2017 was a rollercoaster year for news, especially if you were a person of color, a transgender person, an immigrant, or a woman.
There were immigration crackdowns on the state and federal level. There were proposed policies targeting transgender public restroom use and military service. Debates on Confederate monuments and white supremacy led to longer discussions about race relations. To round off the year, a number of sexual harassment cases became public.
Immigration Policy
The Trump administration began to crack down on immigration through a number of executive orders. One to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries, leading to protests at airports across the country and intervention from the courts. Another order opened the door for more deportations.
The Texas Legislature passed a law cracking down on so-called 鈥渟anctuary cities.鈥� Senate Bill 4 allows law enforcement officials to question the immigration status of a person they lawfully detain, with punishments for officials who don鈥檛 comply. Some of the law is in effect, while the .
The fate of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, is still in limbo, too. Congress has until March to come up with a legislative solution, or else the program winds down with nothing to replace it. Texas has of DACA recipients living in the state and the worries were palpable in Tyler, where about a quarter of the city鈥檚 population is Latino.
More interviews on immigration policy from 2017:
Policies Targeting Transgender People
There was also a bill in the state legislature regulating which public restrooms transgender people could use. That led to opposition not only from the LGBTQ community, but also from business groups, companies and some faith leaders. Contention over that and other proposed bills pushed the Legislature into a special session in the summer, but it didn't become law.
Also this summer, President Trump tweeted he wanted to ban transgender troops from serving in the military. The tweets ultimately didn鈥檛 become policy; the Pentagon this month said transgender people .
More interviews on transgender issues from 2017:
Race
Racial issues played out in a lot of ways this year. The deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August raised again the issue of whether Confederate monuments should remain standing.
There was debate on both sides: Some said the monuments should stay because they represent history, and others said they skew history and celebrate a time when slavery was legal.
But even though civil rights have come a long way in the last century, some attitudes haven鈥檛 changed. For years, 90-year-old Opal Lee of Fort Worth has campaigned to make a federal holiday. On that day in 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston with the news that slavery ended 鈥� two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The day also has personal significance for Lee; when she was a child, a mob of white protesters drove her family from their Fort Worth home.
treated three of the Dallas officers who died in the July 7 shootings last year. He made headlines when he became emotional at a press conference. He quit his job this summer, and discussed some of the overt and covert racism he faced in medicine.
In the NFL, a number of football players kneeled during the national anthem to protest racial injustice, which drew criticism from some fans 鈥� and President Trump. Research found that opinions on anthem protests .
More interviews on race from 2017:
Sexual Harassment
The year began 鈥� and ended 鈥� with women speaking out. The day after President Trump's inauguration in January, thousands of Texans took part in women's marches as part of a nationwide demonstration. By the waning months of 2017, sexual harassment became the topic of every U.S. workplace.
Allegations against movie producer led to a domino effect in major industries. Congressmen resigned, actors and heads of newsroom lost jobs, and we learned some new terms, such as "whisper network" and "open secret."
Women also began sharing their stories of harassment online with the #MeToo hashtag. started the campaign in 2007 to help victims of sexual harassment and assault.
More interviews on sexual harassment from 2017:
