Good morning, it’s Friday. We made it through the first full (almost) workweek of the new year.
I thought we had entered into that gray holiday-free period where there was nothing to celebrate or prepare for or buy anything for until Valentine’s Day, which, for what it’s worth, isn’t much of a holiday as holidays go.
But, as it turns out, I was wrong. Again. Nothing new here.
Today is Three Kings Day, also known as Epiphany, also known as Theophany in Eastern Christian traditions. Whatever name you prefer, this is a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation of God incarnate as Jesus Christ.
On this day, according to the Biblical nativity story, three wise men brought gifts to the baby Jesus as he lay in the manger. (Although the Western and Eastern churches tend to see things a little differently…I’ll let you go down that theological rabbit hole, if you’re so inclined, as it gets a little complicated).
Generally speaking, Three Kings Day is celebrated in most Latin American and Caribbean countries, and it is not only widely known, but also seen in some communities as a “second Christmas”.
Traditions in terms of observances can vary widely.
For example, one custom calls for leaving grass or hay out for the three kings in exchange for a gift. I also read that the grass/hay is to be placed underneath your pillow as a snack for the wise mens’ camels. And the camels – or maybe their handlers? – leave a gift in exchange for the what they eat.
In Spain, it’s traditional to leave a shoe under the pillow instead of grass or hay along with a nice note about what kind of gifts one would like to receive in exchange. (This is starting to sound reminiscent of a wish list to Santa and the Christmas Eve mil-and-cookie tray – some people also include a carrot for the reindeer, in case they get hungry – right?)
Another tradition, if one is celebrating in Mexico, for example, is the consumption of a Rosca de Reyes, a large oval-shaped bread with dried fruit decorations. There’s a baby Jesus figurine baked into the bread, and if you get it in your slice, you’re responsible for hosting the next party, which is Día de la Candelaria (Candelmas), on Feb. 2.
In other cultures, the bread appears in the form of a King Day Cake, which makes an appearance throughout the Carnival season, running from Epiphany through Fat Tuesday – the day before Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent, during which time many people abstain from the consumption of sugar and other tasty things.
If you find a plastic baby in your slice of cake, you get to be “king” or “queen” for the rest of the day, and you’re also in for some good luck and prosperity, as the story goes.
If you have made it this far it probably has dawned on you that I am pointedly NOT delving deeply into the second anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks on the U.S. Capitol. We’ve spent so much time, thanks to the House Select Committee, rehashing and reliving the terrible event, I’m exhausted just thinking about it. I’ll leave it to you to decide how much you want to relive that day.
Personally, I’m all for remembering history so as not to repeat it, but also for not dwelling obsessively on it.
More clouds and rain today, especially in the morning. There might even be a few snow flurries or showers. Temperatures will be in the low 40s.
In the headlines…
President Biden will mark the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack by honoring 12 people who defended democracy against former President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Biden will be awarding the Presidential Citizens Medal to a dozen election workers, officials and law enforcement officers for “contributions to our democracy” before and during the riot, a White House official said.
Biden is set to deliver remarks and host a ceremony at the White House honoring the dozen individuals chosen for having made “exemplary contributions to our democracy” and shown “courage and selflessness” around the events of Jan. 6.
The partner of Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who died after responding to the Jan. 6 attack, sued former President Donald Trump and two rioters charged with assaulting Sicknick.
The suit, filed in Federal District Court for the District of Columbia just before the second anniversary of the attack, seeks at least $10 million in damages each from Trump and two men accused of assaulting the officer, Sicknick, with chemical spray on Jan. 6.
A federal judge has ordered lawyers for Trump to give the government the names of the private investigators who searched the former president’s properties late last year for any remaining classified documents.
Biden announced a far-reaching crackdown on people who seek refuge at the border with Mexico, dramatically expanding restrictions on asylum in the most aggressive effort of his administration to discourage migrants from crossing into the U.S.
Biden announced a weekend visit to the Texas-Mexico border, along with a new immigration plan that would allow 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to enter the country and be able to work legally for up to two years.
The U.S. and Germany will send infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine, the two countries announced, decisions that could pave the way for the West to give Ukraine what it really wants — Western tanks.
The total price tag of the package will be nearly $3 billion, two U.S. officials said.
Biden has hit his highest approval rating in more than a year according to FiveThirtyEight’s aggregation of polls out yesterday.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California contorted himself to try to win over right-wing holdouts as his battle to become speaker limped toward a fourth day, offering concessions that could substantially weaken his authority and empower a strident right flank.
The House adjourned for the third day without electing a new speaker after McCarthy continued to suffer a string of defeats in multiple rounds of voting. As the fight for the gavel drags on, it has now become the longest speaker contest in 164 years.
A written framework for rules in the 118th Congress was released that McCarthy’s allies hope will allow many of the GOP lawmakers who have been voting against him all week to eventually support him.
It’s not clear that Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican, would be able to win votes for speaker any more readily than McCarthy. But he is seen by many members of his party as the most obvious backup.
The Federal Elections Commission has told embattled Rep.-elect George Santos to explain why his campaign filings failed to adequately identify some contributors and why three donors appear to have exceeded contribution limits.
Santos’ sister reportedly skipped years of rent on the Queens apartment the siblings once shared — but managed in that time to still dish out tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions, including $5,000 to her lying brother’s campaign.
Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who is part of Democrats’ razor-thin edge in the chamber and represents a swing state that has played an outsize role in the past two presidential elections, said that he had prostate cancer but expected to make a full recovery.
The CDC has “done some very preliminary work” to do wastewater testing with airlines. There have been growing concerns among public health officials to ramp up monitoring for coronavirus variants amid a Covid-19 surge in China.
China will likely be able to live with Covid-19 by the end of March, based on how quickly people have returned to the streets, said Larry Hu, chief China economist at Macquarie.
A new most transmissible-yet COVID variant has established dominance in the New York area, fueling rising infection rates across the five boroughs as a looming nurses’ strike and ongoing concerns about RSV in kids stoke fresh anxiety about the pandemic.
Public schools in the U.S. have lost more than a million students since the start of the pandemic, prompting some districts across the country to close buildings because they don’t have enough pupils or funding to keep them open.
ABC is asking an L.A. judge to toss actor Ingo Rademacher’s lawsuit over his firing from General Hospital for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine, arguing that the actor’s beliefs aren’t religious in nature and he was likely going to be written off anyway.
The South Carolina Constitution provides a right to privacy that includes the right to abortion, the state’s Supreme Court ruled, saying “the decision to terminate a pregnancy rests upon the utmost personal and private considerations imaginable.”
The South Carolina Supreme Court struck down a ban on abortion after six weeks, ruling the restriction enacted by the Deep South state violates a state constitutional right to privacy.
In a 3-2 ruling, the court concluded that the law ran afoul of the state constitution’s privacy protections, with Justice Kaye Hearn writing in the lead opinion that the “state constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman’s decision to have an abortion.”
Police linked Bryan Kohberger to the house where four University of Idaho students were killed in November through security video and DNA found on a knife sheath, according to newly unsealed documents.
Street safety advocates urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to expand New York City’s Vision Zero program statewide and pointed to a 2006 plan laid out by the state DOT as evidence that New York is lagging on goals to push commuters out of cars.
The backlash to Hochul’s nomination of Hector LaSalle to be chief judge, and the backlash to the backlash, has exposed divisions within New York’s Latino political community, pitting “Latinos for LaSalle” against “Latinx leaders” who oppose his nomination.
Fellow judges say centrist jurist LaSalle could fix New York’s COVID-ravaged courts and improve its judiciary system if only progressive Democrats would give him a chance.
Jeffrey Cohen, a retired judge who served at the Appelllate Division with LaSalle, decried the politics at play. “It’s quite terrible,” he said. “It’s exactly what it should not be.”
Hochul’s year-end veto of legislation to protect unmarked burial sites on Long Island and throughout the state dealt a blow to local Native American tribes who for years have pushed for the measure.
Lester Chang, a newly elected Republican representing a Brooklyn Assembly district, continues to face questions over whether he lives in the borough or in Manhattan.
Ingrid Lewis-Martin, a longtime confidante to Mayor Eric Adams who serves as his chief adviser in City Hall, has been slapped with a $1,000 fine for using her position to financially benefit an aide who owed her money in violation of government ethics law.
Former State Sen. Diane Savino will become a senior advisor to Adams working with Lewis-Martin and the legislative team.
Close comrades of Adams who put together an investment deal involving insurance settlements have now turned on each other, with some partners alleging that they’ve been bilked out of more than $12 million.
Curtis Sliwa said that he accepts Adams’ offer to become the city’s chief rodent exterminator, though he lamented the way in which the mayor floated the job to him.
Members of the Guardian Angels, led by Adams’ campaign foe Sliwa, cleaned garbage off of Lafayette Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant after neighbors of the mayor’s personal residence complained that filth had attracted vermin.
Solving the problem of the infestation around the mayor’s Brooklyn property is not necessarily simple, an expert in rodenticide says.
Out-of-control teens are committing a growing portion of the Big Apple’s robberies, the NYPD revealed, as Adams warned that many city kids were headed toward a “career in violence.”
A 22% citywide jump in major crimes last year was tempered by a year-ending decline signaling the city may be turning a corner in the war on crime, police officials said.
Homicides fell last year to their lowest level since 2019, before the pandemic, but other categories of crime, including robbery and burglary, drove the overall increase compared with 2021.
Adams cheered Biden’s new border policy aimed at rapidly deporting migrants from certain countries including Cuba and Venezuela — but warned it is not enough.
Nurses working at five New York City hospitals remained poised to strike as the union representing them announced that they’ve reached tentative contract agreements at three other local hospitals.
Rapper Nicki Minaj’s husband tried and failed to get his name off New York’s sex offender registry, Brooklyn Federal court papers show.
Former U.S. Secretary of State and presidential nominee Hillary Clinton will join the faculty at Columbia University next month, officials announced.
The Roman Catholic Church laid to rest Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in front of a fog-shrouded St. Peter’s Basilica with an extraordinary funeral presided over by his own successor, Francis.
Francis presided over the funeral of his predecessor in a solemn and grand ceremony, but one that didn’t focus on the deceased’s life or accomplishments.
The former pope’s supporters, who include conservatives, said Francis’ approach seemed paltry in comparison to Benedict’s homily at the funeral of Pope John Paul II.
Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin woke up for the first time last night, two days after his frightening collapse during an NFL game, and wrote a note on a piece of paper. “Did we win?” he asked his bedside nurse.
“So, we know that it’s not only that the lights are on, we know that he’s home. And that it appears all cylinders are firing within his brain,” said Dr. Timothy Pritts, vice chair for clinical operations at University of Cincinnati Health where Hamlin is being treated.
“There are many, many steps still ahead of him,” Pritts said. “From our standpoint, we would like to see him continue to improve, to be completely breathing on his own and to be ready to be discharged from the hospital.”
The Buffalo Bills safety was on a good path for neurological recovery but might still face injuries to other organs, including his lungs.
With somber tones across the league, the NFL began inching toward normalcy this week, ahead of the final weekend of the regular season, as coaches and players outlined how they are reckoning with the terrifying events of Monday night.
The postponed Buffalo Bills-Cincinnati Bengals game where Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest will not be resumed and has been canceled, the NFL announced.
When Hamlin’s heart stopped during a game on Monday night, medical personnel can be heard responding to the kind of emergency the league hoped it would never face.
The Buffalo Bills head coach said Hamlin’s father Mario Hamlin, told the team to focus on their upcoming game against the New England Patriots in the regular season finale on Sunday.
A historic chunk of South Troy’s crumbling iron industry has been targeted for demolition to make way for modern manufacturing.
Albany Medical Center and the Center for Disability Services, which have been serving thousands of people with disabilities for more than 80 years, are receiving federal funds to create an integrated health system billed as the first of its kind in the nation.
