It’s Friday. Good morning!
I feel like I could just leave it at that, and Friday is significant enough on its own. But, of course, I won’t. Because one must keep up appearances and all.
Today is the National Day of Silence, a student-led national protest during which participants take a vow of silence to highlight the silencing and erasure of LGBTQ people at school. During the day, those who have elected not to talk might hand out cards printed with an explanation of why they have done so.
“Breaking the silence” is a significant part of this effort, which might take the form of a rally or a letter-writing campaign, pretty much anything that highlights the issues and challenges LGBTQ youth are facing and the need for schools to be more inclusive.
The Day of Silence was first organized in 1996 by a group of students at the University of Virginia. Created for a class project on nonviolent protest, over 150 students participated that first year. In 1997, organizers took their efforts to the national level and students on nearly 100 campuses and colleges participated.
In 2001, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) became the official organizational sponsor with new funding, staff and volunteers.
A national school climate survey conducted by GLSEN in 2013 found four out of five LGBT students reported verbal, sexual or physical harassment at school and a third reported missing at least one day of school in the past month out of fear for their personal safety.
The Day of Silence is an opportunity for these students and their friends and allies to “speak out” against injustices, bullying and mistreatment.
Today is also World Book and Copyright Day, which is held to promote the importance of reading, lifelong love of literature and integration into the world of work, to inculcate joy and foster the growth of readers and emphasize the pleasure of reading.
UNESCO introduced the event, which is now celebrated in over 100 countries.
Not surprisingly, reading is good for you – it expands your vocabulary and your understanding of the world and lets you exercise your creativity.
Children who regularly read for enjoyment (that part is key, reading because you’re forced to do it isn’t quite the same) have higher test scores, develop a broader vocabulary, increased general knowledge and a better understanding of other cultures than those who do not.
And the Google doodle today, if you happen to have a moment to check it out, is celebrating the Spanish letter Ñ.
Things are looking up on the weather front. We’re in for mostly sunny skies and a high of around 57. Some strong gusts of wind are possible, so be prepared to hold on to your proverbial hat.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden will seek to raise taxes on millionaire investors to fund education and other spending priorities as part of the administration’s effort to overhaul the U.S. economy.
The American Family Plan, which the president wants to pay for by increasing the capital gains tax and the top marginal income tax rate, currently doesn’t include an effort to expand health coverage.
As part of the plan, Biden will seek an increase in the tax on capital gains to 39.6% from 20% for those Americans earning more than $1 million.
For $1 million earners in high-tax states, rates on capital gains could wind up higher than 50 percent. For New Yorkers, the combined state and federal capital gains rate could be as high as 52.22 percent. For Californians, it could be 56.7 percent.
“His view is that that should be on the backs…of the wealthiest Americans who can afford it and corporations and businesses who can afford it,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
The leaders of Russia and China put aside their disputes with Biden long enough to pledge international cooperation on cutting coal and petroleum emissions in a virtual summit showcasing America’s return to the fight against global warming.
“No nation can solve this crisis on our own,” Biden said at the start of the two-day virtual climate summit at the White House. “All of us, and particularly those of us that represent the world’s largest economies, we have to step up.”
At the Minneapolis funeral for Daunte Wright yesterday, the 20-year-old Black man killed by police last week, remembrances of his bright smile drew tears, and calls for police reform drew cheers.
The Derek Chauvin murder trial has reinvigorated efforts on Capitol Hill to address police misconduct, with the White House and lawmakers seeing new energy for bipartisan talks despite different stances on legal protections for officers.
With four killings in the past four months, many residents in Ohio’s capital Columbus feel victimized by their Police Department, which has received a litany of misconduct complaints.
Democrats jammed a bill through the House to make Washington, D.C. the nation’s 51st state – a longtime priority for liberals that is widely despised on the other end of the political spectrum.
Senate Republicans offered a $568 billion counterproposal to Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, which they hope kick-starts negotiations to vastly scale back the president’s plan and do away with the corporate tax increases he is eyeing to pay for it.
The U.S. Supreme Court shot down a Mississippi man’s bid to overturn a life sentence he got for killing his grandfather at age 15 — with the majority ruling that a judge does not have to find a defendant beyond rehabilitation to issue such a term.
The U.S. jobs market recovery accelerated its pace last week as fewer Americans headed to the unemployment line, the Labor Department reported.
First-time claims for unemployment insurance totaled 547,000, well below the Dow Jones estimate for 603,000 and a new low for the Covid-19 pandemic era.
The labor market recovery has still been choppy, and the general downtrend in new jobless claims over the past several months has come with some bumps higher.
While the labor market recovery is gaining speed, red flags are emerging in the housing market, the economy’s star performer during the COVID-19 pandemic.
An influential U.S. federal advisory panel was is set to meet today to potentially decide the fate of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine rollout, as more reports emerged of rare but severe blood clots in women who received the shot.
Federal health officials are leaning toward lifting their recommended pause on the use of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine after finding only a limited number of additional cases of a rare blood clotting disorder among recipients.
Men are less likely to be vaccinated than women, and some of the factors are due to career advantages and race disparities.
As the Biden administration seeks to get 80 percent of adult Americans immunized by summer, the continuing reluctance of men to get a shot could impede that goal.
Health officials in Oregon said that the CDC was investigating the case of a woman who died after developing a blood clot two weeks after immunization.
Scientists at Texas A&M University’s Global Health Research Complex say they’ve detected a new Covid-19 variant that shows signs of a more contagious strain that causes more severe illness and appears to be resistant to antibodies.
Theories on why infections, deaths and hospitalizations have plummeted in Los Angels, once a Covid hot spot, include high immunity from past spikes and a less infectious variant.
California’s two public university systems announced they will require nearly 800,000 students to receive the Covid-19 vaccine as soon as this fall in the nation’s most sweeping higher education testing requirement.
New York marked another day of gains in bringing COVID-19 closer under control, with indicators not seen since November before a holiday season surge.
Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines will effectively prevent serious illness and death from the variant circulating in New York, two independent studies suggest.
Today marks six weeks since the majority of New York’s Democratic congressional delegation, as well as both of its U.S. senators, called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign over multiple allegations of sexual harassment by former staffers. He’s still in office.
Cuomo spent Earth Day at a Long Island event featuring a pair of fellow Democratic lawmakers who have called on him to step down amid sexual harassment allegations.
Reporters are accusing Cuomo of increasingly limiting press access as allegations against him have mounted.
“A lot of governors are holding indoor and outdoor press conferences and inviting reporters. It’s unclear why the governor isn’t holding outdoor press conferences that reporters could attend,” said AP reporter Marina Villenueve.
The Sexual Harassment Working Group is calling on the Assembly Judiciary Committee relinquish the portion of its impeachment investigation into Cuomo that relates to his alleged sexual harassment and to allow the attorney general’s office to handle it alone.
Democratic state lawmakers are calling on Cuomo to sign a bill that would require employers to adopt safety plans for dealing with Covid-19 and other airborne diseases, and that would enable workers to sue them if they don’t comply.
Lawmakers and advocacy groups are calling for restrictions on how New York uses future opioid settlement funds after discovering that millions of dollars from a recent settlement were placed into the state’s general fund.
With less than two months left in the state’s legislative session, lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow public employees in the state system to retire this year if they’re 50 or older and have accrued 25 years of service.
Brooklyn Councilman Chaim Deutsch, a Democrat, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to a misdemeanor tax-fraud charge for filing fraudulent information on income and expenses tied to his real-estate-management business.
Deutsch failed to pay at least $82,076 in taxes on money he made from his real estate management company, Chasa Management, Inc., from 2013 through 2015, prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty to a single count of filing a false tax return for the tax year 2015.
Deutsch intends to complete his term. Speaker Corey Johnson is looking into removing Deutsch from all his committees, including his position as Chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee, as well as his role dispersing discretionary funding.
Disgraced former Bronx Councilman Andy King tried to obstruct a probe into his conduct, an ex-staffer alleges in yet another lawsuit accusing the ousted lawmaker of bullying and abusing his aides.
Brooklyn Councilman Brad Lander, who has crusaded against reckless drivers and pushed a law that lets the city seize their cars, has been caught speeding in school zones around the Big Apple eight times in the past five years.
In seeking the endorsement of the storied Stonewall Democratic Club, the leading LGBTQ political club of New York City, mayoral candidate Andrew Yang spoke of gay bars and made comments that struck members as pandering and tone deaf.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams pressed his case that he is the top public safety candidate in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, saying that a rare fatal shooting in posh Park Slope punctuated the need for a swift crackdown on guns.
As a proud former police officer running for mayor with crime on the rise, Adams is often castigated for being out of step with the activist wing of a party whose vote he is seeking on June 22.
Adams is rolling out the endorsements today of four of Queens state and city elected representatives — coming just days after rival McGuire landed the support of Rep. Greg Meeks, who also serves as the county’s Democratic Party chairman.
McGuire wants to expand New York City’s pre-kindergarten programs to cover toddlers as part of his push to overhaul and improve the public school system — and help fuel the Big Apple’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Candidate Shaun Donovan’s mayoral bid got a financial shot in the arm when the CFB voted to award nearly $1.5 million in public matching funds after receiving sworn statements that a super PAC bankrolled by his dad was not coordinating with his campaign.
Some candidates in the Democratic mayoral primary want to cut $1 billion or more from the police budget, while others have more moderate proposals, frustrating activists.
The public agency that runs John F. Kennedy International Airport approved a deal to scale back and delay plans for a $3.8 billion redevelopment of the New York City airport’s busiest terminal.
The MTA abruptly halted a program to test new security cameras on subway cars — a day after the Daily News raised questions about the ties the company providing the technology has to a Chinese firm that specializes in facial recognition technology.
Twin infants, a boy and a girl, were found dead in an apartment in Queens, and their mother was in custody, officials said.
A federal judge in Manhattan handed down a life sentence to a man convicted of terrorism charges for setting off a pipe bomb in 2017 in one of New York City’s busiest transit hubs.
Former schools Chancellor Richard Carranza violated city rules by scoring his wife a $10 ticket to the hit musical “Hamilton” through a program meant exclusively for Education Department students and staff, the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board said.
As New York’s arts groups continue to grapple with the pandemic’s economic impact, the state is providing a measure of relief with its largest cultural financial commitment in recent years.
Eight days after protesters and city police officers clashed at the entrance of South Station, Mayor Kathy Sheehan and Police Chief Eric Hawkins ordered dozens of officers to forcibly clear a small encampment set up outside the police station.
Hawkins said eight people have been arrested, and some of them were connected to the incident last week at the South Station that started all this when property damage was caused.
A veteran State Police investigator was suspended after Oneida police responded to a Walmart store where the investigator had been confronted by employees who believed he had taken moisturizer and women’s underwear without paying for the items.
Regal Cinemas, the largest operator of movie theaters in the Capital Region, will reopen its two largest local multiplexes today, joining other local movie houses that have been showing films for months.
An effort to expunge the Saratoga Working Families Party’s endorsed candidates from November’s ballot by claiming their petitions were not valid has been tossed out.
Actor Owen Wilson has landed in Saratoga Springs.
Public and private sector officials celebrated progress on a 20 megawatt, $20 million solar farm going up in what used to an empty farm field in Washington County, but which will soon hook into the state power grid.
