1st annual Juneteenth holiday in the US. Of course, post office will be delivering mail, but next year, they will get a day off…along with the bankers.
Setting the pace for Fort Worth’s Juneteenth caravan on Friday is 93-year-old Opal Lee. The activist and educator will lead her community on foot for two and a half miles — a distance thatrepresents the number of additional years it took before enslaved people in Texas were informed of their freedom after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lee has pushed for Juneteenth — celebrated every year on June 19 — to be recognized as a national holiday for more than 20 years. She’s too persistent to give up now, and this year in particular, she has the wind at her back as people across the country echo her calls.
“I have persistence in my DNA. There’s absolutely nothing that I start that I don’t want to finish. I gotta finish this,” said Lee, who added that she wishes she was young enough to be out there protesting in the streets against the police brutality that has taken the lives of so manyblack Americans. “I just gotta see it be a national holiday.”
Opal Lee in February during the Las Vegas leg of her walk from her Fort Worth home to Washington, D.C. The months-long walk was an effort to get Juneteenth named a national holiday. Credit: Courtesy of Opals Walk 2 DC Team
Juneteenth, also known as “Black Independence Day” and “Texas Emancipation Day,” has taken on additional meaning this year as Texans head into almost a month of protests against police violence and racial injustice following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson and Mike Ramos at the hands of police.
The fight to make Juneteenth a national holiday has gained additional momentum this year from the corporate world. Somebusinesses have decided to give employees the day off, while prominent employers from Twitter to the National Football League have declared Juneteenth a permanent company holiday.
On Thursday U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Texas’ senior Republican senator, announced that he will introduce bipartisan legislation to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. But he’s not the first Texas lawmaker to propose commemorating the emancipation of enslaved people in Texas.
On Monday, U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Houston Democrat, introduced a resolution — as she has for the past eight years — with the same goal. With 202 cosponsors, the bills’ supporters quadrupled this year compared to previous years. While Jackson Leehas been one of Juneteenth’s fiercest congressional advocates in recent years, similar legislative attempts date back to at least 1996.
In 1980, Texas became the first state to adopt Juneteenth as a state holiday. Today, it’sofficially recognized in all but three states: Hawaii, North Dakota and South Dakota.
More tweets, videos, songs, news, etc in the comments. See you there.
The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act, saying Republican-led states do not have the legal standing to try to upend the law.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote the court’s 7 to 2 decision that preserves the law that provides millions of Americans with health coverage.
Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M Gorsuch dissented.
The decision meant the attempt to derail President Barack Obama’s landmark domestic achievement met the fate of past legal challenges, in 2012 and 2015.
The key issue this time was whether a 2017 decision by Congress to remove the penalty for not buying health insurance — the so-called individual mandate — meant that the law was unconstitutional and should be wiped from the books.
That would end popular provisions such as keeping young adults on their parents’ insurance policies, and ensuring coverage for those with preexisting medical conditions.
But the court said the states did not have the legal standing to bring the challenge.
President Biden, in contrast to former president Donald Trump, has said he plans to build on the program to offer more Americans health care coverage.
The red-state challenge came to the Supreme Court at an inopportune time — endangering the health-care coverage of more than 20 million Americans during the country’s gravest health crisis in a century.
Even congressional Republicans who have targeted Obamacare in the past distanced themselves from the suit brought by the Republican state attorneys general and joined by the previous administration.
The case posed three questions: Do the challengers have legal standing to bring the challenge? Did changes made by Congress in 2017 render unconstitutional the ACA’s requirement for individuals to buy insurance? And if so, can the rest of the law be separated out, or must it fall in its entirety?
“We do not reach these questions of the Act’s validity, however, for Texas and the other plaintiffs in this suit lack the standing necessary to raise them,” Breyer wrote.
The cases are California v. Texas and Texas v. California.
Essentially, the R’s on the court, especially Roberts, found the case not to be compelling. The merits of the law, which is what was being argued by the plantiff, was not in consideration. It was more if the commerce clause still holds, and in this case it does. ACA lives to fight another day, but there will be more challenges in the future.
From Justice Breyer:
[W]e conclude that the plaintiffs in this suit failed to show a concrete, particularized injury fairly traceable to the defendants’ conduct in enforcing the specific statutory provision they attack as unconstitutional.”
and from Justice Thomas:
Although this Court has erred twice before in cases involving the Affordable Care Act, it does not err today.”
More news, perspectives, etc in the comments. Sure Happy It’s Thursday.
BREAKING: An attorney for Reality Winner says the former NSA translator is out of prison for good behavior. She had been serving a sentence of more than five years for passing classified information to a news outlet. pic.twitter.com/lkUaewN2MI
An auction for a ride into space next month alongside Jeff Bezos and his brother ended with a winning $28-million bid Saturday. The Amazon founder’s rocket company, Blue Origin, did not disclose the winner’s name following the live online auction. The identity will be revealed in a couple weeks — closer to the brief up-and-down flight from West Texas on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing.
It will be the first launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket with people onboard, kicking off the company’s space tourism business. Fifteen previous test flights of the reusable rocket and capsule since 2015 — short hops lasting about 10 minutes — were all successful.
Saturday’s auction followed more than a month of online bidding that reached $4.8 million by Friday. More than 7,500 people from 159 countries registered to bid, according to Blue Origin. More than 20 bidders — the high rollers — took part in Saturday’s auction.
Bezos announced Monday that he and his younger brother, Mark, would be onboard New Shepard’s first crew flight; the news quickly boosted bidding. The winning amount is being donated to Blue Origin’s Club for the Future, an educational effort to promote science and tech among young people.
The completely automated capsule can carry up to six passengers, each with their own big window. Blue Origin’s top sales director, Ariane Cornell, said following the auction that the fourth and final seat on the debut crew flight will be announced soon.
Blue Origin has yet to open ticket sales to the public or divulge prices.
Someone tweeted a similar thought to mine:
We're giving Blue Origin a $10 billion bailout so its owner (who is worth $194 billion) can sell tickets to space for $28 million.
Notably, the poll shows Nina Turner with a sizable lead with support from 50% of likely voters,” her campaign said in a press release. “Across every demographic, Turner is the favorite to serve as OH-11’s next Congressperson.”
Since launching her campaign in December, Turner has also received numerous endorsements – including support from various politicians, organizations and celebrities.
“It is incredibly humbling to have the support of both the local community and national leaders on this journey,” Turner said. “Working people in Northeast Ohio and across this nation deserve a leader who will center the needs of the poor, the working poor, and the barely middle class.”
The congressional seat Turner is seeking was vacated when former Rep. Marcia Fudge was tapped by President Joe Biden to serve as the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Update: NYC Mayor Debate #2 tonight on WABC from 7-9pm ET. I don’t know if there’s a way to see the first hour of it as that is being broadcasted over the air, then it switches to the digital streaming during the second hour.
Senators on both sides of the aisle agreed at a hearing Thursday that Congress should work to address the nation’s physician shortages, especially in primary health care, including through changes to training programs.
At a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Primary Health and Retirement Security Subcommittee hearing, Chair Bernie Sanders said the federal government could help boost the number of practicing physicians in the United States. The government spends about $16 billion every year to fund thousands of medical residency programs.
Sanders, a Vermont independent, suggested Congress expand these programs as well as programs to get doctors into medically underserved areas. He said he plans to soon introduce legislation to authorize 14,000 new Medicare-supported residency programs over seven years. It would also establish new criteria about how the residency slots would be allocated, so half of these doctors would go into primary care.
“We don’t necessarily need more dermatologists on Park Avenue in New York City,” Sanders told the panel.
The Association of American Medical Colleges recently predicted a shortage of up to 139,000 physicians by 2033, including a shortage of 55,200 primary care physicians alone. The pandemic exacerbated these issues in some specialties, including mental health and nursing home care.
Primary care doctors are paid less than specialists on average throughout their careers, and medical residencies in rural and underserved areas struggle to attract as many trainees as those in big cities. This creates doctor shortages in places that need care most.
Witnesses who work in the medical field said Thursday that the nation’s care system structure leads to lower pay for primary care doctors because primary care physicians don’t profit off expensive procedures, such as surgeries.
The system “is flawed and incentivizes the wrong thing,” University of New England President James Herbert told the subcommittee.
David Skorton, president and chief executive officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges, told Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., that there’s an increased interest in going to medical school across the country, but there are some disincentives and the potential for burnout.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine., said low Medicaid reimbursement rates in nursing homes translate into low wages and discourage many qualified health care workers from staying in the field. Collins and Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., recently introduced legislation to create 1,000 Medicare-supported medical residency positions focused on addiction at teaching hospitals.
Collins, Sanders and other senators suggested Congress could also give incentives such as medical education debt forgiveness to get medical residents into rural areas across the country.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said the pandemic has led to a severe shortage of mental health professionals. Before COVID-19, about 77 percent of counties had a mental health workforce shortage, and he said it’s gotten even worse since.
Herbert told the subcommittee that it is important to train all health care providers, including dentists and OB-GYNs, to recognize behavioral health issues, including addiction.
Sanders said he felt encouraged his panel reached a general understanding of these issues and got a handle on how to solve them. He said the subcommittee would continue to examine and try to address health care workforce shortages.
“This is a solvable problem. This is the wealthiest country on Earth. Yes, we can have enough doctors,” Sanders said. “I think we can do this.”
(image credit: Roll Call)
More news, tweets, perspectives in the comments. TGIF!
Bernie Sanders gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor yesterday, demanding what most of the US (who care about foreign relations) want: a cease fire in Gaza and a recognition of Palestinian people as humans.
In the comments, more news, tweets, and videos, including Bernie’s guest appearance on Seth Meyers’ show.
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