President Donald Trump invited the Dodgers to the White House. Many of their fans feared that the team, by accepting, would humiliate themselves and betray the team’s large Latino, Asian and African-American fan base. Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, along with co-owner Magic Johnson, have proposed a solution. Trump has promised that if he can keep the championship trophy, the Commissioner’s Trophy, he will end all seizures and deportations of immigrants.   read more

The Obama administration has once again allowed a big corporation to buy its way out of jail. This time, the corporation is General Motors, which was fined $900 million for covering up its faulty ignition switches that caused at least 124 deaths. Thousands of GM cars had the faulty ignition switch, which could cause the car’s engine to switch off without warning. GM engineers knew early on that the switch was problematic, but didn’t begin recalling affected vehicles until February 2014.   read more

In 1999, the median income of U.S. households was $57,843 in 2015 dollars. In 2014, that family was making only $53,657, down 7.2% from 1999. Americans still haven’t recovered the income they had before the recession that began at the end of the George W. Bush administration; the median income in 2007 was $57,357. But as usual, life’s good if you’re among the wealthy. The richest 5% increased from $196,000 to $206,600.   read more

The delays in confirmation mean that many courts are woefully understaffed. Some of the seats have been open for more than a year and a few for as many as three years. Republicans claim they are only doing with President Barack Obama’s nominees what the Democrats did to George W. Bush’s, but the numbers show that’s just not true. In the last two years of the Bush administration, with a Senate controlled by Democrats, 68 judges were confirmed.   read more

The program turned out to cost about $100 million per fighter, with only four or five still fighting ISIS, Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, head of the United States Central Command, told a senate hearing on Wednesday. Launched in May, the program’s initial goal was to train 5,400 fighters in the first year. The effort fell far short of that promise, producing between 100 and 120 anti-ISIS warriors.   read more

In Missouri, the Republican-dominated legislature passed a so-called “right-to-work” law that would end requirements to join a union or pay fees to a labor organization to keep a job. Such laws are often a death-knell for unions, with non-members enjoying the benefits fought for by organized labor, but not paying their fair share for representation. The bill was vetoed by Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon and on Wednesday, the legislature failed to override Nixon’s veto.   read more

Trust in the judicial branch has fallen, with only 53% of respondents saying they have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the courts. That’s down from 76% six years ago and the decline can be attributed to the numbers plummeting among Republicans. Only 42% of Republicans say they trust the third branch of government, falling 17 points in the past year.   read more

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has found conditions in facilities holding undocumented immigrants to be so bad that it has recommended the release of families being held in them. The report was passed by a 5-2 vote with three of the yes votes coming from commissioners appointed by President Barack Obama, whose administration policies they now criticize.   read more

--Nine CHEC employees submitted records for at least 100 days’ worth of work they didn’t do. --One employee was paid for 160 days of work he didn’t perform. --One employee spent much of his time trying to get friends and relatives on the office’s payroll. --Another employee was found to be having a sexual interaction with an applicant for whom the employee was involved in the background check.   read more

The Colorado Department of Revenue has reported that it collected nearly $70 million in marijuana taxes during the 2014-2015 fiscal year. Alcohol taxes generated less than $42 million during that period. The state made so much money from marijuana taxes that it was required by law to have a tax “holiday,” during which pot sales would not be taxed.   read more

The Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa hires “Borgata Babes” to serve cocktails to its casino patrons. The Babes, both men and women (but mostly women), are told upon hiring that they’ll be “part fashion model, part beverage server, part charming host and hostess. All impossibly lovely.” To maintain their standard of loveliness, Borgata requires that its Babes gain no more than 7% of their body weight.   read more

A report from the U.S. Census Bureau show the gender wage gap reached an all-time low last year. Women who were fully employed earned 78.6% of what men made, up from 77.6% in 2013. The gap is the smallest since 1960 when the Census Bureau began collecting such data. But the improvement wasn’t much to speak of, according to Frida Garza at Quartz. “Put in context, there hasn’t been a meaningful narrowing of the country’s gender pay gap since 2007, when it was 77.8%,” she wrote.   read more

Only 23% of history students were in classes led by a teacher with both a college major and certification in the subject. Among history teachers, only 26% had both credentials—and 34% lacked both credentials. In comparison, most music teachers were fully qualified to teach their subject, according to the survey. Only 2% of music teachers lacked both certification and a degree in the field, while 87% held a postsecondary degree in the subject and were certified.   read more

“Using historical data on both the pageant winners and the average American woman, we were able to estimate that the only decades during which Miss America fell into the same range as the average U.S. woman were the 1940s and 1950s,” according to PsychGuides. But since then, “the pageant winners have become markedly thinner, while the average woman’s BMI has been increasing."   read more

The American-Statesman and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram requested that DPS release the number of seizures and arrests made only by its personnel and the department declined. It also refused to release the hotel bills run up by state troopers during “Operation Strong Safety,” Perry’s effort to look tough on immigration. DPS is now suing the state’s Attorney General to keep it from releasing those bills.   read more

Mulrean’s tour in Kabul began in 2011, when he served as State Department director for interagency provincial affairs. He returned to Geneva the following year as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. mission to the UN. In 2014, he made news by criticizing Vietnam’s civil rights policies at the quadrennial UN review of that country.   read more

The research showed 94% of these murders were committed by men the victims knew. Of those who knew their killers, 62% were wives or other intimate acquaintances of the murderers. In the majority of cases, the murders occurred in the course of an argument between the two individuals, and a gun was usually used as the murder weapon. Black women were victims of this violence at a much higher rate than any other racial group—two-and-a-half times higher than the murder rate for white females.   read more