Hasta La Gadget!

Wendy Carrillo is one of the two dozen candidates in California vying for the opportunity to represent the state’s 34th Congressional District in a special election Tuesday.

Democrat Xavier Becerra vacated his seat when he became the state’s attorney general in January. Carrillo is hoping to win the spot, and will possibly become the first formerly undocumented woman in Congress.

In a recent interview with Jezebel about her campaign, Carrillo discussed the normalization of hate since Donald Trump became president and offered David Duke’s Twitter attacks on her campaign as proof.

“The part that’s new about it is that it is now normalized,” she told Jezebel. “It is normalized racism, it is normalized hatred towards communities of color and towards immigrants. Before, you would see it in places like Arizona with Sheriff [Joe] Arpaio and the immigrant community there, and in other pockets around the country. But now it is entirely across the country and people feel emboldened to attack immigrants and people of color.”

Carillo was born in El Salvador during the civil war and her family fled to Southern California to escape the violence that killed her biological father. Eventually, she obtained legal status as a teen through her stepfather.

The Latina, who is running on a platform that aims to protect hardworking immigrants and Dreamers, was singled out by Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, in March. He subtweeted Carrillo’s campaign video and wrote that she “plays the part of a ‘person of color’ masterfully.” 

Duke didn’t stop there. He continued to tweet at Carrillo to mock her references to “Latino victory” and the portion of her campaign video that features people raising their fists. 

The Latina defended herself and the campaign from Duke on Twitter, and she discussed the incident with Jezebel.

“I personally have been attacked because of my story by David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the KKK, on social media,” she said. “And with that brings all the hatred and all the misogyny and all the racist anti-immigrant, anti-undocumented people, anti-women rhetoric on social media by the alt-right.”

“I knew that that would eventually happen because my campaign and my story is incredibly unique, especially running for office,” she continued. “It just becomes a completely different thing when you see it and when you experience it and you have to have conversations with your team about safety.”

Shortly after her Twitter exchange with Duke, Carrillo told We are mitú she responded as a way to fight back against the normalization of hate.

“I am sick and tired of politicians who claim to represent us but do not stand up as racism and misogyny is normalized in our country,” Carrillo said. “I refuse to sit quietly on the sidelines. David Duke is a Breitbart-reading, white-supremacy-preaching, ‘former’ Grand Wizard of the KKK who attacked me for telling my story as a formerly undocumented person and unrecognized refugee. So I called him out, and I did so unapologetically.”

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If you consider your mom one of your besties and love a good promposal story, now might be a good time to grab the tissues.

Francesca Pfeiffer, a 17-year-old high school student in St. George, Utah, basically has a hero for a mom. 

“She adopted me when I was young and gave me everything,” Francesca told The Huffington Post of her mom, Caridad. “And she’s diabetic and has almost no feeling in her fingers, but she still managed to pack up a house and move a state away in three days when I was accepted to really great high school.”

Through the years, Francesca’s superhero single mom has let on that she regrets not going to her own prom. 

“She’s always slightly sad about it,” the teen said. “She was treated horribly by teachers and peers in school; one time a boy was dared to ask her to a dance and ended up spitting and laughing in her face.” 

Given all that, Francesca had no doubt she’d ask her mom to her prom, which is this upcoming Saturday ― and last weekend, she finally got the opportunity. A video of the sweet Disney-themed promposal was posted Sunday night on the popular Facebook page “Love What Matters,” where it has over 218,000 views:

To pull off the promposal, Francesca asked her mom to come into the local high school rec room, where she surprised her with balloons, a DIY version of the house from “Up!” and the glass rose from “Beauty and the Beast.” 

“Since you are my ohana, can I say something crazy?” Francesca said, reading a Disney pun-filled sign she made. “Will you be my guest at prom? 

“Are you kidding me?” a teary-eyed Caridad asks her daughter in the clip. 

“This is why I kept refusing to go with anybody!” Francesca tells her mom, to a chorus of “Awws” from onlookers. 

The video ends with Francesca telling her mom that she plans to take her to Las Vegas. The pair also plan to have a girls’ day at Disneyland. 

“We’ve been before and it’s a place where we can finally forget about the world and just focus on each other and having a wonderful time,” said Francesca.

But first, they have a prom to attend. 

“I’m excited to make prom up to her,” Francesca said. “Her happiness is my priority, she has done everything for me and now that I’m old enough, I can give back.”

We’re not crying, you’re crying. 

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On Tuesday, there were rumors that members of the GOP are creating AHCA 2.0, a sequel to the failed health care legislation that they’d hoped would replace Obamacare.

For this week’s HuffPost Comedy hashtag game, we thought we’d help Republicans do a better job of rolling out AHCA 2.0 by creating catchy taglines.

These are the best #AHCASequelTaglines that Twitter had to offer.

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Get ready to see Santa Claus in a new (and refreshingly diverse) light this holiday season, courtesy of a forthcoming parody children’s book.  

On March 28, publisher Harper Design announced plans to release Santa’s Husband, which re-casts Kris Kringle as a black man in an interracial, same-sex relationship. Slated for an October release, the book will follow Santa’s life in the North Pole, except in this version, he’ll have a white husband who fills in for him at shopping malls around the world.

It will be written by Daniel Kibblesmith, a comedy writer on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and feature illustrations by A.P. Quach (including the image above.) 

Kibblesmith, who co-wrote 2013’s How to Win at Everything: Even Things You Can’t or Shouldn’t Try to Win At with Sam Weiner, told The Hufington Post that he got the idea for Santa’s Husband last Christmas, after the Mall of America faced a backlash when it introduced a black Santa (played by Larry Jefferson). 

“My fiancée [author Jennifer Wright] and I joked privately, and then on Twitter, than since every house has its own traditions and lore surrounding Christmas, we would tell our child that the black Santa Claus was the ‘real’ Santa,” he said. “If they saw a white Santa at the mall, we’d explain that this was his husband.” 

Kibblesmith then joked about the idea in a Dec. 3 tweet.

After his tweet garnered over 3,300 retweets and 8,300 likes and was featured on parenting blogs, the writer-comedian said he realized “there was genuine interest in this book becoming a reality.” 

As to what he’d like readers to take away from Santa’s Husband, Kibblesmith said, “warm Christmas-y feelings and a good night’s sleep,” noting that he hopes the book will ultimately become a holiday favorite “for couples and new families who are looking to begin their own kinds of holiday traditions.” To prospective critics who may be angered at the prospect of a black Santa, Kibblesmith would like to remind them that “everything is OK.” 

“Some people — not me — even believe that Santa Claus is just your parents, which would mean that there are as many interpretations of Santa Claus as there are different kinds of families,” he quipped. “But again, this is only a theory, because Santa Claus is real, and we have written a book about him.” 

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