Good morning, it’s Thursday, which is one day away from Friday. We are inching closer to the weekend and getting an early taste of summer, as the temperature is forecast to hit the mid-80s today.
Yeah, you read that right.
Also tomorrow, though things will start to go downhill – not by much, though – from there, with a comfortable mid-70-degree range for the weekend. Next week, well, we’re back to reality with in the 50s and 60s.
But hey, it’s better than anything below freezing. I’m going to take a big leap and say we’re out of the woods when it comes to a surprise late spring storm.
Of course, now that I’ve said that, it will snow on June 1.
OK, enough with the weather obsession. It’s getting old. It’s just that not feeling freezing cold down to the very marrow of my bones is so damn novel. And a relief.
Today happens to be Thomas Jefferson Day – a day honoring the man described by none other than the White House (that he once occupied, though back before it had a website) as:
“(A) spokesman for democracy, an American Founding Father (some say one of the most influential of the bunch), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third president of the United States.”
Today is supposedly Jefferson’s birthday.
I say supposedly because Jefferson actually had two birthdays.
His birthdate is inscribed as “April 2, 1743 O.S.” on his tombstone at Monticello, his Charlottesville, VA estate. He was born while the old Julian or “Old Style” calendar was still in use. The Gregorian calendar, which is the modern-day version, came into existence when Jefferson was nine years old, and at that time, his birthday became April 13.
Weird, right?
The official celebration of Thomas Jefferson’s Birthday was not established until 195 years after his birth, on March 21, 1938, when President Roosevelt issued Proclamation 2276 declaring April 13 as a national observance of Jefferson’s birthday.
Jefferson was a remarkable person who played a key role in our nation’s early days. This is undeniably true. But he is also a complicated figure who owned slaves – even while living in the White House, and infamously was fixated on one in particular – a woman named Sally Hennings – with whom he is widely believed to have fathered multiple children.
Jefferson’s relationship with Hennings, which is often mischaracterized as an “affair” (she was not in a position to refuse his advances, as she was his “property” at the time), became a scandal for the third president not long after he was elected and took office. He never denied the accusation, and he did free Hennings’ (and his) children, as he reportedly promised he would.
History is messy, and usually not pretty. But as they say about those who fail to learn from it…better to acknowledge our collective faults and wrongs and shortcomings as a country, if we are ever to hope for a chance not to repeat them.
Another glorious and unseasonably warm day is on tap, with temperatures in the mid-80s and sunny skies. There is an elevated fire risk warning in place for much of the Hudson Valley up to Albany, due to a combination of dry conditions and strong winds.
In the headlines…
Police have launched an investigation after a document outlining details of President Joe Biden’s trip to Northern Ireland was found on the street by a member of the public yesterday.
The document, discovered near the hotel where Biden was staying, included the names and phone numbers of police officers involved in the operation, as well as the streets where they were deployed and other information.
Biden urged Northern Irish political leaders to restore their power-sharing government with the promise that scores of major U.S. corporations were ready to invest in the region as he marked the 25th anniversary of peace in Belfast.
The agreement “just has a profound impact for someone who has come back to see it. It’s an incredible testament to the power and the possibilities of peace,” Biden said.
While decades of violence between Nationalists and Unionists has been mostly left to another era, the peace is fragile and the politics are broken – making Biden’s speech to students as much about the future of this region as its bloody past.
Biden spoke proudly of his Irish roots during his first day in Ireland – so much so that a gaffe he made at an Irish pub stirred controversy across the sea in Britain.
After more than a year of offering incentives for industries to invest in clean energy, the Biden administration announced what it called the most ambitious auto pollution rules in history, with the aim of accelerating automakers’ shift to electric vehicles.
The Biden administration’s proposal to sharply cut tailpipe emissions and vehicle pollutants is on a fast track as the future of U.S. auto production could become a presidential campaign issue next year.
A federal appeals court ruled that the abortion pill mifepristone could remain available, but the judges blocked the drug from being sent to patients through the mail and rolled back other steps the government had taken to ease access in recent years.
The order from a divided three-judge panel in Louisiana allowed the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone to remain in effect but declined to stay a lower court’s ruling that imposed significant restrictions on access to the drug.
Former President Donald Trump landed in New York City last night ahead of his expected deposition this morning in the $250 million business fraud lawsuit brought against him and his company by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump was expected to visit the offices of New York’s attorney general today for his second deposition in a legal battle over his company’s business practices.
Trump is suing Michael Cohen for $500 million in damages for allegedly breaching his contract as Trump’s former personal attorney.
“Defendant breached his fiduciary duties owed to Plaintiff by virtue of their attorney-client relationship by both revealing Plaintiff’s confidences, and spreading falsehoods about Plaintiff, likely to be embarrassing or detrimental, and partook in other misconduct.”
Trump sat down for a lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, and warned of potential for China to push a large portion of the world off of the dollar standard would be the equivalent of America losing a world war.
Lawyers for Trump, citing a “deluge of prejudicial media coverage” of his recent indictment and arraignment in Manhattan, asked a federal judge for a one-month postponement of his civil trial over an allegation that he raped a magazine writer in the 1990s.
The judge overseeing Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Fox News said he was imposing a sanction on the network and would very likely start an investigation into whether Fox’s legal team had deliberately withheld evidence.
Federal investigators are asking witnesses whether Trump showed off to aides and visitors a map he took with him when he left office that contains sensitive intelligence information, four people with knowledge of the matter said.
A second threatening letter containing white powder was reportedly sent to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg yesterday, a week after he indicted Trump on dozens of felony counts.
“NYPD testing determined the powder found in the mailroom to be non-hazardous,” the DA’s office said in a statement. “We thank our partners at the NYPD Emergency Service Unit and the NYC Department of Environmental Protection.”
A victims’ rights advocate due to testify before lawmakers investigating Bragg says the prosecutor should focus more on fighting for crime victims — not wasting his time prosecuting Trump.
A new COVID variant the World Health Organization has its eye on seems to be causing a new symptom in children rarely caused by other Omicron spawn.
The new variant seems to be spreading faster than other recent variants but doesn’t seem to cause more severe illness, according to initial studies.
Arcturus — technically the Omicron subvariant XBB.1.16 — caused India’s health ministry to launch mock drills in order to see if hospitals are properly prepared to handle a potential influx of COVID patients.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is reportedly backing changes to criminal discovery laws via the state budget process at the behest of New York City district attorneys who blame progressive reforms for a surge in dropped cases,
Prosecutors have called for changes as well as more money to handle the faster turning over of evidence to defense, pointing to how time consuming the recently passed provisions have become for their offices.
Criminal justice advocates and public defenders are up in arms over an 11th-hour push by prosecutors to roll back part of New York’s discovery reforms in the state’s already-late budget.
Faith leaders and health care workers from around the state argue that inadequate funding for health care and bail changes proposed in Hochul’s budget will help perpetuate a cycle of generational poverty.
As local news deserts are spreading in New York, a proposal in Albany could spur the hiring of more journalists to attend planning board meetings and read school district budget proposals.
Albany must include “good-cause eviction” once it finally passes the stalled state budget, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive electeds said at a rally in Astoria, Queens.
AG James announced that New York will received more than $112 million from a multi-state settlement with Juul Labs Inc. for the company’s alleged role in fueling a “youth vaping epidemic that led to a rise in underage e-cigarette smoking nationwide.”
It’s not just the families of the 2018 limousine crash in Schoharie who are mad that the state’s Stretch Limousine Passenger Safety Task Force hasn’t met since last fall — and that officials in Hochul’s administration won’t explain why.
New state tests start next week, reflecting new standards that were supposed to go into effect years ago, but were delayed due to the pandemic.
An increasing number of women have turned to New York City in the months since the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion, leaving states to establish and enforce their own laws. It is something the city government is actively encouraging.
Mayor Eric Adams finally revealed the name of New York City’s first-ever “rat czar”, after shrouding her name in secrecy for three weeks. Kathleen Corradi, who currently works for the Department of Education, has been tapped for the job.
Adams, who introduced Corradi in Harlem, described her as a “maestro” who would successfully coordinate interagency efforts to address New York’s rat problem.
Corradi, who will be paid $155,000 a year, will supervise the rat experts who already work for the city.
Civil rights advocates and progressive Democrats are howling over Adams’ decision to bring back the NYPD’s controversial robot dogs, but he waved off that criticism and pledged more to come in his push for a more high-tech city government.
Another disillusioned batch of more than 10,000 New Yorkers relinquished their driver’s licenses for the Florida version in the first quarter of 2023, extending an ongoing exodus into the Sunshine State.
Seventy percent of New Yorkers say they’re happy living in the state, compared to 30 percent who wish they lived elsewhere, according to a recent poll from the Siena College Research Institute.
A litany of Department of Correction failures contributed to the deaths of seven inmates in New York City’s troubled jail system during the second half of 2022, according to a report released yesterday from a city oversight board.
Nearly four years after a Bronx building collapse killed an Ecuadorean construction worker crushed under 1,000 pounds of debris, three contractors have been charged in his death, one of a series of worksite fatalities that raised alarms about a perilous industry.
The NYPD sprang into action this week to rescue what they thought was a dog struggling to swim in the East River but ended up saving a much larger and more dangerous canine – a coyote.
Seneca Nation leaders cut the ribbon in Niagara Falls for the first nation-owned cannabis dispensary.
Visitors to the Lake Champlain Valley may soon be able to stay at former Gov. George Pataki’s farm for the summer months, according to an application filed with the Adirondack Park Agency.
Construction is beginning this week for a new Saratoga skate park at the East Side Recreation facility.
Albany’s budget director received a one-year waiver that allows him to live outside of city.
It’s been a week since a fire damaged four buildings on Albany’s Grand Street, displacing more than a dozen people and requiring demolition of the structures. For those who lived in the Mansion neighborhood apartments, the impact is far from finished.
Amazon will start charging a fee for returns under certain circumstances in an effort to reduce the return of online orders.
