Hasta La Gadget!

A new website is taking a dig at President Donald Trump’s frequent, costly trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort and suggesting how the money might be better spent.

The site IsTrumpAtMarALago.org, launched on Friday by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, tracks how many weekends Trump has spent there and what the estimated cost has been for taxpayers. As of Monday morning, he had gone to the resort seven out of his 13 weekends as president, costing taxpayers an estimated $25 million.

IsTrumpAtMarALago.org also provides a list of programs that could have used that money, specifically citing those facing Trump-proposed cuts, such as public school funding and aid for the homeless.

“It’s supremely hypocritical of Donald Trump to spend millions of government dollars at Mar-a-Lago while crusading to cut vital programs such as Meals on Wheels,” CAP Action spokeswoman Morgan Finkelstein said in a press release. “Our tracker will provide context and keep Trump accountable for his out-of-control spending at taxpayers’ expense.” 

To calculate costs, the website estimates Trump’s resort visits at around $3.6 million per trip, pointing to an unidentified Government Accountability Office report. The GAO report commonly cited for that estimate looked at a 2013 Palm Beach, Florida, visit by President Barack Obama and, as The Washington Post has pointed out, costs can be complicated to estimate.

The website adds to a mounting chorus of criticism around Trump’s visits to Mar-a-Lago. Some have focused on the costs for these trips, while others have noted the need for improved security measures at the resort.

Many people have also noted the irony of Trump heading to golf clubs so often ― 12 times in the first nine weeks of his presidency ― after he repeatedly criticized Obama for golfing during his time in office.

With the money spent on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago visits, the site calculates the government could have funded a year’s worth of meals for 9,000 Meals on Wheels recipients, six years of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, or 7,000 Pell grants to help low-income students pay for college, among other options.

While CAP Action said in its release that the site specifically lists “programs that Trump wants to cut,” it glosses over some nuances of those budget proposals. For instance, the site says Pell grants “have been on Trump’s chopping block.” In fact, the president’s proposed budget would continue to fund Pell grants at the same level. However, in order to do so, it would pull $3.9 billion from the program’s surplus, which advocates had hoped would be preserved as a cushion or used to strengthen or expand the grants, according to Inside Higher Ed. 

Similarly, the site says the president “wants to slash” Meals on Wheels funding. But the block grants targeted in Trump’s budget aren’t the main source of federal funding for that program. It is unclear how much Meals on Wheels funding would actually be affected by the proposed budget, although Trump’s budget director did appear to criticize the program to reporters, citing it as an example of efforts that “sound good” but “don’t work.”

So far the tweeter-in-chief has not publicly responded to the website’s criticism.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

It goes without saying that black women are phenomenal, but in case you needed a reminder, or maybe just a dose of inspiration, there’s no better place to see black women doing the damn thing than on social media. 

In an age where social issues surrounding race and gender are more heated than ever, black feminists are leading the charge in bringing awareness and keeping folks woke through their online visibility. 

In celebration of this, below are 21 black feminists (from Janet Mock to Zendaya) who use Instagram to change, inspire, and bless us all with their flyness: 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

In honor of the Sikh holiday of Vaisakhi, more than 500 Sikh volunteers gathered in New York City’s Times Square on Saturday to teach tourists and passers-by about their faith in a memorable way. 

The volunteers claim to have tied 8,000 turbans during the event. 

Turban Day 2017, organized by Sikhs of New York, sought to educate Americans about Sikhism, a faith practiced by 25 million people in the world. 

The campaign is the brainchild of Chanpreet Singh, the 24-year-old founder of Sikhs of New York. The group got its start as a student club at Baruch College, Singh’s alma mater. The first Turban Day took place at the university five years ago, and the event has been growing ever since.

Singh said the idea for an event to educate people about Sikhism came from his personal experiences.

“I’ve been called names like terrorist, ISIS. I’ve heard things like ‘Go back to your country,’” he told HuffPost. “All throughout high school and middle school.”

He believes it’s up to Sikhs to educate others about their religion.

“I take the fault on ourselves. We haven’t done enough to educate.” 

The religion’s roots can be traced back to Guru Nanak Dev Ji, a 15th century spiritual leader who lived in the Punjab region, which lies in modern-day India and Pakistan. In those days, a turban was often worn by members of the rich, upper class. Guru Nanak encouraged all his followers to wear turbans, as a symbol of devotion and to promote equality.

Sikhs have been part of America’s religious landscape for over 100 years. Yet, many Americans are unfamiliar with the religion, or confuse Sikhs with Muslims. A 2015 survey from the National Sikh Campaign, which partnered with Sikhs of New York for Turban Day, found that 60 percent of Americans said they knew nothing at all about Sikh Americans. Americans were more likely to assume that a man wearing a turban was Muslim (20 percent) or of Middle Eastern descent (28 percent), than they were to assume the turbaned man was Sikh (11 percent). 

Sikhs have also been victims of discrimination and hate crimes, often because of the turbans they wear as part of their faith. About 67 percent of turbaned Sikh youth in Massachusetts, Indiana, Washington, and California say they’ve been bullied.

Singh hopes that Turban Day will help educate people about his religion. 

It takes between two to five minutes for each turban to be wrapped properly. During that time, a Sikh volunteer presents information about Turban Day and about Sikhism. After the turban is tied, the volunteer asks for reactions and fields any lingering questions.

“I thought, how about giving the firsthand experience of what a turban feels like. If someone takes a turban away with them, they’ll always remember that it was a Sikh person who gave it to them,” Singh said. 

Since he started the project five years ago, Singh said that it has expanded tremendously. Singh said that at the last Turban Day, held in 2015, his team tied 3,500 turbans.

Singh said that the event has received some critical feedback from Sikhs who wondered whether the participants would walk away with a full understanding of what a turban means in the Sikh religion. Singh said that his team tries to address this by asking participants to treat the turban as an honor and a crown, and to refrain from smoking and drinking alcohol while wearing it. 

“It shouldn’t be just, you get a turban tied to take a picture,” Singh said. “”They should know who is tying the turban and what the turban is.” 

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Washington, D.C., police said Monday they were investigating a disturbing package sent to the office of the nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties group that included a soiled page ripped from the Quran. 

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said a page from an English translation of the Quran was smeared with a “foreign substance” that appears to be feces. Also enclosed was a racist letter portraying former President Barack Obama as a monkey. 

Warning: graphic photo below. 

Officer Sean Hickman, spokesman for Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, said police were investigating.  

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told The Huffington Post the fake return address was for Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), though it didn’t include his name. 

“It’s often what these people do,” Hooper said of those who send hate mail to the group. “They put the return address of someone who is sympathetic to Muslims,” like Conyers. 

In 2005, Conyers introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives “condemning bigotry and religious intolerance.” It added: “The Quran, the holy book of Islam, as any other holy book of any religion, should be treated with dignity and respect.”

Hooper said CAIR receives hate messages every day. The organization decided to contact police about this one because of the foreign substance on the ripped Quran page. 

CAIR executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement on Monday that the package is “just a sample of the hate targeting American Muslims and other minority groups in the wake of the presidential election.”  

“These bigoted acts will never stop us from defending the civil rights and religious freedom of all Americans,” Awad said. 

Zainab Chaudry, a national spokeswoman for CAIR and manager of the group’s Maryland chapter, wrote in a Facebook post that “this pathetic stunt pulled by coward(s) hiding behind fake names and addresses is designed to shock and intimidate Muslim activists who are on the front lines fighting islamophobia.”

“It belies a deep-rooted hatred of Islam and Muslims,” Chaudry added.

Near-daily reports of acts of anti-Muslim hate include a slew of incidents in which copies of the Islamic holy book have been desecrated. 

Last month, a Muslim family in Virginia returned to their home to find their copy of the Quran destroyed and “FUCK MUSLIMS” written on a wall. Someone dumped two copies of the Quran into a campus toilet at the University of Texas at Dallas. A man broke into an Arizona mosque and tore up more than 100 copies of the Quran. And in New Mexico, a couple was accused of urinating on a Quran inside a Santa Fe library.  

“The more they defile the written message of the Quran, let’s protect and preserve it in our hearts and minds,” Chaudry wrote in her Facebook post. “The more they speak ill of it, let’s keep our tongues moist with the recitation of its verses.

“Anyone who carries this much hate around in their hearts is in desperate need of prayers,” Chaudry continued. “At the end of the day, they can’t stand something they don’t even understand.”

Elsewhere in the country in recent months, Muslim Americans have been targeted with violence, and their places of worship vandalized or destroyed. 

In Minnesota, a man told police his hatred of Muslims drove him to stab a Somali man. In Milwaukee, a Muslim woman was brutally attacked in what the community is calling a hate crime. In Oregon, an Iranian refugee returned home to find anti-Muslim messages and death threats on his wall. Men in San Francisco and in Charlotte, North Carolina, threatened in separate incidents to shoot Muslim women. And in Florida, a man is accused of saying, “I’m going to kill all you Muslim — —[expletive], get out of my country,” then pointing a gun at his Muslim neighbors. 

Mosques across the country have been targeted for vandalism or other acts of destruction 35 times this year, according to CAIR. During a three-week period, fires at three mosques were declared arson.  

Hate crimes against Muslims rose 67 percent in 2015, the latest year for which the FBI has statistics. A Southern Poverty Law Center report this year said the number of anti-Muslim hate groups tripled in 2016. 

America does not do a good job of tracking incidents of hate and bias. We need your help to create a database of such incidents, so we all know what’s going on. Tell us your story.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Okay, so you’ve had your Nintendo Switch for awhile. Ganon’s corpse is but a speck in the proverbial rearview mirror and hunting for the last remaining shrines in Breath of the Wild isn’t all that interesting. What’s a person to do? Well, that’s wher…