Nepal: New Prime Minister Must Keep Promise To LGBTI Community
Last week marked the coming out party for one of the world’s newest heads of state. Baburam Bhattarai, the newly-elected Prime Minister of Nepal, visited New York and Washington, D.C. to meet and greet world leaders, and introduce himself to the United Nations.
Bhattarai has had a lot on his plate since taking office, so leaving the country was a questionable move in the first place. The deadline for Nepal’s new constitution, just two months away, looms on the horizon, and the Constituent Assembly — the 600-some strong body charged with delivering the draft of a new constitution for the Himalayan nation — has been mired in deadlock for nearly a year. In addition, Bhattarai makes this trip on the heels of his first bold proclamation that has human rights groups reeling: he wants blanket amnesty for all crimes committed during the ten-year internal armed conflict that wracked Nepal until 2006. (Bhattarai’s party, the Maoist Party, emerged out of the Maoist rebel group that started the “People’s Revolution,†in which over 10,000 people died.)
But while concerns over transitional justice issues will no doubt be on the agendas of many world leaders as they meet Bhattarai in the U.S., another troubling human rights issue lurks, waiting now four years for proper implementation. To put it simply: Nepal should have some of the most gay- and trans-friendly laws in the world, but it doesn’t. Bhattarai holds the keys to making this happen.
In 2007, Nepal’s leading LGBTI rights activist, Sunil Babu Pant, won a Supreme Court Case demanding full, fundamental equality for all sexual and gender minority citizens. It was a landmark, comprehensive decision. The world watched as Nepal, a traditional and conservative society by many measures, emerged onto the global LGBT rights stage as an example of effective activism and advocacy for sexual and gender minorities.
Bhattarai’s power to implement these laws is crucial. Government bureaucracy in Nepal is thick and chaotic; ministries change personnel so frequently that lobbying them can seem pointless. Since the 2007 Supreme Court decision, for example, four people have served as Home Minister. The Home Ministry is responsible for, among other things, issuing citizenship identification cards, without which many basic services are out of reach for Nepali people.
The Court decision mandated that the government issue ID cards that allow citizens to identify as third gender (the term used in Nepal for transgender or binary gender non-conforming people.) To date, only a handful of people have successfully done this, and all succeeded by putting up a hearty fight.
Nepal
A simple directive letter from Prime Minister Bhattarai could change this for the entire country. Just before the Parliament voted on a new PM, Bhattarai promised to do this while seeking support from CPN (United), a party with five votes in the Parliament, one of which belonged to Pant, who has been a Member of Parliament since 2008. Advocates and activists were encouraged by Bhattarai’s promise.
In fact, Bhattarai, when he was Finance Minister in 2008 under the first Maoist regime, did something no other government of Nepal had ever done: he created a budget line for programs geared toward sexual and gender minorities. Sunil Babu Pant’s non-governmental organization, Blue Diamond Society, has been using some of these funds to build a LGBTI community center in Kathmandu modeled on the New York LGBT Center. It would be the first such community center in South Asia.
In an additional progressive move, the 2011 Nepali census was the first in the world to allow citizens to identify as male, female, or third gender. The process was highly flawed, and the inclusion of the category appears to have been mostly a superficial gesture at this point (the data on people who identified themselves as third gender is not linked to any other demographic numbers), but such steps toward implementation indicate a growing level of acceptance of the LGBTI community in Nepal, and presage the comprehensive reform expected.
As a Member of Parliament and the Constituent Assembly, Sunil Pant sits on the fundamental rights chapter drafting committee in the Constituent Assembly. The fundamental rights chapter is finished, and follows the Court’s orders to be completely inclusive of LGBTI citizens in all rights and protections. Now it sits rotting as a special sub-committee debates the details of power sharing and state structure. Since the constitutional deadline was last extended, Pant has refused to take his salary from the government, saying he cannot take money if no work is being done on the draft.
Whether the constitution drafting process will be completed by the extended deadline – just over two months away – is certainly on Bhattarai’s mind. But in the meantime if he wants to show the Nepali people that he takes human rights and his own judiciary seriously, he has an easy way to do that: a flick of his pen could order all administrative offices across the country to obey the law and recognized third gender citizens.
The Court decision demonstrated substantial progress, but the LGBTI community has been waiting for too long for something real to happen.
On Friday, Bhattari spoke at The New School. I asked him via Twitter when he would keep his promise. He replied: “We have in principal agreed that we will provide citizenship – even our Supreme Court has given a ruling in that context. So the government is committed to implement that.â€
Hari Phuyal, the prominent Kathmandu lawyer who tried the 2007 Supreme Court case says, “the Court decision came at such a crucial time, when the LGBTI community was misused and mishandled by the law enforcement agencies in Nepal.†The violence against LGBTI people has largely ceased thanks to successful advocacy and publicity, but now is another crucial moment, and there is one man who can make the difference.
 (Image: Baburam Bhattarai)
Kyle Knight is a Fulbright Scholar in Nepal where his research focuses on the LGBTI rights movement. He previously worked at Human Rights Watch, where he focused on children’s rights issue. For three years, he worked as a suicide prevention counselor for LGBTQ youth at the Trevor Project in New York City. He currently sits on the Trevor Project’s Advocacy and Public Policy Committee, is the president of the Duke University LGBT Network, and a is lecturer in Gender Studies at Tribhuvan University, Nepal’s state-run university in Kathmandu. You can follow him on Twitter @knightktm.
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In the days leading up to Easter, President Donald Trump has repeatedly—and falsely—claimed that egg prices have plummeted to the point of being “too low,” baselessly citing steep double-digit declines—even as Americans face record-high prices at the grocery store.
“The egg prices are down 87 percent, but nobody talks about that,” the President said on Friday. “You can have all the eggs you want, we have too many eggs, in fact, if anything the prices are getting too low.”
Trump: We have too many eggs. if anything, the prices are getting too low pic.twitter.com/SIKjGJzaD1
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 18, 2025
Trump campaigned on the promise he would lower the price of groceries “on day one,” a promise that three months later is not only unfulfilled, but in some cases reversed: overall grocery prices have risen.
READ MORE: ‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House
On Thursday, Trump claimed the price of eggs had dropped 92%, while berating a reporter and his Federal Reserve Chairman.
“The price of groceries are substantially down,” the president falsely claimed.
The price of eggs, you know, when I came in, they hit me with eggs. I just got there, I was here for one week, and they started screaming, ‘Eggs have gone through the roof.’ I said, ‘I just got here.’
“They went up 87%, and you couldn’t get them,” Trump told reporters. “They said, ‘You won’t have eggs for Easter,’ which is coming up. Happy Easter, everybody.You won’t have eggs for Easter.”
“And we did an unbelievable job, and now eggs are all over the place and the price went down 92 percent,” he claimed.
READ MORE: Trump’s Latest Target: The Watchdog That Keeps Suing Him
Last week on Monday, Trump had claimed, falsely, that egg prices had dropped 79%.
Egg prices, Newsweek reported on Wednesday, “continued to climb despite recent efforts by the Trump administration to combat the shortage brought about by the ongoing bird flu with imports of Turkish eggs. The CPI egg index jumped by 5.9 percent from February and was up 60.4 percent compared to March 2024, and the average price for a dozen grade A large eggs climbed 5.6 percent to a record $6.23.”
Moe Davis, the well-known retired U.S. Air Force colonel, attorney, and former administrative law judge, posted to social media a federal government chart of egg prices.
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Davis wrote, “the price of a dozen eggs in March was $6.23, the highest price ever recorded and 26% higher than in January when Trump took office. Of course if Trump says egg prices are down then the MAGA cult is obliged to say egg prices are down.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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Image via Reuters
The Trump White House is coming under fire for what appears to be an attempt to mock the U.S. Supreme Court, the facts in the case of a Maryland man wrongly deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, and The New York Times.
The White House’s official account on the social media platform X posted a “corrected” version of a New York Times story—corrections that have drawn concern and scorn from the legal community and political commentators.
“Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Maryland Man in El Salvador,” read a screenshot of the Times’ headline.
But the White House’s version (below), complete with red ink and cross outs, reads: “Senator Meets With MS-13 Illegal Alien in El Salvador Who Is Never Coming Back.”
The White House added remarks saying, “Fixed it for you, @NYTimes. Oh, and by the way, @ChrisVanHollen — he’s NOT coming back.”
Fixed it for you, @NYTimes.
Oh, and by the way, @ChrisVanHollen — he’s NOT coming back. pic.twitter.com/VoAphh2ZPY
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 18, 2025
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) traveled to El Salvador this week and, after several days, was finally permitted to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia—the legal U.S. resident whom the Trump administration has admitted in court it wrongly deported. Multiple courts, including the Supreme Court, have ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return. Yet the Trump administration appears to be refusing.
Friday’s claim that Abrego Garcia is “never coming back” was taken as a serious statement of intent by some.
Attorney Aaron Regunberg wrote: “The White House is saying he’s ‘never coming back’ — they are explicitly declaring they will violate a unanimous Supreme Court order.” Calling out Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Regunberg wrote: “you said this was your red line that would trigger ‘extraordinary action.’ So…where the f— are you?”
“2 telling things here,” offered The Washington Post’s senior political reporter Aaron Blake. “1) White House crosses out ‘wrongly,’ despite repeatedly acknowledging its error in court. 2) ‘who’s never coming back’ is basically taunting SCOTUS. Signals the opposite of any intent to ‘facilitate’ his return.”
“The White House press shop lies and claims Mr. Abrego was not wrongfully deported, despite having acknowledged that fact at every single stage of the court process; at the district court, the circuit court, and the Supreme Court,” noted attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. “They are openly contemptuous of the truth.”
Civil rights attorney Patrick Jaicomo, replying to the White House, wrote: “There is a mistake in the headline. You didn’t wrongly deport Garcia. You wrongly imprisoned him without due process. So, fix your mistake, as the courts have ordered. You don’t have to keep doubling down on bad decisions.”
Attorney Dilan Esper added, “I’ll remind you that the federal judges issuing orders see this.”
Veteran journalist John Harwoood called it, “disgusting fascism,” and wrote that “the Trump WH is garbage from top to bottom.”
Opinion writer Magdi Jacobs noted, “They’re moving from evading the judiciary to openly mocking it. This is very dangerous territory.”
Some others addressed what they appeared to suggest was the juvenile nature of the White House’s post.
“When you graduate from 4chan and land your first job at the White House,” wrote Talking Points Memo publisher Josh Marshall.
“The Trump admin really wants to distract people from the fact that it illegally sent someone to El Salvador in violation of a court order & binding law, either out of malice or sheer incompetence. No amount of s—posting will change that,” said Reason magazine’s Billy Binion.
“This is the evil of the Trump White House,” remarked Fred Wellman, an Army veteran, political consultant, and the host of the podcast “On Democracy.”
Journalist and author Robert Lusetich observed: “The White House, an ever-lasting symbol of the power, dignity and greatness of the United States. Now, a trolling meme account.”
Anti-gun-violence activist Fred Guttenberg declared the White House is “staffed by pathetic punk 2nd grade pre pubescent children.”
Journalist James Surowiecki commented, “Your tax dollars are paying for this childish cr–.”
See the White House’s social media post above or at this link.
Image via Reuters
From the outset of his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump signaled that a central focus of his presidency would be targeting and exacting retribution against his critics.
“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice,’” Trump told attendees at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
In keeping his retribution vow, Trump in just three months—often with the use of the power of his executive orders—has targeted for retribution numerous top law firms, revoked the security clearances of dozens of top national security experts, former government officials, and former political opponents. He has targeted top universities, threaten to defund millions of dollars or more in critical research grants, and declared top news outlets CNN and MSNBC “corrupt” and “illegal.”
Just days after the 2024 election, NPR reported that during the campaign, “Trump made more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived enemies, including political opponents and private citizens.”
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On Thursday, Trump threatened to go after one of his top legal critics: CREW, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit legal and ethics watchdog that has been working for years to hold him (and others) to account, often by suing.
Asked by a reporter what group he would like to see have their tax exempt status removed, Trump replied, “Well, we’ll be making some statements, but it’s a big deal.”
“They’re so rich and so strong, and then they go so bad, they’ve earned so much by being a member of this country, you know, a member of this group, this beautiful group of people in this country, and then they go and they abuse their power like that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Thursday afternoon. “I think it’s, you know, I think it’s very sad.”
“I have a group named CREW,” he continued. “CREW. You ever hear of it? I think it’s CREW, and they have a guy that heads CREW. It’s supposed to be a charitable organization. The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump. So we’re looking at that.”
“We’re looking at a lot of things, but if you take a look at CREW, what they’ve done, and I think it was a very big abuse, but we’re going to be finding out pretty soon.”
During Trump’s first and second terms, CREW sued Trump or his administration for alleged emoluments clause violations, alleged Presidential Records Act noncompliance, and challenged some of his executive orders. It also represented voters in a lawsuit attempting to use the 14th Amendment to remove him from the ballot, claiming his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection was constitutionally disqualifying.
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In January, CREW was part of a lawsuit suing to “block Trump’s illegal plan to fire government workers,” and in February, CREW sued the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “to compel transparency.”
CREW, in a statement to NCRM, vowed to continue its work.
“For more than 20 years, CREW has exposed government corruption from politicians of both parties who violate the public trust and has worked to promote an ethical, transparent government,” CREW Vice President of Communications Jordan Libowitz said. “Good governance groups are the heart of a healthy democracy. We will continue to do our work to ensure Americans have an ethical and accountable government.”
Legal experts are blasting Trump’s threat.
“It is literally a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison for the President, VP, or any senior White House employee, to ‘request, directly or indirectly, any officer or employee of the IRS to conduct … an audit or other investigation of any particular taxpayer,'” wrote attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
“The Trump administration has gone after law firms, they’ve gone after universities, and they’re now going after civil society, including groups like @CREWcrew. They want to silence any opposition to their extreme agenda,” added the National Women’s Law Center.
“President Trump is now threatening to weaponize the IRS against nonprofit organizations like @CREWcrew,” wrote Public Citizen. “He is attacking our most basic right: to say what we believe without fear of government prosecution. We proudly stand in solidarity with our friends at CREW.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
Reporter: On the tax-exempt status subject, what are the other groups you would like to see status remove from?
Trump: … Could be. Environmental — I have a group named crew. Ever hear of it? I think it is c-r-e-w. The only charity they had is going after Trump pic.twitter.com/lfaxnQ0A1N
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 17, 2025
Watch the video above or at this link.
READ MORE: ‘Stunning Admission’: GOP Senator Says Colleagues ‘Are All Afraid’ of ‘Retaliation’
Image via Reuters
Trump Doubles Down Calling Egg Prices ‘Too Low’ as Costs Soar to Record Highs
‘Taunting SCOTUS’: Concerns Mount Over ‘Openly Contemptuous’ White House
Trump’s Latest Target: The Watchdog That Keeps Suing Him
‘Things Like This Take Place’: Trump Shrugs Off Mass Shooting Despite Once Being a Target
