Good morning. It’s Friday. Hallelujah.
This morning’s missive is going to be a bit on the short side. It’s one of those things that I think is really important to call out, but also I don’t want to dwell on it for longer than absolutely necessary. Why? Because, quite honestly, it depresses me greatly.
The world can be both cruel and beautiful. Sometimes I like to indulge my love of the ridiculous and fun. Unfortunately, today we’re dwelling on the former and not the latter.
I assume you’re following the news out of Oklahoma. But in case not, a non-binary teenager is dead after an altercation in a school restroom with some of their classmates. Sixteen-year-old Nex Benedict, according to their family, identified as non-binary and used they/them pronouns.
The police say that early autopsy results indicate that Nex did not die as a result of their injuries sustained in the fight between them and several of their classmates, but also didn’t reveal (yet) WHAT the cause of death was, exactly. According to a statement, the Owasso police will be waiting until “toxicology results and other ancillary testing results are received” to comment further.
According to Nex’s family, they had been experiencing harassment and bullying as a result of their nonbinary identity. The police are investigating what led to the incident in the bathroom, interviewing other students and staff.
The environment in Oklahoma for LGBTQ+ individuals is not great, to say the least. One might even call it hostile, based on policies like a so-called “bathroom bill” passed in 2022 by the state Legislature, which mandated that all preK-12 schools require students use the restroom and locker rooms of the sex designated on their birth certificates.
In addition, Gov. Kevin Stitt in 2023 issued an executive order requiring government agencies to identify people according to their sex at birth and not their gender identity.
Sadly, what Nex experienced leading up to the bathroom fight is hardly unique.
Bullying is on the rise across the country. According to an annual survey conducted by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, 40 percent of youth said they were bullied on school property in 2020, which is 14 percent higher than in 2019. Also concerning, some 18 percent of youth have experienced cyberbullying , and more than half of those didn’t tell an adult about what they experienced.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, CDC data released in 2020 shows that LGBTQ+ youth are more likely to be bullied than their straight/cisgender counterparts. These findings showed that 43 percent of transgender youth had been bullied on school property, and 29 percent of transgender youth, 21 percent of gay and lesbian youth and 22 percent of bisexual youth had attempted suicide.
Today happens to be International STAND UP to Bullying Day – a semi-annual event that takes place in February and November, with the fall event coinciding with Anti-Bullying Week. One way to mark this day is to wear a pink shirt that signifies a public pledge to stand up to bullying. (The pink shirt is connected to the origin story of this day, which is just one of a number of days dedicated to combatting bullying).
It’s a sad testament to the state of the world that we need to set aside days for recognizing that bullying is damaging, horrible, mean, unnecessary, and just plain wrong. But, here we are. And Mother Nature seems to be equally bummed out, given the forecast – rain in the morning with some mixed winter precipitation possible. Temperatures will be in the mid-to-high 40s.
The weekend is looking better, with mostly sunny skies on both days, though Saturday will be on the chilly side (temperatures in the low 30s), while Sunday will be warmer (low 40s).
In the headlines…
The US-made Odysseus lunar lander made a touchdown on the moon, surpassing its final key milestones — and the odds — to become the first commercial spacecraft to accomplish such a feat, but the condition of the lander remains in question.
The lander, built by Intuitive Machines, touched down on the lunar surface at around 6:23 p.m. ET, overcoming a late-stage glitch with its onboard laser instruments. Odysseus is the first American spacecraft on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
While this venture was much more modest than the Apollo missions that led to astronauts walking on the moon, NASA’s hope was that it could help inaugurate a more revolutionary era: transportation around the solar system that is economical (for spaceflight).
Senior Israeli, Qatari, U.S. and Egyptian officials will meet in Paris today to attempt to advance a deal for a cease-fire and the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, an Israeli official and a person briefed on the talks said.
This likely signals that Israel believes progress on a so-far elusive deal is still possible, amid reports that Hamas could be willing to soften demands rejected by Jerusalem.
Reps. Dan Goldman and Jerry Nadler joined with 11 other Jewish Democratic members of Congress to send a letter to Biden urging him to “exhaust every effort to facilitate a mutual, temporary ceasefire agreement” between Israel and Hamas.
More than a dozen people were arrested yesterday evening during a peaceful pro-Palestinian protest inside a Manhattan building where Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrats of New York, have offices.
Jewish students are suing Columbia University and Barnard College over allegations of “severe” and “pervasive” antisemitism at the affiliated Manhattan institutions.
The large-scale military strikes the US has directed at the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group in Yemen that has disrupted shipping in the Red Sea, has forced the Biden administration to wrestle over what it can do without congressional approval.
Schumer, the majority leader, is traveling to Ukraine today for a visit meant to show American solidarity with a democratic ally under attack by Russia and increase the pressure on Republicans to drop their opposition to additional U.S. aid.
The US will impose sanctions on more than 500 targets in its response to Russia over the death of the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, the largest single package in a flurry of economic restrictions since the country’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago.
Russian authorities have declared that Navalny died of natural causes but are refusing to release his remains until his family agrees to a “secret funeral,” Navalny’s mother and his spokeswoman said.
President Joe Biden met yesterday with Navalny’s wife and daughter, the White House said, as the president prepares to levy additional sanctions against Russia.
“The President expressed his admiration for Alexei Navalny’s extraordinary courage and his legacy of fighting against corruption and for a free and democratic Russia in which the rule of law applies equally to everyone,” a White House statement read.
Two more Alabama fertility clinics announced they would be halting IVF treatments after the state Supreme Court’s decision that found frozen embryos can legally be considered children. One is the facility being sued in the lawsuit on which the court ruled.
Some women wonder whether they will now have to pay to keep extra embryos stored permanently, or face criminal charges if they are disposed of.
The accident in the Alabama clinic that spurred three legal challenges and lead to this decision echoes a pattern of serious errors that happen all too frequently during fertility treatment, a rapidly growing industry with little government oversight, experts say.
The White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by former President Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border.
Trump’s attorneys launched a flurry of attacks last night against the federal charges accusing him of illegally holding on to classified documents after he left office, filing more than 70 pages of court papers seeking to have the case thrown out.
The judge in Trump’s civil fraud case has rejected a request from the defense to delay the enforcement of the penalties in the case.
In an email to Trump’s legal team and lawyers from the New York Attorney General’s Office, Judge Arthur Engoron of the New York State Supreme Court said he would sign a judgment proposed by the state that finalizes his ruling.
Crowdsourcing platform GoFundMe is standing up to pressure from the left to halt a fundraiser meant to help pay Trump’s penalties from last week’s New York civil fraud ruling.
Trump often characterizes his campaign as a battle for America’s future. Speaking at a Christian broadcast media convention in Nashville, he wrapped that depiction in a good-versus-evil framework, portraying his opponents as part of a “wicked” system.
Republicans mounting a long-shot bid to unseat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand selected Mike Sapraicone, a wealthy private security executive, as their preferred nominee at a party convention. But two conservatives are vowing to primary him.
Congress is failing Israel by not passing an aid package to support its ongoing war against Hamas, Gov. Kathy Hochul said.
“I miss the Tea Party,” Hochul said. “I miss John Boehner, I miss people that you could actually work with and get things done.”
The state has levied more than $25 million in fines against unlicensed smoke shops for selling cannabis products since last year, but only a minuscule percent of that has been collected by the state Tax Department and the Office of Cannabis Management.
The New York attorney general urged the FDA to “take immediate action” and renew alerts to doctors and patients about the dangerous effects of Singulair for children, saying the current warnings about the drug’s psychiatric side effects were not sufficient.
In a letter, the attorney general, Letitia James, also called on the federal agency to consider discouraging the prescription of Singulair, an asthma and allergy drug, to children.
Longtime Republican Southern Tier Assemblyman Andrew Goodell will retire at the end of the year.
Upper West Side Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal — who isn’t interested in building more market-rate housing — has been living in a five-room, rent-stabilized apartment in a landmarked building for 40 years, paying only a fraction of the market rate.
Democrats considering whether to accept an independent commission’s proposed congressional boundaries are proposing legislation that, if they redraw the maps, could require legal challenges of that process to be filed in state Supreme Court in Albany.
Mayor Eric Adams, who had boycotted the existing Staten Island St. Patrick’s Day parade over its exclusion of L.G.B.T.Q. groups, announced that the borough would hold a second parade, without that prohibition, this year.
A firm run by Adams’ former chief of staff became a city lobbying outfit just weeks after he and his relatives gave $15,000 to Adams’ legal defense fund, alarming a watchdog group and highlighting the murky ethics of contributing to a politician’s attorney fees.
The city’s Education Department won’t see another round of city budget cuts this spring. But the school system still stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars of expiring federal aid by this summer unless officials act quickly to replace it, advocates warned.
CUNY’s York College and Queens College were evacuated yesterday after receiving a bomb threat via email, police said.
Over the last year, the number of vacant public housing apartments in New York City has risen by nearly 50% — with just under 5,000 units sitting empty as of January, while more than 240,000 applicants languish on the NYCHA waiting list.
A “negligent” engineer whose errors led to the collapse of a seven-story Bronx apartment building agreed to pay a $10,000 fine — and serve a two-year city inspection ban, authorities said.
Contractors paid big bucks by the MTA to bring in subway car cleaners during the pandemic are accused of stiffing close to 400 workers of more than $2.5 million, a pair of new lawsuits charge.
New York has stood at the vanguard of progressive workplace legislation, yet some Starbucks workers say the city isn’t standing up to their employer.
A Long Island county is making more than 100 facilities off limits to athletic organizations that allow transgender girls and women to compete on teams that match their gender identity, staking out a position in the nationwide debate.
In signing the executive order which put the ban into effect, County Executive Bruce Blakeman said it only applies to female competitive sports, not co-ed sports, or in sports where biological females want to compete against males.
“There is too much bullying going on of biological males trying to inject themselves in women and female sports and we will not tolerate that in Nassau County,” Blakeman said at a news conference.
Albany County Democrats will not endorse any of the four men who want to be the Albany County district attorney.
James R. Davis, a former county assistant district attorney, won the Saratoga County Republican Committee’s endorsement for County Court judge.
The City of Troy will launch a sixth attempt to develop the vacant former City Hall site at 1 Monument Square after “insurmountable” issues arose in building the fifth proposal, Mayor Carmella Mantello said in her state of the city address.
A Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor is suing the college after he says it refused to let him use his inventions in his small business and instead licensed the patents to another business.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
