Good morning, it’s FRIDAY.
Does anyone else find it incredibly ironic that today is National Spouses Day, which is all about celebrating the union of matrimony, falls on the final day of Family Mediation Week, which draws attention to the voluntary process through which couples who have decided to END their unions can do so outside the legal system?
Marriage has a lot of thing going for it. Assuming it’s healthy and stable, which is a whole different conversation that we will reserve for another day, marriage has been shown to be good for your kids, for your health, and for your bank account – just to name a few areas in which considerable research has been conducted.
However, the idea of tying oneself in perpetuity to a single life partner is apparently, growing less and less palatable – and not just here in the U.S. The vast majority of the world’s population lives in countries with falling marriage rates.
In this country, marriage has declined by 60% over the past 50 years, and the median age for first marriages has gone up for men and women alike. According to the Census Bureau, Washington, D.C. has the highest ratio of unmarried women to available men. (So many jokes about politics, not a single one of them appropriate…)
The number of women entering their first marriage between the ages of 40 and 59 has jumped 75% since 1990, which makes me feel right on trend, since I delayed getting hitched until after my 40th birthday. I also married someone who had been married once before.
Concerning statistic: Half of all first marriages end in divorce, but second and third marriages end at a higher rate. This somehow does not dissuade people from trying again, as 64% of men and 52% of women get re-married.
Perhaps the rise in popularity of polyamory will help save marriage – or at least redefine it? Some people who open their marriages swear that it was the best thing for their primary relationship, while others say it was the final nail in the divorce coffin. Either way, the whole thing seems awfully messy and complicated.
For those who do opt to split, there’s evidence that mediation can be the path to a more amicable parting of ways. It also can be more affordable and quicker. It is not a panacea, and it has its detractors. But it is an option that more people are availing themselves of.
More unseasonably warm weather is on tap for today and tomorrow, with temperatures in the low 40s. Sadly, it will be raining for most of the day today.
Tomorrow, will be cloudy with areas of patchy fog. Sunday is looking sort of like a bust, with a potential winter storm on the horizon, bringing with it a mix of rain and snow with temperatures in the mid-to-high 30s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden needled former President Donald Trump while heralding a major infrastructure investment during a visit to the critical battleground state of Wisconsin.
Mocking his predecessor, he said Trump’s “infrastructure weeks” fizzled so often that the phrase became a punchline. “On my watch, instead of infrastructure week, America is having an infrastructure decade,” Biden said.
Biden returned to the deteriorating John A. Blatnik Memorial Bridge to make the case that his administration is following through on its pledge to fix the critical link between the port cities of Superior, Wisconsin and Duluth, Minnesota.
While in Wisconsin, Biden announced $5 billion in funding for major transportation projects.
During Biden’s third full year in office, an average of 39.8% of Americans approved of his job performance. Among prior presidents in the Gallup polling era who were elected to their first term, only Jimmy Carter fared worse in his third year.
Trump leads Biden by six percentage points in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that showed Americans are unhappy about an election rematch that came into sharper focus this week.
Americans’ views of the nation’s economy – while mostly stagnant for the past few years – are showing signs of improvement. Slightly more than a quarter (28%) rate economic conditions as excellent or good, a 9 percentage point increase from last April.
Biden faces a party that, according to polls, would have preferred a different candidate. And divisions within his coalition, most visibly over the war in Gaza, have increasingly spilled into public view.
Michael Leach, the White House’s first chief diversity and inclusion officer, is leaving the administration, the White House confirmed.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott received the support of all but one of the nation’s Republican state governors in his feud with the Biden administration over border security.
Twenty-five GOP governors signed a joint statement in support of Abbott and his state’s “constitutional right to self-defense” after the US Supreme Court ruled the Biden administration could remove razor wire installed by Texas along 30 miles of the border.
Trump took the stand in a New York courtroom for roughly four minutes yesterday to defend himself in the defamation trial brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who alleges he sexually assaulted her in a dressing room in the 1990s.
Trump’s attorney asked the former president whether he stood by his remarks in a deposition in which he had called Carroll a liar. “One hundred percent, yes,” Trump said. “She said something; I consider it a false accusation.”
His appearance amounted to a campaign stop and another opportunity, in Trump’s estimation, to advance the narrative that he is the victim of a broad conspiracy designed to block his return to office and damage his personal and business reputation.
The former president’s opposition has all but killed the prospects for a bipartisan border deal, reflecting how his influence in Congress has grown as he gains ground in the Republican primary.
Senior Senate Republicans are furious Trump may have killed the emerging deal, depriving them of a key legislative achievement on a pressing national priority and offering a preview of what’s to come with him as their likely presidential nominee.
Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) this week asked colleagues who have endorsed Trump to intercede with him and ask that he hold off on criticizing the emerging deal until lawmakers have a chance to review its details.
The Supreme Court denied Alabama death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith’s last chance to avoid a nitrogen gas execution by Alabama, with three liberal justices dissenting.
Alabama last night executed Smith, the first death row inmate known to die by nitrogen gas, marking the emergence of a wholly new method of execution in the United States that experts have said could lead to excessive pain or even torture.
Smith appeared conscious for “several minutes into the execution,” and for two minutes after that, he “shook and writhed on a gurney,” according to the media witness report.
The United Nations’ highest court is expected to rule today on a call for Israel to suspend its attacks in Gaza, a decision that might have little practical effect on the war but that could increase the international pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Decisions by the court, the United Nations’ top judicial body, are binding, but the court has few means of enforcement. Still, a ruling against Israel would add to international pressure on Netanyahu’s government over the war.
The United Nations’ top court said in a statement that the 17-judge panel will announce its response to South Africa’s requests in court on January 26 at 12:00 GMT.
Bill Burns, director of the CIA, is expected to meet with officials from Israel, Egypt and Qatar to discuss a deal to secure the release of remaining hostages held by Hamas, according to a US official familiar with the plans.
Burns’ trip is a sign the United States is pushing to secure a deal to release the hostages being held in the Gaza Strip and broker a prolonged cease-fire, according to U.S. officials
Brooklyn Democratic Rep. Yvette Clarke said that artificial intelligence (AI) deepfakes are a bipartisan issue in the wake of reports of the recent spread of AI-generated graphic images of pop superstar Taylor Swift on social media.
Clarke’s New York colleague, Rochester Democrat Rep. Joseph Morelle, unveiled a bill last May to make sharing deepfake pornography illegal. In a release, his office said that advancement in technology has let deepfakes grow quickly.
The term ‘Taylor Swift AI’ was trending in various regions, with one post gaining more than 45 million views before it was eventually removed.
The House Ethics Committee dropped its investigation into Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York for pulling a House fire alarm, but released a report that found his explanations “less than credible and otherwise misleading.”
A majority of the 10-member committee, split equally between Democrats and Republicans, voted against creating a subcommittee to pursue the probe, according to a press release from the panel’s leaders.
The announcement was accompanied by a 16-page report from the Office of Congressional Ethics disputing allegations from some Republicans that Bowman intentionally triggered the alarm to delay a vote.
Gov. Kathy Hochul heard firsthand from people affected by hate crimes in Manhattan ahead of remarks touting a bill package that would add 31 offenses to the state’s statute of hate crimes, including first-degree murder, rape, graffiti vandalism and arson.
Hochul, speaking after a roundtable on hate and bias prevention at John Jay College, said the expansion of the hate crime statute is necessary after bias incidents, including a rising wave of antisemitism since Hamas’ terror attacks on Israel sparked war in Gaza.
House Republicans and their campaign arm are seizing on Hochul’s $233 billion budget proposal that would boost migrant-related aid by $500 million and lead to spending cuts for hundreds of school districts — many located in crucial House seats.
Former Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi crashed his Republican rival’s campaign event outside one of the Big Apple’s tent city migrant shelters yesterday, as both Congress hopefuls honed in on the asylum seeker crisis to rally voters.
New York is rapidly nearing the date when the lack of new congressional lines could start interfering with the ability to hold primaries in June as planned. And there are few signs that the redistricting process will be wrapped up soon.
A New York City real estate brokerage accused of charging eye-popping fees to would-be renters agreed to pay $260,000 in penalties following a 17-month state investigation, Hochul said.
The state’s elections watchdog says a socialist group improperly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the 2022 elections. Clawing it back could upend the movement’s finances.
An errant email has led to collusion accusations and subpoenas, illustrating the cutthroat environment surrounding the battle for a casino license in New York.
Rockland County Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski has declared that he will not seek reelection this year. He was first elected in a special election on May 1, 2007, and was re-elected in 2022 to his 9th term.
Campaign finance regulators overseeing the city’s generous taxpayer-funded matching program for political campaigns flagged nearly 400 donations to Eric Adams’ 2021 campaign as possibly bundled and requiring disclosure the campaign never provided.
Ramping up their feud with Adams over police legislation, the leading Black members of the City Council loudly rejected the mayor’s offer for them to go on ride-alongs with cops to better familiarize themselves with the NYPD.
Adams unveiled a more than $43 million investment aimed at making New York City a national leader on gender equity, including for transgender and gender expansive New Yorkers, with the ambitious goal of becoming the most women-forward city in the US.
Adams, flanked by his all-women deputy mayors and other senior female staffers, said the effort — “Women Forward NYC” — will roll out 42 programs aimed at greater access to health care, professional development and stable housing for women.
Adams wants to create a new government agency to regulate the booming number of online deliveries in New York City — and may require tech giants to ensure their workers are following traffic laws.
The New York City Council plans on holding a public hearing next week examining 11 bills aimed at further regulating e-bikes and allowing vendors to legally sell their wares near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo blasted his own party over the lack of a border policy, criticizing the party’s “ineffectiveness” and “ideological divides” amid rumors he’s considering a run for New York City mayor.
Cuomo: “To me, the Democratic Party, at its best, doesn’t deny problems, it solves them. It is ideologically driven, but also realistic. It is the ‘progressive’ party because it actually makes progress. We must regain that focus.”
Within a day of the death of Matthew Sachman, 19, on New York City subway tracks, so-called obituary pirates had flooded search results with false information.
Problems with MTA radios may have contributed to the slow-moving crash of two subway trains on the Upper West Side earlier this month, federal investigators wrote in a preliminary report.
Radio and brake failures contributed to the collision between two No. 1 trains which left dozens injured earlier this month, and put the MTA’s safety record under the microscope, federal investigators confirmed.
New York Daily News staffers walked off the job yesterday – the paper’s first work stoppage in three decades — to protest “chronic cuts” by its hedge fund owners that “shrink the budget to fill their pockets.”
The Metropolitan Opera, still reeling from the disruption brought by the pandemic, said that it had withdrawn nearly $40 million in additional emergency funds from its endowment as it works to survive one of the most trying periods in its 141-year history.
Justin Timberlake is on the comeback trail — and he’s making a stop with a free concert at Irving Plaza in New York City on Wednesday, Jan. 31.
A former employee of World Wrestling Entertainment sued Vince McMahon, the longtime chairman and chief executive of W.W.E., in federal court, accusing him of physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault and trafficking.
Two City of Albany police officers are under investigation for separate alleged incidents that occurred last week.
A report is expected next month from one of the groups that has been investigating the Saratoga Springs school district’s athletic department.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
