Good morning, it’s Tuesday.
I think it goes without saying that this is a very big election year.
That statement stands regardless of your political affiliation, though I know for several cycles running now a variety of politicians have said that year’s contest is the most significant/impactful/dire etc.
This year it really does feel different somehow. Maybe it’s because both candidates are historic in their own way. Joe Biden, at 81, is the oldest American president; while Donald Trump recently became the first American president to be convicted of a felony.
A sort of damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, for sure, but don’t let that deter you from going to the polls. Even if you have to hold your nose when making a choice at the top of the ballot, there are a lot of competitive and important down-ballot races that deserve your time and attention.
Around this time of year, the noise ramps up considerably – particularly in Democrat-dominated New York, where the June primary is really the definitive election day in a lot of (gerrymandered) districts (especially downstate).
There are more ads – TV, web, and radio – more yard signs, more rallies, more mailers, more knocks on your door – as candidates try to capture your attention and, ultimately, your vote.
Candidates are targeting specific voting groups – Black voters, Latino voters, gay voters, white male voters, and, of course, women voters. That last group is particularly important (and I’m not just saying that because I happen to fall into that category).
According to the Center for American Women and Politics: “Women have registered and voted at higher rates than men in every presidential election since 1980, with the turnout gap between women and men growing slightly larger with each successive presidential election.”
The rate at which women vote always amazes me because quite honestly, because we really haven’t had the right to cast a ballot for all that terribly long. The 19th Amendment, which legally guarantees women the right to vote, was passed by Congress on this day in 1919, and ratified about a year and two months later – on August 18, 1920.
The path to the 19th Amendment was long and arduous. But, of course, it was worth it, which is something to keep in mind as we’re both fighting to reserve the rights we have (ahem, bodily autonomy), and also pushing to enshrine protections, like the Equal Rights Amendment.
Victory, as they say, has a thousand mothers (or something like that, anyway). But I’ve always been particularly proud to live in a state that has deep ties to the suffragette movement. If you haven’t paid a visit to the Women’s Rights National Historical Park, which tells the story of the first Women’s Rights Convention that was held in Seneca Falls July 19-20, 1848, what are you waiting for?
ROAD TRIP!
And while you’re at it, make a detour to Rochester, which is a hotbed of women’s rights and civil rights history.
If you’re planning on hitting the road, now is the time to do it from a weather perspective. It will be hot – close to 90 degrees – with intervals of clouds and sun and only a possibility of a rain shower or thunderstorm. Get outside while the getting is good, because looking ahead, things are about to get pretty darn soggy. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order today allowing him to temporarily seal the U.S. border with Mexico to migrants when crossings surge, a move that would suspend longtime protections for asylum seekers in the United States.
The order would reportedly shut down asylum requests at the U.S.-Mexico border once the average number of daily encounters hits 2,500 between ports of entry, with the border reopening only once that number declines to 1,500.
Biden has been mulling use of a 1952 law that allows access to the American asylum system to be restricted. The law, known as 212(f), allows the US president to “suspend the entry” of foreigners if their arrival is “detrimental to the interests” of the country.
The United States urged the U.N. Security Council to support the three-phase plan announced by President Joe Biden aimed at ending the nearly eight-month war in Gaza, freeing all hostages and sending massive aid into the devastated territory.
Biden told Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani that Israel was prepared to advance the hostage deal proposal it made last week and urged Doha to pressure Hamas to accept the offer, the White House said.
Releasing an audio recording of a special counsel’s interview with Biden could spur deepfakes and disinformation that trick Americans, the Justice Department said, conceding the U.S. government could not stop the misuse of AI ahead of the election.
“The passage of time and advancements in audio, artificial intelligence, and ‘deep fake’ technologies only amplify concerns about malicious manipulation of audio files,” according to a DOJ filing.
Jill Biden, wearing a purple blazer and scribbling on a white legal pad, sat in the first row of a drab fourth-floor courtroom on yesterday, in a show of support for her son, Hunter, on the first day of his trial on federal firearms charges.
By midafternoon, Judge Maryellen Noreika had selected 34 potential jurors, more than double the number needed to deliberate, including alternates.
A jury was seated and sworn in at 4:20 p.m. The jurors include a former Secret Service employee. Several of the jurors said they have had family members or close friends with histories of substance abuse.
President Biden issued a rare public statement on the criminal trial of Hunter Biden, stressing that he would not get involved in the matter legally or politically but conveying his affection for his son.
“Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today,” Joe Biden said in a statement. “Hunter’s resilience in the face of adversity and the strength he has brought to his recovery are inspiring to us.”
During his first congressional hearing in nearly two years, former chief White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci picked up where he left off: trading barbs with Republicans over the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fauci’s public testimony before the House Oversight and Accountability Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic was long anticipated and preceded by two days of closed-door interviews in January.
Fauci testified before a House panel investigating Covid’s origins, which had found emails suggesting that his aides were skirting public records laws.
With a one-page order, the Georgia Court of Appeals made it all the more likely that Donald Trump will not face a criminal trial in the state before he faces off against President Biden in the November election.
Trump and the Republican National Committee collected a combined $141 million in May, campaign officials said, an enormous haul fueled in part by his criminal conviction last week.
Recent polling shows Trump’s position on immigration appears to be resonating. About half of Americans have said they would support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a CNN poll conducted by the research firm SSRS in January.
As Rep. John Rose, Republican of Tennessee, castigated the former president’s criminal conviction on the House floor, his young son locked in with the C-SPAN cameras, making a series of contorted faces in a moment that circulated widely online.
Biden’s decision to call out his predecessor as a “convicted felon” for the first time during a Connecticut fundraiser yesterdat represents a significant hardening of his rhetoric against his Republican general election foe.
Biden leaves the campaign trail this week and flies to France for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, where he’ll give speeches touting American alliances that beat back dictatorships bent on world conquest.
As former Rep. George Santos’ federal fraud case moves closer to a trial later this year, federal prosecutors are calling on a judge to reject the expelled lawmaker’s attempts to spike a number of identity theft charges against him.
The New York Republican, who last year became only the sixth lawmaker in history to be expelled from the U.S. House of Representatives, has requested that a judge dismiss three of the 23 charges against him.
State lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul are in general agreement on landmark legislation that would regulate social media feeds for kids, multiple sources confirmed.
New York had a history of poor state government transparency before Hochul rose to power in 2021 and, unfortunately, things have gotten worse since, a new report says.
Lawmakers in Albany are rushing to address various environmental and health-related initiatives, with just a week left in the 2024 legislative session.
A judge recently ruled in favor of Disability Rights New York in a battle to obtain records from the state Education Department related to a school for students with autism in Westchester County.
Epinephrine injectors, which are used to treat life-threatening allergic reactions, could soon be required at stadiums, ballparks, concert venues and amphitheaters across New York if legislation passed last week is signed into law.
Rep. Mondaire Jones, a fellow Black progressive who entered Congress with Rep. Jamaal Bowman after the 2020 election, is endorsing Bowman’s challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer due to differences over the Israel-Hamas war.
Mayor Eric Adams announced a new effort to expand access to public restrooms in city parks across all five boroughs.
The new facilities aim to make it easier for New Yorkers to hit the head when they’re out and about, without having to resort to soiling the streets and sidewalks.
The city is also introducing a new Google Maps layer that New Yorkers can activate on their phones to easily find the locations of every public restroom operated by a wide-range of agencies and civic institutions citywide.
As part of ongoing budget negotiations with the City Council, Adams has reportedly agreed to stave off some of his most controversial education cuts, including a large funding reduction for public schools with declining enrollment.
Adams named a loyalist, Louis Molina, former head of the city’s troubled jail system, as the new head of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.
An explosive showdown between Biden’s now-campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez and Adams reportedly prompted the New York City mayor to unleash a barrage of public criticism of Biden’s handling of the border crisis.
The New York City Housing Authority yesterday reopened a waiting list for housing choice vouchers, a federally funded program also known as Section 8. The list closed in December 2009, after it ballooned to include more than 128,000 families seeking help.
A city Parks Department enforcement patrol officer was reassigned and placed on administrative duties after a video on social media showed a physical altercation involving an unlicensed 14-year-old girl accused of selling food in a Lower Manhattan park.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso blasted the sanitation department’s delayed rollout of its commercial waste zone program, which was intended to weed out private garbage haulers with troubled safety records.
Two NYPD cops were wounded in a shootout with a migrant teen on a scooter they stopped early yesterday for riding the wrong way down a Queens one-way street, police said.
One officer was shot in the leg and the other was shot in the front of his bulletproof vest, police officials said. The officers and the man, who was shot in the right ankle, are expected to survive.
A 12-year-old boy was arrested on Sunday night after fatally shooting a 14-year-old boy in the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn earlier that day, the police said.
The City Department of Transportation announced it would start selling popular street signs in limited quantities every month, and declared “sign drops are the new sneaker drops.”
A 2022 NYPD promotion exam for future sergeants was riddled with problems that contributed to cheating on the test, a new oversight report concludes.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation has served the Albany County Water Purification District with two notices of violation related to unpleasant odors emanating from its north plant on Canal Street in Albany.
Kris Roglieri, the Albany loan broker facing a federal wire fraud charge and civil court allegations he stole millions from clients, has remained in federal custody since his arrest Friday after prosecutors argued he was a flight risk and a “danger to the community.”
The king and queen of the Netherlands will be in Albany and New York City next week as part of an official visit to the US that will highlight historic ties between the nations and strengthen current bonds, according to an announcement.
Albany police are investigating the stabbing of one man early yesterday were led to another man dying from knife wounds, police said.
Officials at Broadview Federal Credit Union said their mobile banking app was back online yesterday morning, after it was down for the weekend as they completed the transition of their apps from the old CapCom and SEFCU credit unions.
The first Belmont Stakes run at historic Saratoga Race Course will be broadcast to a national audience on Fox television and streaming services.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
