Emily McLean

President Donald Trump revoked the milestone initiative, allowing transgender people to use the bathroom and locker room of their choice in public schools on Wednesday, Feb. 22. This piece of legislature protected transgender Americans in their choice to use the bathroom, which aligns with their gender identity, rather than the gender with which they were born. According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, about 150,000 people between the ages of 13 and 17 identify as transgender. Former president Barack Obama signed this bill into law in response to the controversy in North Carolina when former...

The day after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, more than three million people around the world took to the streets to show their opposition. It is estimated that in Washington, D.C. alone, more than 500,000 people attended the rallies, which was three times more than the amount of people who attended the inauguration. More than one million rail trips were taken on the Metro, which is the second highest in history, next to Barack Obama’s second inauguration. People from all walks of life attended the marches. The crowds of protesters included veterans, celebrities, college students, children, scientists and more. Each...

It is now becoming common for crimes to be live-streamed, especially with the recent launch of Facebook’s new live-streaming feature: Facebook Live. Recent events involving graphic videos going viral are causing some people to question whether content like this should be allowed to be posted. One recent event involving a group of people recording as they bound and tortured a mentally disabled man was seen by thousands across the world live as it was happening, and Facebook did not remove the video for several hours after the incident. A Facebook spokesperson said of the video, “We do not allow...

Mass extinction has become a growing topic of conversation amongst politicians and in households after the release of “Vanishing,” a CNN series that sheds some much-needed light on the subject. According to the Center of Biological Diversity, Earth is currently experiencing the worst case of species die-offs since the loss of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The agency also reports that dozens of species are going extinct every day, with as many as 200 species going extinct every year. Ninety-nine percent of species that are currently endangered are on that list specifically because of humans. The human factors...

Male birth control is a product that has been in the development for years, even as early as the 1950s. Recently, a study was commissioned by the World Health Organization, in which 320 men in monogamous heterosexual relationships around the world were given two injections of hormones every eight weeks that were designed to lower sperm count. The study found that the injections were 96 percent effective and of the 320 participants, only four pregnancies resulted from this. However, this study was cut short after the side effects were found to be too severe, with 1,491 reports of adverse...

As polarizing as the election process has been over the last 18 months, tensions are only continuing to rise as Inauguration Day gets closer. The alleged banning of protests at national parks and public places around the country, specifically in the District of Columbia, is one of the more recent major controversies. As of Dec. 13, more than 20 groups have applied for permits in order to protest the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. The groups claim that their permits have either been denied or postponed of approval. These activist groups, including People’s Action and the ANSWER Coalition, suspect...

The morality of abortion has been a polarizing issue for decades, even despite the Supreme Court’s decision to make it legal in 1973. Every American seems to have an opinion on this controversial topic and with a new law in Texas that will take effect on Dec. 19, the controversy is only growing. This week, Texas enacted a law that mandates that aborted fetuses be either cremated or buried rather than disposed of as medical waste. Critics estimate the additional cost of each cremation or burial to be around $2,000. The law was first introduced in July by Governor...