Good morning, and welcome to July!
A quick programming note: In observance of the Glorious Fourth, AKA Independence Day, which we will be delving into in just a moment, there will be no Rise and Shine this coming Monday.
Enjoy a safe, healthy, and happy holiday weekend, all. Remember to drink your water and wear your sunscreen – even if it’s cloudy.
Though most people associate this weekend with picnics, cookouts, fireworks, and other traditional summertime celebratory events, there is an actual historical aspect to the 4th of July.
On that day in 1776, the Continental Congress unanimously and formally adopted the Declaration of Independence, announcing the colonies’ separation from Great Britain, even though the actual vote took place on July 2, the 4th became synonymous with all things related to freedom.
A little reminder: The Constitution is the document that provides the legal and governmental framework for the United States, while the Declaration, is more of a manifesto, and includes the infamous “all Men are created equal” line. (Not women, notably, and also not individuals of color who were enslaved at the time – all that came much later).
The first July 4 celebration was held in 1777, even though Congress was still preoccupied with the ongoing American Revolution. Festivities included concerts, bonfires, parades, the firing of canons and muskets, and a ceremonial reading of the newly-inked aforementioned declaration.
The whole fireworks thing started that year in Philadelphia. It was a spontaneous celebration, described in a letter by John Adams to his daughter, Abigail, and accompanied by a ship’s cannon firing off a 13-round salute in honor of the 13 colonies.
In 1781, the state of Massachusetts became the first to make July 4 an official holiday, moving to do so a few months before the key American victory at the Battle of Yorktown.
Celebrating July 4th became a fair common practice after the War of 1812, but Congress did not make July 4 a federal holiday until 1870, and a provision was not granted providing paid time off for all federal employees until 1941.
As an aside: Today would have been Princess Diana’s 61st birthday.
It’s going to be blisteringly hot today, with temperatures soaring into the mid-90s. There will be intervals of clouds and sunshine throughout the day. The weekend is a little hit or miss, with scattered thunderstorms forecast for Saturday and mostly sunny skies on Sunday and Monday. Temperatures on those three days will be in the 80s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden said he would support making an exception to the filibuster – the 60-vote threshold in the Senate needed to pass most legislation – in order to codify abortion rights and the right to privacy through legislation passed by Congress.
It was a striking assertion from a president who is steeped in the traditions of the Senate and has resisted calls from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party to scrap the longstanding Senate practice of requiring a 60-vote threshold to pass legislation.
A judge in Florida blocked a state law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, the latest in a flurry of activity in state courts and legislatures following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Democrats are blasting Biden for agreeing to nominate an anti-abortion Republican to a lifetime federal judgeship in Kentucky, less than a week after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Legislation rolled out by a group of Democratic New York City Council members would make abortion pills available for free at dozens of health clinics across the five boroughs.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James is calling on Google to correct search results she says are directing abortion seekers to dangerous and misleading anti-abortion clinics in the state, her latest action to shore up abortion rights in the Empire State.
The Supreme Court said Biden administration can scrap a Trump-era immigration policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration courts, a victory for a White House that still must address the growing number of people at the border.
The ruling was 5-4, and states that immigration law gives the federal government the discretion to end the program, formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols.
The Supreme Court delivered a major setback to Biden’s ambitious climate change goals, ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency does not have broad authority to curb planet-warming pollution from power plants.
The EPA ruling was a substantial victory for libertarian-minded conservatives who have worked for decades to curtail or dismantle modern-style government regulation of the economy.
Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in to the Supreme Court, shattering a glass ceiling as the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court.
Justice Jackson took both a constitutional oath, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts, and a judicial oath, administered by Justice Stephen Breyer, whom she is replacing, making her the nation’s 116th justice and sixth woman to serve on the high court.
The Supreme Court announced that it would hear a case that could radically reshape how federal elections are conducted by giving state legislatures independent power, not subject to review by state courts, to set election rules in conflict with state constitutions.
The U.S. Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the convictions of executives and SUNY Polytechnic Institute founder Alain Kaloyeros in the so-called “Buffalo Billion” bid-rigging case when the court begins its new term in the fall.
That means the court has agreed to take up the case of Joseph Percoco, who spent years as former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s right-hand man, and consider whether private citizens can be convicted of depriving the public of their honest services.
The court signaled it accepted Percoco’s request to review part of his case, in which he was convicted of three bribery felonies related to money he accepted from a Syracuse-area developer while on Cuomo’s campaign, not technically on government staff.
The Supreme Court declined to take up a case involving a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for health care workers in New York that does not offer an exemption for religious reasons.
Three justices — Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — objected to the court’s decision not to review the mandate, which allows those with medical exemptions to continue working without being vaccinated but not those with religious objections.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a dissenting opinion expressed support for a debunked claim that Covid-19 vaccines were developed using the cells of “aborted children.”
At midnight on Thursday, tens of thousands of National Guard troops who have yet to prove they have been vaccinated against the coronavirus were in violation of a direct order mandating their compliance.
North Korea claimed its Covid-19 outbreak began when two residents touched “unusual things” near the South Korean border, according to state media.
Airborne propaganda leaflets sent by activists across the border have long angered the regime, which pointed to them as the likely culprit in the country’s recent outbreak.
New York City is creating the first mobile testing units in the United States that will allow people who test positive for the coronavirus to immediately receive for free the antiviral treatment Paxlovid.
COVID positivity rates in New York City have crept back up to late-January levels, as top doctors warn the city may be on the verge of a sixth wave of COVID-19 driven by the “worst version” of the omicron variant yet.
The FDA decided to advise manufacturers that when they update the Covid-19 vaccine booster they should add an Omicron BA.4/5 component to the current vaccine mix. This would create what’s known as a bivalent, or two component, booster.
The FDA wants to update the booster shots to provide longer lasting protection ahead of the fall, when public health experts expect another wave of infection as immunity from the vaccines wanes and people spend more time indoors.
The rapidly spreading Omicron subvariants known as BA.4 and BA.5 will probably overtake other versions of the coronavirus and become dominant throughout the Americas in the next few weeks, as they already have in the US and Mexico, a WHO official said.
Oxford Biomedica Plc has signed a three-year agreement with AstraZeneca Plc to manufacture the UK drug giant’s Covid-19 vaccine on an as-needed basis.
New York lawmakers returned to the State Capitol yesterday as they prepared to take steps toward barring guns in a multitude of “sensitive locations” and banning people from carrying firearms into businesses unless owners explicitly say they are allowed.
The governor issued a proclamation calling for an extraordinary session today, that not only now includes a response to the Supreme Court case on concealed carry, but also on an equal rights constitutional amendment.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a two-year extension of mayoral control over New York City public schools shortly before such authority would have expired at midnight this morning.
Angry lawmakers, parents and advocates rallied Wednesday in City Hall Park, calling on Hochul to sign a bill forcing New York City to lower class sizes.
New legislation targeting hidden fees and predatory “anti-consumer ticketing practices” in New York State’s live event industry, including theater, sports events and concerts, was signed into law by Hochul.
Hochul signed a bill aimed at cracking down on “malicious” hidden charges for tickets to concerts and sporting events — as well as tech that scoops up free ducats to sell for a profit before regular New Yorkers can get them.
Hochul’s administration denied a key permit for a gas powered cryptocurrency mining operation in the Finger Lakes, saying the facility spews too much planet-warming pollution to be allowed under the state’s climate law.
Retiring Staten Island Sen. Diane Savino said she is going to work for the Adams administration when her term ends.
Police are eying domestic violence as the motivation behind the killed of a 20-year-old mother, Azsia Johnson, on the Upper East Side – the latest in a string of gun violence, part of a rising tide that has swept New York City since the start of the pandemic.
Johnson planned to meet up with the child’s father the night she was shot and killed, and now cops want to question him, police sources said.
Nine people – including a juvenile – were shot in an apparent drive-by shooting yesterday evening on a street in Newark, city officials said.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s response to a hostile encounter with a grocery worker on Staten Island has left even his defenders baffled.
Adams, the second Black mayor, went as far as to call Giuliani a possible “Karen,” a slang term for people — often white women — who are prone to use their privilege to call police or other authority to settle noncriminal disputes, often with people of color.
Two Veterans Affairs hospitals in New York City that were left on life support under a proposal to a downsizing commission are now set to stay open after U.S. Senate leaders said they intend to scrap the commission.
The Department of Justice has opened a sweeping investigation of the New York City Police Department’s Special Victims Division and its handling of sex crimes, officials said.
Guns used in crimes in New York City will be analyzed faster. That’s the aim of a first-of-its-kind unit at the city’s Medical Examiner’s Office.
The beachfront tourist destination Luna Park will soon be introducing three new attractions and pedestrian plazas on several acres along the iconic Coney Island, New York, boardwalk as part of its expansion.
SUNY Poly has received $397,000 from NYSERDA to train the next generation of custodians, technicians, engineers, and managers for the high-tech buildings that house chip-making facilities and labs for developing computer chips.
The City of Albany’s good cause eviction law, the first of its kind in the state, was struck down in a decision that may lead to the overturning of similar pieces of legislation across the state.
Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy said he hopes the city can begin construction on a new pool for Central Park by the fall, setting in motion construction of a new facility in the long-abandoned tennis stadium that is now choked with weeds and brush.
