HC Wake-Up Call: States Sue Trump Over Family Separation Policy, Sarah Sanders Will Get Secret Service Protection & Barbie Is Now a Total Coding Boss

Good morning, Her Campus! With a break-neck news cycle, there is no possible way for you to stay on top of every story that comes across your feeds—we’re all only human, after all.

But, life comes at you fast. So grab a cup of coffee and settle in for this quick and dirty guide to stories you might’ve been sleeping on (like, literally. It’s early.)

States Sue Trump Over the Family Separation Policy

The Trump administration was sued by 17 states and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, and are hoping to stop the “cruel and unlawful” separation of immigrant children from their families at the border, Reutersreports.

In a complaint filed with the U.S. district court in Seattle, the states and D.C. called the executive order that President Donald Trump signed on last Wednesday to suspend the family separations at the border “illusory.”

“The new federal executive order does not bring back together the thousands of families that were torn apart by the federal government’s policy, and it does not prevent families from being separated in the future,” Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said in a statement on the lawsuit.

The complaint also said that the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy was unconstitutional because it was “motivated by animus and a desire to harm” to immigrants coming from Latin America, Reuters reports.

Family separations were a result of that policy to prosecute all adults who cross the U.S. border illegally, including those that travelled across with children.

In Trump’s executive order, however, he did not explain how his immigration policies could be adjusted to keep families together and housed together while their legal status was assessed.

Sarah Sanders Will Get Secret Service Protection

White House Press Secretary will be getting Secret Service protection as soon as today, according to CNN, but it is unclear how long it will last.

The news comes only a few days after Sanders was asked to leave a Lexington, Virginia restaurant because she worked for the Trump administration. The incident sparked a national debate regarding a business’ right to refuse service and public service during the Trump era.

During a press briefing on Monday, Sanders discussed the incident, saying that she and her husband “politely left” the restaurant.

“I was asked to leave because I worked for President Trump,” Sanders said. “We are allowed to disagree but we should be able to do so freely and without fear of harm, and this goes for all people regardless of politics.”

“Healthy debate on ideas and political philosophy is important, but the calls for harassment and push for any Trump supporter to avoid the public is unacceptable,” Sanders added.

When asked about this new security detail, the Secret Service told CNN: “For operational security purposes the Secret Service does not comment on its protective operations.”

Barbie Is Now a Total Coding Boss

Barbie is taking the STEM world by storm, and showing girls that they can accomplish anything they set their minds to, especially if it’s in science, technology, engineering or math.

The new “Career of the Year” 2018 Barbie is here and she’s a robotics engineer.

According to Mashable, Mattel debuted the new Barbie doll on Tuesday, and honestly, she seems pretty fabulous.

Robotics engineer Barbie even comes with her own safety goggles, laptop and a miniature robot. How cute is that! And she’s all about representation, too, coming in four different skin tones.

And if you thought that this new “Career of the Year” Barbie couldn’t get any better, Mattel has partnered up with Tynker and fans of the new doll will get seven free coding lessons to help make their dreams of becoming a robotics engineer come true.

Mattel also asked Cynthia Breazeal, a scientist at MIT and the founder of robotics company Jibo, to assist with the new Barbie to ensure she accurately portrayed a real robotics engineer at work.

“I think it opens up girls’ imaginations [to the idea] that intelligent machines can be in their daily lives,” Breazeal told Mashable about the new Barbie. “When you talk about something like artificial intelligence, we cannot only have a few highly educated people. The democratization of these technologies is very, very important.”

Hopefully this new robotics engineer Barbie will inspire girls everywhere to follow their STEM dreams.

What to look out for...

There's a Sean Spicer talk show in the works, and, um, what?