Good morning, it’s Friday, and I am relieved.
Sometimes I get to the end of the week completely depleted – especially around this time of year. (Budget season, IYKYK). I feel like a sponge that has been squeezed out, having written and spoken so many words, I wonder whether I have any more to give.
But the show must go on. And so here we are.
It’s a big weekend if you happen to live in the Albany area. The annual Tulip Festival, which brings thousands of people to Washington Square Park – the city’s 81-acre public garden crown jewel – to admire the many varieties of the event’s namesake flower and partake of some food, art, and music in the process – will be held Saturday and Sunday.
There are more than 140,000 tulips in the park, according to the event website. The festival is focused in part on celebrating the city’s Dutch heritage and its sister city relationship with Nijmegen, a city in the Netherlands.
That relationship was forged after WW II when Albany sent Nijmegen humanitarian aid to help that municipality rebuild and recover due to the heavy damage it had sustained during the conflict. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands expressed her thanks by sending Albany 2,000 tulip bulbs, which were planted in Washington Park, and became the upstate city’s signature flower.
The Tulip Festival has some time-honored traditions, including the crowning of the Tulip Queen and her court, and the ceremonial scrubbing of the streets by local students clad in traditional Dutch costumes. (This is reportedly inspired by the Dutch practice of cleaning the streets before big festivals).
The street scrubbing takes place in downtown Albany and serves as the festival’s official kickoff, with a proclamation delivered by the mayor and a profession from City Hall to the intersection of State and Lodge streets, where the brooms and buckets are deployed.
Tulip Festival coincides with Mother’s Day, which, interestingly, has its roots in the peace movement – or “A” peace movement, anyway – which seems very fitting somehow.
I always struggle with what to get my mom, because there are only so many pieces of jewelry, scarves, and tchotchkes one can use. In recent years, I have taken to putting together little gift bags of treats that I know she wouldn’t buy herself – gourmet chocolate, nuts, chips etc. – that she can share with my step-dad. I also like to bring a plant because it lasts longer than cut flowers – especially for my mom, who has a pretty green thumb.
Mother’s Day, by the way, is the second biggest floral holiday of the year behind Valentine’s Day, with more than 20 millions stems sold by 1-800-Flowers.com alone. It turns out that – like so many other nice things – flowers have a bit of a dark underbelly, as the global floral trade is not terribly good for the environment.
That’s where Tulip Fest comes in. If you have a mom who loves flowers, maybe invite her to tiptoe through Washington Park with you, though the weather for this weekend is looking mixed, so your best bet for outdoor activities is likely Sunday.
Today we will see more rain, with highs only reaching the mid-50s – downright chilly for this time of year. Saturday will bring more steady rain in the morning, followed by clouds and the occasional shower in the afternoon; temperatures will improve slightly, topping out in the mid-60s. Sunday looks to be a banner of a spring day, with clear and sunny skies and just a few passing clouds. Temperatures will reach into the low 70s.
In the headlines…
Robert Francis Prevost, who was elected the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church yesterday and took the name Pope Leo XIV, is the first pope from the United States.
Prevost, 69, is a Chicago-born cardinal who previously served in Peru for two decades. He is also the first Augustinian pope, according to the Vatican, which means he belongs to a Catholic order known for its commitment to community and sharing.
In Peru, he is known as the saintly missionary who waded through mud after torrential rains, bringing help to needy people, and as the bishop who spearheaded the life-saving purchase of oxygen production plants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new pope is widely considered to be soft-spoken and cautious — but has not been shy in recent years about speaking out on hot-button issues, from the teaching of gender ideology in schools to climate change.
Pope Leo XIV appears to have previously reposted social media posts critical of Vice President JD Vance and the immigration policies of President Donald Trump — views that were in line with his predecessor and could cause friction with the White House.
Pope Leo XIV has voted several times in his home state of Illinois in recent years, public records show, including with an absentee ballot in last November’s presidential election.
Trump called the election of the first American pope a “great honour” for the country and said he looks forward to meeting him.
The former missionary stands to be an ideological check on a certain breed of American-styled Catholicism, which in recent years has been ascendant in Washington yet has drifted into more conservative lanes than its global brethren.
Church bells rang out for hours on campus, and professors toasted with champagne. Congratulatory messages inundated Villanova’s president as the university celebrated its new most famous alumnus.
Trump has reportedly fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, the first woman and the first African American to hold that post.
Hayden received an email from the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office telling her she was terminated late yesterday. The move comes after accusations from conservative groups that Hayden promoted children’s books with “radical” leftist agendas.
“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately,” the email said, without citing a cause. “Thank you for your service.”
Trump announced that the United States intended to sign a trade deal with Britain that would bring the two nations closer and roll back some of the punishing tariffs he issued on that country’s products
A group representing General Motors, Ford and Stellantis blasted Trump’s trade deal announced with the United Kingdom, saying it would harm the US auto sector.
Trump has asked House Speaker Mike Johnson to include a tax hike on rich Americans in the sprawling fiscal package lawmakers are putting together, according to two people familiar with the request, reviving an idea that many Republicans have opposed.
Trump said he would name the Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro, whose false statements about the 2020 election were part of a lawsuit against the network, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, hours after he was forced to pull his first choice.
“During her time in office, Jeanine was a powerful crusader for victims of crime,” the president wrote on social media in announcing the pick, listing her background in law enforcement. He added, “She is in a class by herself.”
Pirro, a longtime Trump ally who was a regular presence at Mar-a-Lago even before he ran for president the first time, earned quick praise from the GOP senator who had derailed the nomination of Ed Martin, Trump’s first pick for the role.
The move raised legal questions. Trump appeared to be relying on an aggressive interpretation of his appointment powers, and his installation of Pirro could face a challenge in court.
Trump recently switched his nomination for Surgeon General but his first pick, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, will continue to work at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy unveiled a plan to revamp the nation’s failing air traffic control system by 2028 — following a deadly plane crash outside Washington, DC and thousands of radar and communications outages.
Four New York Republicans issued a blistering joint statement rejecting an offer they said came from House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and the House’s top tax writer on how to expand the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT.
Both houses of the state Legislature passed Gov. Kathy Hochul’s massive $254 billion state budget package last night following days of debate and over a month delay past the April 1 deadline.
A Hochul-backed mask ban in the state budget deal drew jeers from lawmakers, who said it didn’t go nearly far enough as they lined up to vote on the spending package.
Final details on a big business-bashing payroll tax to fund the MTA’s ambitious capital plan were revealed, along with a new way the agency can generate much needed cash: speed cameras targeting lead-footed bridge-and-tunnel drivers.
Speeding through a work zone on the MTA’s bridges and tunnels could soon result in an automatic ticket being mailed to your home.
The final budget included a couple of quirky things that even lawmakers were unaware of — such as an end to the law that lets kids deliver newspapers.
A series of measures that appear to benefit incumbent politicians in New York were tucked into the state budget approved this week by lawmakers.
The FBI in Albany has opened a formal criminal investigation examining the real estate and mortgage transactions of New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to law enforcement sources briefed on the matter.
James was heckled by a Trump supporter at a community hearing where she claimed the freshly opened federal criminal probe into her alleged mortgage fraud is “baseless.”
New York dog owners would be held criminally accountable if their dog harms another animal under a new proposed state bill — which advocates say would close a legal loophole and help get justice for mauled pooches.
North Country GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik is at a political fork in the road after Trump pulled her nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations, citing a too-close-for-comfort nose count in the GOP-controlled House.
A revised formula doling out $26.4 billion to New York school districts that public education advocates had been lobbying for will, as it turns out, deliver hundreds of millions less to New York City than had the old formula remained intact.
Mayor Eric Adams lauded coming changes to state law that will make it easier to force mentally ill people into treatment — after he publicly pushed for the change for three years because of crime concerns.
Adams often laments a central paradox of his mayoralty: While most serious crime is declining, New Yorkers don’t feel any safer. That’s because, by the NYPD’s own metrics, they’re not.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — whose mayoral endorsement could weigh especially heavy this year — recently met with Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani, indicating she may be narrowing her search for who to potentially support in the race for City Hall.
New York City is expected to welcome 400,000 fewer tourists this year than it did in 2024, a decline primarily driven by negative sentiment toward the United States among foreign travelers who have reconsidered their vacations.
A pro-Palestinian rally at Brooklyn College erupted in chaos yesterday, with demonstrators and the police engaging in physical altercations, several people being arrested and one officer firing a Taser to subdue a man in the crowd.
Social media accounts livestreaming the protest depicted a chaotic scene as protesters clashed with police officers, with one post on X appearing to show a protester screaming in pain after being tased by police.
Columbia University students and Jewish advocates called on the Ivy League school to crack down on the scores of anti-Israel rioters who took part in a violent takeover of a campus library.
Republicans are calling for harsh measures to be taken against the anti-Israel rioters who stormed a Columbia University library — as the White House praised the Ivy League school for swiftly calling in cops to disperse the mob.
A year ago, when masked pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, the sole public safety officer who was present left the scene after notifying her supervisor. These demonstrators were met with a far different response.
“I want to say to parents, if your children is on the Columbia campus and participating in this, I think you should reach out to them,” Adams said. “This is not what you do on a college campus, particularly going inside a library and protesting in this manner.”
A private special education school on the Upper East Side is accused of skipping out on $800,000 in legal bills to defend against sexual harassment claims and health violations, a new lawsuit claims.
Harvey Weinstein accuser Kaja Sokola told jurors she met with Harvey Weinstein in 2006 — even though he’d sexually abused her as a teenager years earlier — because she wanted to impress her family, who disapproved of her acting dreams.
Few experts gave the Knicks a chance to beat the champion Boston Celtics — except for the devoted fans who packed the street outside Madison Square Garden.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum stopped by a Brooklyn sports complex yesterday to celebrate the revival of its ice rinks that almost closed for good until hockey parents pushed the White House to intervene.
Washington Heights community members and officials rallied to save the financially strapped 115-year-old Fort Washington Collegiate Church after leadership announced its closure at the end of June.
State and Orange County health officials confirmed three new measles cases in children under the age of 5, though it is not yet clear whether transmission occurred within the county.
The children recently returned from international travel and were not vaccinated against the disease, according to the New York State Department of Health. The cases are not connected to other known outbreaks in the United States.
Twenty people have been indicted in connection with a $4.6 million car theft ring that prosecutors said operated across the New York metro area and beyond, stealing everything from Hondas to Dodge Hellcats and reselling them on social media platforms.
In a change urged by County Executive Dan McCoy, the County Legislature has requested that the State Liquor Authority expand sales hours for liquor stores in the county to the maximum allowed by the state.
For the second time in less than a month, Black politicians and activists assembled on the steps of City Hall to denounce the Schenectady Democratic party for what they see as its spurning of Black candidates and disrespect for the Black vote.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
