Topline
President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a invoice creating a brand new federal vacation, “Juneteenth Nationwide Independence Day,” to rejoice the liberating of America’s final slaves – the primary new federal vacation to be created in practically 40 years.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arrive for an occasion to mark the passage of the … [+]
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Key Information
Vice President Kamala Harris, the invoice’s major Senate Democratic cosponsor in 2020, famous that Biden signed the invoice in “a home constructed by enslaved folks,” and “footsteps away” from the place the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
Biden stated that regardless of being solely a number of months into the job, making Juneteenth a federal vacation will go down as “one of many biggest honors” of his presidency.
The invoice handed unanimously within the Senate after Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) lifted his objection to the price of granting tens of millions of federal employees one other time without work, acceding to the overwhelming help for the invoice amongst lawmakers.
The Home handed it with an awesome bipartisan majority the next day, with 14 Republicans voting in opposition to it after some warned that the identify “Nationwide Independence Day” may trigger “confusion” with July 4th.
Juneteenth is the primary new federal vacation created since 1983, when President Ronald Reagan established Martin Luther King Jr. day to rejoice the civil rights icon.
Key Background
Juneteenth commemorates the date on which the Emancipation Proclamation was transmitted to the distant neighborhood of Galveston, Texas on June nineteenth, 1865. It has been celebrated within the black neighborhood for hundreds of years however solely grew to become mainstream in current many years.
Stunning Reality
After languishing for practically a 12 months, the invoice handed Congress in simply two days. Johnson initially blocked it on July 22, 2020, lifting his maintain on June 15, 2021. It handed the Senate unanimously later that day, then handed the Home 415-14 on June 16.
Chief Critic
“That is an effort by the Left to create a time out of entire fabric to rejoice identification politics as a part of its bigger efforts to make Vital Race Concept the reigning ideology of our nation,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) stated of the Juneteenth invoice on Wednesday, forward of the Home vote.
Huge Quantity
49. That’s the variety of states that acknowledge Juneteenth, with North Dakota making it a vacation in April and Hawaii formally recognizing it on Wednesday. South Dakota, the place a number of legislative efforts to make Juneteenth a vacation have failed, stays the final holdout.
