Good morning, it’s Monday and we’re back to the five-day workweek grind.
I read with great interest the news that there’s a push on in Albany to reduce the number of work days for state employees from five to four. The bill’s sponsor, Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, called the current 40-hour/five-day-a-week standard a “relic”, adding: “(I)t’s time to evolve to better match the needs of our bodies, families, and communities.”
I agree that the old model of 9-to-5 is certainly outdated, thanks to the pandemic proving that remote work can be beneficial. But admittedly, it has its drawbacks. I find that I am working MORE hours rather than less as a result of being tethered to my phone. Basically, any time and place where there’s cell service, I can be working – and often am.
The assemblymember did admit that the four day workweek isn’t for everyone, and I agree. But the data is starting to increasingly show that working less can, in fact, make people more efficient as well as happier.
As we enter the summer months – assuming it ever stops raining – we are entering vacation season, and a time when things slow down a hair, letting people get out and enjoy themselves more, and perhaps unplug a bit. June happens to be a very busy month, with no lack of events and things to do, thanks in part to the fact that it’s Pride Month.
This year’s Pride looks different, though, as reports are mounting of companies and organizations scaling back their support in the face of the DEI crackdown by the Trump administration. No one wants to end up the next Harvard, enmeshed in a prolonged legal battle that few can afford and losing more public funds than have already been stripped from worthy causes and programs.
This is happening here in New York, where Heritage Pride, the organization behind NYC Pride and other related events is now being forced to fundraise to close a quarter-million dollar budget gap after companies withdrew their traditional support. The New York Times reported that about a quarter of the corporate donors who usually support the city’s annual Pride festivities either cancelled their support outright or scaled back considerably.
Of course, this goes both ways. There have been reports in recent weeks of LGBTQ+ advocates boycotting certain cities and/or events based on their perception that government officials haven’t been sufficiently full throated in opposition to the Trump administration’s attacks on their community – or, in the case of the City of Troy, that one official in particular is both gay and a Trump supporter.
Something similar is occurring in New York City, where some LGBTQ clubs are boycotting Mayor Eric Adams’ Pride Month event at Gracie Mansion due to his refusal to call out Trump. (Of course, in Adams’ case, the situation is complicated by the fact that the DOJ dropped its corruption charges against Adams, who is running for re-election obviously has some serious skin in the game).
As a reminder, the modern Pride movement has its roots in New York City, where the first march took place on June 28, 1970 – one year after the historic Stonewall Uprising. And, to be clear, celebrations ARE indeed continuing – not just in New York City, but around the state – all month long.
Things are clearing up on the weather front – just in time for us all to return to work! It will be lovely today, if you can sneak outside for a few moments, with mostly sunny skies and temperatures maxing out in the low 70s.
In the headlines…
A man with a makeshift flamethrower yelled “Free Palestine” and hurled an incendiary device into a group that had assembled to raise attention for Israeli hostages in Gaza, law enforcement officials said yesterday. Eight people were injured, some with burns.
The suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, was booked into the Boulder County jail north of Denver and expected to face charges in connection with the attack the FBI was investigating as a terrorist act.
Soliman is an Egyptian national who came into the country two years ago and overstayed his work permit, authorities said. The six victims ranged in age from 67 to 88 and all are hospitalized.
“A terror attack was committed in Boulder, Colorado by an illegal alien,” Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, said in a statement on X.
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt condemned the recent “rage-filled, violent attacks” at Jewish gatherings and called on public officials to do more before “the crisis escalates even further.”
Speaker Mike Johnson defended cuts to Medicaid in the budget bill House Republicans passed last month, saying that “4.8 million people will not lose their Medicaid unless they choose to do so.”
Johnson, during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” pushed back on independent projections that the bill would lead to 4.8 million people who would lose coverage because of work requirements
President Donald Trump said that he planned to withdraw his nomination of Jared Isaacman, a close associate of Elon Musk, to be the next NASA administrator, days before Isaacman was expected to be confirmed for the role by the Senate.
China said that the United States had “severely undermined” the trade truce the two countries reached last month, striking back against Trump’s accusations that it was violating the terms of their agreement.
Trump’s top economic advisers said they would not be deterred by a recent court decision that declared many tariffs to be illegal, pointing to additional authorities that the White House could invoke as it looks to pressure China and others into negotiations.
The Trump administration unveiled fuller details of its proposal to slash about $163 billion in federal spending next fiscal year, offering a deeper glimpse into the vast array of education, health, housing and labor programs that would be hit by deep cuts.
The many spending reductions throughout the roughly 1,220-page document and agency blueprints underscored the president’s desire to foster a vast transformation in Washington.
The Trump administration deported a 31-year-old Salvadoran man minutes after a federal appeals court barred his removal while his case proceeded, the government admitted in a court filing this week.
Americans are more likely to say neither party has strong leaders than they are to attribute the characteristic to either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, according to the latest CNN/SSRS poll.
In the May poll, released yesterday, respondents were asked which party is best described as “the party with strong leaders.”
In a dramatic incident captured on video, U.S. Department of Homeland Security police last week handcuffed one of Rep. Jerry Nadler aides in the congressmember’s Manhattan office, which is in the same federal office building as an immigration courthouse.
The episode was recorded by someone who was sitting in Nadler’s office. In the video, an officer with the Federal Protective Service, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is shown demanding access to a private area inside the office.
Nadler strongly criticized federal officers with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for entering his district office and briefly detaining one of his staffers, calling the incident “deeply troubling.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the Trump administration of “clearly trying to intimidate Democrats” after federal agents handcuffed Nadler’s aide. “We don’t work for Donald Trump,” he said. “We don’t work for the administration.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul rallied in Brooklyn with Jeffries against steep federal healthcare cuts approved in a budget bill passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives last month.
Hochul said the bill would cause 1.5 million New Yorkers to lose their healthcare and would lead to $3 billion in losses for hospitals in the state. The State Health Department launched a new interactive tool to help New Yorkers understand the impacts of the bill.
“Have they no heart? No compassion? Were they not raised in a country where people take care of each other?” Hochul said.
Stuart Rabinowitz, the ex-Hofstra University president, is Hochul’s choice to helm a reconfigured board of directors for financially beleaguered Nassau University Medical Center, her office announced Saturday.
In a Daily News op-ed, Hochul highlighted her administration’s efforts to convert empty office buildings into apartments in New York City, where the affordable housing crisis is most acute.
Republican state Sen. Joe Griffo has introduced a bill to green light the use of clips to hold open gas pump nozzles throughout the Empire State — devices already legal in the country’s 49 other states.
Equinox, which operates 43 gyms in New York, will issue refunds to individuals who struggled to cancel their memberships to the luxury fitness company’s gyms and online programs.
Mayor Eric Adams named a new parks commissioner, picking the department’s first deputy to take the helm overseeing the city’s 30,000 acres of green spaces and beaches.
Adams said Iris Rodriguez-Rosa, a seasoned public servant who first joined the parks department in 1986, would take charge of the agency following the resignation of Sue Donoghue at the end of May. Rodriguez-Rosa is the first Latina to hold the post.
Fix the City, a super PAC supporting Cuomo that is the single largest outside spending force in New York City’s political history, has raised $10 million from business leaders and special interest groups that could benefit from the former governor’s victory.
New York lawmakers are considering new packaging regulations for large companies that would require them to reduce the amount of materials they use while improving their recyclability over the next two and a half decades.
The Working Families Party endorsed Zohran Mamdani as its top choice in the mayoral primary Friday night, giving his campaign a boost that could spark consolidation among progressive voters and defeat their nemesis, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
To the surprise of many in New York’s political establishment, Mamdani, 33, has leap-frogged other more-established candidates to become the leading progressive running in the June 24 primary.
Adams is reportedly trying again to court Big Apple Republicans into supporting his re-election bid — banking on growing fears over socialist candidate Mamdani’s surging campaign.
Cuomo was denied another $675,000 in public matching funds, as the New York City Campaign Finance Board said it continued to believe his mayoral campaign had illicitly coordinated with a super PAC.
Longshot Big Apple mayoral candidate Scott Stringer’s claim that he’d work with the Anti-Defamation League to root out antisemitism is news to the non-profit.
In the race to be New York City’s next mayor, few issues have generated proposals as ambitious and sprawling as the housing crisis, a top concern for a growing number of voters.
Adams is losing his “war on rats” — in large part because his administration refuses to fully fund a Sanitation Department unit dealing with a backlog of more than 1,700 garbage-strewn lots that need to be cleaned, a majority of City Council members said.
New York City has recorded the lowest number of murders and shootings in modern history through the first five months of the year, Adams announced.
Rep. Ritchie Torres is demanding the state Division of Human Rights and NYC Commission on Human Rights probe allegations of “an insidious pattern of harassment, intimidation, and discrimination” by the Park Slope Co-op against Jews — or anyone pro-Israel.
The mom found dead in a squalid Bronx apartment next to the body of her disabled 8-year-old son was remembered at a moving memorial service yesterday — with an NYPD charity and State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie picking up the tab.
Manhattan Councilmember Gale Brewer is demanding free dental care for illegal immigrants — and revealed she’s shelled out more than $8,000 of her own dough to keep their pearly whites intact.
Felony assault is up 19% in transit, from 214 incidents at this point in 2025, to 255 as of Sunday, according to NYPD statistics.
Michael Mulgrew handily won re-election as United Federation of Teachers president Saturday, clinching more than half the votes for his sixth term. Mulgrew got 54 percent of the vote, sources said.
Members of New York City’s thriving Chinese community hope a recent City Council resolution will help educate New Yorkers about their ancestors’ contributions to the city and country as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month draws to a close.
Hundreds of street safety and immigrants rights advocates flooded the Lower Manhattan Friday evening to protest the NYPD’s recent policy of issuing criminal summonses — rather than traffic tickets — to cyclists accused of breaking the law.
A major runway at Newark Liberty International Airport reopens today, nearly two weeks earlier than expected, but flight reductions and delays are still an issue.
The Pacers won Game 6 over the Knicks, 125-108, on Saturday to clinch their second NBA Finals berth and a matchup against the league’s best regular-season team, with MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on its side, the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The federal government has canceled billions of dollars in funding for clean energy and decarbonization projects across the nation, including for a multi-million project to transition the Kraft-Heinz plant in Lowville off of fossil fuels.
Metro-North Railroad will benefit from $25 million in state funding intended to speed travel times and reduce delays on trips between Poughkeepsie and New York City.
Republicans are planning to attack their Democratic opponents over New York’s effort to force Massapequa to drop its Chiefs mascot as part of a ban on Native-American imagery in school logos.
Trump’s Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is threatening to bring a civil rights case against the Empire State for forcing a Long Island high school to ditch its Native American mascot.
County leaders in the Capital Region and Hudson Valley are pushing back against the Trump administration’s claims that they are among 15 New York counties considered to be “defying federal immigration law.”
Researchers at the UAlbany Atmospheric Sciences Research Center are working with a Boston high-tech firm to develop new ways to forecast wind and extreme weather events much faster and more accurately than current forecasting methods can.
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan donated $10,000 to Albany Forward, the political action committee supporting Chief City Auditor Dorcey Applyrs’ mayoral campaign, according to the state Board of Elections website.
After serving more than three decades in the Saratoga County District Attorney’s Office, Karen Heggen is reportedly preparing to step down before the end of her current term.
Local ambulance services will soon be available in the rural-suburban Rensselaer County town of Postenkill for the first time in 11 years.
A 14-year-old boy has been charged with starting the massive fire that destroyed the historic former Victory Mill Saturday.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
