Good morning, it’s Monday.
I had lived in New York for most of my adult life and visited most of its 62 counties at least once. (Such is the life of political reporter – my former profession).
I have spent quite a bit of time in the Queen City, as Buffalo is also known, and even dated someone from there for a few years, and yet somehow I never made it to Dyngus Day.
Dyngus Day (AKA Śmigus-dyngus if you happen to be in Central Europe) is a formerly Pagan-turned-Roman Catholic Polish-American tradition that celebrates both the end of the restrictions of Lent and the joy of Easter. It is a day of new beginnings.
This holiday, which includes some rather unique (some might say odd) traditions that we’ll get to in a moment, is celebrated around the world, including by Polish communities here in the U.S.
Buffalo has a rather sizable Polish-American community who are the descendants of what was once the nation’s sixth largest representation of the Polish-American diaspora. These days, many of them live not in the city itself, but in its Eastern suburbs – like Cheektowaga and Marilla.
According to the census, about 34,000 (11 percent) of the Buffalo population are of Polish ancestry, whereas Cheektowaga is at about 37,000 (almost 40 percent).
Other cities across the nation also have Dyngus Day celebrations – Cleveland, for example, and Chicago. But Buffalo is known for having the largest concentration of festival locations, polka bands and Polish traditions in the U.S., some of which date back to the 1960s.
And when you dare to mock Dyngus Day in Buffalo, as Anderson Cooper now knows all too well, the wrath of the entire city is upon you. Buffalonians are very proud people. You take your life into your hands if you dare to mock and/or question the excellence of their sports, their food, their insanely snowy winters, and their holidays.
Dyngus Day may have its roots in pagan celebrations of the March equinox. One tradition on this day is that boys throw water on the girls they fancy – sometimes sneaking into their houses at the break of day to catch them still sleeping in bed and give them a rude (and wet) awakening, and also spank them pussy willows.
Legend has it that the girl who gets soaked the most will be the next to marry. (BTW, Dyngus Day is also sometimes referred to as “Wet Monday“).
The water apparently represents cleansing, purification and fertility. I couldn’t really find much in the way of an explanation related to the pussy willows, other than they are associated with the first signs of spring.
It’s also traditional to wear red and white – the colors of the Polish flag – on Dyngus day; eat Polish comfort foods like kielbasa, pierogi, and sauerkraut; drink Tyskie beer; and dance the polka.
If you happen to be in Buffalo today, be sure to check out and partake in some of the local fun. The weather in Western New York is looking pretty good today – 55 degrees and sunny.
Here in Albany, it’s shaping up to be sunny and 66 degrees…and if you look ahead to next weekend – HOLY SHIT we skipped right to summer! We’re looking at temperatures climbing steadily through the week and into the 80s, folks, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I’m starting to feel a serious bout of spring fever coming on. Sorry in advance if I disappear into the ether.
In the headlines…
Police in Northern Ireland have reportedly disrupted an IRA bomb plot ahead of President Joe Biden’s visit to Belfast tomorrow.
The trip will be a four-day swing for Biden, starting in Belfast to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that ended civil war in Northern Ireland, before revisiting where his ancestors lived in Ireland.
Biden has spoken with Louisiana State University basketball star Angel Reese in a phone call to congratulate her on the Tigers’ NCAA championship win, the White House said.
Biden’s call to Reese, 20, came about after a week of back-and-forth from the basketball star, who said she would not accept an invitation to the White House following her team’s victory.
Biden’s not-yet-official bid for re-election will lean on hundreds of social media “influencers” who will tout Biden’s record — and soon may have their own briefing room at the White House.
The effort is reportedly spearheaded by staffer Rob Flaherty, who will lead four digital staffers in the White House and was named assistant to the president, which has the same rank as the communication director and press secretary.
A trove of secret Pentagon documents that were exposed on social media have shed new light on the state of the war in Ukraine.
The documents showed just how deeply the United States has penetrated Russia’s military and intelligence services, and revealing that Washington also appears to be spying on some of its closest allies, including Ukraine, Israel and South Korea.
The Department of Justice has opened an investigation into the leaks of the trove of apparent US intelligence documents that were posted on social media in recent weeks.
The documents are becoming a growing source of anxiety for US intelligence agencies, as numerous allies have been forced into denials over the purported leaks.
A federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, potentially making it harder for patients to get abortions in states where abortion is legal, not just in those trying to restrict it.
The decision from District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk could represent the biggest blow to abortion rights in the US since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.
However, just minutes later, a federal judge in Washington, U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice, ordered the FDA not to make any changes that would restrict access to the drug in 17 states and D.C. that sued to expand access to mifepristone.
Judge Kacsmaryk delayed his ruling from taking effect for a week to give the Biden administration time to appeal, which it did.
Republicans are grappling with how they message on abortion in next year’s elections, after the party suffered a defeat in the highly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
The contradictory federal court rulings will almost certainly queue the issue up for the Supreme Court, marking the first significant abortion case to land on the high court’s docket since a majority of justices last year overturned Roe.
Several Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said the Biden administration should ignore the Texas ruling and refuse to enforce it. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra did not dismiss that possibility.
The decision to block the availability of widely used abortion drug mifepristone is “reckless” and “not America, Becerra said.
In a series of tweets late on Friday night, Biden said the ruling would “prevent women across the country from accessing the medication” and that he and Kamala Harris, his vice president, were “committed to protecting a woman’s right to an abortion.”
The Biden administration is reportedly planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032.
Former President Trump’s lawyer suggested that his client’s team would be open to moving a trial to a venue outside of Manhattan as Trump has suggested due to the borough being a “stronghold of liberalism.”
Attorney Jim Trusty argued “there’s a lot to play with” when examining whether New York prosecutors waited too long to secure an indictment against Trump and if the ex-president intended to commit any crimes with the payments at the center of the case.
Trusty said that there are no more classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr said that Trump is the GOP presidential candidate “most likely” to lose to Biden in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.
Barr said Trump played “games” with federal investigators as they sought to retrieve the documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate that ” could amount to obstruction of justice.
Melania Trump yesterday broke her silence for the first time since her husband’s indictment and arrest, while her husband delivered a blistering message to critics.
The Covid-19 virus may have originated from humans, a Chinese scientist has claimed. A research team in China has published analysis of samples taken more than three years ago from the market linked to the outbreak of Covid-19.
Chinese health officials have called out the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus for his “offensive” comments in the ongoing search for the origins of COVID-19.
The World Health Organization is monitoring XBB.1.16, an omicron subvariant that has been detected in over 20 countries and is contributing to a recent surge of COVID-19 cases in India.
India recorded 5,880 new reported covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of active cases to 35199, the union health ministry said.
David Crosby passed away during a battle with COVID-19, according to his former Crosby, Stills and Nash bandmate Graham Nash.
Albany Democrats are giving themselves another week for state budget talks, as Gov. Kathy Hochul pushes to loosen limits on imposing bail and remanding people ahead of their trials.
Paychecks for roughly 83,000 state workers won’t be issued this week unless lawmakers return to the Capitol and pass a second budget extender by noon today.
State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli sent a letter last Thursday warning Hochul of the impending deadline, which would ensure the his office has enough time to begin processing direct deposits for 83,000 employees at state agencies due to be paid next week.
Lawmakers are expected to gavel in this morning to consider a temporary spending measure that will fund New York’s government until April 17.
Albany lawmakers have floated changes to a key state subsidy for rent-stabilized apartments that could stop the building of thousands of badly needed units amid New York’s housing crisis.
A Capital Region Republican state senator has floated a proposal to eliminate cash bail while giving judges more detailed criteria on the circumstances necessary to jail a person accused of a crime.
New York is following the lead of other states trying to alleviate housing crunches by chipping away at local restrictions on building. The accusations of government overreach here also echo claims in some of those other states.
Hochul and state Attorney General Letitia James on Friday filed a brief in support of a lawsuit brought by Democrats that is seeking to compel the redrawing of New York’s congressional boundaries, which are not scheduled to be reconfigured for another decade.
The top Democrats threw their weight behind a redistricting lawsuit slated to be heard by a state appellate court, pressing in an amicus brief to toss lines drawn by a special master after a series of fits and starts in the election year redistricting process.
The move helps to reignite the fight over whether the current map that benefited Republicans on Long Island and the Hudson Valley should be redrawn by the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission ahead of the 2024 elections.
The Hochuls opened the grounds of the Governor’s Mansion in Albany on Saturday to welcome children and their families to partake in an Easter celebration for the first time since the pandemic began in 2020.
Albany’s slow recreational cannabis rollout is leaving veterans behind, critics charge.
NYCLU and Prisoners’ Legal Services filed a petition in state Supreme Court this week seeking authorization to bring a class-action lawsuit against the DOCCS to stop what the groups allege is the illegal use of solitary confinement in prisons.
Disgraced governor Andrew Cuomo’s “unmitigated greed” and mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the “needless” deaths of thousands of elderly New Yorkers, a Nassau man whose mother and father died from the virus claimed in court.
COVID-related deaths had a greater impact on the city’s mortality rates in 2020 than the Spanish flu pandemic had on 1918 death rates, alarming new statistics released by the city’s Department of Health revealed.
The pandemic caused the death rate in New York City to climb about 50 percent over the previous year, according to new data, a phenomenon not seen in nearly 200 years.
A group of progressive lawmakers visited Rikers Island last week to highlight problems in New York City’s trouble-plagued jails as they pushed back on Hochul’s proposed bail reform rollbacks.
A nonprofit run by the state’s health commissioner operates as a shadow agency without scrutiny from lawmakers — yet doles out hundreds of millions of dollars yearly in government money and has a huge say in New York’s biggest medical decisions, critics said.
Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign fundraising manager reportedly solicited donations for the mayor’s reelection bid last year while simultaneously being paid to lobby his administration on behalf of a Manhattan property owner with business before the city.
One of Adams’ top goals as New York City mayor is to build a school system better equipped to help children with dyslexia. The mission is a personal one.
In a bid to protect some of the city’s oldest structures, Adams unveiled a plan to bolster enforcement for buildings designated as historic landmarks that are at risk because of unknown structural flaws, neglectful owners or unauthorized contractor work.
A Bronx street was renamed Saturday in honor of a teen shot and killed by a stray bullet from a ghost gun — and Mayor Eric Adams used the occasion to reaffirm his fight against the illegal weapons.
The NYPD still hasn’t trimmed enough fat to achieve a budget savings target spelled out by Adams last year, an administration official said after the mayor announced a multi-billion dollar agreement to raise salaries for most of the department’s cops.
Eight tenants in New York City have filed a class action lawsuit against the city’s Department of Social Services for terminating their inclusion in rental voucher programs aimed at keeping people out of homeless shelters.
Bronx Councilman Oswald Feliz has proposed legislation to stiffen penalties and crack down on the use of bogus paper license plates for “ghost cars.”
A coalition of five powerful labor unions plans to spend more than $1 million to re-elect Democratic City Council members facing challenges in this year’s primary and general elections.
A decision out of Albany traffic court could invalidate some outstanding parking tickets in the city.
The state Public Employees Relations Board ruled against the City of Saratoga Springs in yet another accounts department labor-management dispute.
Delmar Bistro, a popular eatery on Delaware Avenue, will close later this month after eight years in business.
Tiger Woods withdrew yesterday from the Masters Tournament, where he was in last place and openly struggling to overcome the agony of years of injuries.
Twitter has dropped the “state-affiliated media” label from NPR’s account and replaced it with a “government funded” label, after facing backlash over the decision.
The label first appeared on NPR’s account on Tuesday, leading the news organization to halt its posts on the social media platform.
