Wednesday Morning in the Blogosphere

 High School friends

SCOTUS lifts political spending limits - MediaPost

How NPR published a Supreme Court retirement that never happened - Poynter

'Local media is stuck in a rut of negativity about its hometown' - Journalism UK

How newsrooms around the country commemorated the USA at 250 - E&P Magazine

Fact-checkers reckon with shrinking budgets and growing AI threats at GlobalFact 2026 - NL

Today in Labor History July 1, 2026

 The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Pickets

Steel workers in Cleveland, led by the Poles and Czech wire mill workers, began a violent strike in what was to be an 88-week strike against wage cuts. – 1885

The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers staged what was to become an unsuccessful three-month strike against U.S. Steel Corp. Subsidiaries. – 1901

The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) organized the “Great Revolt”, a strike involving 50,000 cloakmakers that lasted over 4 months. Following the lead from women, the mostly male cloakmakers won uniform wages, a shorter workweek and paid holidays. As with the result of the strikes in 1909 and 1910, the ILGWU swelled in membership. – 1910

Some 1,100 streetcar workers went on strike in New Orleans, spurring the creation of the po’ boy sandwich by local sandwich shop owners and one-time streetcar men. “Whenever we saw one of the striking men coming,” Bennie Martin later recalled, “one of us would say, ‘Here comes another poor boy.’” Martin and his brother Clovis fed any striker who showed up. – 1929

The Great Railroad strike of 1922, commonly know as the “Big Strike” was a nationwide strike of railroad workers. Launched by seven of the sixteen railroad labor organizations in existence at the time, the strike lasted just over a month before collapsing. At least ten people, most of them strikers or family, were killed in connection with the strike. – 1922

The Hawaiian longshore strike brought together Japanese, Filipino and other ethnic plantation workers into one labor union. – 1937

The United Auto Workers (UAW), under the leadership of Walter Reuther, left the American Federation of Labor (AFL). They left because of conflicts between Reuther and AFL president George Meany. Reuther died in a plane crash in 1970, and the UAW did not rejoin the AFL until 1981. – 1968

The National Association of Post Office & General Service Maintenance Employees, the United Federation of Postal Clerks, the National Federation of Post Office Motor Vehicle Employees and the National Association of Special Delivery Messengers merge to become the American Postal Workers Union. – 1971

The International Jewelry Workers Union merged with Service Employees International Union. – 1980

The Graphic Arts International Union merged with the International Printing & Graphic Communications Union to become the Graphic Communications International Union, now a conference of the Teamsters. – 1983

Copper miners began a  years-long, bitter strike against Phelps-Dodge in Clifton, Arizona. Democratic Governor Bruce Babbitt repeatedly deployed state police and National Guardsmen to assist the company over the course of the strike, which broke the union. – 1983

The Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union merged with International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees. – 1995

The International Chemical Workers Union merged with the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union. – 1996

The Newspaper Guild merged with the Communications Workers of America. – 1997

The United American Nurses affiliated with the AFL-CIO. – 2001

Important Events From This day in History July 1

 

  

1997 Hong Kong Handover

1997 : Hong Kong is handed back to the Chinese authorities after 156 years as a British colony. Tung Chee-hwa was sworn in as Hong Kong's new leader.

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1916 France The Somme

1916 : After bombing the area of no mans land between German and English Forces in Somme region of France the English soldiers went over the trenches expecting little German resistance , but the Germans had large numbers of Machine Guns trained on the area and by the end of the day 20,000 British soldiers were dead and another 40,000 had injuries, this became one of the worst military decisions in history and the offensive was eventually stopped after 4 1/2 months with 600,000 British and French soldiers killed, wounded, or missing in the action.

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1956 U.S.A. Interstate Highways

1956 : President Eisenhower called for $50 billion to be spent over 13 years for the construction of over 42,500 miles of interstate highways using the Interstate Highway Revenue Act which was to be funded by taxing gasoline, currently this tax is 19 cents for each gallon of gas.

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1920 Germany Debt 200,000,000,000

1920 : The nation of Germany reports its total debt as 200,000,000,000 marks as of this day in history. In addition to the nation's large amount of debt, food riots breakout in various locations including Lubec throughout the country.

1932 U.S.A. Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt

1932 : Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt was selected as the presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

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1932 China Japanese Troops

1932 : Japanese troops took over a Chinese customs office in a city on the Chinese Eastern Railroad . The Japanese forced the Chinese customs official and his staff to evacuate the building.

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1942 Egypt Rommel's Afrika Korps

1942 : After suffering earlier defeats at the hands of Rommel's Afrika Korps British troops after receiving much needed supplies and additional troops from New Zealand, Canada and Australia went on the offensive against Rommel's Afrika Korps at El Alamein in Egypt, thus stopping his advance and becoming a turning point in the war in North Africa.

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1943 Sicily Allied Bombing

1943 : The allied Northeast African air forces bomb all of Sicily during a 24 hour raid. The attack was planned as an attempt to weaken Italy's outer defense during World War II.