Good Tuesday morning.
Happy International Women’s Day, which aims to celebrate the historical, cultural, and political achievements of women while also raising awareness about gender bias and discrimination, which, sadly, are still very much present in our state, our country, and around the globe.
The theme of this year’s day is #BreaktheBias, imagining a world that is free of stereotypes and discrimination and is diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
Sounds kind of like a pipe dream, but I guess we all need a goal.
Not to be pessimistic or anything. I mean, women have come an awfully long way, but when abortion rights are under attack, and the gender pay gap is still very real, and women lost significant ground – both in the workplace and at home – during the pandemic, well, it’s easy to be cynical.
The first National Women’s Day was held in 1909, as per a declaration of the Socialist Party, and was observed on the last Sunday in February until 1913.
At the time of the inaugural Women’s Day, women didn’t have the right to vote, (at least we got that one squared away via the 19th Amendment’s ratification in 1920), and also were overworked and experiencing pay inequity (like I said, a long way to go here).
The year before, some15,000 women marched through New York City in 1908 to demand their rights. A year later, an International Women’s Conference was organized by Clara Zetkin, a German suffragist and leader in the Women’s Office, who also proposed a special annual Women’s Day.
International Women’s Day was honored the following year in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland, with more than one million participants.
For the uninitiated, the U.S. women’s rights movements has its roots right here in New York – in Seneca Falls, to be exact, which is where, in 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and one hundred supporters signed the Declaration of Sentiments asserting that “all men and women are created equal.”
Women won the right to vote in New York via an amendment to the state Constitution three years before the 19th Amendment was ratified. We were the first eastern state to take this step, which was a significant victory for the suffrage movement.
I knew I was proud to be a New Yorker for a reason. (OK, for many reasons, but this is a good one, also, abortion was decriminalized in New York three years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision…See? Three IS the magic number).
The weather continues to be peripatetic, with temperatures heading into the 40s today and then even lower into the 30s tomorrow with a mix of rain and snow on the horizon. A wind advisory with potential gusts of up to 50 mph remains in effect for a few more hours (unless you’re reading this after 7 a.m…boy, do you sleep late, or what?)
In the headlines…
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators ended a third round of talks yesterday with little progress, while Ukraine’s military held fast along several fronts and Russia continued to shell cities and residential areas.
U.S. lawmakers pushed the Biden administration to facilitate the transfer of fighter aircraft to Ukraine from Poland and other NATO and Eastern European countries, after a plea on Saturday from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Zelensky, taunting President Vladimir Putin of Russia and showing confidence in the Ukrainian defense of the capital, Kyiv, released a video that opened with cellphone footage showing his exact location.
As Russian forces continue to advance across Ukraine, the U.S. is accusing the Kremlin of “starving” besieged Ukrainian cities, in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who appealed directly to Putin to “end the war, end it now.”
Increasingly indiscriminate Russian shelling magnified fears of an intensifying humanitarian crisis that has already left tens of thousands without food, water, power or heat in besieged cities of southern Ukraine and elsewhere.
President Joe Biden is racing to avoid a fight with Congress over banning Russian oil imports as he faces the increasing possibility that his own party will act if he doesn’t.
A bipartisan group of American lawmakers agreed to move ahead with legislation that would ban Russian energy imports in the United States and suspend normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus.
Biden’s advisers are discussing a possible visit to Saudi Arabia this spring to help repair relations and convince the Kingdom to pump more oil.
President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela signaled a willingness to increase his country’s oil production if Russian supplies are shut out of the international market, as he described a meeting with American officials as “respectful, cordial, very diplomatic.”
Yesterday, the national average price for regular gasoline hit $4.065 a gallon, the highest price since July 2008 and approaching the record of $4.114 reached that same month, according to AAA.
Today, as in the early 1900s, Jews are once again escaping violence in southeast Europe. But the context is radically different — cathartically so for the many Israelis who have come here to join the relief effort.
Biden will sign an executive order as soon as midweek to marshal resources across the government to develop a sweeping plan to oversee cryptocurrencies, including whether the U.S. should issue a fully virtual version of the dollar.
The order, which may seek to appoint an individual with regulatory authority to oversee the crypto market, could come as early as tomorrow.
The move comes as administration officials have raised concerns in recent weeks about Russia’s use of cryptocurrency to evade the impact of crushing sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
The State of the Union address failed to boost Biden’s popularity among independents, but he did get a bounce from Democrats, a survey has found.
Biden today will make a presidential visit to the Fort Worth VA Clinic in Texas to speak with veterans, caregivers, and survivors about addressing the health effects of environmental exposures such as burn pits.
First Lady Jill Biden hit both former President Donald Trump and Putin as she kicked off a three-day, three state tour yesterday, starting in Arizona.
The Senate unanimously approved a bill that would make lynching a federal hate crime, explicitly criminalizing a heinous act that has become a symbol of the nation’s history of racial violence.
The U.S. Supreme Court allowed congressional maps that had been approved by state courts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to stand, giving Democrats an advantage in this year’s election in two key states.
The court declined to hear a case brought by prosecutors in Pennsylvania, effectively allowing a state court decision that had overturned actor Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction to stand.
From Florida to Idaho, Republican-led state legislatures are not waiting for the Supreme Court to rule: They are operating as if Roe has already been struck down, advancing new restrictions that aim to make abortion illegal in as many circumstances as possible.
A convoy of truckers and other supporters circled the capital on the Beltway for a second day yesterday, protesting Covid-19 mandates and hoping to attract attention from lawmakers.
Moderna Inc. said it will never use its Covid-19 vaccine-related patents to stop others from manufacturing its vaccine in more than 90 low- and middle-income countries, but signaled it was prepared to begin enforcing patents in wealthier countries.
New Zealand’s approach to COVID-19 has shifted radically, moving from elimination to suppression and now to something approaching acceptance as the Omicron variant has taken hold.
A new coronavirus variant may emerge in the near future, especially as countries experience a “honeymoon period” from COVID-19, an expert recently said.
People who have even a mild case of Covid-19 may have accelerated aging of the brain and other changes to it, according to a new study.
The study, published in the journal Nature, is believed to be the first involving people who underwent brain scans both before they contracted Covid and months after.
The governor of Puerto Rico lifted the territory’s mask mandate for most places, as one of the last holdouts in the United States eased Covid-19 restrictions.
Contradicting guidance from the CDC, Florida will soon recommend that healthy children not get vaccinated against Covid-19, the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, announced.
Four more free, at-home rapid COVID-19 antigen tests are available starting now from COVIDtests.gov as the Biden administration works to get control of case numbers and infections.
While New York City rents plunged at the start of the pandemic, they are now surging, and the increase is double the national rate, amplifying the affordability crisis.
“It’s just sort of mind-boggling, the increases we’re seeing now,” said Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, a nonprofit advocacy group.
The full U.S. Supreme Court rejected a group of New York City school workers seeking to stop the city from firing them for not getting vaccinated against Covid-19, denying a renewed request by 15 people turned away Feb. 11 by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
New York City eliminated a school mask mandate that had been in place since the fall of 2020, a major milestone in its recovery from a public health crisis that upended the lives of nearly 1 million students in the nation’s largest school district.
This came on the same day that the city also suspended its proof of vaccination requirement to enter restaurants, gyms and other entertainment venues.
At elementary schools and high schools, students and parents alike expressed concern that it was too soon, despite the declarations by Mayor Eric Adams that the city has beaten back the Omicron variant of the virus.
Teachers at a top Manhattan high school pressured students to stay masked – all with the blessing of their principal.
Roughly 100 parents and children gathered in front of City Hall to protest continuing mask mandates for the city’s youngest kids.
Adams went restaurant hopping in Manhattan’s East Village to celebrate the end of the city’s indoor vaccine mandate while imploring New Yorkers to stop living in fear of a potential future COVID-19 outbreak.
The mayor dined on (vegetarian) borscht at an East Village mainstay alongside lawmakers and expressed interest in detoxing at a Russian Turkish bathhouse. Dressed in a blue suit and paisley tie, he even attempted to ride a skateboard.
Adams also made a surprise visit to the East Village deli that has been targeted by rowdy teens for months despite employees pleas’ to cops for help
During his joyous day out, Adams told reporters that he was okay with unvaccinated people frequenting businesses.
Pressed about the delay in their rollout, Adams said the first group of officers in the NYPD’s hybrid plainclothes police squad will hit the streets “within the next week or so.”
Adams has reorganized the structure of city government, merged and consolidated several offices, created new roles while separating previously existing ones at the top of City Hall and established his top priorities in doing so.
State Sen. John Liu chided Adams for his hasty exit from a hearing on City Hall’s control of the nation’s largest school system.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ nominee for the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board got a grilling from members of the City Council over concerns that a business she founded had its own possible conflict — or the appearance of one.
Major delivery companies like Amazon and UPS that clog New York’s streets with trucks will pay less for parking in bus lanes and “no standing” zones under new rules that go into effect in May, according to a new policy by the city Finance Department.
In one example of how former Gov. Andrew Cuomo may be trying to reassert his standing as a political player, he has reached out to Adams’s team regarding polling about Democratic Party fortunes, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
Cuomo would still face an impeachment proceeding if he runs and wins elected office in New York, according to a source close to the state Assembly.
An attorney who worked for the Cuomo administration claims he was fired last year for his cooperation in a state attorney general’s investigation that sustained multiple sexual harassment allegations against the former governor.
The state inspector general’s office is investigating a breach of confidentiality at New York’s ethics oversight agency, spurred by a complaint filed by an attorney representing Cuomo.
The state Legislature decided to allow voters to request an absentee ballot on the basis of COVID-19 concerns in school district elections this year, even as the latest strain of the coronavirus dwindles across the state.
The LOB reopened to the public this past week after roughly two months where visitors were barred from entering the space that houses lawmakers’ offices, public hearing rooms and areas where activists traditionally have gathered to promote their causes.
Governor Kathy Hochul spoke at Monroe Community College, where she outlined a number of state investments, calling it a “New era” for the City of Rochester.
Hochul announced that a proposed $100 million in state funding could go to remove a 1 1/2-mile section of Rochester’s northern Inner Loop.
Gas prices in several Upstate New York Cities have hit a new all-time record high.
There’s no guarantee New York drivers will see a positive impact from the suspension of the state’s sales tax on gasoline, though the issue remains under review, Hochul said.
A media consultant that shaped more than $500,000 in ads attacking Hochul has longtime ties to U.S. Rep Tom Suozzi, who is seeking to challenge the incumbent in June’s Democratic primary for governor.
State lawmakers in a budget proposal set to be released in the next week are expected to include a provision meant to support pharmacists in New York after Hochul late last year vetoed a similar provision.
New York prisons will not release people convicted of some sex offenses until they find housing far from schools. But that is hard to do, especially from behind bars.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is looking for a new captain to lead the office’s troubled sex crimes unit, which has been slammed by abuse victims as dysfunctional and unsympathetic.
One of New York’s largest LGBTQ non-profits has lost $10 million in state funding after an investigation found it was mishandling the millions in taxpayer dollars it received each year.
State Sen. James Tedisco of Glenville is asking Inspector General Lucy Lang to release any findings from the office’s investigation of the state’s oversight of the Saratoga County limo company involved in the 2018 crash in Schoharie that killed 20 people.
Queen Elizabeth II has permanently quit living in Buckingham Palace, and has decided to permanently reside in her weekend home, Windsor Castle.
