Good morning, it’s Thursday – one day away from the Friday of a holiday weekend (the unofficial kick-off of summer, FWIW).
The headlines have been full of pain and tragedy of late, and while I strongly believe that it does no good to look away from hard things that demand we – perhaps finally – confront them head-on, I personally needed a little bit of a break.
And so when I was looking around for something to write about this morning, I really felt the need to be inspired and uplifted.
Enter Sally Ride.
Those of a certain age (read: old, AKA my contemporaries) will remember Ride well. The rest of you need to get schooled.
She was both the first American woman to travel to space, and, at the time of her flight aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger – June 18, 1983 – as part of its second mission, STS-7, at the age of 32, she was also the youngest astronaut ever to make the trip.
Dr. Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles on May 26, 1951. She attended Stanford University, from which she graduated in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in English and physics, and then continued on with her studies at the same institution, earning a master’s in physics in 1975 and a Ph.D. in physics in 1978.
Ride was still at Stanford when she applied for NASA’s astronaut program. She was one of just 35 selected out of 8,000 applicants, and her cohort included the space programs first six women astronauts.
After her first successful space flight, Ride went up again in the Challenger in 1984. She was scheduled to make yet another trip in 1986, but that mission was scuttled due to the Challenger explosion in January of that year that took the lives of seven astronauts – including the first teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe, the winner of a national screening that started in 1984.
Ride, who has served as an inspiration for women in the STEM fields for decades, served on the commission that investigated the explosions of both the Challenger and Columbia (February 2002) shuttles.
She was inducted into the US Astronaut Hall of Fame in 2003, and started her own educational company, Sally Ride Science, to “pursue her long-time passion for motivating young girls and boys to stick with their interests in science and to consider pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.”
Ride died of pancreatic cancer in July 2012 at the age of 61. Interestingly, it was not until after her death that she went public with the fact that she was gay.
Ride was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was also featured on a postage stamp, and had a U.S. Navy research ship named in her honor.
Sally Ride Day commemorates and celebrates her life and accomplishments and is observed annually on Ride’s birthday.
Another nice late spring day is on tap with temperatures in the mid-to-high 70s and cloudy skies in the morning, giving way to sun in the afternoon.
In the headlines…
President Biden signed an executive order intended to increase accountability in policing and improve public trust, citing it as a sign of slow but steady progress two years to the day that George Floyd was murdered in Minnesota.
The order creates a national registry of officers fired for misconduct and encourages state and local police to tighten restrictions on chokeholds and so-called no-knock warrants.
It also restricts the transfer of military equipment to law enforcement agencies and mandates all federal agents wear activated body cameras.
Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden will head to Texas “in the coming days” to do whatever they can to comfort the community ripped apart by the killing of 19 young students.
“As a nation, I think we all must be for them. Everyone,” he added. “And we must ask: When in God’s name will we do what needs to be done to, if not completely stop, fundamentally change the amount of the carnage that goes on in this country?”
A decade after Republicans blocked gun safety legislation in response to Newtown, Biden remains caught between a desire to honor the dead by vowing to act and the reality that he cannot deliver on sweeping promises without consensus in Congress.
There have been 27 shootings on school properties across the nation since 2022 began.
Instead of bringing up House-passed background checks legislation that Republicans and possibly a Democrat or two would block, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is holding out hope that the latest mass shooting will finally unstick a bipartisan deal.
Schumer urged his Republican colleagues to compromise on two pieces of gun safety legislation — but it could take some time for the bills to reach the floor.
Denouncing “politicians and partisanship,” former President Donald Trump vowed to speak at this weekend’s National Rifle Association convention despite the Texas school shooting.
House Sergeant-at-Arms William Walker revealed he does not believe lawmakers should be permitted to carry firearms on the Capitol Complex — a departure from current policy, which allows members to bring D.C.-licensed firearms into Capitol buildings.
Salvador Ramos used Facebook to share updates the day he shot his grandmother, then killed 21 people at a Texas elementary school, police said.
Ramos came from a broken family and unsettled classmates and co-workers with sometimes aggressive behavior and disturbing social-media posts. He didn’t have any known or documented mental-health issues, and had no adult arrest record.
The 21 victims killed at a Texas elementary school were all in a single fourth-grade classroom, according to police. Accused gunman Ramos barricaded himself inside the Robb Elementary School room Tuesday morning and opened fire.
The gunman entered the building despite being confronted by an armed school security officer, then wounded two responding police officers and engaged in a standoff inside the school for over an hour, state police officials said.
Frustrated onlookers urged police officers to charge into Robb Elementary as the gunman raged inside, and investigators worked to track the massacre that lasted upwards of 40 minutes and ended when the 18-year-old shooter was killed by a Border Patrol team.
Many sets of siblings and cousins attended Robb Elementary, which served second, third and fourth grades, in some cases causing multiple tragedies within families.
Donna Independent School District, in South Texas, will be closing its campuses today after a credible threat was reported to the police, according to Javier Reyes, a security officer in the district’s police department.
Students and youth organizers with the March for Our Lives gun control movement are planning nationwide protests following the Texas elementary school shooting, including a march on Washington, D.C., on June 11.
In New York and across the country, children, parents and caregivers grappled with the aftermath of the deadly shooting in Uvalde, Tex. Some schools around the country took extra precautions in the wake of the shooting.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is calling on New York state lawmakers to pass legislation that would ban the sale of AR-15-style rifles to people under age 21.
“How does an 18-year-old purchase an AR-15 in the State of New York, or the State of Texas?” she asked. “That person isn’t old enough to buy a legal drink. I want to work with the Legislature to change that. I want it to be 21. I think that’s just common sense.”
Hochul said she wants the change to apply “at a minimum” to AR-15s, saying she would work with the state Legislature to determine whether it could apply to other types of firearms. New York City already bans the sale of guns to those under 21.
Hochul slammed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Twitter for highlighting New York as an example of a state where tougher gun control laws don’t work.
It promises to be a jam-packed ending to the scheduled session for the state Senate and Assembly, which is due to conclude on June 2.
A day after the latest mass shooting massacre, a federal court upheld a New York law that would allow the state or people impacted by gun violence to sue manufacturers.
The law says gun manufacturers’ products can be considered a public nuisance. It allows the state, cities and citizens to bring civil lawsuits alleging industry participants didn’t enact reasonable controls to prevent the unlawful sale or use of firearms in New York.
Mayor Eric Adams blasted social media that glorifies violence and its impact on New York City’s children in the aftermath of the Texas elementary school shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
Adams wants New York City parents to help him stem the tide of handguns showing up in city schools, urging them to search students’ book bags and social media accounts if necessary — to make sure they’re not carrying firearms.
A Brooklyn man charged in the unprovoked killing of a Q train rider last weekend instructed other passengers to “put their cellphones away” after the fatal shooting, a Manhattan prosecutor told a judge.
Adams came under unfriendly fire for his role in a bizarre day of negotiations with the Q train subway murder suspect, with critics suggesting the ex-cop needed to let the NYPD handle things.
After gunning a man to death in front of terrified straphangers, accused subway killer Andrew Abdullah quickly began plotting his exit strategy to avoid arrest, prosecutors said. He’s being held without bail.
Weeks before Abdullah was accused of murdering a Brooklyn man in cold blood on a subway train, a Criminal Court judge released him without bail on charges of stealing a car.
The killing was the latest in a series of violent episodes that have made subway riders worried about their safety at a fraught moment for the transit system.
Train crew shortages are the leading cause of the thousands of subway delays straphangers endure each month, new MTA data shows.
Congestion pricing faces more delays as MTA officials struggle to answer hundreds of questions from the feds on the plan to toll motorists driving south of 60th St. in Manhattan.
Adams’ top cop has been privately meeting with workers at top Big Apple businesses to convince them that NYC is safe as the city struggles to get workers back full-time amid the uptick in violent crime.
City Hall claimed that 1,300 homeless New Yorkers have left the Big Apple’s subway system to claim a bed in a shelter in the three months since the start of Adams’ crackdown.
Adams will deliver the keynote address at a cannabis business conference tomorrow.
A growing cluster of Legionnaires’ disease cases in the Bronx has resulted in the death of one person and illness in 18 others, eight of whom are currently hospitalized, the New York City Health Department said.
Vouchers, which help people afford rent, have long been seen as a key to solving the nation’s housing woes. But in New York City, a broken oversight system is undermining their effectiveness, advocates say.
Antonio Delgado officially resigned from Congress and was sworn in as New York’s next lieutenant governor.
“We have enough politicians. We really do. What we need are more public servants,” Delgado said, adding that the work he’s done in Congress “is work of unity.”
Delgado quickly set his sights on the National Rifle Association while pushing for additional gun control measures in the wake of a deadly mass shooting at a Texas school.
The state doled out $21 million last year to subsidize the Showtime mini-series, “Escape at Dannemora,” starring Benicio del Toro and Patricia Arquette.
The former human resources director of the Sidney Albert Albany Jewish Community Center is facing three to nine years in state prison if she does not pay back $127,000 she stole from the Whitehall Road facility.
The Milton Town Board was expected to pass a resolution that will disallow any flag other than a governmental one – such as the New York state or the American flag – from being hoisted on its flagpole because it could be construed as “government speech.”
Honest Weight Food Co-op members overwhelmingly opted to move forward with the exploration of opening a downtown location in partnership with the Electric City Food Co-op, a Schenectady upstart.
Trump’s stature as GOP kingmaker has been dented in the past week, as some candidates he backed in major Republican primaries—particularly for governor—lost their bids.
The GOP primary for a Pennsylvania Senate seat will go to a recount, with celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz clinging to a narrow advantage over David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, in one of the nation’s most intensely watched midterm contests.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signed a bill into law that bans abortion at conception in his state, the strictest anti-abortion law in the nation.
The law makes exceptions in cases where an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother, or in cases of rape or incest if they have been reported to law enforcement.
The Walt Disney Co. has become entangled in a corruption scandal unfolding in Anaheim, the southern California city where its Disneyland Resort is based, that this week prompted its mayor to resign.
