painful history and the legacies of slavery that linger still today. but from that suffering has emerged an even greater meaning and desire to understand the tradition of today s juneteenth holiday and the pursuit of freedom. it is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the end of u.s. slavery. while president abraham lincoln s emancipation proclamation came in 1863, slaves in texas didn t know they had been freed until union troops entered galveston, texas, and made the announcement on june 19th, 1865. laura smalley, who was born a slave in texas, was just a child when it happened and gave this interview in 1941. we didn t know where to go. mom and them didn t know where to go. you see, after freedom broke, they started just like you turned some of them out, and they didn t know where to go. they turned them loose on the 19th of june. that s why, you know, we celebrate that day. black lives matter! reporter: today, 155 years later, communities are marking the holiday
the president an embarrassing rebuke if he moves forward with the tariffs stressing, quote, i think the administration ought to be concerned about another vote of disapproval. according to the new york times, senator ted cruz of texas didn t mince words with his message to the white house lawyers, telling them they didn t hear a single yes from the republican conference in support of the tariffs. calling them a $30 billion tax hike on texans. the times also says that fellow texas senator john cornyn complained, quote, we re holding a gun to our own heads. and mitch mcconnell reiterated his colleagues lack of support for the president s tariffs. there s not much support in my conference for tariffs, that is for sure. i think it s safe to say you ve talked to all members who are not fans of tariffs. we re still hoping this can be avoid. it s interesting, geoff, you can t help but think this is them setting up a paper trail,
we re going through a lot. the mayor of san juan was nice and generous and thanking us for the great job we ve done with fema. we really have, we ve worked very hard in puerto rico. it s tough because it s an island. in texas we can ship the trucks right out there and do we ve gotten a-pluses on texas and florida. and we will also on puerto rico. but the difference is this is an island sitting in the middle of an ocean and it s a big ocean, it s a very big ocean, and it we re doing a really good job. i want to i want to go there tuesday seems to be the first time we can do without really disrupting first responders an the efforts being made to help people. we have shipped massive amounts of food and water and supplies to puerto rico and we are continuing to do it on an hourly basis. that island was hit as hard as you can see. when you see 200-mile-an-hour winds, even texas didn t have
the discovery process what is in the air? i imagine they should be able to discover it in a court process. but honestly, in some court cases that we looked at when we were doing the series that you had talked about, there were cases where companies said they wouldn t provide it. they wouldn t provide specific information. in fact there was one case where a worker got pretty severely burned, my colleague susan carol wrote this piece, they sued and tried to get all sorts of information. nobody investigated it, very little investigations were done. the epa tried to do an investigation, like did not get more far with the company involved. so honestly even when it causes health damages to the public or to individuals, it can still be difficult to get that information. and just to be clear, texas didn t pass a law. governor abbott, when he was attorney general, his office made a ruling changes, essentially like they sent out a
investigation, like did not get more far with the company involved. so honestly even when it causes health damages to the public or to individuals, it can still be difficult to get that information. and just to be clear, texas didn t pass a law. governor abbott, when he was attorney general, his auchs made a ruling changes, essentially like they sent out a letter to everybody saying that we re not going to a ruling saying we re not going to provide the state is no longer going to provide this information to the public. very quickly does that mean well have you seen any evidence of maybe second thoughts that maybe texas lawmakers might want to pass a law that changes that? i would be very i haven t seen any second thoughts. let s put it this way. after the he port incident, there was a dupont incident where four workers died. that did not inspire any massive changes in the right to know laws in the state of texas. our chemical series that you