AND WE ARE BACK IN BUSINESS, BABY! Good morning! It’s Monday.
Technology, man. Can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Sometimes I truly miss the good old days of pen/pencil and paper, you know? Unless you ran out of ink or broke your point with no access to a sharpener, you knew you were going to be able to put words down.
Hopefully, our weeklong involuntary vacation didn’t inconvenience you too much, dear readers. Thanks for bearing with me while we did a little tinkering under the hood, so to speak.
We’re back just in time for another four-day workweek. Today is MLK Day, a federal holiday annually observed on the third Monday in January, which is – theoretically speaking – on or near the great civil rights leader’s birthday. (He was born on Jan. 15, 1929 in Atlanta).
This year, the holiday actually DOES line up with MLK’s actual birthday, but that often doesn’t happen, thanks to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, which former President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law in 1968.
The Act at first impacted just Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Columbus Day. Labor Day already fell on a Monday, and MLK Day came under the auspices of the Act, which was intended to create more three-day weekends – something the travel industry really likes a lot – when it was established in 1983 and first observed in 1986.
MLK Day is intended to be more than just a bonus day off, however. It was designated as a national day of service on which all Americans are encouraged to volunteer to improve their communities to honor King’s legacy.
The push to create MLK Day happened just days after he was assassinated on April 4, 1968 at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tenn., where he had traveled to champion the rights of local sanitation workers as part of his ongoing Poor People’s Campaign. (As an aside, I’m not sure how I never knew – until I started googling for this post – that King’s mother, Alberta Williams King, was herself assassinated six years after her eldest son’s death).
Despite the fact that King’s death sent shockwaves across the U.S. – and the world – it took 15 years for supporters to muster sufficient support in Congress to have MLK Day established as an official national holiday. Undeterred by the wheels of government grinding exceptionally fine in this case, Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers reintroduced the legislation to make that happen every year without fail, backed by the Congressional Black Caucus, which he helped found.
There are a lot of events taking place both locally and across the nation to observe this day. President Joe Biden will be in Philadelphia, PA, where he will be marking the holiday at a local food bank.
This will be the third time in four years that the president has spent the day giving back with Philabundance, PA, and the fourth time he has visited the Keystone State (an important swing state) since last December.
The weather is making quite a bit of news these days. (Who else got caught in that CRAZY snow squall yesterday? I actually watched a wall of white roll up from Troy into Brunswick and then engulf me while walking the dog. It was downright disconcerting). More headlines on that below.
Today will be quite on the weather front, with bright, sunny skies and temperatures in the 30s. The mercury is only going down from here, so dig out those long underwear and wooly sweaters. Don’t leave the house without a hat and gloves. Yes, I sound like your mom. I’m sure you’ll thank me later.
In the headlines…
Subfreezing temperatures across much of the United States left millions of Americans facing potentially dangerous cold yesterday as Arctic storms threatened near-blizzard conditions in the northeast and several inches of snow in portions of the South.
More than 95 million people were under a wind chill warning or advisory yesterday as an “Arctic blast” blanketed the country, forecasters said. Two people were killed in Oregon after trees fell on their homes.
The weather in Iowa is having an effect on campaign events, with several canceled ahead of today’s caucuses. Des Moines is forecast to have wind chills between minus 20 and minus 30.
Officials are warning that frostbite can occur within 10 minutes of outdoor exposure and as Iowans will be lining up at their local caucus site, with some forced to wait outside for extended periods of time.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who pulled up to second place in a new Iowa poll, scrapped her planned in-person campaign event set for Friday evening in Council Bluffs. Her campaign cited ‘potentially dangerous weather conditions.’
Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency before the weekend weekend in Western New York and Tug Hill for “potentially dangerous and life-threatening blizzard-like conditions” at the eastern shores of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
Hochul announced a full travel ban for most of Erie County, due to “potentially life-threatening blizzard-like conditions” in the area, and parts of the Thruway were closed.
Ahead of the Buffalo Bills’ matchup with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the wild card round, Hochul took a jab at Steelers fans that intend to travel to the game.
“One final bit of advice, and this one’s for our friends who are thinking about traveling from Pittsburgh to watch the game,” Hochul said. “We think it’s just better if you stay home and tune in on television. It will be safer for all of us. It’s going to be a rough game for you anyhow.”
The potentially dangerous winter storm forecast led the NFL on Saturday to push back the Bills’ wild-card playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers from yesterday to today.
Hochul says the playoff game between the Steelers and Bills “will not be pushed back again,” despite an ongoing travel ban in the area around Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, New York.
Biden had a blunt message after voters in Taiwan elected a new president Saturday: “We do not support independence” for Taiwan.
Biden’s decision to strike the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen is reigniting the long-simmering congressional battle over war powers — and it’s become a rare point of consensus for progressives and hardline conservatives.
Biden said on Saturday the United States had delivered a private message to Iran about Iran-backed Houthis responsible for attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
In a new twist to the fight over abortion access, congressional Republicans are trying to block a Biden administration spending rule that they say will cut off millions of dollars to anti-abortion counseling centers.
Biden said Friday that it was a lapse in judgment for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin not to tell him about his hospitalization last week, but he still has confidence in his Pentagon chief.
The entire incident has exposed Austin as that rarest of creatures in Washington: an intensely private person in a relentlessly public job.
Biden announced Friday that federal student debt will be wiped out for certain borrowers who took out relatively small loans and have been in repayment for the past decade.
The White House has been rolling out smaller, more targeted relief programs that it says have now canceled $132 billion in debt for more than 3.6 million Americans.
John Kerry, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in the Biden administration, is planning to depart his role this winter, according to a person familiar with his plans.
Kerry, 80, is expected to work on President Biden’s re-election campaign to stress the administration’s climate achievements.
Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday that he stood by the spending deal he negotiated with Democrats to avert a government shutdown, spurning demands from ultraconservatives who have pressured him to jettison the agreement.
The 2024 primary season begins with Donald Trump well ahead of his Republican opponents on key measures of popularity, while Biden’s job approval rating has dropped to a low for any president in the past 15 years, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin leaned into the intrigue of a presidential bid in Manchester Friday morning but stopped short of announcing any news. Again.
While Republican primary voters think Trump is their best shot in November, it’s Nikki Haley who right now holds a bigger lead over Biden than either Trump or Ron DeSantis in potential head-to-head match ups.
A strong majority of GOP voters would be satisfied with Trump as their party’s nominee, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, underlining his backing as he hopes for a strong showing in today’s Iowa caucus.
About 72 percent of poll respondents said they’d be satisfied with Trump, and about two-thirds of the GOP electorate feel that the former president has the best chance of winning back the White House in November.
Trump framed the Iowa caucuses in dark terms yesterday, attacking the opponents he leads handily in the final sprint to the nation’s first nominating contest.
A buttoned-up president who often appears behind a lectern in a suit and tie, Biden is reportedly heeding pleas from top advisers to return to his original form and loosen up.
After years of delays and safety and design disputes, Amtrak is one step closer to bringing new high-speed trains to the busy Northeast Corridor.
Amtrak officials said late Friday the new trains, which had failed an extended series of computer modeling tests, had passed on the 14th try and had been cleared by the Federal Railroad Administration to begin testing on the tracks that run from Washington to Boston.
Pressure is mounting on Hochul to alleviate the state’s politically volatile migrant crisis and the financial strain stretching New York City to the brink. The answers could rest on her state budget proposal tomorrow.
Hochul is set to propose an appropriation tomorrow that would provide one of the largest sums ever invested by a state into research of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the neurodegenerative disease known as A.L.S.
Hochul and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday called for the release of Hamas-held hostages, joining a rally in Midtown almost 100 days after the Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel.
If you consider local control so important, prove it. That is Hochul’s unspoken message to state legislators this session on affordable housing.
Democrats in Albany plan to take another shot at filling a loophole that allows groups to anonymously fund lobbying campaigns on powerful state posts after Hochul killed the bill last year.
Despite a months-long process that New York has undertaken to enroll inmates in health care coverage, which proponents say could drastically improve their health and enhance public safety, momentum in securing federal approval has lapsed.
The Republican nominee in a special House election to replace George Santos in New York provided a hazy glimpse into her personal finances, submitting a sworn financial statement to Congress that prompted questions and led her to amend the filing.
The GOP candidate, Mazi Melesa Pilip, and her husband owed the IRS up to $250,000 as of the end of April.
The Gateway project to build two new badly needed tunnels for trains under the Hudson River is already running two years behind schedule — even though it just broke ground, a federal audit shows.
The state is prepared to pay up to $308 million to cover New York City’s cost of sheltering migrants at the federally owned former military airfield in southeast Brooklyn for at least a year, state records show.
Immigrants are the majority of New York City’s 65-and-over population. Many have no nest egg, and some are coping with social isolation.
Mayor Eric Adams said on Friday that he would reverse a small portion of previously announced cuts to New York City’s education budget that would have slashed money for dozens of high-needs schools.
The announcement reverses a fraction of the steep cuts Adams ordered in the fall, as he blamed the city’s bleak financial picture largely on the ongoing influx of asylum seekers and other migrants — an assessment other elected officials have pushed back on.
New York City’s public libraries are expected to be exempt from another round of budget cuts, a move that should allow them to maintain six-day-a-week schedules, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Adams vowed at a private NYPD event last week to fight “socialist organizations” he claimed want New York City cops to do “paperwork” instead of policing.
The Adams administration is “definitely” considering instituting curfews at all migrant shelters in the city amid complaints about residents at some of them venturing into nearby neighborhoods at night to beg for money.
New York City’s building department is having a moment, and Adams is now facing a call to restore the budget cuts he’s planning for the agency.
The FDNY has ordered all firetruck and ambulance personnel to mask up while rendering patient care due to outbreaks of infectious diseases.
Civilians are filing more complaints against the NYPD than they have in more than a decade, according to a new report from the city’s police oversight agency.
Investigators with the New York State Department of Health have concluded that a troubling lapse by a surgical team at a hospital in Brooklyn resulted in the recent death of a 30-year-old mother who gave birth by cesarean section.
A 14-year-old boy died in a fall from a Coney Island-bound F train in Brooklyn on Friday afternoon in the first reported subway surfing death of 2024.
A federal judge greenlighted a data-privacy lawsuit that Madison Square Garden once ripped as “the dumbest suit yet.”
A Brooklyn assemblyman exploded during a public rally after a political nemesis recorded him while shouting that he let his mother rot to death in bed alone.
Joseph Zadroga, a tireless warrior for Sept. 11 first responders and the father of the first cop whose death was attributed to a Ground Zero-related illness, was fatally struck by an SUV in New Jersey, officials said.
Scientists have confirmed the existence of the world’s oldest forest — and the ancient, secret spot is in Cairo, only a short drive from the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple.
City of Schenectady tax bills will arrive late in the mail for residents due to a software glitch and the delayed passage of the city budget last month, city officials announced in a news release.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
