Good morning, it’s Friday.
I assume a lot of people are already off for the holidays, en route to wherever it is they will be celebrating. If that’s you, travel safe, and I hope you get to your destination with relatively little in the way of headaches and delays.
It’s going to be very crowded out there on the roads and rails, and in the air.
Give yourself some extra time to get where you’re going, and try to be nice to those who are working hard to make your trip possible – toll takers, flight attendants, railway workers, pilots, gas station employees, fast food restaurant staff…you get the idea. They, too, would like to be home with families and friends, I’m sure.
This will be my last “Rise and Shine” of 2023. I generally take the week between Christmas and New Year’s to rest and recharge. Next year is shaping up to be a doozy. I’m going to need all the energy I can get to keep up.
Regular posting will return on Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024.
I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your time and attention and your willingness to indulge my idiosyncrasies. I’ve been doing this morning headlines thing for a long, LONG time now – for well over half my professional life.
There wouldn’t be any point to yelling into the void if at least one person wasn’t there to hear it. I appreciate you – especially those who have been around since the early days. You know who you are.
Here’s to good health, happiness, prosperity, and, most of all, peace in 2024. See you on the flip side.
We’ll have partly cloudy skies today, with temperatures in the high 30s. Christmas is looking, well, not white. In fact, the forecast is calling for warmed than usual weather in the high 40s and a mix of clouds and sun.
In the headlines…
The Biden administration is quietly signaling new support for seizing more than $300 billion in Russian central bank assets stashed in Western nations, and has begun urgent discussions with allies about using the funds to aid Ukraine’s war effort.
After nearly a week of intense negotiations and days of delayed votes, the US was in talks with Egypt to find a compromise U.N. Security Council resolution to pause fighting and allow for increased aid to Gaza by air, land and sea.
The death toll reported in Gaza has reached roughly 20,000, according to officials in the territory, the heaviest loss on the Arab side in any war with Israel since the 1982 Lebanon invasion.
During the first six weeks of the war in Gaza, Israel routinely used one of its biggest and most destructive bombs in areas it designated safe for civilians, according to an analysis of visual evidence by The New York Times.
In a significant swing of support, a new poll finds that 40 percent of Israelis would vote for Biden in the upcoming US presidential election, compared to just 26.2% who would back Trump.
Biden believes “serious scrutiny” is warranted for the planned acquisition of U.S. Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, the White House said after days of silence on a transaction that has drawn alarm from the steelworkers union.
Biden “has been clear that we welcome manufacturers across the world building their futures in America with American jobs and American workers,” National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard said in the administration’s most extensive comment yet.
The carefully worded remark shows the high stakes for Biden if his administration, via the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, blocks the deal due to national security sending a negative signal about openness to foreign investment.
Biden is ramping up the pressure on his Mexican counterpart to help with the situation at the US southern border that has officials scrambling to respond to an unprecedented migrant surge and exacerbated one of the president’s longstanding political problems
Then-Vice President Biden exchanged emails with his son Hunter’s business associate 54 times – some around the time he was traveling to Ukraine and his son worked for a Ukrainian gas company, according to records released by the House GOP.
A former Trump White House aide has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit that alleged he violated state and federal laws in connection with the online publication of laptop content attributed to Hunter Biden.
Just hours after finishing in second place on The Masked Singer, an ex-Dukes of Hazzard star and country music artist, John Schneider, called for the execution of President Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
In response to the president’s message on X (formerly Twitter) that labeled Donald Trump a threat to democracy, Schneider wrote in a now-deleted post: “Mr. President, I believe you are guilty of treason and should be publicly hung. Your son too.”
The Secret Service has reportedly opened a probe into Schneider’s statement.
Biden’s campaign is building up its operations heading into the 2024 election year, laying the groundwork in key battleground states and sharpening its argument against former President Trump.
“I’m not an Insurrectionist (“PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICALLY”),” Trump said on his Truth Social website yesterday, two days after the Colorado court said he should be barred from the ballot because of Jan. 6.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that the indictments of Trump had “distorted” the Republican presidential primary, tacitly admitting that the former president’s legal problems have helped him.
Rudy Giuliani filed for bankruptcy, acknowledging severe financial strain exacerbated by his pursuit of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and a jury’s verdict last week requiring him to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers he defamed.
The whopping judgment is the biggest debt listed on Giuliani’s bankruptcy filing, which lists nearly $153 million in money owed, but he also owes millions of dollars in legal fees as well as unpaid state and federal income taxes, according to the filing.
New York’s population exodus continued to top national charts for a third consecutive year with a loss of more than 101,000 residents from the Empire State, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation to establish a task force on missing girls and women who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) in the state after local lawmakers and advocates sent a letter calling for the action in October.
Hochul has until today to sign or veto a bill expanding access to child care — and she’s evaluating it based on a dramatically inflated estimate of how much it will cost, according to sources with knowledge of her deliberations
The New York State Department of Health is scrutinizing Bellevue Hospital’s use of unlicensed technicians to assist doctors in weight-loss surgeries.
There have been 730 bills signed into law this year and that number is still rising. Right now, 87 are waiting for the governor’s signature. Seventy have been vetoed.
The woman who accused Gov. Andrew Cuomo of groping alleges she was demoted and shuffled through jobs in Hochul’s administration before being told by a high-ranking staffer that she should “hit the pavement” and seek employment elsewhere.
New Yorkers got their first glimpse of what the state’s Cap and Invest program to reduce carbon emissions will look like, with release of a “Pre-Proposal” plan from the DEC and NYSERDA.
Two New York state lawmakers announced legislation that would expand coverage for breast cancer screenings and bolster early detection for women at higher risk.
On the 2023 state tests, third- through eighth-graders did better in math and English than they did before the pandemic.
The top Democrats and Republicans of the state legislative agriculture committees are calling for U.S. Senate passage of the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act in a letter sent to New York’s U.S. senators, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.
The United Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in an effort to block his slashing of education funding — challenging his cost projection for providing migrant services in the process.
In the suit, the UFT, the AFL-CIO and a group of individual teachers accused the mayor of exaggerating the city’s fiscal woes in order to push through a “blunt austerity measure” that is both illegal and unnecessary.
Adams blamed rats — along with the cost of living and COVID-19 — as big reasons why New Yorkers are fleeing the state in droves according to a recent report.
Adams blasted the City Council’s “far-left agenda” after it approved two controversial bills on Wednesday banning solitary confinement for inmates in jails and forcing police officers to report every street encounter, no matter how small.
Republicans are already hammering Democratic rivals over the controversial bill passed by the City Council Wednesday that would require street cops to file reports on millions of minor interactions with the public.
A massive inferno at an apartment building in Sunnyside, Queens, that injured 14 people and displaced more than 100 residents Wednesday was caused by a contractor who illegally torched a metal door frame in a vacant unit, fire officials said.
The New York City Council passed a bill this week requiring professional and college sports venues in the city to let ticketholders bring reusable drink containers into their events.
The petrifying partial collapse of a 96-year-old apartment building in the Bronx has generated a push by two New York congressmen for stronger safety regulations in buildings that receive federal funding.
NYPD officers shot and killed 13 people in 2022, the highest number of people killed by New York City cops since 2012, according to newly published data.
New York City’s government is not on pace to comply with the city’s own climate law – Local Law 97, which takes effect Jan. 1 – by the required deadline, officials concede.
Reports of the demise of Civitello’s, the 102-year-old North Jay Street, Schenectady institution selling all manner of Italian delicacies, have been greatly exaggerated. It is closing for renovations, but not permanently.
After nearly 34 years at WNYT, Elaine Houston is retiring and leaving the NBC affiliate at the end of the year.
City Council President Marion Porterfield accuses Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy of dividing the legislative body along racial lines in a leaked November email obtained by the Schenectady Republican Party.
The Catskill Central School District assistant superintendent was castigated for his handling of an investigation into high school students who took lewd photographs of students with disabilities when he was the principal of a Westchester County high school.
