Good morning, it’s Monday. The state legislative session is officially over, and it ended with a whimper rather than a bang.
The so-called “big ugly,” which is the traditional mishmash of unrelated bills horse-traded into a massive end-of-session deal was nowhere to be seen. There was briefly talk of a “little ugly”, which I guess would have been exactly what it sounds like – a smaller version of its big brother – also didn’t materialize.
The state Assembly did pull an all-nighter, ending Saturday morning rather than Friday night, which is when their Senate counterparts called it quits – one day after the calendared end-of-session.
This is pretty standard, though. Definitely don’t let it fool you into thinking that the Assembly is somehow more productive than the upper house. There are just more members over there in the so-called “people’s house,” and it takes them longer to get through the agenda as a result, is all. More people to talk during debates. More people to cast their votes, etc.
‘After covering state government for two decades – give or take – I wasn’t predicting a particularly productive post-budget session, but things really took a turn for the worse when Gov. Kathy Hochul decided to pull the rug out from under the congestion pricing plan just a few days before the session’s scheduled end.
This sent the Legislature into a tailspin. Not only were lawmakers not expecting the governor’s change of heart – especially not when she 1) had just a few weeks ago been publicly touting the congestion pricing plan, and 2) considerable investment into cameras and other equipment had already been made by the MTA for the planned launch at the end of this month.
The loss of congestion pricing, which appears to be dead for the long term – though, since this is Albany, where zombie proposals ride from the dead on the regular, one never truly knows – leaves a $15 billion hole in the MTA’s capital budget. Despite considerable debate over how to fix that, lawmakers in the end didn’t reach a consensus and left town anyway.
Now, they may well be back for a special session sometime after the elections – in other words, once we know the outcome of some rather competitive and very important suburban congressional races where congestion pricing was not playing well with voters.
So, it could be a while before the governor and lawmakers figure this mess out. In the meantime, we have plenty of other things to keep us occupied – for instance, the annual Dragon Boat Festival, which commemorates the Chinese poet Qu Yuan and is held annually on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month of the Chinese calendar.
That happens to be today.
There’s a bit of a morbid backstory to this holiday, which is held in remembrance of Qu Yuan, who is said to have drowned himself in a river on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month (June 27, 278 BC) in protest of the fall of his homeland, from which he was exiled.
Legend has it that villagers rowed along the river looking for the tragic poet’s body, and also threw rice dumplings known as zongzi into the water in an effort to prevent the fish from eating his corpse.
Hence the evolution of the tradition of commemorating the holiday by participating in or watching dragon boat races and eating zongzi, which can be sweet or savory and filled with red bean paste, pork, salted egg yolk, and more.
These celebrations are held all over the world, and also signify the turning of spring into summer – including in New York, though it appears at least one local festival took place a few weeks ago at the tail end of AAPI Month.
It’s going to be on the cool side again, with cloudy skies and a chance of showers. Temperatures will top out in the low 70s.
In the headlines…
The United States asked the United Nations Security Council late yesterday to vote on its latest resolution for a cease-fire in Gaza, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to the Middle East in his latest push for a pause in fighting.
The Israeli politician Benny Gantz, a key member of the country’s war cabinet, quit the government yesterday over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza.
“Netanyahu prevents us from moving forward to a real victory,” Gantz said in a televised statement in which he described leaving the government as a “complex and painful” decision.
“That is why we are leaving the emergency government today with a heavy heart, but with a whole heart,” he added, and called on Netanyahu to set a date for new elections to take place by the fall.
Israel’s latest hostage rescue operation, which brought four Israeli hostages to safety, also killed at least 210 Palestinians, including children, according to a Gaza health official.
World Food Programme Executive Director Cindy McCain said its operations are paused in Gaza due to concerns about the safety of its workers.
The White House declined to say whether President Joe Biden will meet Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister visits Washington next month to address the U.S. Congress.
Biden has long attempted to distance himself from his family’s business dealings as he ran for and eventually became president, but a new report details just how involved those in the president’s inner circle have been in Biden family ventures.
Biden shared a personal bookkeeper with this son, Hunter, a personal lawyer with this brother, Jim, and the former head of then-VP Biden’s Secret Service detail helped Jim Biden investigate a potential Chinese business partner, according to a Politico report.
Biden and former President Donald Trump are basically tied nationally and in battleground states, according to new polling from CBS News.
The CBS News/YouGov poll found that Trump received 50 percent support nationally among likely voters, while Biden received 49 percent. In battleground states, 50 percent of likely voters selected Biden, while 49 percent backed Trump.
Trump is scheduled for a pre-sentencing interview with a probation officer today after his hush money trial conviction last month, according to a Trump campaign official and two sources familiar with the matter.
Trump will reportedly do the interview via a computer video conference from his residence at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Judge Juan Merchan, who’s presiding over the hush money case, permitted Trump’s lawyer to be present for the probation interview after prosecutors didn’t object. Trump’s defense team is scheduled to submit a sentencing recommendation on June 13.
Trump ‘s campaign hired extra medics, loading up on fans and water bottles and allowed supporters to carry umbrellas to an outdoor rally yesterday in Las Vegas, where temperatures were expected to exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 degrees Celsius).
Trump suggested that one of his followers would choose to take his own his life before voting for his rival, Biden.
The Biden administration is considering a proposal to protect undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens from deportation and allow them to work in the country legally, according to four officials with knowledge of the discussions.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas yesterday defended the timing of the Biden administration’s recent executive order on border security, pinning the blame on past inaction in Congress.
“It’s early, the signs are positive. Our personnel have done an extraordinary job in implementing a very big shift in how we operate on the southern border,” Mayorkas said, noting that implementation of the new policy has only just begun.
“Our intent is to really change the risk calculus of individuals before they leave their countries of origin and incentivize them to use lawful pathways that we have made available to them and keep them out of the hands of exploitative smugglers,” he added.
Biden on Friday for the first time publicly apologized to Ukraine for a monthslong congressional holdup in American military assistance that let Russia make gains on the battlefield.
Biden said yesterday that he had reached an agreement with French President Emmanuel Macron on the use of profits from frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine.
This year’s state legislative session was marked by turmoil within courts, college campuses, state government, and a last-minute congestion pricing reversal that ignited the Capitol in the final days of lawmakers’ six month-stint in Albany.
Hochul scuttled the congestion toll to enter Midtown because she believes too many people are afraid to take the subway so they drive in instead, ex-Gov. David Paterson said.
Hochul’s controversial decision to indefinitely delay the long-awaited Manhattan congestion pricing plan is being seen in Washington, D.C. as a political panic move to boost Democratic hopes of retaking the House of Representatives.
The 2019 law that established congestion pricing said the state and MTA “shall” implement congestion pricing. Observers including Rep. Ritchie Torres and the Daily News Editorial Board argue that language legally compels Hochul and the MTA to enact the tolls.
The angry fallout over Hochul’s last-minute move to indefinitely delay congestion pricing continued in Brooklyn yesterday, as a coalition of fuming bus and subway riders protested and vented against the controversial decision.
Michael Kimmelman: The city was built on bold ideas. Suddenly (Hochul) paused a game-changing plan to fight congestion. Can we still do big things in a polarized moment?
An extraordinarily broad coalition of powerful people who often don’t see eye to eye joined forces and prompted Hochul to blink and scuttle the controversial $15 congestion toll for Midtown.
In the agency’s first public comments since Hochul’s congestion pricing announcement, MTA officials said the board would have to reassess where its funding should best be allocated.
The Legislature joined lawmakers nationwide in declaring the need to address the negative influence of social media on children. But protecting young people’s mental health depends on the bill’s implementation and ability to survive potential legal challenges.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is scheduled to testify tomorrow in a closed-door congressional subcommittee hearing probing New York’s handling of the pandemic, and the circumstances that led to the deaths of more than 15,000 nursing home residents.
The solar eclipse that passed over New York in April led to a sharp temporary drop in power production from solar panels, according to a new report.
The Christopher Street station in the West Village is poised to get a new name after a bill to rename it in honor of the Stonewall National Monument cleared the state Legislature last week.
Mayor Eric Adams asserted he had “no idea” a grand jury had convened for the federal corruption probe into his campaign fundraising.
“I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer. I’m Eric Adams — the mayor! Ex-cop!” he told reporters upon his arrival at the 39th Annual 116th Street Festival in East Harlem Saturday.
The city has asked a judge to toss out a sweeping ageism lawsuit filed by a group of FDNY chiefs against Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh, arguing that it fails to show that seasoned fire officials were targeted or suffered discrimination because of their age.
A 12-year-old Brooklyn student is leading the charge in demanding the city Department of Education drop a bizarre scheduling plan that requires students to show up for a one-day school week before Christmas break.
Despite the city Department of Education’s mantra that “safety is our highest priority,” the city fails to provide safety officers to guard all the youngsters in its pre-K programs.
Riverside Park’s crumbling infrastructure and lakes of mud have locals fuming – as park officials blame City Hall for starving the greenspace of years of needed funding.
A Democrat seeking a state Assembly seat in heavily Jewish southern Brooklyn has filed petitions to run on a separate “Pro-Israel Party” ballot line to bolster his chances of winning.
More than 34,000 fans and cricket dignitaries squeezed into a temporary stadium built in the last three months in the Long Island park to watch the most anticipated match of the T20 Cricket World Cup: India versus Pakistan.
Lisa Goree took the helm of the Shinnecock Nation in April, the first woman to hold that post in centuries, as the Long Island tribe navigates disputes over burial grounds and projects to build a casino and a gas station.
The Albany Roman Catholic Diocese said Saturday it found reasonable cause in a sexual abuse allegation against a priest who died almost 23 years ago following an investigation.
A Frankfort-based nonprofit is celebrating the upcoming opening of its new grocery store in one of Troy’s most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods and is seeking applications for cashiers, stockers and managers.
Dornoch’s victory in the first running of the Belmont Stakes at Saratoga Race Course was a record-breaker.
NYRA said $125,748,941 was wagered on the day’s 14 races from all sources, a record for a year in which a horse did not have a bid to win the Triple Crown. That’s a 6.3 percent increase over the previous non-Triple Crown record, $118,283,455, set last year.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
