Good Monday morning. Up and at ’em!
It was a fantastic weekend, weather-wise: Hot but not oppressively so, thanks to the break in the humidity. As long as you weren’t stuck at an airport somewhere, waiting for the technology to catch up with itself, it was a great time to be out and about.
But now the party’s over, and we’re back to the grind – at least those of us who aren’t on summer vacation. As I was contemplating this post and noodling around the interwebs, it seemed to be slim pickings at first.
As an aside, given that I am no longer in the news gathering business, but rather a mere participant in the electoral process – just like everyone else – I’m going to reserve commentary related to the news about our soon-to-be-former president and his decision not to seek re-election.
There are plenty of links to all the coverage you could possible want below…assuming you haven’t already read it.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
It is National Penuche Fudge Day. The novelty of this kept me busy for all of five minutes or so as I tried to determine what kind of flavor profile we were talking about here.
It appears to be a combination of maple and caramel, with overtones of butterscotch, owing to the fact that penuche (pronounced pe-new-chee) fudge is made with brown sugar instead of the standard white. The other ingredients are pretty standard: milk, butter, vanilla, and possibly nuts, most likely walnuts or pecans.
In the South, where penuche is also used to make cake or cupcake frosting, this delicacy is sometimes referred to as “brown sugar fudge candy.” The origin story here, as it is with so many old-fashioned foods, is murky. It could be a descendent of something known as Scottish tablet, which his made by boiling condensed milk or cream, sugar, and butter.
There’s also a tenuous connection to a supposed former Boston Bruins player Mark Penuche, who allegedly loved maple syrup. But this appears to be an urban legend. According to Merriam-Webster, the word penuche comes from the Mexican Spanish word panocha, which means raw sugar.
That’s pretty much the long and short of it as far as penuche is concerned. Kind of light for a Monday. As it turns out, however, this sort of sleepy midsummer day marks an extremely important moment in New York history, because it was on this day in 1686 that the City of Albany’s first charter – known as the Dongan Charter after Thomas Dongan, lieutenant and governor of the province of New York – was signed.
The charter established Albany as an incorporated city, fixing its boundaries, setting up its municipal government, and naming its first officers. It also gave the city the exclusive right to negotiate with the local Native American tribes and made it the sole market town in the Upper Hudson region.
The Dongan Charter is the oldest existing city charter still in force in the entire nation. According to Stefan Bielinski, former senior historian of the New York State Museum, the charter is also “arguably the longest-running instrument of municipal government in the Western Hemisphere.”
Kinda cool, no?
Those of you who follow local politics will likely recall that Albany voters in 1998 approved a new charter that incorporated the basic structure of the previous version but also added new provisions to streamline city government and make it more responsive to the community’s needs.
Albany celebrated its Tricentennial – the 300th anniversary of its chartering – with a year-long celebration in 1986. (There was a longstanding history of marking these major charter-related milestones).
Happy charterversary Albany! Maybe some penuche fudge to celebrate?
A partly cloud day is on tap with temperatures again topping out in the high 80s. There’s a possibility of a stray shower or thunderstorm, as per usual.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden announced in a letter posted on X that he’s ending his re-election bid, bringing an abrupt and humbling conclusion to his half-century-long political career and scrambling the White House race just four months before Election Day.
Biden, 81, could not reverse growing sentiment within his party that he was too frail to serve and destined to lose to Donald Trump in November. He backed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the Democratic nominee.
“(W)hile it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and my country for me to stand down and to focus solely on my duties as President for the rest of my term,” Biden said.
Biden endorsed Harris as the Democratic nominee in a separate statement on X. He said he would speak to the nation later this week to provide more details about his decision.
Harris said in a statement that she was “honored” to receive Biden’s endorsement and intends to “earn and win” the Democratic nomination for president in her first public statement since the president’s stunning announcement.
Shortly after Biden announced that he would drop his reelection campaign, Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison had a message: There would be no automatic coronation for his replacement.
Without delving into how the process would unfold, Harrison promised that the party would adhere to its rules now that Biden has announced he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race.
“The work that we must do now, while unprecedented, is clear,” she said. “In the coming days, the Party will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward as a united Democratic Party with a candidate who can defeat Donald Trump.”
Close to 4,000 delegates will gather at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago starting on Aug. 17. Biden has won more than 3,800 of those delegates, who will now all be released to vote for whomever they choose.
To win the nomination, a candidate must secure 1,986 delegates. As of 10 p.m. yesterday, 531 delegates had already endorsed Harris.
The vice president’s numbers against Trump were very similar to Biden’s in several recent national surveys. Other polls have shown Harris slightly outperforming Biden by 1 or 2 points — though, critically, still trailing Trump at this point in some key matchups.
Biden did not tell most of his staff until a minute before making an announcement to the world on social media yesterday. Harris also learned of his decision yesterday.
With Biden out of the race, individual delegates will need to select the party’s nominee either during a virtual roll call tentatively scheduled for early August, or on the convention floor in Chicago next month.
Former President Barack Obama didn’t endorse Harris, saying Democrats would pick an unnamed “outstanding nominee” in his first statement on Biden stepping aside from the party’s ticket. Bill and Hillary Clinton did announce their support for the VP.
Harris has not dropped any major hints about whom she’d like to have as a running mate. Given the rushed circumstances of the decision, she will have very little time to vet them and ensure that they’d work well together.
Minutes after Biden’s announcement, Trump described Biden as going “down as the single worst president by far in the history of our country” and said he thought Vice President Kamala Harris would be easier to beat.
Trump’s campaign was reportedly already preparing a major effort to attack Harris in the even that Biden stepped aside as the Democratic nominee, including a wave of ads focusing on her record in her current office and in California.
House Speaker Mike Johnson warned hours before the president’s announcement that Republicans could likely file legal challenges against any attempts to replace Biden, if he dropped out of the race.
New campaign-finance filings released this week revealed the degree to which Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts on May 30 and Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27 became seminal moments in the fund-raising race.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez urged Democrats to reconsider their efforts to replace Biden as their nominee, warning that members of her party were discounting his electoral strengths and hurtling ahead without a clear succession plan.
“I have not seen an alternative scenario that I feel will not set us up for enormous peril,” the congresswoman said on a late-night livestream on Instagram. “People need to understand the reality and the gravity of what these people are proposing.”
Ocasio-Cortez questioned the viability of replacing Biden at this late stage, warning some Republicans would challenge that in court, which end in “a presidential election being decided by Clarence Thomas and the Supreme Court,” like in 2000.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, previously a staunch supporter of the sitting president, thanked Biden and said he would “go down in history as one of the greatest champions of working families our nation has ever known.”
Mayor Eric Adams released a statement on Biden’s decision not to run for re-election, noting that the country “owes a debt of gratitude” to the President and pointedly not endorsing Harris.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House Republican Conference chair and North Country representative, used Biden’s announcement to call for him to resign immediately from the presidency, calling him “unable and unfit” to serve.
More response from New York elected officials to Biden’s big announcement can be found here.
The homeland security secretary, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, announced the members of a panel to conduct an independent review into security failures after a gunman was able to wound Trump last weekend at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa.
The Secret Service acknowledged it had turned down requests for additional federal resources sought by Trump’s security detail in the two years leading up to his attempted assassination last week, a reversal from earlier statements by the agency.
Trump’s former finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, was released from Rikers Island early on Friday, after serving 100 days of a five-month prison sentence.
A former top FBI agent in Albany has been misidentified on X and other social media platforms by posters who claim she was seated behind former Trump during the July 13 rally in Butler, Pa., that was interrupted by an assassination attempt.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas who was a leading voice for racial justice and progressive causes during the three decades she served in the House, died on Friday in Houston. She was 74 and had been battling pancreatic cancer.
Hochul requested a federal emergency declaration from Biden to support recovery efforts after severe weather pummeled the state last week, her office said Saturday.
The influential union boss representing a majority of the MTA’s workforce has in recent months publicly called Hochul an “enemy” of transit workers. But behind the scenes, his organization has poured cash into her campaign fund.
A New York state program called the Medical Indemnity Fund was supposed to provide worry-free health care to children severely injured at birth, but parents say it has failed them.
Over the objections of some school leaders in New York, who wanted their high schoolers to practice realistic active shooter drills, the state Education Department has banned all such simulations.
Upstate New York House members are asking for federal help for Medicare Advantage health plans serving retirees as insurance providers contend they will soon need to drastically roll back benefits and increase costs for seniors without action.
The Empire State Plaza and Capitol will receive $100 million in state funding to start the first phase of a plan to decarbonize state buildings.
A legal battle is brewing between some New York City tenants and Mayor Eric Adams over rental assistance laws.
Donors to Adams’ campaigns who do business with city government routinely violate the $400 limit on donations intended to thwart corruption — and the campaign’s latest filing this week is no exception.
Adams’ administration is reportedly asking City Council members to sign a letter calling for a “peaceful political process” in the wake of the assassination attempt against Trump.
The New York City Council voted last week to give Speaker Adrienne Adams authority to bring legal action against the mayor’s administration to ensure that a ban on solitary confinement in city jails goes into effect later this month.
A year after Police Commissioner Edward Caban was sworn in as the first Latino to head the NYPD, serious crime continues to drop in the city — though some critics say that success has come at a cost.
Nicole Gelinas: Adams was rightly bragging last week that subway crime is down. But New Yorkers, just as rightly, couldn’t get too excited: Above ground, core Manhattan below Central Park is having a bloody summer.
The son of an ex-City Hall bigwig lost consciousness after overdosing on fentanyl and fell out of his chair while playing blackjack at Mohegan Sun, and staffers wasted precious minutes getting help that could’ve saved his life, video obtained by the Post shows.
A Manhattan judge on Friday set Nov. 12 as the tentative date for the start of jury selection in a new sexual assault case against the disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose 2020 sex-crimes conviction in New York was overturned in April.
Four people, including a mother and her two young children, were found dead inside a Brooklyn apartment on Friday night after the police said they responded to reports of an assault.
An 24-year-old man was in custody Saturday morning in connection with the attack, according to the police. The police did not say how the man, whom they did not name, was connected to the victims.
Seven New Yorkers contracted listeria linked to sliced deli counter meat in a multistate outbreak that killed two and landed more than a dozen people in the hospital, health officials said Friday.
A Brooklyn judge rejected George Santos’ request to dismiss certain charges in his criminal fraud case on Friday. Brooklyn federal judge Joanna Seybert decided all 23 charges against the truth-challenged former Long Island congressman will stand.
A Westchester County suburb, Mamaroneck, updated its law about tree removals from yards, upsetting tree advocates, who want stricter rules, and residents who don’t want to be told what to do.
Riverkeepers from New York and Delaware plan to sue to prevent the endangered Atlantic sturgeon – a prehistoric creature that can weigh as much as 800 pounds – from being caught and killed in commercial fishing nets.
Neighbors are pushing for the state Department of Environmental Conservation to take action against a cryptocurrency mining facility in Niagara County over air emissions and noise pollution that have also drawn concerns from environmental advocates.
For Albany County Legislator Mark A. Robinson, once the de facto leader of an illegal cannabis operation, the opening of his licensed cannabis dispensary is a major milestone in the legacy of a family that endured the hammer of the nation’s war on drugs.
Typically, the Albany area would average about ten 90-degree days all summer. Since the start of June, the area has already experienced 11 90-degree days, even though the meteorological summer is only halfway done
Photo credit: George Fazio.
