Author: tourist_yp6g7u

Former President Donald Trump has been spending most of his free time in courtrooms rather than on the campaign trail in hopes of rectifying his more than 30 pending criminal charges. But the Supreme Court ruled that the leader could be legally immune from official actions taken while in office but not for unofficial conduct on July 1, leaving lower courts to evaluate whether Trump can be held accountable for measures taken surrounding the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

After the decision came down, Trump posted in all-caps “BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!” on his social media.

Many of his followers celebrated the announcement and regarded the decision as a chance for the former leader to return to power in the Oval Office. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will now preside over the case and assess the extent of presidential protections. 

“This decision today has continued the Court’s attack in recent years on a wide range of long-established legal principles in our nation, from gutting voting rights and civil rights to taking away a woman’s right to choose to today’s decision that undermines the rule of law of this nation,” Biden shared from the White House during prepared remarks.

He cited the ruling as, “one of the darkest days in American history.”

Biden is not alone in this sentiment. 

“The indictment paints a stark portrait of a president desperate to stay in power,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in dissent.

“It is alleged that he went so far as to threaten one state election official with criminal prosecu- tion if the official did not ‘find’ 11,780 votes Trump needed to change the election result in that state,” she continued. 

Later on, she wrote, “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.  With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” words repeated verbatim by Biden during his statement of disapproval.

However, conservative justices adamantly argued a decision of this magnitude could negatively impact precedent for future presidents. Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas concurred with the court’s decision proclaiming such an act could “threaten our constitutional order.”

“To conclude otherwise would hamstring the vigorous Executive that our Constitution envisions,” Thomas wrote, while agreeing with an earlier Scalia dissent in an earlier case that said: “While the separation of powers may prevent us from righting every wrong, it does so in order to ensure that we do not lose liberty.”

Nonetheless, legal analysts have doggedly pursued Trump and his cohorts for acting as if they are above the law. Just one day after the trial, former New York City mayor—and Trump’s former lawyer—Rudy Giuliani was disbarred from practicing law in the state for perpetuating false claims pertaining to the 2020 election. In Georgia, Trump alongside a group of 18 others are facing charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

Trump currently charts in history as the first to have held the presidency and faced prosecution. But yesterday’s decision could effectively shield him from further repercussions in legal jurisdictions across the country. 

“Stated simply, the Court has now declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States can (under circumstances yet to be fully determined) become a law unto himself,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, while also mentioning it “breaks new and dangerous ground.”

Now, Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump for fraudulent 2020 election claims, must carefully navigate allegations deciphering between official and unofficial acts. Judge Chuktan says she will give both the defense and prosecution teams three months to prepare for trial. A date has yet to be set.

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Kamm Howard is leading a push to have a reparations commission established by President Joe Biden before the November 2024 general election. Howard, a Chicago-based entrepreneur and real estate investor, is the founder of the grassroots groups Reparations United and Earn the Black Vote. He says his organizations have been working along with several others to send weekly batches of postcards to the White House, urging Biden to fulfill the campaign promise he made to establish a reparations commission during his presidency.

When he campaigned for the presidency in 2020, Biden stated that his administration “will support a study of reparations.” The postcards being sent to the White House call on the president to fulfill that pledge. 

The Poynter Institute’s fact-checking website PolitiFact noted this past February that “Biden promised to support the study of reparations. He did not promise to pay reparations—only to support its study.

“Biden could form a commission to study reparations or back a long-standing proposal in Congress to study it. He could give a speech calling for a study on reparations,” PolitiFact added, “We found no evidence that he took any such steps.”

Four years of waiting for Biden to take that step is no longer acceptable, Howard told the AmNews. 

It’s a goal that has been fought for since the end of African enslavement in the United States. It was most recently a crusade waged by the late Rep. John Conyers Jr., who re-introduced his “H.R.40 – Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act” bill in every session of Congress from 1989 to 2017. 

Howard, a long-term reparations scholar, worked with Rep. Conyers for 12 years. He is a 16-year member of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA) and has most recently been assisting Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee after she took on the task of championing H.R. 40 in Congress. Lee has sponsored the bill every year now since 2017.   

Talks about the creation of a reparations commission had been moving forward, Howard said, because several meetings have been held with the president’s team and the congresswoman. But a few weeks ago, Rep. Jackson Lee announced that she has pancreatic cancer, and reparations commission talks have been postponed while she looks after her health.

Biden’s Emancipation Proclamation moment

The Earn the Black Vote campaign kicked off in August 2023, based on the understanding that some 83% of Black registered voters support the Democratic Party, and Black voters are widely seen as being able to carry the Democratic Party to electoral victory. Progressive policies that lead to greater inclusion of Black people tend to come from center-left politicians, who are usually Democrats.

Howard said they base their campaign on the following data: “One, that the president cannot win [re-election] with the amount of Blacks who have defected from the Democratic Party. A company that we’re working with put that number at about 2.9 million Blacks who voted for him in 2020 and disapprove of him now –to the point where they’re talking about not voting at all, voting third party, or possibly voting for Trump. We’re messaging that he definitely can’t win if those numbers stay the same, and that in order to turn those numbers around, he needs to establish a reparations commission. That’s one message. 

“The second message is that we’ve already demonstrated the political will in the Democratic Party for reparations. In the last Congress, when the Democrats controlled the Congress, 88% of Dems in the House and the Senate pledged support for the bill if it came to the floor. We had 96 House sponsors and over 23 Senate sponsors of the Senate bill. And then there were others who pledged [that] once it comes to the floor, they would vote for it. We had the votes if passed by the House; we just didn’t get it to the floor.

“The third message is that this is his [Abraham] Lincoln moment,” Howard continued. “Lincoln had to do what he clearly did not want to do: He clearly did not want to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, he didn’t want to [let[ enlist Blacks in the army, he didn’t want to give Blacks weapons when they were allowed to join the army. But he did what he had to do in order to save the union. We’re saying this is Biden’s Emancipation Proclamation moment: He has to do what’s necessary if he wants to save democracy, which is at risk in this election. 

“Our fourth message is that Black reparations [are] good for all of America. We have economic data, social data, to back that claim up.”

Simply establishing a reparations commission could help restore the faith of Black people in U.S. democracy, Howard said; a faith that has been tested frequently. It would also help the nation view itself as capable of facing its past and dealing with that past justly.

“It would be great if we could get reparations established without the commission, but the policies that the president has been pushing are pretty nonspecific,” Howard said. “They’re not targeted toward the descendants of the slave system in this county; they’re pretty general.” 

Howard said the  creation of a reparations commission would drive more Blacks to vote for Biden. Plus, establishing a commission now would give it time to get up and working within the next administration. The commission’s tasks can be completed within the first two years of  Biden’s next presidency, and, by the third year, legislation and resources about it could pass through Congress.

The Earn the Black Vote campaign is not specifically targeting Republican party representatives because the GOP has not voiced any interest in supporting reparations for African slavery, activists say. But Howard said that conservatives are also welcome to push for a reparations commission. 

“Our message to the Republican Party[is] if you really want Black votes, then have [Speaker of the House] Mike Johnson call the bill to the House, have the Senate Republicans not filibuster the bill, let it come to a vote––we have enough Democrats for the vote––and we could expect it to pass. 

“That’s really our message: Our campaign is about before the election, what can happen before the election. After the election, then we’re going to go back and roll up our sleeves and see what’s available to us.”

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* This article was originally published here

In continuing efforts to process arrivals of asylum seekers and migrants, local immigration groups are pushing for more language access services and a central interpreter bank in New York City’s $112.4 billion fiscal year 2025 budget. They were overjoyed to see funding for language services restored, despite the city’s recent failures to keep up with local language access law.

Although President Biden’s action plan temporarily shut down the southern border this June, asylum seekers are still arriving in New York City. According to city numbers, more than 205,000 asylum seekers have arrived since the spring of 2022, with more than 65,000 still in the city’s care.

One of the main issues among West African migrants from countries like Senegal and Guinea is that some speak lesser-known dialects of various African languages, said Aminata Chabi-Leke, a founding member of AfriLingual, a worker cooperative for native Africans. 

“Sometimes they will say they speak a specific language and once you start the assignment, you figure out it’s not actually the correct language,” Chabi-Leke said. “They’ll tell you ‘I speak Fulani,’ but it’s not the Fulani from Guinea; it’s from Mauritania.”

In most instances, a fellow native speaker of any kind makes a person immediately feel comfortable and confident, said Chabi-Leke, but some people remain nervous about communicating and sharing personal information, making it necessary to get training in legal interpretation, business practices, and trauma-informed interpretation for survivors—especially for asylum seekers dealing with navigating a new country’s infrastructure. 

“Language access is not a luxury anymore,” Chabi-Leke said. “I feel personally that language access is a human right, because everybody should be able to say what they want to say in the language that makes them feel most comfortable. That’s how they can convey, to the best of their ability, the message.”

According to data from the city’s Language Access Secret Shopper (LASS) program, more than half of the city’s 148 service centers were in violation of Local Law 30, the city’s local language access law. The shopper program found that only four service centers had both translated signage and documents on-site for those newly arrived. At other service centers, people were uninformed about their right to interpretation services; did not make use of telephonic interpretation services through the language line, instead relying on tools like Google Translate; and were frequently denied interpretation. 

ACT Executive Director Amaha Kassa said city agencies need more bilingual staff, more cultural training, and better enforcement of the language law to improve the situation for both newly arrived and established migrants and asylum seekers when it comes to looking for work, housing, and healthcare.

“People are seeking vital services—certainly new arrivals over the last couple of years, but also long-term New Yorkers who are limited English-proficient and seeking services—and they expect that those services will be accessible in their language,” Kassa said. “That’s what the city advertises and tells people. That’s what the law says. And often they’re not able to access those services.”

Francis Madi Cerrada, a staff person at New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), said her family members have experienced language barriers for decades. Her family migrated to the city   from Venezuela about 20 years ago, when she was a teenager, but her mother still speaks limited English. “A lot of the infrastructure we have today, we didn’t have back then, and it just sort of fell on the kids to translate,” said Madi Cerrada. “I had to translate during the parent-teacher meetings [and when] getting things in the mail. Surprisingly, just a few weeks ago, I still had to translate for her in the hospital. She was getting a routine colonoscopy. They got their own interpreter and I sat back, but I also watched the interpreter not always translate what the doctor was saying. It’s an issue even to this day.”

Madi Cerrada said more awareness and resources are definitely available now for immigrant families, but it’s still frustrating for people like her mother. “My mom is in a little better position because she speaks a little more English,” she said. “I know that it’s difficult for folks that arrived recently that don’t know how to access information.” 

The Language Justice Collaborative (LJC), which is made up of immigration groups like NYIC, African Communities Together (ACT), the Mexican American Students’ Alliance (MASA), and the Asian American Federation (AAF), received much-needed funding in the 2024 city budget to address these gaps in language services amid the migrant influx. The money went toward language services staffing, training for interpreters, and testing language proficiencies, Kassa said.

Before the city budget passed this week, councilmembers and advocates were reeling over Mayor Eric Adams’s sweeping cuts to beloved programs, especially ones for libraries, cultural institutions, and pre-K and 3k seats for early childhood education. Kassa said immigration groups had heard about $3.8 million in cuts to language access services and wanted that funding restored as well. 

Mayor Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams agreed to the budget on time with little spectacle this year, and made many of the requested restorations. 

“I want to thank Speaker Adams and our partners in the City Council for joining us in passing a budget that addresses the affordability crisis head-on and that invests in the future of our city and the working-class people who make New York the greatest city in the world,” Mayor Adams said in a statement. “Despite facing unprecedented challenges, including a $7.1 billion budget gap, a $4.9 billion international humanitarian crisis, and hundreds of millions of short-term stimulus dollars used to fund crucial long-term programs, we still passed a collaborative budget that addresses the three things that cost New Yorkers the most: housing, childcare, and healthcare.” 

The adopted city budget dedicated $100 million to an early childhood education strategy with $25 million specifically toward child care services for undocumented children, $600 million for equitable education initiatives, more than $22 million for cultural institutions and libraries, $5.4 million for HIV/AIDS related programs, and a robust affordable housing plan. 

The LJC applauded the inclusion of several priorities in the budget as well as language access worker cooperatives.

“The final New York City budget for FY25 brought major reversals to Mayor Adams’s unnecessarily austere proposed budget that would have left too many New Yorkers in need,” said NYIC President and CEO Murad Awawdeh. “This budget will give our immigrant neighbors—whether they arrived here 30 days ago or 30 years ago—a better opportunity to fully integrate into their lives as New Yorkers, and will ensure that families can stay together while they contribute to our economy and their children are safe, learning, and cared for. We look forward to building on these investments in the year to come to ensure that everyone who calls New York home can thrive here.”

At least $1 million of the funding will go to a centralized interpreter bank for public-facing spaces, which was proposed by the LJC.

“Right now, City Council offices are providing their own interpretation out of their district budget(s),” Kassa said. “We proposed that this new language bank focus on filling the gaps for offices, like City Council offices, community meetings, clinics. That’s where those funds would go, as well as to contracted city agencies; for example, legal service providers or a [nonprofit or church-based] charity. You’re kind of on your own in figuring out where to find interpretation for clients.”

Kassa said there’s also hope for the funding to be more inclusive of indigenous Latin American languages such as Kakchiquel & Kich’e or Nahuatl; African languages like Wolof, Fulani, Mandingo, Hassaniya, French, and Arabic; Asian languages like Mandarin, Cantonese, Min Nan Chinese, Bengali, Japanese, and Korean; and Haitian Creole.

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Despite growing calls from Democrats nationwide for President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race after an anxiety-inducing debate with ex-President Donald Trump, some Black supporters say they’re sticking with the incumbent come hell or high water.

“It’s crazy. Everyone has a bad day, and I feel he did well. Answered all the questions without all the energy he usually has because he was under the weather going into the debate,” said Londel Davis Jr., 70th Assembly District delegate to the Judicial Convention. “Barack Obama had the same thing: He had a bad showing and everyone was all scared and worried. In the next debate, he killed the guy. I think the same thing is going to happen.” 

At Footprints Cafe, a Caribbean restaurant in Brooklyn, political enthusiasts—mostly Black and Brown older adults—from the Vanguard Independent Democratic Association (VIDA) and Unified Political Association (UPA) gathered to watch the highly anticipated presidential debate on Thursday night. A short survey revealed that most in attendance were hoping to see Biden deliver a “clear, sobering message” about populist policies, such as lowering insulin costs, abortion freedom, and student loan forgiveness, but also wanted him to dispel any speculation about his age and mental faculties declining. 

There was a pretty big expectation that none of that would be happening, based on club leadership passing out a facetious bingo card at the start of the event. Options included “Trump makes a weird face” and “Biden whispers.”

A few raspy-voiced minutes into the debate, it was clear that the audience was disappointed but not entirely surprised by Biden’s performance. Even halfway through, as people began to leave the venue, mentally check out, or argue about the lack of fact-checking in regard to Trump’s rebuttals, very few wavered in their support for the 81-year-old incumbent.

“We cannot afford for our country to go back into the hands of a tyrant. Somebody that does not care about any of the national concerns that we have or the local concerns,” community leader Anthony Beckford said during a commercial break. 

When the debate wrapped, a media storm complete with negative polling descended on the Biden campaign. Democrats openly and privately started speculating about how to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee by the time the convention will be held in August in Chicago. At this point in the national primaries, Biden has secured enough delegates to be the nominee and can only be unseated if he chooses to drop out of the running of his own volition.

“His performance was very, not reassuring after we kept hearing from his camp ‘oh, he’s sharp, he’s on point’ and everything but our eyes and ears are not lying to us,” said VIDA President Henry Butler, a firm Biden supporter. Butler said if a younger person were in question, the panic about age wouldn’t be so palpable. 

“To this whole part about replacing him, the question Democratic voters have to ask themselves, and be realistic about this, [is] replace him with who? Who out there do they truly think can beat Trump?” Butler said. “I think they’re under this delusion, the super-left progressives, that if we throw a progressive in there, somehow they would win. They live in their own progressive silos in these big cities like New York, Philly, and Chicago, and LA, and Miami. That’s not America.”

Voters are placing unconventional bets on alternate presidential candidates, such as Governor of California Gavin Newsom, former First Lady Michelle Obama, current Vice President Kamala Harris, Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer, Governor of Pennsylvanis Josh Shapiro, and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. But nothing’s concrete yet.

Biden has said publicly that his age, getting over a cold, traveling extensively without rest, and other factors led to his weak showing at the debate. He hasn’t given any indication that he’s stepping down.

Manhattan Party Boss Keith L.T. Wright doubled down on sentiments that one debate, albeit a “horrible” one, doesn’t warrant calls for Biden to drop out. He said Black voters for Biden aren’t likely to waver, despite a small wave of younger voters defecting to the independent side or men to the Republican side.

“I am not calling for him to step aside. It all comes out in the wash,” Wright said. “Trump will be Trump and Biden will be Biden.”

Josue Pierre, one of the founding members of the Shirley Chisholm Democratic Club (SCDC) in Brooklyn, said that the agism people have against Biden should apply to Trump as well. He believes that his vote should go to the best policy-maker who can be seen as a national leader.

“Against Biden is a fellow that’s been convicted of a number of things; has said a number of disturbing things about not just minorities and immigrants, just policy-wise; things that make you wonder if he even believes in democracy,” said Pierre.

On July 1, the Supreme Court ruled that U.S. presidents are immune from prosecution for their “official” acts, directly affecting Trump’s court case in D.C. and delayed sentencing for his New York conviction. 

The next debate between Biden and Trump is scheduled for September. Pierre hopes the second debate will be engaging and factual, with more of an emphasis on abortion, affirmative action, and economic recovery and low employment rates. 

“I believe as folks start to pay attention, it’ll become clear who the best option is and that’s clearly Joe Biden,” Pierre said.

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* This article was originally published here

New York City’s post-pandemic economy saw a boom of Black-owned businesses that organizations like Progress Playbook wanted to channel as a means for community development and public safety within New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) communities. Two years later, the Renaissance Project is succeeding.

For all the progress the city’s economy has made in the wake of the pandemic, residents living in NYCHA housing were still trailing behind when it came to employment. 

Black and Latino residents, particularly men, living in NYCHA developments were more likely to be missing from the city’s workforce altogether in 2023, reported the Community Service Society of New York (CSS). “Too many young Black and Latino men are currently caught between a lopsided post-pandemic recovery and a regime of over policing,” said CSS Senior Policy Analyst Iziah Thompson in a statement. 

Beyond just giving people jobs, said Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS) Director Ranti Ogunleye, the city envisioned a way to motivate NYCHA residents to take the reins and build businesses that reflect the needs of their communities. 

ONS partnered with Progress Playbook in 2022 to create the Renaissance Project.

“There is income that people need to make and sustain themselves,” Progress Playbook founder and CEO Lloyd J. Cambridge said, “but we need to be in a position to thrive. And to thrive from an economic standpoint, it goes back to ownership. It’s not just these cute small ideas, it’s about how do we scale these ideas into bigger organizations and ensure they have the capacity to grow responsibly, sustainably, and also profitably so they can then hire in their communities.” 

A native Brooklynite, Cambridge said he was inspired to start a small business training and economic development consultancy about eight years ago. The organization currently has three community-based incubators: Empire Project, Blueprint Project, and the Renaissance Project.

Originally called NYC Safe, the Renaissance Project works with individuals to identify solutions for issues in the community ranging from education to LGBTQ safety, said Cambridge. Ten entrepreneurs living in NYCHA developments across the city are chosen for the program. Over the course of 12 weeks, they are given business training, mentorship, $4,000 in stipend payments to support their business, and an opportunity to win up to $10,000 in additional funding at Progress Playbook’s Pitch Competition. 

This past weekend, the program showcased their second cohort’s business ideas at a festive inaugural summit in Brooklyn held June 29. The event featured a variety of entrepreneurs, speakers, music, food, demonstrations, and networking sessions.

Stanley Johnson, a tenant association president for Metro North Plaza Houses in East Harlem, wants to install sensory equipment in all of NYCHA’s playgrounds for families with autistic children. His fledgling company is called Metro Sensory Project. 

Johnson currently works at Bellevue Hospital as a community health advisor and never saw himself as an entrepreneur. “This was not on my vision board. This was not something that I thought I would be doing, but it’s so fulfilling,” he said.

Lashante Briscoe who started the nonprofit, Be The Light, was excited about her entrepreneurial journey. Her nonprofit focuses on aiding single mothers transitioning from the shelter system. Briscoe is a special education teacher studying for her doctorate and a single mother who lived in the shelter system herself. She offers her clients networking opportunities, resources, mindfulness and wellness classes, and financial literacy courses. 

“A lot of my counterparts who were given vouchers and apartments lost those apartments within two years because the city will pay your rent, but if you’re not solidifying your financial path and managing your finances when it comes time for you to be independent– you can’t,” Briscoe said at the summit. “I said, ‘what if I can create something where I can provide this for other women?’”

This year the city’s employment rates among Black residents slightly improved compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) April 2024 economic snapshot. But there remains a significant disparity between the unemployment rates of Black (7.9%), Latino (6.7%), and white New Yorkers (3.3%). 

In an attempt to close the jobs gap, Mayor Eric Adams announced $1.2 billion in city contracts for security guard services and fire safety personnel with a concentration on community hiring this June. The city’s goal is for 40% of the labor hours to be performed by individuals who live in NYCHA housing or reside in a ZIP code where at least 15% of the population lives below the federal poverty threshold.

It’s important to note the city’s public workforce is comprised of mostly women and people of color, yet continues to shoehorn women of color into civil service job titles with lesser pay— earning them $0.84 for every $1 paid to white city employees, per city pay parity reports. Higher paying jobs are dominated by white and male employees.

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Nelly threw his wife Ashanti a surprise baby shower recently at the Dolce & Gabbana Boutique in the Big Apple, reports Essence Magazine. The intimate soiree was attended by family and friends of both expectant parents, including Fat Joe, who credits himself for getting them back together last year after they broke up in 2013. The new bundle of joy will be Nelly’s third child. The St. Louis-born rapper also adopted his sister’s two children after she passed away from cancer. The baby is Ashanti’s first. Said Ashanti, “I’m excited about seeing this little human version of myself and the person that I love so much.” Congratulations Nelly and Ashanti. I just love it when a great love story comes to fruition….

Kicking off this year’s #Sharkfest, the new one-hour special “Shark Beach with Anthony Mackie: Gulf Coast” recently premiered on National Geographic in the U.S. The show is also available on Disney+ and Hulu in the U.S. The Marvel superstar, played by Mackie, tackles a huge challenge: the fishing phenomenon called depredation, where sharks prey on fishermen’s catches before they can be retrieved. Mackie, who is a lifelong fisherman, sets out to learn more about these encounters in his hometown New Orleans… 

Hip Hop veteran Jim Jones showed up at All Elite Wrestling’s pay per view, The Forbidden Door at the UBS Arena in Long Island, N.Y., on June 30. The Dipset member introduced and escorted the company’s first Black world champion: professional wrestler and rapper Swerve Strickland to the ring for the main event. Jones got a huge ovation from the more than 11,000 people in attendance when he said he “swerves when he drives” and reminded fans that “we fly high, no lie—you know this.” AEW has become the biggest rival of WWE and has attracted celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal, Rosario Dawson, T-Pain, and Snoop Dogg on its shows, which air on the cable channels TBS and TNT. Sources say Damon Dash and comedienne Sam Jay were also backstage at the show…

We hear…

…SCCG management announced a joint venture with KSN Gaming to launch “BooRay!, The Biggest Gambling Card Game in Sports and Entertainment”…

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No one should be mad at Isaiah Hartenstein for grabbing the bag, a sack that contains $87 million no less.

The 26-year-old center emerged as a key component for a Knicks team that finished this past NBA regular season 50-32, the No. 2 seed Eastern Conference and reached Game 7 of their conference semifinals match up against the Indiana Pacers before falling 130-109 at Madison Square Garden with a crew emotionally and physically decimated by injuries.

But Hartenstein  had made around $22 million in career earnings, a modest sum by today’s NBA measure, including the two-year, $16 million deal he signed with the Knicks in July 2022. So the contract offered by the Oklahoma City Thunder, a rising championship contender, on Sunday night, the official start of NBA free-agency, was hard to refuse.
Upon announcing the acquisition of the 7-footer 24 months ago, Knicks team president Leon Rose said this:

“We are very excited to welcome Isaiah Hartenstein to the Knicks’ family,” he expressed to open his comments. “He’s a versatile big man who impacts the game on both ends of the floor and who plays with a passion and energy that is contagious.”

Rose’s words proved to be prescient. With starting center Mitch Robinson finding consistently stable health elusive, undergoing left ankle surgery in May following his exit from Game 1 versus the Pacers, the same ankle on which he had surgery in December that kept him out until his brief return for the playoffs, Hartenstein’s quantifiable and intangible effect on the Knicks’ success was considerable. 

This past season, Hartenstein, who was born in Eugene, Oregon, and moved to Germany in 2008 with his family, where his father, Florian Hartenstein, was playing basketball professionally, appeared in 75 of the Knicks’ 82 regular season games, starting 49, and averaged 7.8 points and 8.3 rebounds. He then started all 13 of their postseason games, posting 8.5 points and 7.8 rebounds in 29.8 minutes. Hartenstein played youth and pro basketball in Europe prior to making his NBA debut with the Houston Rockets in 2018 and also spent time with the Denver Nuggets, Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Clippers.

Now Rose and the Knicks front office staff will have to weigh options to fill the void left by his departure. Robinson’s injury history makes him a liability and his offensive limitations necessitate the Knicks ultimately add a center that can be more than just a lob threat with the ability to effectively pass out of the low and high posts, and score from beyond the front of the rim, skills Hartenstein ably provided. Jericho Sims, heading into his fourth season with the Knicks, has not demonstrated the requisite offensive prowess.  

Some of the names being mentioned as potential trade targets are Walker Kessler of the Utah Jazz and Nick Richards of the Charlotte Hornets. But for now these names are  just conjecture. Rose and company have demonstrated they have a clear direction and executable plan. Fans of the team are anxiously waiting for the next chess move.

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As the WNBA season heads toward the Olympic break, the New York Liberty sit atop the WNBA standings with a record of 17-3. It is the Liberty’s best start to a season in franchise history.

After a disappointing loss in the Minnesota Lynx in the Commissioner’s Cup, the Liberty returned to action on Sunday against the Atlanta Dream, coming away with an 81–75 home win at the Barclays Center. On Tuesday, the Liberty avenged their loss to the Lynx a week earlier with a blistering fourth quarter, ending the game on a 15-2 run, for a 76-67 victory.

Liberty forward Jonquel Jones scored a game-high 21 points and added 12 rebounds. Afterwards, the 2021 league MVP was named to the WNBA All-Star team that will face the Team USA Olympic squad on July 20 in Phoenix, Arizona. Olympians Breanna Stewart (her third selection) posted a strong double-double of 17 points and 17 rebounds, and point guard Sabrina Ionescu (her first Olympics appearance) registered a stat line of 17 points, five assists and five rebounds.

“This was personal,” said Ionescu, who helped keep head coach Sandy Brondello’s group ahead of the 15-4 Connecticut Sun and 14-5 Lynx, which face each other tonight.

“Obviously, they’re a great team. They were 2–0 against us. This was a bigger game than it really was in terms of it being a regular season game. We had to understand that.”

In the win over the Dream, Stewart became the fastest player in WNBA history to surpass 5,000 points (242 games). “It’s a cool honor, for sure,” acknowledged the 6 ‘4” UConn alum, who played for the Seattle Storm for six seasons (2016-2022) before signing with the Liberty in February 2023.

“I wouldn’t be able to be here and do all the things without my teammates and I really appreciate them setting me up to get to this point, but we’re trying to do more than just get accolades,” said the 29-year-old reigning WNBA MVP.

The Liberty take on Caitlin Clark and Indiana Fever on the road this Saturday (1:00 p.m., CBS) and then have a morning matinee (11 a.m.) versus the Connecticut Sun next Wednesday. They will follow up those games with a July 11 game at home against the Chicago Sky, the Sky again on July 13 on the road, and July 16 hosting the Sun at the Barclays before the All-Star game and a month-long league pause for the Olympics.

Clark and the Sky’s Angel Reese, whose intense and highly followed rivalry goes back to the 2023 college season when Reese and LSU defeated Iowa, led by Clark, in the NCAA women’s Division I championship, will now be teammates on the WNBA All-Star team as named by the league on Tuesday.

Reese, a 6’3” power forward, and Clark, a 6’0” point guard, are continuing their competitive battle as leading candidates for WNBA Rookie of the Year honors.

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