Good morning, it’s Monday.
March certainly is coming in like a lion – a lion with a very big roar in the form of very strong winds. What WAS that situation, this past weekend anyway? All I know is that it forced me to do my long run inside, which I very much dislike and makes everything twice as hard.
Also over the weekend, I somehow missed International Women’s Day, which might be because, you know, that’s sort of every day for 51 percent of the population. I appreciate that there’s a day dedicated to highlighting the many challenges women face – from sexism and bumping up against the glass ceiling to fighting for equal rights and equal pay to being afraid for our safety on a regular basis.
When you live life wondering if it’s actually a good idea to do something as simple and ostensibly good for you as going for a run alone, it kind of wears on you after a while. And these are first world problems, I know. Women across the world face life or detah difficulties far greater than mine.
It is interesting to note that the theme of International Women’s Day is “For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.” Here’s some more from the UN:
This year’s theme calls for action that can unlock equal rights, power and opportunities for all and a feminist future where no one is left behind. Central to this vision is empowering the next generation—youth, particularly young women and adolescent girls—as catalysts for lasting change.
A feminist culture where no one is left behind. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? Particularly at a time when a women’s right to bodily autonomy is under siege and there’s a concerted effort underway in D.C. to dismantle anything that smacks remotely of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Ah, but this isn’t a political blog, is it? Forgive me. I was reverting to a version of my former commentator self. Perhaps it would be more appropriate for me to focus on the fact that today is National Napping Day, which handily comes on the day after Daylight Savings Time kicks in (that was yesterday, folks, in case you slept in an extra hour and are scrambling right now).
I kind of feel like a lot of us have been asleep at the wheel for a long time, though. And perhaps now isn’t the best moment for nodding off in the middle of the day. One never knows what one might miss – the signing of a surprising executive order, for example, or the issuing and then rescinding and then reissuing again of a tariff. Or another round of federal firings.
No, now is not the time for napping, as much as I enjoy a good midday snooze – though I never have managed to perfect the art of getting just enough sleep to feel refreshed, but not too much so as to be groggy and out of it for the rest of the day. Now is the time for paying attention – as difficult as that might be. And believe me, I’ve been wanting to just avert my eyes and shut down a lot lately (metaphorically speaking, of course, an insomniac never truly rests).
I feel your pain, just so you know.
We’ll get a reprieve from the crummy weather today, at least, with temperatures soaring into the mid-50s. It will be cloudy in the morning with sun breaking through in the afternoon. Looking ahead, I see nothing in the forecast that’s lower than 40 degrees. Could this long winter nightmare finally be over? Fingers crossed.
In the headlines…
Beijing began imposing tariffs today on many farm products from the United States, for which China is the largest overseas market. It is the latest escalation of a trade fight between the world’s two largest economies.
The Chinese government announced the tariffs last week, shortly after President Donald Trump raised tariffs on Chinese products for the second time since he took office in January.
The Chinese tariffs will include a levy of 15 percent on U.S. products like chicken, wheat and corn, as well as 10 percent on products like soybeans, pork, beef and fruit.
In Chinatowns across the country, people worry about the potential damage of the tariffs to business, loss of cultural traditions and the already high rates of poverty in these immigrant communities.
As concerns swirl over the impacts of steep new tariffs on U.S. companies and consumers, so too does talk about how certain businesses try to avoid them.
Trump declined to rule out the possibility that his economic policies, including aggressive tariffs against America’s trade partners, would cause a recession in an interview aired yesterday on Fox News.
“I hate to predict things like that,” Trump said. “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing. And there are always periods of it takes a little time.”
Trump also told Maria Bartiromo, the host of “Sunday Morning Futures,” that he was considering increasing tariffs against Mexico and Canada.
The Secret Service shot a 27-year-old man near the White House early yesterday after an “armed confrontation” with federal officers, the agency said. Trump was in Florida at his Mar-a-Lago Club and was not at the White House at the time.
House Republicans on Saturday unveiled a measure to fund the government through Sept. 30, boosting spending on the military and daring Democrats to oppose it and risk being blamed for a government shutdown that would begin after midnight Friday.
The 99-page legislation would slightly decrease spending overall from last year’s funding levels, but would increase spending for the military by $6 billion, in a nod to the concerns of G.O.P. defense hawks that stopgap measures would hamstring the Pentagon.
As U.S. and Ukrainian officials prepare to meet in Saudi Arabia, Trump has privately made clear to aides that a signed minerals deal between Washington and Kyiv won’t be enough to restart aid and intelligence sharing with the war-torn country.
European leaders are supporting a $53 billion Arab-backed plan for recovery and reconstruction in Gaza that was previously rejected by the US and Israel.
While Trump administration officials have promised to preserve core patient services, initial cuts at the V.A. have nonetheless spawned chaotic ripple effects.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s premier agency for weather and climate science, has been told by the Trump administration to prepare to lose another 1,000 workers, raising concerns about NOAA’s lifesaving forecasts.
A group of Native American tribes and students is suing the Trump administration to reverse its recent firing of federal workers at Native schools that they said has severely lowered their quality of education.
Amid a generational crisis in Canada’s relationship with the US, the Liberal Party of Canada chose an unelected technocrat with deep experience in financial markets to replace Justin Trudeau as party leader and the country’s prime minister and take on Trump.
Mark Carney, 59, who steered the Bank of Canada through the 2008 global financial crisis and the Bank of England through Brexit, but never held elected to office, won a leadership race yesterday against his friend and former finance minister, Chrystia Freeland.
In much of his victory speech, Carney attacked Trump, who has imposed tariffs on Canada and said he wants to make the country the 51st US state. “Americans should make no mistake,” he said. “In trade, as in hockey, Canada will win.”
The Trump Administration’s abrupt withdrawal of $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University cast a pall over at least nine other campuses worried they could be next.
Federal immigration authorities arrested a Palestinian graduate student who played a prominent role in last spring’s anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, according to his attorney.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly clashed with tech billionaire and close Trump adviser Elon Musk during a contentious Cabinet meeting hosted by Trump.
Musk, the world’s richest person who helms six major companies, tore into Rubio, scolding the former senator for not firing much of the workforce at the State Department and that he is only “good on TV,” but barely for anything else.
The longstanding animus between another Trump ally, Steve Bannon, and Musk encapsulates a key tension at the heart of the president’s Make America Great Again movement.
A new agreement has been reached to end wildcat strikes by thousands of New York State correctional officers, which have created chaos throughout the prison system.
Under the agreement, which was negotiated by state officials and the correctional officers’ union and will only take effect if 85 percent of staff go back to their posts, the officers are expected to return to work today,
Late Saturday, several correction officers contacted the Times Union and said the agreement does not do enough to address workplace safety, so they may not return. It also does not waive strike penalties, according to DOCCS.
Massive, wind-whipped brush fires raged across parts of Long Island’s Pine Barrens region on Saturday, prompting a large emergency response to control the blazes that led to a local State of Emergency in the town of Southampton in Suffolk County.
The fires — in Center Moriches, East Moriches, Eastport and Westhampton — blanketed parts of Long Island’s East End, filling the sky with thick black smoke, threatened homes in middle class communities and wealthy parts of the Hamptons.
“This could be a multi-day event,” Hochul told CNN. “I’m also concerned about the air quality…This can shift at any moment, but the air quality is definitely compromised.”
However, all four Long Island brush fires that sent soaring plumes of smoke into the air had been contained by yesterday afternoon, authorities said.
Two firefighters were hurt battling the blazes and two commercial buildings were damaged, Newsday reported. No residential buildings were damaged; any earlier reports of burned homes were erroneous.
Hochul is recruiting federal workers fired by the Department of Government Efficiency to fill roughly 7,000 state jobs – adding hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly taxpayer costs to an already bloated payroll that has grown by billions on her watch.
In the last week of February, 372 federal workers filed for unemployment in New York alone, according to a news release from the state attorney general’s office announcing a lawsuit challenging the firings.
The specter of federal cuts to Medicaid is looming over New York’s fiscal future. But state officials are loath to start preparing for a potential funding drop before concrete details are unveiled.
The backlash to ConEd’s proposed rate increases has illustrated what could be a thorny issue for decades to come: persuading New Yorkers to absorb some of the cost of the state’s transition to green energy.
Plastics are so hard to recycle that many environmental advocates believe the only way forward is to dramatically reduce how much of the material consumers use and are supporting legislation in Albany to try to accomplish that goal.
Elected to deliver New York from disorder and disrepair, Eric Adams established himself as the avatar of its chaos well before his arrest — a proper ambassador for a place that increasingly seemed to be losing its collective mind.
Two federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York who worked on the case against Adams were reportedly placed on leave Friday and escorted out of the building by federal law enforcement officials.
An attorney appointed by the judge overseeing the criminal case against Adams recommended the case not only be dismissed, but the judge should do so with prejudice — which would end the prosecution entirely.
In a blow to Adams, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is solidifying support for his mayoral bid among the Brooklyn Democratic Party, an institution whose backing candidates covet despite its deteriorating ability to influence citywide races.
This year, three Democratic candidates for mayor of New York City — Cuomo, Adams and former City Comptroller Scott Stringer — will provide a durability test for the #MeToo movement in New York politics.
Cuomo plans to hire 5,000 more cops — boosting the number of NYPD officers by 15% — if he’s elected NYC’s next mayor.
Leonard Greene: “(T)here’s one label that you can’t hang around the former governor’s neck — that he’s not a real New Yorker.”
A pro-Israel group Cuomo founded last year promises appears to have accomplished little beyond a few private informational receptions and opinion essays.
On her first day as a candidate for mayor, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams signaled she’s not necessarily going to play nice with the seven men already competing for the Democratic nomination.
“The tone is going to be to put New York first. I am one that is always in my policy, in the way that I live, in the way that I act, it’s to put New York first and you know, not my own selfish, whatever, premise,” she said.
Many of her supporters see her candidacy as an opportunity for Democrats to elect a qualified Black woman to lead the country’s largest city, less than a year after the bruising loss of Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to lead a major party presidential ticket.
Having two people with the last name Adams on the ballot in the New York City mayoral race could leave voters confused — and give a boost to frontrunner Cuomo, experts said.
Cuomo stood by the Empire State’s controversial bail reforms, telling reporters after a mayoral campaign stop at a Harlem church that, “It righted a terrible social wrong.”
New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander is being accused of “divesting” city pension funds from government bonds of the State of Israel — allegedly breaking from his predecessors and state counterpart in a politically charged move.
Allies of socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani have launched a super PAC in his support called New Yorkers for Lower Costs, for the purpose of supporting Mamdani with ads and other materials ahead of June’s Democratic mayoral primary.
Mamdani wants to subsidize free transit and childcare with higher taxes on corporations and establish city-run food stores, freeze rent for millions of New Yorkers and create a new safety plan for the city, he told the NY Post.
A Democrat challenging Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in a primary this June vowed to get tough on subway crime – including targeting fare beaters – as he slammed the incumbent’s “poor” prosecuting record.
A mob of trans rights activists are repeatedly hijacking community education council meetings in Manhattan — and even danced the “Macarena” last week to disrupt a meeting and protest those opposed to boys playing girls’ sports.
FDNY bosses will be barred from dating their underlings under a new, long-overdue policy on job-related relationships, officials said.
The number of detectives in the NYPD has dropped below 5,000 for the first time since the pandemic – and union leaders warn that 1,600 more gumshoes could retire by the end of the year.
Over the last few months, beekeepers in the Adirondacks are seeing an unprecedented number of bee deaths.
The Albany County Legislature may vote to settle a tax debt of more than $500,000 for less than what it is owed in an unusual agreement that would allow Garland Brothers Funeral Home to remain open.
With allegations that incumbent Supervisor Kevin Veitch is not keeping his focus on community needs such as backyard chickens and is spending too much money on favored employees, two of his fellow Republicans are challenging Veitch in a primary.
Meteorologist Sam Coplin is leaving CBS6 Albany and heading to the Weather Channel. He made the announcement Saturday on-air as well as on social media.
The Buffalo Bills and Josh Allen have agreed on a new deal that will keep the quarterback in Buffalo through the 2030 season, the team announced yesterday.
A league source confirmed to The Athletic that the deal is a six-year extension for $330 million and includes a record $250 million guaranteed.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
