Good morning, it’s Thursday. The first week of March is just flying by. In case the warmer weather wasn’t enough to remind you, spring is right around the corner – just 14 days away, to be exact.
If you happen to live in or visit the Albany area this week and also happen to be driving on I-787 toward the city, you might notice on the right-hand side of the road a digital billboard.
For the second year in a row, the Holcim Ravena cement plant, which is the last remaining cement plant in all of New York, has rented out space on this billboard to celebrate and honor four of its female employees during Women in Construction Week (March 2-8).
I know about this effort because I work with the plant, assisting them with communications and public affairs. To say I’ve learned a lot during this engagement is a vast understatement. I never really gave cement (the key ingredient in concrete and mortar) a second thought, and I would hazard to guess that most people probably don’t.
But you should. Concrete is the world’s most commonly used building material – it’s quite literally the foundation of everything from buildings and bridges to windmill bases and sewage systems. And yes, it also has a significant impact on the environment – a fact of which cement companies are keenly aware, and seeking to address.
This isn’t about cement, though, really. It’s about the people who work at the plant, which runs (more or less) seven days a week, 365 days a year. These folks work very, very hard. And, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that, like most of the rest of the construction industry, the vast majority of plant employees are men.
The number of women in the construction industry has increased ever so slightly over the years, but they still make up a very small – somewhere between just shy of 10 and 14 percent – portion of the workforce. This is a problem for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the industry has been struggling with a labor shortage that is only projected to get worse as existing workers age out.
While some progress has been made to increase the number of women in the industry, considerable stigmas remain around the concept that construction is a lot of, well, heavy lifting – literally. The truth is that there is some of that, but thanks to technological advancements, there are a wide range of jobs that don’t include the operation of large pieces of machinery, though, to be clear, there’s no reason why a woman can’t do that, too.
Attracting women to the construction industry requires more than just improving and broadening recruitment efforts. The women I’ve had the chance to speak with all talked about the need to make the job site more accommodating, recognizing the need, for example, for single-sex locker rooms and PPE that isn’t one size fits all (men).
It’s the little things. Making the workplace more welcoming so people truly feel like they belong really goes a long way.
More rain is in the forecast this morning, though it is expected to taper off later in the afternoon. Temperatures will be in the high 40s early on, and will fall throughout the day. Winds could pick up considerably as the day progresses.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump is reportedly set to sign an executive order to eradicate the Department of Education as early as today.
Trump will reportedly use his executive powers to direct Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department” based on “the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk met with House Republicans last night to update them on work done by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as the new group takes significant steps to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
Republican senators told Musk at a closed-door meeting that his aggressive moves to shrink the federal government will need a vote on Capitol Hill, sending a clear message that he needs to respect Congress’s power of the purse.
Musk defended himself against GOP criticism, saying that he “can’t bat a thousand all the time.” But he also promised to work to correct mistakes amid the Department of Government Efficiency’s slash-and-burn operation across the federal government.
Musk has derided Social Security, the nation’s most popular federal program, as a sketchy pyramid scheme while pushing to close offices and eliminate thousands of jobs of those who administer it. Democrats see an opening.
Musk suggested that the U.S. government should privatize “as much as possible” and named Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service as two services ripe for privatization, according to a source in the room.
Inside the administration, there is growing frustration about the pace of immigrant arrests and deportations, even as Trump mobilizes the full weight of the federal government behind his mission to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to cut approximately 72,000 jobs, roughly 15 percent of its current workforce, VA Secretary Doug Collins confirmed.
The U.S. Capitol Police said that Hayden Haynes, the chief of staff to Speaker Mike Johnson, was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving on Tuesday night soon after Trump’s speech after the top aide backed his car into a parked Capitol Police vehicle.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former Democratic vice presidential contender, slammed Trump’s address to Congress in an interview on CNN, referring to the speech as “reality TV.”
The varied response to Trump’s speech reflects the clash within the Democratic Party as it tries to find an effective message to counter an unbound president who is defying laws and norms while dominating the public’s attention.
ActBlue, the online fund-raising organization that powers Democratic candidates, has plunged into turmoil, with at least seven senior officials resigning late last month and a remaining lawyer suggesting he faced internal retaliation.
Producers of the Broadway musical “Hamilton” are canceling plans to perform at the Kennedy Center in Washington next year, pointing to Trump’s “takeover” of the Washington, D.C., institution and drawing pushback from the new interim executive director.
Mayor Eric Adams walked a tightrope during his House Oversight Committee testimony on sanctuary cities, lauding immigrants’ contributions to the city while voicing support for the deportation of undocumented immigrants who break criminal laws.
The four big city mayors who testified on Capitol Hill knew they were invited by House Republicans to be punching bags. For Adams, however, the blows were thrown by fellow Democrats.
“I personally agree with a majority of New Yorkers and believe that you should resign. You should do the right thing, you should step down and resign today,” California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia told Adams.
The hearing in Washington, DC, vividly illustrated Adams’ waning position among his own party, as well as Republicans’ increasingly warm view of him.
A federal judge yesterday denied a request from New York City to temporarily block the federal government from pulling $80 million in emergency funding that went toward sheltering migrants.
Adrienne Adams, the first Black leader of the New York City Council, said that she would join the already crowded race for mayor with less than four months before the June primary.
Speaker Adams, who will formally launch her campaign at a Queens rally this weekend, hopes to position herself as a principled and scandal-free alternative to the incumbent mayor and the race’s presumptive favorite, the former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“I never planned to run for mayor, but I’m not giving up on New York City,” Speaker Adams said in a statement. “Our city deserves a leader that serves its people first and always, not someone focused on themselves and their own political interests.”
Cuomo continues to show he’s the frontrunner in the mayor’s race, the chorus of Democrats who piped up to condemn his behavior or call for his resignation are now shrugging at his candidacy.
Months out from elections, Cuomo leads the field as New Yorkers sour on Adams, who is facing federal bribery and fraud charges — but there is no commanding consensus on a front-runner, per a Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday.
The poll found only 11% of registered Democrats would throw their support behind Adams in the June mayoral primary, while 31% would back Cuomo, who officially entered the race less than a week ago.
Just 20 percent of New York City voters approved of Adams’s job performance, according to the Q poll, and more than half said he should resign, demonstrating that he faces a daunting path to re-election this year.
A group of 110 power women are throwing a breakfast fundraiser for Cuomo tomorrow. Also in attendance will be a host of Cuomo family members, including his mother and three daughters.
Cuomo is currently living in a 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath apartment at the Oriana on East 54th Street.
Democratic Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, a mayoral candidate, is expected to propose offering an after-school seat to every public school student who wants one. The sweeping program would be free, cover all children, and run until 6 p.m. on weekdays.
Declare a state of emergency because of New York City’s housing crisis. Build 50,000 homes on public golf courses. Triple subsidies for affordable housing. These are a few of Brad Lander’s ideas to address the housing crisis if he is elected mayor in November.
Jacques Jiha, Mayor Adams’ top budget official, said the administration can’t commit to using city funds to offset any federal cuts President Trump may push through, arguing the sheer amount of cash at risk is too large to entertain such a move at this time.
About two dozen pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Barnard College in Manhattan occupied the lobby of the school’s main library, escalating a confrontation with school administrators and leading to several protesters being taken into custody, the police said.
Hours earlier, dozens of masked protesters had taken over the Milstein Center with Palestinian flags and materials labeled as coming from the Hamas media office, according to images shared on social media.
The Justice Department unsealed charges in New York and D.C. against a dozen Chinese citizens accused of being part of a sophisticated hacking ring that steals data from U.S. businesses and people to sell to the Chinese government and others.
New Yorkers are filing more complaints about crime than they have in a decade, despite figures from police officials that show major crimes like robberies, rapes and murders are down compared to last winter.
A 4-year-old boy died on Tuesday after he was found near fentanyl in a Brooklyn homeless shelter, according to a senior law enforcement official.
Hundreds of birds at a Queens live poultry market have succumbed to a new bird flu outbreak — less than two weeks after the shops were allowed to reopen as the virus runs rampant across the nation.
New Yorkers should prepare for major street closures and thousands of runners as the New York Road Runners’ United Airlines NYC Half takes over parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan Sunday. For the first time, the course includes the Brooklyn Bridge.
New York’s ongoing prison guard strike is costing taxpayers millions of dollars a day, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office.
Prosecutors in Western New York provided disturbing new details about the killing of a 24-year-old transgender man, Sam Nordquist, who they said was sexually assaulted and tortured for several weeks earlier this year in a motel room in Canandaigua.
The commission charged with investigating allegations of misconduct against judges in New York tallied the highest number of complaints in its history last year.
The Leo W. O’Brien Federal Building in Albany might soon be for sale. The U.S. General Services Administration included it and six properties in the town of Glenville that were part of the Scotia Navy Depot on a list of federal properties designated for disposal.
The Capital Region volleyball community is mourning the death of a Colonie High School athlete who died following a cardiac incident suffered while playing in a tournament last month in Boston.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
