State of Mind: As Donald Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election further entrenches itself in his party, the Texas Republican Party over the weekend adopted a platform declaring that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

  That resolution, approved by a voice vote, says that “substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results in five key states in favor of ” Biden. 

  More than two and a half years after the election, no person investigation or lawsuit has turned up proof of any fraud that affected the outcome. Yet the Texas Republican resolution says that “we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”

  Jonathan Weisman wrote in The NY Times wrote that, “Like mint in the garden, the seeds that the Trump team planted between Election Day 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021, are now growing out of control, aided by the former president’s allies.”

  The Texas Republicans also issued a “rebuke” to Senator John Cornyn for his work on bipartisan gun legislation and declared homosexuality to be “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”

Juneteenth: Speaking of Texas, today is a federal holiday in celebration of “Juneteenth,” which actually fell yesterday on June 19^th, a day that has been celebrated for generations by Black Americans.

  June 19, 1865 was the day when Union troops brought news to Galveston, Texas that slavery had been abolished in the United States. That was two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but somehow the slave owners of Texas didn’t relay the news. The celebration by freed slaves that day became a tradition, until last year when President Biden declared it a federal holiday. 

  And just as Texas kept slaves ignorant of their freedom, some states want to keep their citizens uninformed today. In the year since Juneteenth became a federal holiday, at least 36 states have introduced or adopted legislation to restrict teaching in schools about race and racism. Texas is one of them.

Viral News: The Centers for Disease Control has recommended Covid vaccines for children as young as 6 months. Federal regulators have now approved the Moderna vaccine for children ages 6 months through 5 years, and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 6 months through 4 years.

  Both vaccines are considered to be safe, and both produce antibody levels similar to those seen in young adults. 

Like a heat Wave: Another heat dome is sitting over the Midwest and South with temperatures hitting as high as 100. It will move East this week, pushing out the unusually cool weather of the weekend.

Grounded: Travel chaos continues. Already today, 253 domestic flights have been cancelled and a total of 1,631 around the world. Between Friday and Sunday, more than 3,200 flights were canceled and about 9,000 flights delayed.

The Obit Page: Longtime political columnist and television pundit Mark Shields died Saturday at age 85.

  Shields  worked on Capitol Hill and managed Democratic political campaigns before joining the editorial board of The Washington Post in 1979. He eventually became a nationally syndicated columnist and spent 33 years as a commentator at PBS, often paired against a political opposite.

  The Wall Street Journal once called Shields one of the “wittiest political journalists in America” and “frequently the most trenchant, fair-minded, and thoughtful.”

The Spin Rack: Employees at an Apple store in Towson, Maryland outside Baltimore have voted to unionize, the first of the company’s 270 outlets to do so.  Employees at two dozen Apple stores have expressed interest in unionizing, union leaders say. — The world governing body for swimming effectively barred transgender women from the highest levels of women’s international competition, prohibiting transgender women from competing if they went through all or part of puberty as a male. It’s one of the strictest rules on transgender athletes in all of sports. — A 15-year-old boy was killed and three adults wounded, including a police officer, in gunfire last night at a street music event in Washington, DC. — An Arizona wildfire damaged buildings at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, but the telescopes were not damaged.

Dough Brained: A national boycott is growing against Martin’s Famous Dutch Potato Rolls, a favorite of sandwich and burger chains as well as just plain people across the country. The company owners endorsed a pro-Trump, election-denying candidate for governor of Pennsylvania and some customers are not happy.

  James Martin, the executive chair and former president of Martin’s, as well as his wife and daughter, all contributed to the campaign of Douglas Mastriano, who was involved with attempting to overturn his state’s vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Mastriano is one of Trump’s hardcore political supporters ignoring the devastating testimony and evidence coming out of the House hearings and carrying on with the big election lie. 

  Mastriano chartered buses for people to attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and attended himself. After the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas., which left 19 children and two teachers dead, Mastriano retweeted a video clip of himself comparing gun control to Nazism.

  But the Martin potato roll people love him. We suggest putting your hamburger on an English muffin instead.