Good Thursday morning.
On this day one year ago, a mob of angry – and in some cases armed – Trump supporters sought to undermine democracy by storming the U.S. Capitol in hopes of preventing a congressional vote to certify the results of the 2020 election.
If you do not like or agree with the aforementioned characterization of what happened on that fateful day, maybe this isn’t the morning newsletter for you.
Or, perhaps just today’s iteration is one you should skip altogether? Come back tomorrow and we’ll be talking about easier and less controversial things…like chocolate, or the weather.
But really, to call what happened anything but what it truly was – a violent insurrection that attacked the very underpinnings of our Constitution and our government (or maybe I would accept the word “riot” in a pinch) – is to do history a serious injustice.
I guess we could probably avoid the whole thing and just pretend this anniversary isn’t occurring. That would certainly be easier. But you know what they say about those who cannot remember or fail to learn from history – they are doomed to repeat it.
And I, for one, feel very strongly that we should never again in this country allow what happened on that day at the U.S. Capitol to reoccur, although those in positions to prevent such a thing will be the first to tell you that the threat has hardly been mitigated.
In an unusual display of prudence, the former president succumbed to pressure – in some cases from fellow Republicans and his own advisors – and decided not to hold a planned press conference today at his Florida beach club. He did, however, not abstain in blaming basically everyone but himself for having such a boneheaded idea in the first place.
And also, if you thought that Donald Trump would go quietly into the night and let this anniversary pass without having to anything at all to say, think again. He’ll reportedly be airing his grievances at a campaign-style rally in Arizona very soon.
In the meantime, we will be hearing today from President Joe Biden, the man who defeated Trump in November 2020, but, given all the headaches he has had since taking office and his tanking poll numbers, perhaps is having second thoughts about the job these days. Vice President Kamala Harris will also be speaking as part of a series of tributes organized by the congressional Democrats.
An interesting and completely unrelated juxtaposition – today also happens to the the Feast of the Epiphany, AKA Three Kings Day, which, according to Wikipedia, “celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ; in Western Christianity, the feast commemorates principally the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child, and thus Jesus Christ’s physical manifestation to the Gentiles.”
What I remember most about this day is celebrating it when I lived in France, where it is traditional to eat a Galette des Rois, a sort of flattish almond cake that has, depending on who makes it, a little plastic or ceramic baby figurine inside it. Whoever gets the baby Jesus in their slice – assuming they don’t accidentally swallow it – is named king, or queen, and gets to wear a paper crown.
It’s all very festive and fun, and the cake is delicious. Sadly, like everything else these days, the cost of the Galette des Rois is going up. Also, there are other traditions that do versions of the king cake thing…learn more about that here.
If almond cake is not your thing – who ARE YOU? – no seriously, maybe you’re not a marzipan sort of a person, and if that’s the case, you’re in luck. Today is also National Shortbread Day.
I don’t know anyone who has anything bad to say about shortbread, which is basically just a big block of butter and sugar creamed together with a small bit of flour and some salt and baked to golden perfection.
What’s not to like?
I’ll tell you what I’m not liking these days…the cold. Something about getting older makes it harder to take. Or maybe I’ve just lost my edge. Either way, it will be in the low-to-mid 30s today, with intervals of clouds and sunshine in the morning giving way to mostly clouds in the afternoon.
In the headlines…
In his speech from the Capitol’s Statuary Hall today President Biden intends to touch upon his deeply personal views of the assault on democracy and the attack on the hallowed Capitol building, where he spent nearly four decades during his time as a senator.
Biden will blame his predecessor, Donald Trump, for the attack, saying he holds “singular responsibility” for the “chaos and carnage”, said spokeswoman Jen Psaki. Investigators have so far arrested 725 suspects in connection with the riot.
Biden will not be measured in his remarks, instead telling Americans that Trump, carries “singular responsibility” for what happened on Jan. 6.
While much of the focus has been on how Trump’s White House and members of Congress spent the day, little is known about how Biden and his team processed, in real time, the riot that was taking place.
Ten House Republicans voted to charge Trump with inciting the Capitol attack. All of them are still struggling with the consequences.
Trump’s continued grip on the party shows, once again, that the former president can outlast almost any outrage cycle, no matter how intensely it burns.
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland vowed that the Justice Department would pursue wrongdoing “at any level,” saying he would defend democratic institutions from attack and threats of violence.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the rioters who stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6 “lost” their bid to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
Biden and VP Kamala Harris will visit Atlanta on Jan. 11 to speak about the “urgent need to pass legislation to protect the constitutional right to vote.”
Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will attend a funeral for Sen. Harry Reid in Las Vegas on Saturday. Former President Barack Obama is also expected to attend, and deliver a eulogy.
Biden will be in Colorado tomorrow to tour the damage left by the Marshall Fire and discuss federal support for the victims, according to Rep. Joe Neguse and the White House.
More than 1,700 U.S. flights were canceled yesterday, bringing the total number of flight cancellations since Christmas Eve to nearly 20,000.
Federal Reserve officials at their meeting last month eyed a faster timetable for raising interest rates this year, potentially as soon as in March, amid greater discomfort with high inflation, according to minutes that were released yesterday.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has stumbled in explaining her COVID policy decisions, making life difficult for Biden and clouding his administration’s efforts to combat the virus.
Biden stepped up his vaccination push as cases reported in the U.S. rose to new records, saying unvaccinated people would suffer the worst of the Omicron-driven surge in infections.
The CDC updated its recommendations for the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine booster to include children as young as 12, at least five months after they finish the primary vaccine series.
The CDC said it was not changing its definition of “full vaccination” against the coronavirus. But the agency changed its emphasis on the appropriate regimen, tweaking how it referred to the shots.
A vaccine authorized in December for use in India may help solve one of the most vexing problems in global public health: How to supply lower-income countries with a COVID-19 vaccine that is safe, effective and affordable.
A small, new real-world study suggests that two widely used at-home antigen tests, the Abbott BinaxNOW and Quidel QuickVue, may fail to detect some Omicron infections even when people are carrying high levels of the coronavirus.
It took three days, on average, for people to test positive on a rapid antigen test after their first positive P.C.R. result. In four cases, people transmitted the virus to others while the rapid test showed the negative result, according to the study.
Massachusetts’ COVID-19 death total climbed past 20,000 yesterday.
Organizers of the Grammy Awards called off “music’s biggest night” scheduled for later this month due to uncertainty around the Omicron variant of Covid-19.
A couple from New Hampshire who had been married for 44 years and contracted COVID-19 during the holidays died within moments of each other while holding hands.
Kelly Ernby, an Orange County, California deputy district attorney who recently ran for state assembly and regularly spoke out against vaccine mandates, has died of complications from COVID-19 at the age of 46.
Lupita Nyong’o is the latest fully vaccinated celebrity to test positive for COVID-19. The Academy Award winning actress announced her diagnosis on social media.
Novak Djokovic’s chance to play for a 10th Australian Open title was thrown into limbo when the country denied him entry and canceled his visa because he failed to meet the requirements for an exemption to COVID-19 vaccination rules.
The tennis star had been stuck in an Australian airport as officials tried to work through issues related to his COVID-19 vaccine exemption for the upcoming Australian Open.
Kyrie Irving, the star Nets guard, made his regular-season debut against the Indiana Pacers last night following the team’s surprise reversal of its policy to bar him from practices and road games until he received the coronavirus vaccine.
A case of “flurona” — someone infected with both the flu and coronavirus simultaneously — has been discovered in a child in Southern California, a testing company announced.
In New York City’s courthouses, omicron is so out of control that arraignments have turned into a hot zone where anyone present receives a COVID-19 exposure alert, public defenders said.
The number of recorded COVID-19 cases among city students and school staff skyrocketed yesterday as reports of positive test results continued to flood the Situation Room responsible for tracking school cases.
Angered teachers union factions are ramping up pressure on NYC officials to adopt remote learning amid an ongoing “nightmare” of COVID-19 infections in city schools.
Frustrated city parents want to lower the quarantine time for COVID-19 infected students from 10 to five days in light of evolving guidance from the Centers for Disease and Prevention.
Nearly 1,000 teachers and staff in the Capital Region reported being sick with coronavirus when school restarted this week, which is 26 percent of the 3,600 new cases reported locally.
Albany public schools will shift to distance learning through the end of next week, citing the surge in COVID-19 cases since the holiday break.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is making a special delivery: nearly $1 billion in coronavirus emergency relief funds to New York City’s public hospital system as health care workers battle the latest Omicron outbreak.
The city’s public hospital system, NYC Health + Hospitals, will receive an extra $111 million in support from City Hall and smaller, private safety-net hospitals will get $27 million in loans from Goldman Sachs.
Gov. Kathy Hochul laid out her hopeful vision for New York’s future yesterday, using her first major address to pitch policy proposals and promise better days despite COVID’s unclenching grasp.
Hochu, who wore suffragette white in a nod to the fact she’s the first woman governor to deliver a State of the State address, pledged to restore trust in government after a scandal pushed her predecessor from office and also to restore the economy.
“What I am proposing is a whole new era for New York,” said Hochul during the 33-minute speech, delivered to a largely empty Assembly chamber with about 50 people sitting socially distanced due to the ongoing pandemic.
Hochul laid out a comprehensive agenda for 2022 delivering her address on the same day as the the beginning of the state legislature’s six-month session.
Hochul pledged $10 billion to boost the state’s decimated health care work force, proposed a new transit line, and directed funds to combat gun violence.
The governor outlined a plan that includes more than $2 billion in tax cuts for middle-class taxpayers and small business owners.
Hochul made clear she wants to eliminate the current version of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, the often-criticized state board in charge of enforcing ethics laws for lawmakers, government officials and lobbyists in New York.
She gave the broad outlines of what she’s calling a five-year, $25 billion housing plan for New York. But tenant advocates said they were alarmed by Hochul’s failure to mention the eviction moratorium, scheduled to expire Jan. 15.
Hochul said she would ask the state Legislature to make the sale of drinks to go at bars and restaurants legal, cementing in law a popular emergency policy that helped the battered hospitality industry weather the first year and a half of the pandemic.
An underutilized 14-mile freight line would be converted into a new commuter “Interborough Express” service connecting neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens under a plan championed by Hochul.
Outside the Capitol, hundreds of protesters gathered to rail against vaccine mandates and electronic passports such as the state’s Excelsior Pass. They specifically directed their ire toward the idea of mandating vaccination for K-12 students.
The rally was organized by a number of organizations across the state, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense, which has advanced numerous debunked theories regarding vaccination.
Disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo will have to appear in Albany court “in some form” tomorrow, when a judge is expected to toss misdemeanor sex-crimes charges for allegedly groping a former aide.
Adrienne Adams had to overcome several obstacles on her way to being voted in yesterday as the first Black woman to serve as speaker of the New York City Council, the second-most-powerful position in city government.
“History has its eyes on this City Council,” Adams said, addressing her members and the public for the first time, some of whom were forced to join the meeting virtually due to the recent uptick in COVID-19 cases.
Former speaker candidates Keith Powers and Diana Ayala were named to leadership positions at the Council’s first meeting of 2022.
Eric Adams has been New York City’s mayor for less than a week, but he’s already found himself the target of online scrutiny over comments he made at a press conference Tuesday about “low-skill workers” who lack the academic skills to “sit in a corner office”.
“People are going to try to take everything I say and distort it,” he contended, “but I’m focused, I’m disciplined, and I’m grinding to bring my city back.”
Adams defended the firing of the top internal cop in city jails after an outcry from the union, claiming NYC residents want him to fix the problems on Rikers Island.
Adams announced more members of his senior staff, naming a former Republican member of the City Council, Eric Ulrich, and a high-powered Brooklyn political power broker, Frank Carone, to top posts.
Adams outlined a three-point plan to make sure city hospitals don’t break under the strain of the omicron surge.
The path that Adams has charted to reduce shootings in the city centers on reinstating a version of the plainclothes police units that had become notorious for their use of force on Black and Latino New Yorkers before the units were disbanded in 2020.
The former NYPD captain said in a press conference that a handshake with a local NYPD chief left two of the fingers on his right hand in a splint.
Manhattan shopkeepers expressed fear and anger that the new district attorney’s progressive policies will only serve to embolden small-time crooks and put them in harm’s way.
Lawyers representing convicted sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell asked a federal judge to grant the British socialite a new trial after a juror told media outlets that sharing his experiences as a sexual-abuse victim influenced deliberations.
A juror who found Maxwell guilty says he can’t remember if he’d shared during jury selection that he’d been sexually abused — prompting a judge to order briefing on whether Jeffrey Epstein’s chief enabler should get a new trial.
After months of rallies calling for Saratoga Springs to come to a racial reckoning, the newly sworn-in City Council, at its first meeting, acted on two requests from those concerned with the city police force’s treatment of people of color.
Lark Street’s First Friday market will not be taking place this month in view of the spiking number of COVID-19 cases in the Capital Region, the Downtown Albany Business Improvement District announced earlier this week.
A former employee of the Schenectady County sheriff’s department is taking legal action against local officials and members of the department for a “laundry list” of incidents she alleged amounted to workplace discrimination, sexual harassment and more.
The National Labor Relations Board has alleged in a complaint that The New York Times violated federal workplace law by telling some employees that they could not publicly support a recently formed union of tech workers.
The tiny, spiny and adorable hedgehog is helping to upend conventional wisdom about the origins of drug-resistant bacterial infections that kill thousands of people each year.
The U.S. is racing to combat an ostensibly modest foe: hobbyist drones that cost a few hundred dollars and can be rigged with explosives.
