Good morning, it’s Wednesday – all day long. Middle of the week! All downhill from here.
Unless you are very plugged into the news and/or follow LGBTQ+ issues closely, the name “Rita Hester” might not mean much to you – if it means anything at all.
It should, so let’s change that.
Rita Hester was a Hartford, Connecticut-born transgender African American women who was murdered in Allston, MA (for those not familiar, this is a neighborhood in Boston) at the age of 34 on Nov. 28, 1998.
To this day, her killing remains unsolved and her murderer, who stabbed her multiple times in her own apartment and neither forced entry nor took anything, has not been brought to justice.
Rita was a singer, dancer, and all-around entertainer at a cabaret in downtown Boston. She was a mainstay of the city’s queer scene and well known throughout the LGBTQ+ community. She was misgendered in the news coverage of her death, which basically victimized her twice – sadly, a not infrequent occurrence.
This, understandably, infuriated her friends and family, not to mention those in the community who felt that Rita – and they – deserved far better.
Rita Hester came to symbolize the elevated rates of violence experienced by transgender individuals. A study released in 2021 by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that trans people – men and women, especially those of color – are more than four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization – including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault.
Many of these victims do not report their experiences to the police, for fear that they will be stigmatized, ignored, or otherwise not taken seriously – much like what happened to Rita, whose mother spent years trying to find out who killed her daughter, dogging police long after they had stopped taking her calls or returning them.
Kathleen Hester died in 2020 without any closure around Rita’s death.
Last year, the 25th anniversary of the murder, Boston Police recommitted to solving this unsolved crime, assigning a new detective to the case. This is a step forward, though the department has persisted in using what the LGBTQ+ community calls Rita’s “dead name” – the one she was assigned at birth but no longer after her transition.
Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), which was was founded in 1999 by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith to honor Rita and all those who were targets of deadly violence as a result of their being transgender, genderqueer, and/or nonbinary.
Another partly cloudy dry day is on tap – there’s rain in the forecast in the coming days, and that’s certainly can’t come soon enough, given the spate of wildfires we’ve been experiencing as a result of the lack of precipitation. Temperatures will be in the mid-50s.
In the headlines…
President-elect Donald Trump picked Howard Lutnick, a billionaire investor and veteran Wall Street CEO, as his next Commerce Secretary.
Trump, in a statement yesterday, also said Lutnick would “lead our Tariff and Trade agenda, with additional direct responsibility for the Office of the United States Trade Representative.”
Trump announced that he has picked TV’s Dr. Oz, a former US Senate candidate, to run the sprawling Medicare and Medicaid programs, saying ” there may be no Physician more qualified and capable… to Make America Healthy Again.”
As administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Oz will lead the federal health programs that provide those services to tens of millions of retirees, children and poor people, or about half of all Americans, Trump said.
Trump tapped Linda McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive who ran the Small Business Administration for much of his first term, to lead the Education Department, an agency he has routinely singled out for elimination in his upcoming term.
“Linda will fight tirelessly to expand ‘Choice’ to every State in America, and empower parents to make the best Education decisions for their families,” Trump said, later adding, “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”
When he takes the oath of office in January, Trump will make history as the first court-adjudicated sexual abuser to assume the presidency. If he gets the team of his choice, he will not be the only one in the room whose conduct has been called into question.
An unidentified hacker has gained access to a computer file shared in a secure link among lawyers whose clients have given damaging testimony related to Matt Gaetz, the former Florida congressman who is Trump’s choice to be attorney general.
Like many conservative politicians before him, Trump has called for dismantling the department altogether — a cumbersome task that likely would require action from Congress.
Sixty percent of Americans say they probably won’t get an updated COVID-19 vaccine heading into the winter months, with more Democrats showing a willingness to receive another dose than Republicans, the Pew Research Center said.
As the United States makes a transition from President Joe Biden to Trump, presidents and prime ministers around the world are searching for stability, particularly when it comes to China.
As he made his final appearance at global gatherings, including at the Group of 20 summit in Brazil, Biden lobbied for his foreign policy goals even as leaders shifted attention away from him.
Democrats whose support for Israel has been strained by the wars in Gaza and Lebanon appear headed for a series of tests over continuing to back Israel’s right-wing government and the attendant debate over antisemitism and the anti-Israel left.
Trump joined Elon Musk, as his company’s prototype moon and Mars rocket carried out a sixth test flight that showed a mix of progress and setbacks.
New York prosecutors agreed to postpone further proceedings in Trump’s hush-money case, but opposed the president-elect’s bid to dismiss his conviction on 34 felonies.
Damian Williams, the top prosecutor in Manhattan, has privately told people he’ll step down before Trump is inaugurated in January, marking the end of his tenure aggressively prosecuting crimes across Wall Street.
A bipartisan coalition of 32 attorneys generals, including New York’s, are urging Congress to pass online safety legislation for children but with a provision that it would not preempt state laws that include stronger protections.
As Democrats regroup following this month’s elections, which left them out of power in Washington, many are turning to Brooklyn Rep. Hakeem Jeffries to help forge a path forward and lead their comeback.
The Brooklyn lawmaker, who was re-elected as House Democratic leader, will try to position his party to retake the chamber in the midterms and end unified Republican government after Democrats prevented the GOP from expanding its narrow majority.
As New Yorkers made their voices heard in the 2024 election, voter turnout trends reveal how successful each party was in turning its base out to vote.
The council tasked with reducing New York’s elevated child poverty rate plan to tell legislative leaders to expand the state’s child tax credit to lift low-income families across the state out of poverty.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the completion of a $5 million bridge replacement project on the New York State Thruway in Onondaga County.
Hochul announced a significant boost to the Local Government Efficiency Grant (LGEG) program, doubling its funding to $8 million.
Hochul aims to appeal to Trump’s ego and origins as a real estate developer to overcome his antipathy to the city in leveraging funds for legacy-defining New York City transit projects, including an overhaul of Penn Station and the city’s aging subway system.
At a gathering billed as “a fireside chat” with the Partnership for New York City’s Kathryn Wylde, Hochul rejected the narrative that she’s to blame for congestion pricing. Instead, she said she inherited the issue from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi called Hochul congestion pricing’s “main chamion,” adding: “The only mess created here was her sloppy fits, starts, reversals, and re-reversals that all seemed to coincide with the political calendar.
New York’s Republican members of Congress have cast the revival of congestion pricing, albeit at a lower price tag than the previous $15 toll, as a “cash grab” that will hurt middle-class workers who commute into the city.
New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer is trying to throw a monkey wrench into Hochul’s congestion pricing plan with a number of federal maneuvers that, he hopes, will delay the MTA from turning the cameras on.
Gottheimer, running to become Garden State governor next year, read Hochul’s June statement saying she would “pause” the congestion pricing plan because the $15 toll would put the “squeeze” and “break the budget” of working and middle class drivers.
Mayor Eric Adams yesterday hailed Hochul for resurrecting the city’s hated congestion pricing plan — and insisted the Big Apple is safe from potential blowback by Trump.
Members of the New York City Council who have long been critical of Adams’ shelter stay limits for migrants pushed back against the policy during an oversight hearing this week.
The City Department of Investigation is looking into the actions of Jesse Hamilton, a longtime Adams associate whom the mayor put in charge of city leases, including a last-minute decision to rent space from a big donor to the mayor’s legal defense fund.
Adams said Trump talked about how great of a mayor he is in a brief ringside conversation at a mixed martial arts fight Saturday night — the latest example of the big city Democrat’s conciliatory approach with the Republican president-elect.
Adams showed no signs of compromise on a controversial city housing plan headed for a vote in the City Council.
Lawmakers mounting a challenge to Adams in the upcoming election rallied behind a plan to make child care universal in New York.
An NYPD officer and a bystander were shot in Queens yesterday and the alleged shooter was gunned down. Both victims are expected to recover.
The suspect, Gary Worthy, 57, was shot in the head and died at the scene, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. Cops recovered his gun, which he used to intimidate his robbery victims before using it to shoot the police officer, he added.
Adams prodded Albany for help in his years-long push to take mentally ill homeless people involuntarily off the street and into care — grimly casting a madman’s deadly Manhattan stabbing spree as the tragic consequence of inaction.
Following the bloody stabbing spree that left three dead Monday, the mayor made a push for legislation that would broaden the grounds for involuntary removal at his weekly press briefing.
Manhattan triple-murder stabbing spree suspect Ramon Rivera was ordered held without bail when he appeared before a Manhattan Criminal Court judge yesterday afternoon.
Rivera reportedly chose his victims because they were preoccupied doing something else and he was able to sneak up on them.
About 1,000 children — nearly 15% of the 7,600 kids living in migrant shelters whose families got notices to leave since the end of June — have left the public school system, representatives of the city’s Office of Asylum Seekers disclosed at a City Council hearing.
Sean Combs appeared in a Manhattan courtroom as his lawyers objected to the prosecution’s use of handwritten notes found inside the music mogul’s jail cell, arguing that his rights had been violated when they were turned over to prosecutors.
The dispute stemmed from a recent sweep of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where Combs has been held since September. Prosecutors cited the notes, which they contend exposed prohibited behavior, in a court filing last week.
A Manhattan judge ordered federal prosecutors to destroy records of the notes taken from Combs’ jail cell.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority sidelined Staten Island’s newest train cars just one month after their debut — and it’s not clear when exactly they’ll be back on the tracks.
The life and legacy of Shirley Chisholm — the groundbreaking politician who made history in 1968 as the first Black woman to be elected to the U.S. Congress — will now be officially celebrated every year in her native New York City.
A brushfire broke out in an upper Manhattan park, scorching about 15 acres and taking more than 100 firefighters to bring the blaze under control.
A cryptocurrency plant in Central New York can continue operating after a court rejected the state’s effort to shut down the facility, but the debate isn’t over and both sides consider the ruling a victory.
The chief financial officer of Ronald McDonald House Charities of the Capital Region has been fired after allegedly defacing a Donald Trump campaign sign with swastikas in October and taking a different one from another location earlier this month.
The New York Phoenix professional basketball team that launched yesterday shares plenty in common with the Albany Patroons, their new Capital Region rival in The Basketball League.
After 48 years of operations, Catskill Regional Off-Track Betting Corporation will stop accepting wagers at the end of the month. The decision follows years of financial troubles at the organization.
The University at Albany and IBM have launched five new research projects on artificial intelligence that are funded by the university’s $20 million Center for Emerging Artificial Intelligence Systems.
Town officials are discouraging players from using The Crossings for the game Pokémon GO, which lets individuals catch virtual images with their phones while visiting real-world locations.
Photo credit: George Fazio
