If we continue to warm the planet, we don’t settle into some new state. It’s an ever-moving baseline of worse and worse.”
It's so bad that perhaps the term “wildfire” also needs to be rethought, suggested Woodwell Climate Research Center senior scientist Jennifer Francis.
“We can’t really call them wildfires anymore,” Francis said. “To some extent they’re just not, they’re not wild. They’re not natural anymore. We are just making them more likely. We’re making them more intense.”
Several scientists told the AP that the problem of smoke and wildfires will progressively worsen until the world significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which has not happened despite years of international negotiations and lofty goals..
Another bus carrying dozens of migrants from Texas arrived Saturday afternoon at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, courtesy of the governor and taxpayers of the Lone Star State.
The 41 asylum seekers arrived about 12:40 p.m. and were received by the L.A. Welcomes Collective, a network of nonprofit, faith and immigrant rights groups, officials said in a statement. The migrants are from Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Belize and Nicaragua.
“With great love and dignity, we extend a warm welcome to our newly arrived brothers and sisters in Los Angeles,” said Martha Arevalo, executive director of American Resource Center-Los Angeles (CARECEN), one of the groups providing resources and support.
A temporary welcome center was set up at nearby St. Anthony Croatian Catholic Church.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that her office learned about the bus Friday and immediately began coordinating with the collective, as well as with city and county departments, to assist the migrants upon their arrival.
“The City of Los Angeles believes in treating everyone with respect and dignity and will do so,” Bass said.
The migrants were recently paroled by the Border Patrol and voluntarily boarded the bus in Brownsville, Texas, for the 1,600-mile journey, officials said. This is the second bus to arrive from the Texas-Mexico border in just over two weeks, after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Los Angeles as the latest Democrat-run city to which his state will bus migrants...
At least they'll be treated like human beings in California, unlike in Christofascist p.o.s. Gov. Gregg Abbott's Texass.
