NEW YORK (WABC) -- New York City brought out its 'wepa' spirit to celebrate the 68th annual National Puerto Rican Day Parade on Sunday.

Crowds of spectators lined up along Fifth Avenue in Midtown to watch the parade's colorful floats and musical performances.

ABC 7 New York streamed the parade, which was hosted by Eyewitness News' own David Novarro, Joe Torres, and The View's Sunny Hostin. All three have been named the parade's grand marshals. Eyewitness News reporter Kemberly Richardson reported along the parade route.

This year's parade theme, Plantando Bandera (Planting Roots), recognizes how Puerto Rican communities across the diaspora have established deep roots and positively contributed to their communities, locally, nationally and globally.

The celebration also recognizes the municipality of Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican community of Atlanta, Georgia.

"We are pleased to recognize the communities of Aguas Buenas and Atlanta, and we anticipate highlighting them in our 2025 festivities," stated NPRDP Board Chair Lillian Rodríguez Lopez. "These communities exemplify our 2025 theme, Plantando Bandera, as each has uniquely and positively impacted and contributed to society while enriching the cultural identity of our people."

The parade also paid tribute to the beloved Puerto Rican Christmas tradition, La Parranda.

You can re-watch the entire 2025 National Puerto Rican Day Parade below:

The 2025 celebration will pay tribute to the long legacy of Puerto Rican artists in urban and contemporary art. The parade's television broadcast will include a featured piece starring Graffiti legend Lee Quiñones and art historian, Dr. Yasmin Ramirez, as they reflect on the groundbreaking role Puerto Ricans played in shaping New York's street art movement.

The piece traces the roots of Puerto Rican contemporary art from the mid-20th century works by Rafel Tufiño and Lorenzo Homar, to the graffiti and contemporary art movements that showcased Nuyorican voices like Quiñones, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and many others.

For the eighth consecutive year, the NPRDP is awarding 100 scholarships valued at $2,000 each, for a total of $200,000, to exceptional students of Puerto Rican descent that are making a difference in their communities and will be enrolled in a college or university in the coming school year.

This year's recipients represent 24 states and Puerto Rico, with 36% of recipients being from Puerto Rico. Selected recipients represent 76 colleges/universities, including a mix of public and private schools, including the CUNY, SUNY, and UPR systems, as well as Ivy League institutions like Cornell, Yale, and Columbia. The 2025 class of scholarship recipients were notified by June 1, and a list of winners will be posted on the NPRDP website, www.prparade.org. Since 2014, the NPRDP has awarded over $1.8 million in scholarships.

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It’s a field of broken dreams.

The city Department of Education spent $4 million in taxpayer funds to renovate a Brooklyn athletic field — then handed it to a small all-boys public school founded by former Chancellor David Banks, which promptly kicked out three girls’ soccer teams.

The power play by Eagle Academy for Young Men II in East Flatbush is under scrutiny by the feds for alleged violation of Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in public schools, The Post has learned.

Until last fall, the girls’ varsity soccer teams from Medgar Evers College Prep, Wingate and Prospect Heights high schools — all in District 17 and within walking distance of the “Old Boys and Girls Field” at the corner or Troy Avenue and Rutland Road — used the space for practice and home games.

But the DOE gave control of the refurbished field to the 622-student Eagle Academy in Ocean Hill, which is two miles away in District 23, for its football team.

DOE workers even painted the school’s logo and name in huge letters on the turf to underscore ownership.

“Suddenly, quietly, behind our backs, it got transferred to Eagle Academy,” said Ruslan Yakovlyuk, coach of the Medgar Evers girls varsity soccer team, the Cougars.

The girls, “from poor neighborhoods,” Yakovlyuk said, were forced to play on distant fields across Brooklyn, miss afternoon classes to make games on time, and got home late from pactice.

“Once the facility was transferred to them, they basically said, ‘It’s ours,’” he said of Eagle Academy. “My guess is that Mr. Banks gave it to them somehow. It’s all politics.”

Before Mayor Adams named him schools chancellor in January 2022, Banks served 13 years as president and CEO of the Eagle Academy Foundation, which supports a network of five public schools in NYC, and one in Newark, for boys of color in grades 6 to 12. Before that, Banks was founding principal in 2004 of the first Eagle Academy in the Bronx, which formed in partnership with 100 Black Men of New York.

Shani Nakhid-Schuster, who coached the Wingate Lady Generals soccer team, was also frustrated by Eagle Academy’s takeover.

“Somehow they got the field, and all the teams that played there had to be moved,” she said.

Officials offered an adjacent baseball/softball field, but athletic directors deemed it unsafe for soccer because of the pitcher’s mound and cut-outs of dirt around the bases.

“A lot of our games were rescheduled. We went all over,” Nakhid-Schuster said, recalling that girls traveled up to an hour or more to home games on other Brooklyn fields.

“All I know is that the girls were really put at a disadvantage, and I don’t think it was fair for them. It was a huge disservice to women’s sports.”

Kenneth Bigley, a sports coordinator for NYC’s Public School Athletic League, filed a sex-discrimination complaint on Sept. 30 with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

“Taking a DOE-owned facility that was used by students of both genders, renovating it, and then giving exclusive use to a small all-boys school seems the type of situation Title IX is meant to prevent,” Bigley wrote.

In December, the federal office confirmed it had opened an investigation.

The girls’ soccer players weren’t the only athletes evicted.

In July, the Caribbean Premier League Soccer (CPLS), which had hosted annual tournaments featuring teams representing Caribbean and African nations for 35 years, was forced to cancel all games after the Eagle Academy denied it permission to use the field pending the renovation, BKReader reported.

When work was done, Eagle Academy refused to grant the league a permit to use the field on Sundays from May to September, claiming soccer cleats, though less destructive than football cleats, might damage the field’s “integrity.”

Besides the football field, the sports complex includes a track around the baseball field and basketball courts.

A DOE spokeswoman said management of the field “was turned over to Eagle Academy stewardship in April 2023 on the grounds of it being the school closest in proximity with the largest number of athletic teams.”

But the Eagle Academy, with four athletic teams, is farthest from the field. The three closest co-ed high schools and complexes list a total 32 teams.

Both DOE and SCA spokespersons refused to explain who requested or approved the $4 million renovation, and how it was awarded to Eagle Academy.

The DOE denied that Eagle Academy barred any school or community group from using the field,

Banks did not respond to a request for comment.

This is Eater’s guide to all the New York City restaurants, bars, and cafes that closed in June 2025 (see: May, April, March, February, and January). This list will be updated weekly and is a round-up of the dining and drinking places that have shuttered around the city. If a restaurant or bar has closed in your neighborhood, let us know at ny@eater.com.

June 5

East Village: Danish pastry bakery Sweet Cake appears to have closed its Manhattan location, as reported by EV Grieve, sometime this spring. Its Flushing location remains open. 215 First Avenue at East 13th Street

Greenwich Village: Critically acclaimed Japanese Peruvian restaurant Llama San is closing this week after six years this week. Its last day will be on Saturday, June 7. Chef Erik Ramirez and Juan Correa are still operating Llama Inn in Brooklyn and the recently opened Papa San, both with similar Japanese Peruvian approaches. 359 Sixth Avenue, at West Washington Place.

Harlem: Japanese comfort food restaurant Chopped Parsley closed on Saturday, May 31. Owner and chef Yumika Parsley, who opened her restaurant in 2015, had been recounting her issues with the address’s management on Instagram, writing that she was told she wasn’t able to renew the lease back in March. 500 West 146th Street, near Amsterdam Avenue

Herald Square: Martinique Hotel restaurant B&L Diner has closed sometime in May. The space had been co-partner and chef Franklin Becker’s restaurant the Press Club Grill, but that closed in September 2024 to become this diner later that fall by Becker and Stephen Loffredo. The hotel’s other dining and drinking spots include newcomer dessert shop Sweet Graffiti, cocktail bar the Bronze Owl, and the B&L Bakery. 1262 Broadway between 32nd and 33rd streets

Long Island City: Queens Chinese speakeasy 929 Speakeasy closed on Sunday, May 18. The team is going to relocate the cocktail bar, which opened in 2021, to a new address sometime later this year, per its website. The team also turned the current address into a new bar, 56709, with cocktails and Japanese City pop music. 42-45 27th Street, between 42nd Road and 43rd Street

Upper West Side: Chinese dry hot pot restaurant 108 Food Dried Hot Pot closed sometime this past spring, as reported by West Side Rag. Former Eater NY critic Robert Sietsema raved about the restaurant when it opened in 2017. 2794 Broadway at West 108th Street

Upper West Side: Family-run Mexican restaurant Taqueria y Fonda is closing on Saturday, June 7, as reported by I Love the Upper West Side. Owner Jorge Lopez had sold the restaurant because of “rising rents,” per the website. The restaurant had opened back in 1999. 968 Amsterdam Avenue, between West 107th and 108th streets

When Governor Kathy Hochul abruptly hit the brakes in January on a sweeping program to price pollution, she said the state needed more time to “get it right.”

Holding off on the cap and invest program would allow “more space and time for public transparency,” her 2025 agenda briefing book promised.

Later that month, the then–head of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation told lawmakers that the agency would “continue the robust stakeholder engagement we have had over the past few months” on New York’s plan to ratchet down pollution while raising billions for the transition to clean energy.

Four months on, there’s little sign that Hochul’s administration has continued those efforts.

Climate advocates who had discussed details of cap and invest with state officials late last year — as Hochul prepared to launch the long-anticipated program — told New York Focus they haven’t heard anything from the administration since then about the core parts of the program.

Instead, DEC is focused on a narrower component of it: creating rules for how companies would be required to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The agency published a draft version in late March, and held hearings on those rules this week, as part of a mandatory public review process — marking the state’s first public forum on cap and invest since Hochul’s about-face in January. Climate groups and legislators rallied outside hearings in Syracuse and Albany on Tuesday and Wednesday, and are planning to do the same in New York City next week, demanding that Hochul’s administration release the full regulations to implement the carbon pricing program.

DEC spokesperson Lori Severino said the reporting regulation “lays the foundation for a future cap-and-invest program.”

But the centerpiece of the program — an auction system requiring companies to pay for the right to pollute — remains on hold. (Cap and invest, as proposed over the last two years, hinged on three pieces of regulation: the reporting rule, as well as one to determine which emissions polluters to charge and another to structure how the auctions should run.)

DEC did not provide any examples of recent “stakeholder engagement” on that front, except to note that web portals soliciting public comments on how cap and invest funds should be raised and spent remain open.

Nor has Hochul’s administration sought meetings behind the scenes, according to several groups.

“I haven’t heard anything recently,” said Conor Bambrick, senior climate adviser at the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance. He was one of many climate advocates who met with the Hochul administration in December, when officials were seeking to build support for the expected announcement of cap and invest rules in January.

“Our coalition members continue to try and engage with the executive around the urgent need to move forward with cap and invest this year,” said Stephan Edel, executive director of the climate justice coalition NY Renews. “It’s frustrating how little we’ve heard from the governor on a program that would benefit residents statewide.”

One climate advocate, who requested anonymity due to ongoing dealings with the administration, said that some staff at the state energy authority NYSERDA who had been working on cap and invest outreach had been moved to other projects. (A NYSERDA spokesperson said staff routinely work on multiple projects at a time.)

Alongside its work on the technical regulations, NYSERDA led sessions last August and September seeking feedback — particularly from environmental justice groups — on how to spend the proceeds from cap and invest. Regulators laid out a framework for the investments and specific prompts for written comments, asking for replies by the end of last September. Officials said the feedback would help inform the state’s budget for this fiscal year.

But with cap and invest on pause, lawmakers instead agreed this spring on a one-time, $1 billion pot of climate funding from the state’s general budget — more than the state had ever committed before, but less than the $3 billion cap and invest was expected to raise in its first year. NYSERDA has not continued its outreach on a longer-term spending plan.

Vanessa Fajans-Turner, executive director of the group Environmental Advocates NY said that her organization, like others, hasn’t gotten any recent updates from state officials on the overall cap and invest program. But she sees the emissions reporting rule as a step in the right direction.

“This reporting rule is progress — and we’re glad to see DEC taking steps to hold polluters accountable. But we have to be honest with ourselves: knowing who’s polluting doesn’t stop the pollution,” Fajans-Turner said in a statement Wednesday.

New York’s climate law required that the state issue regulations to meet its binding emissions targets by the beginning of 2024, and cap and invest was designed to help meet it. Many advocates were willing to give regulators longer to fine tune the program, as long as it was clear they were making progress.

Now that Hochul has hit the brakes, it’s a different story. Four climate groups sued the state in late March in a bid to get the program back on track.

Bambrick, of the Environmental Justice Alliance, said there was no reason to wait for a final reporting rule to move ahead with the rest of the program. (His group is not party to the lawsuit.)

“This was pitched as three sets of regulations that needed to move forward. They can all move forward together,” he said. “We’re running out of time. These should have been implemented a year and a half ago, and we’d like to see them start to move forward now.”