Good Thursday morning.
There’s a lot going on today.
In some states – like, for example, Florida – it’s Tax Day, since residents were given extra time to file their federal tax returns as a result of severe weather that impacted large areas.
For college-bound high school seniors, it’s Decision Day – the deadline by which most colleges and universities require incoming students to commit to attending, meaning a deposit and formal acceptance must be filed.
It’s World Lyme Day, held during Lyme Disease Awareness Month to educate people about the bacterial disease transmitted by the bite of an infected tick. Lyme is insidious. I personally have had it several times now and am hyper vigilant about ticks. Unfortunately, when one has dogs and likes to spend time outside, one is inevitably going to be exposed to ticks.
The Smith family has already had several tick incidents so far this year and there were not pretty.
The best possible way to avoid Lyme is to not get bitten by a tick. Even though not all ticks carry Lyme, some carry other, equally vile, diseases. Long pants and shirt sleeves, tucked in socks, and strong insect repellent are all recommended if you’re going to be outside. Talk to your vet about prevention for pets.
It’s also May Day, AKA International Workers Day, which is recognized around the world’s as Labor Day, though not formally observed here in the U.S. or in Canada, both of which celebrate Labor Day in September. It’s ironic that the U.S. doesn’t do May Day, since it has its roots for the fight for a shorter work day, which took place right here in America back in the 19th century.
Originally, this day was about celebrating the arrival of spring and that tradition dates back centuries. Both the Romans and the Greeks had versions of a pagan festival that focused on agriculture and fertility – for livestock and humans alike. Traditional activities included dancing around the Maypole, crowing a May Day king and queen, and weaving floral garlands.
There was once a belief that if you bathed your face with dew on the morning of May 1 you would have beautiful skin, which isn’t any weirder than, say, smearing snail slime on your face.
The Puritans, who tended to put the kibosh on anything fun and remotely sexual, forbade the observance of May Day because they considered it licentious.
As for the workers rights’ origin of this day, that dates back to the late 1880s and the Haymarket violence that took place in Chicago as unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists and just everyday workers protested, paraded and walked off their jobs in an effort to secure an eight-hour workday. There were clashes between protesters and police, shootings, a bomb, and deaths on both sides.
The Soviet Union and other Communist countries eventually adopted May Day as an official holiday. It was this connection, in particular, to the observance that reportedly made President Grover Cleveland nervous, which lead him to sign legislation in 1894 establishing a day to honor workers – AKA Labor Day – in the fall instead of the spring.
As a counter to the Communist observance of May Day, Americanization Day was established in 1921. President Dwight D. Eisenhower subsequently declared May 1 “Loyalty Day” in 1955 as a moment to, among other things, “renew that high sense of patriotism which has signalized our glorious history as a Nation.”
Today might be the last day without some form of precipitation that we see for a good while, so get out there and enjoy it while you can. It will be partly cloudy with temperatures topping out in the low 70s.
In the headlines…
The United States will share future revenues from Ukraine’s mineral reserves under a deal announced by the Trump administration that creates a joint investment fund between the countries.
The agreement comes after months of fraught negotiations as the United States tries to broker an end to Ukraine’s three-year war with Russia.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised the deal, calling it a “historic economic partnership” and said that the U.S. “looks forward to quickly operationalizing” the agreement.
The full details of the agreement are yet to be released, with Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal expected to present the deal to the Ukrainian parliament – the Rada – today.
The Senate rejected an effort to undo President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on most U.S. trading partners, even as a small group of Republicans joined Democrats in delivering a rebuke to a trade policy that many lawmakers fear is causing economic harm.
The vote deadlocked at 49 to 49, meaning it failed despite three Republicans joining Democrats in favor of a measure that sought to terminate the national emergency declaration Mr. Trump used this month to impose 10 percent reciprocal tariffs.
Three Republicans joined Democrats in rejecting the tariffs: Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Paul was a cosponsor of the resolution with Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat.
House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have advanced their portion of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” endorsing a suite of policies that would turbocharge the administration’s immigration enforcement and deregulation efforts.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a searing indictment of Trump’s first 100 days in power, warning in her first major address since leaving office that the nation was witnessing a “wholesale abandonment of America’s highest ideals” by its president.
In her most extensive comments since losing to Trump, Harris excoriated his trade policies, defiance of federal court orders and push to slash spending for a host of federal programs.
Harris called Trump’s seesawing tariffs the “greatest man-made economic crisis in modern presidential history” and warned that they are “clearly inviting a recession.”
Elon Musk admitted that his first 100 days in the White House were “intense,” as he stood up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and attempted to slash trillions of dollars in government spending.
Musk revealed that he has slept over at the White House and enjoyed late night ice cream that Trump recommended he indulge in.
The Trump administration recently sent a diplomatic note to officials in El Salvador to inquire about releasing a Salvadoran immigrant whom officials have been ordered by the Supreme Court to help free. But the authoritarian government said no.
Mohsen Mahdawi, an organizer of the pro-Palestinian movement at Columbia University, was freed from federal custody more than two weeks after immigration officials detained him and sought to rescind his green card.
A federal judge ruled Apple must loosen its grip on its App Store and stop collecting a commission on some app sales, capping a five-year antitrust case by Epic Games that aimed to change the power that Apple wields over much of the digital economy.
The judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, rebuked Apple for thwarting a previous ruling in the lawsuit and said the company needed to be stopped from further disobeying the court.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed a question about his 17-percent approval rating when asked whether he is becoming a political “liability” for his own party. “Polls come and go. Our party is united,” Schumer insisted.
According to CNN’s poll this week, Schumer’s favorability rating was “his worst rating in CNN polling back to 2017.” The drop comes as Democratic voters continue to express frustration with party leadership over their response to Trump’s agenda.
Gov. Kathy Hochul won big policy achievements in her $254 billion budget, allowing her to address crime and the cost of living and chart a road map for Democrats navigating shifting political allegiances in the Trump era. Now she has to sell that to voters.
Hochul sounded off about the “outrageous” price of eggs — jokingly telling New Yorkers to make chocolate cake with applesauce instead.
The U.S. Department of Justice has asked a federal judge to declare a New York law that has allowed thousands of migrants to obtain driver’s licenses to be unconstitutional and to issue an order prohibiting state officials from enforcing it.
TD Bank closed Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign account within a week of his federal indictment, according to newly released records that detail his campaign’s ongoing struggles with financial record-keeping.
Adams’ federal corruption indictment is dead, but New York City’s Campaign Finance Board isn’t forgetting about it.
The city Campaign Finance Board has once again rejected Adams’ request for campaign matching funds, as it significantly expands its investigation into Adams’ political fundraising.
In an April 15 letter, the CFB stood by its prior decision not to award Adams $4 million in matching funds, citing “reason to believe that Eric Adams has, in the course of public funds program participation, engaged in conduct detrimental to the Program.”
Thousands of low-income New York City tenants who use city assistance to cover their housing costs could soon face a rent hike when they renew the aid, under a new plan from the Adams administration.
Adams is expected to visit a sprawling co-op complex in eastern Queens, to discuss how the state’s green energy mandates are impacting thousands of city residents, particularly those living in large, self-managed residential buildings like the Towers.
Comptroller Brad Lander is pledging, if elected mayor, to ensure that no New York City straphangers wait longer than 6 minutes for a subway train or longer than 8 minutes for buses on dozens of lines.
Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn, was viewed as a welcome entry to the New York City mayoral race almost a year ago, but just weeks before the primary, his candidacy has yet to take off.
Assemblymember and mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani sees opportunities to alleviate New York City’s homelessness and mental health crises scattered throughout the subway system: in empty storefronts and underground vacant spaces.
In the Democratic primary, the city Board of Election held a lottery to determine the order the candidates will appear on the ballot. The coveted first spot on the ballot went to Mamdani.
Three candidates vying to be the next mayor of New York – former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa and businessman Whitney Tilson – visited Staten Island to share their visions for the borough.
The New York City panel that decides annually if and how much rents can go up for almost one million rent-stabilized apartments voted in favor of increases, after landlords said they needed more money to pay for rising expenses.
The nine-member panel, the Rent Guidelines Board, voted 5 to 4 to back increases of between 1.75 and 4.75 percent on one-year leases and between 4.75 and 7.75 percent for two-year leases.
An unlikely alliance of MTA leadership, Democrats and Republicans are calling on Amtrak to rethink a work plan that will shut down one of four tubes of a critical Long Island Rail Road tunnel for the next three years.
Long Island Rail Road service could suffer for years as Amtrak repairs two damaged East River tunnels that connect Penn Station to Queens, MTA officials warned.
The MTA plopped down another $5 million to combat fare evasion on buses – as scofflaws continue to avoid the farebox with impunity.
MTA honcho Janno Lieber isn’t sweating the fact that the recently announced state budget doesn’t give the transit agency its full $68 billion ask for its ambitious capital plan.
NJ Transit riders yesterday were urged to work from home if Garden State locomotive engineers make good on a threat to strike in mid-May, which would shut down the agency’s commuter rail service that carries roughly 350,000 daily passengers.
A net 30,000 New Yorkers fled the city for Florida’s Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties in the five years through 2022, taking with them a combined $9.2 billion in income, a new report shows.
A Department of Education newsletter claiming Israel is committing “genocide in Gaza” was sent out to hundreds of teachers — prompting fuming Jewish educators to call it out as another example of ingrained antisemitism in the city’s public school system.
Harvey Weinstein accuser Miriam Haley told a Manhattan jury disturbing details of how the hulking film mogul sexually assaulted her in his Soho loft — and how she calculated the safest thing she could do was to “check out” and endure the attack.
Eleven high school lacrosse players in Syracuse, N.Y., turned themselves in to the authorities in a hazing incident involving younger teammates that the district attorney said included a gun and a knife.
Four candidates seeking the Democratic line in the race to be Albany’s next mayor made their case to voters yesterday in an hourlong debate that touched on several key issues, including housing affordability and public safety.
Flooding over Easter weekend in the rear of the Village of Ballston Spa’s public library, which was expected to be only closed for a week, has led to the discovery of asbestos, shuttering the library “until further notice.”
Republicans have successfully thwarted four primary challenges from Saratoga County GOP candidates who were also endorsed by Democrats.
Gloversville Mayor Vince DeSantis said the raging blaze that gutted a historic former glove and knitting mill factory building, and heavily damaged two other nearby businesses appears to be suspicious even though the investigation into its cause is continuing.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
