It’s Wednesday, good morning and Happy Juneteenth!
Some of you might be reading this a little later than usual, having taken advantage of your extra day off to sleep in. Or maybe you’re up at the same time as always – zero-dark-thirty, as my military friends like to say – and wondering why the heck it is that you don’t have the day off, while other people do.
Juneteenth, (AKA Emancipation Day), was declared a federal holiday in the early days of the Biden administration (June 2021). It’s officially Juneteenth National Independence Day, and, as with all federal holidays, the usual things are closed – the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Postal Service, etc. – and most federal employees are entitled to take paid time off (PTO).
Private employers are not required to give people paid time off on any holidays, though they do have to observe the laws in the states where they are located. As of last year, only 28 states had made Juneteenth a permanent paid or legal holiday with legislation or executive action.
That includes New York, which actually beat the feds to the punch by a whole year in making Juneteenth a state public holiday, meaning state government offices are closed and state workers have a paid day off.
There are a few states that give workers the option to take off, but haven’t officially declared the day a holiday, and others haven’t passed legislation but instead are relying on gubernatorial proclamation, which is a sort of year-to-year thing.
The issue not only is a very important one to the Black community, which has been commemorating the date for some 150 years, but also became something of a political football during the 2000 presidential campaign. Donald Trump sparked outrage when his campaign announced it would hold a major event on Juneteenth in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of a 1921 massacre of Black residents and Black-owned businesses on “Black Wall Street.”
The Trump campaign ended up rescheduling the event for June 20 out of “respect”, but the damage was already done.
As a reminder, Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States – which did not, as is commonly believed, occur automatically with the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863. That document declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious Southern states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”
However, it did NOT emancipate enslaved people in certain parishes in Louisiana, or the states of Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, and West Virginia, even though they had abolished slavery before the end of the Civil War.
Some places where slavery HAD been ended didn’t get the message – remember, this was long before the telephone was invented – of what had happened until long after the war ended in April 1865. The last place to be notified by Union troops was the City of Galveston, Texas, which received the news on this day in 1865.
There are a lot of different Juneteenth celebrations and events scheduled, but given the fact that we are still in the throes of a heat advisory, with temperatures shooting into the 90s and heat index values in the low 100s, it’s unclear whether organizers will move things indoors or choose to move things to another day entirely. Best to check before you go.
Also, if you are heading outside, bring an umbrella and/or a slicker, because skies will be cloudy with a marginal chance of a stray shower or thunderstorm. Also, the usual caveats apply: Sunscreen even if you can’t see the sun and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.
In the headlines…
A blast of heat and humidity in the Midwest and Northeast days before the official start of summer put a wet blanket on outdoor activities from festivals to sports camps as officials urged people to take precautions.
Over the next six days, 265 million people, or about 82% of the U.S. population, are likely to experience temperatures topping 90 degrees as the official first day of summer arrives on Thursday.
After a record-breaking day yesterday, with high temperatures around the Midwest, Great Lakes and Northeast were largely in the low 90s — 10 to 15 degrees warmer than usual for mid-June – more than 20 daily records are expected to be broken today.
Officials declared heat emergencies and opened cooling centers as temperatures reached the high 90s, with humidity making it feel hotter in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Rochester, NY, than in San Antonio, Phoenix or St. Petersburg, Fla.
The atypical heat, which is also roasting the Midwest, may foretell a brutally hot summer, with most of the country expected to see higher-than-usual temperatures for at least the next three to four weeks, forecasters said.
The outer bands of Potential Tropical Cyclone One are already lashing southern Texas, where they are set to unleash strong winds, heavy rain and possible flash flooding in some areas.
Tropical Storm Alberto is expected to form in the Gulf of Mexico and the sprawling storm system has begun battering Texas with tropical storm-force winds, meaning they are gusting between 39-73 mph.
As expected, the Biden administration is taking executive action to protect undocumented spouses of American citizens — a move that would shield about 500,000 immigrants from deportation.
The action will provide legal status and protections for about 500,000 American families and roughly 50,000 noncitizen children of immigrants under the age of 21 whose parent is married to a US citizen.
The president announced that his administration will, in the coming months, allow certain U.S. citizens’ spouses without legal status to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship without having to first depart the country.
The president’s announcement to expand legal protections for some undocumented spouses of American citizens evoked Barack Obama’s move to help young immigrants in 2012.
“This is proof-positive of the Democrats’ plan to turn illegal aliens into voters. I fully expect this order, which is manifestly contrary to the Immigration and Naturalization Act, to be challenged and struck down in the courts,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Misleading GOP videos of Biden are going viral. The fact-checkers are having trouble keeping up.
About one in 20 people who voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election plan to vote for Biden in November’s ballot, according to a poll.
With less than two weeks until the first presidential debate, CNN announced the rules agreed on by both the Biden and Trump campaigns.
The rules include microphone muting, a coin flip and more when the two candidates face off at the network’s Atlanta studio on June 27.
Robert Morris, the founder of a Texas megachurch and a faith adviser to the Trump White House, has resigned from his job as its senior pastor, the church said yesterday, days after he was accused of sexually abusing a child in the 1980s.
The $230 million temporary pier that the U.S. military built on short notice to rush humanitarian aid to Gaza has largely failed in its mission, aid organizations say, and will probably end operations weeks earlier than originally expected.
As the war has raged in Gaza, another battle has unfurled in parallel along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon — a risky game of tit-for-tat that has intensified in recent weeks, with a far stronger foe.
More than eight months of fighting between Israel and Hamas has destroyed buildings and infrastructure across the Gaza Strip, leaving more than 39 million tons of debris and exacerbating an already dire health crisis there, according to the UN.
The United States is on a pace to add trillions of dollars to its national debt over the next decade, borrowing money more quickly than previously expected, at a time when big legislative fights loom over taxes and spending.
The Congressional Budget Office said yesterday that the U.S. national debt is poised to top $56 trillion by 2034, as rising spending and interest expenses outpace tax revenues.
Much of this increase from the February forecast comes from a projected $145 billion rise in projected outlays related to student loans.
It’s the Summer of Trump in the House of Representatives, where Republican lawmakers have flooded the chamber with bills and resolutions honoring the former president, convicted felon and 2024 GOP front-runner.
Trump’s campaign denied he is planning to stay in Chicago and commute to Milwaukee for the 2024 Republican National Convention in July.
Trump now intends to stay in Milwaukee, two of the people briefed on his logistics said. The change avoids a perceived slight to the largest city in Wisconsin, a vital battleground state.
New York’s highest court rejected Trump’s appeal of the gag order in his hush-money case in a terse decision. The Court of Appeals declined to take up the appeal because “no substantial constitutional question [was] directly involved.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul came to Manhattan yesterday to declare a reboot for New York’s rocky retail cannabis industry, as frustrated applicants for retail licenses protested in front of her office over the state’s broken promises to let them launch their businesses.
Hochul is set to deploy 50 members of the National Guard to provide assistance to New Yorkers during this week’s heat wave.
People living in Gowanus, Brooklyn, are calling on Hochul to clean up the area, claiming that they have been breathing contaminated air for years.
More than 400 unlicensed cannabis shops across New York City have been shut down since the state Legislature expanded the city’s enforcement power in this year’s state budget, Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams touted.
The Democratic governor has adopted the curious policy of not endorsing anyone in their primary challenges on her home turf, despite helping President Joe Biden’s bid on the national TV circuit.
Charges were dismissed yesterday against one of the six people accused in a campaign finance scheme aimed at trying to curry favor with then-candidate and now Mayor Adams.
The city announced it is investing $1 billion into 39 pools across the five boroughs. Officials said the city will use this new funding to build two indoor pools and fully renovate three more.
A Bloomberg investigation finds the NYPD under Adams is spending more time in the air and taking more chopper flights out of NYC — at a cost.
Lefty New York City Comptroller Brad Lander is set to challenge Adams for the Democratic mayoral nomination next year — telling key donors unequivocally that he is in the race, an anonymous Lander donor tells the NY Post.
New York City Council leaders are reportedly growing increasingly anxious that this year’s municipal budget will be late as negotiations with Adams have grounded to an “intractable” halt on a number of key issues, including education and library funding.
More than 12 percent of offers to New York City’s most prestigious high schools went to Black and Latino students this year, education officials announced yesterday, the highest number since 2013.
Pop superstar Justin Timberlake was arrested for drunk driving in Sag Harbor, LI, early yesterday after botching field sobriety tests — and repeatedly refused to take a chemical test as he sat in jail, according to court filings obtained by the Daily News.
Cops pulled over the 43-year-old “SexyBack” star after they saw him blow through a stop sign six blocks away from The American Hotel, where TMZ reported Timberlake had been partying.
Timberlake told arresting officers, who reportedly did not recognize him, he had just “one martini, and I followed my friends home’’ — while refusing three times to take a Breathalyzer test, according to court documents.
Amtrak and NJ Transit commuters faced major delays in and out of Manhattan’s Penn Station yesterday due to overhead wire issues and a disabled train at the station, according to the two rail services.
“The Heart of Rock and Roll,” a new jukebox musical powered by the songs of Huey Lewis and the News, will close on Broadway on Sunday.
An outage causing the 911 system to go down across the state of Massachusetts yesterday did not impact New York despite cell phone notifications alerting some New Yorkers that the system was down.
Massachusetts’s statewide 911 emergency system was paralyzed for nearly two hours, prompting officials to urge residents to call local police stations and firehouses and even revert to pulling red fire call boxes on street corners if necessary.
Fighting for his political life ahead of next week’s New York primary, Rep. Jamaal Bowman took broad swipes at his opponent in the contest’s final debate, accusing him of failing Black constituents and selling his campaign out to a pro-Israel super PAC.
Danskammer Energy, the owners of the Danskammer gas-fired power plant along the shores of the Hudson River, has given up its fight to expand the peaker plant — a term used for facilities that generally only run when there is high demand.
Ellis Medicine says it will close its 82-bed nursing home on McClellan Street in Schenectady due to financial difficulties, although it is aiming to retain the 73 employees currently working at the site.
Arts Letters & Numbers, a multidisciplinary cultural nonprofit that hosts events, exhibits, performances and artist residencies on its campus, has purchased the La Perla Italian Restaurant at the Gregory House Country Inn as part of an expansion of its campus.
The body of a missing fisherman on the Mohawk River was found yesterday after a five-day search, the Montgomery County sheriff’s office said.
Warren County and the United Methodist Church have agreed to pay $875,000 to settle a sexual abuse lawsuit filed on behalf of a man who was sexually abused as a child nearly 50 years ago by a former minister who had also been the boy’s foster parent.
A house collapsed in Syracuse, N.Y., yesterday, injuring at least 10 people, including children. Firefighters responded to reports of an explosion and a building collapse just after 4 p.m., Michael Monds, the Syracuse fire chief, said at a news conference.
Willie Mays, the spirited center fielder whose brilliance at the plate, in the field and on the basepaths for the Giants led many to call him the greatest all-around player in baseball history, died yesterday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 93.
A statement from Major League Baseball said it was “heartbroken” over the death of “one of the most exciting all-around players in the history of our sport”. Mays was twice the league’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) and won the World Series with the Giants in 1954.
Nicknamed the “Say Hey Kid”, Mays, a center fielder, had a professional baseball career that spanned four decades, and was baseball’s oldest living Hall of Famer.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
