Good morning, it’s Tuesday, and it’s the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack by Hamas in Israel, in which 1,195 people were killed – 736 Israeli civilians (including 38 children), 79 foreign nationals, and 379 members of the security forces.
The attacks, which occurred during the Jewish holiday is Simchas Torah, were incredibly brutal and inhumane. They sparked a violent response from Israel in the form of a war in Gaza that drags on to this day and has killed multiple thousands of Palestinians – including children – and sparked a massive humanitarian crisis.
The war has created – or maybe exposed? – deep rifts in both the Democratic Party and the Jewish community.
A recent poll from the New York Times and Siena University recently found that support for Israel has eroded, with a majority of American voters in opposition to sending additional economic and military aid to support the country in its military efforts. In addition, about six in 10 poll respondents said Israel should end its attacks – even if the remaining hostages were not released and Hamas was not eliminated, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said is the war’s primary goal.
Perhaps most stark was the reversal in the percentage of Americans who say they support the Palestinians over Israel (35 percent) instead of vice versa (34 percent) – for the first time since the New York Times began polling voters about their sympathies in 1998.
This is a seismic shift with long term political implications that is playing out right now in the New York City mayor’s race. It used to be that candidates and sitting elected officials were required to focus on the “three Is” – Israel, Ireland, and Italy – in other to win in the five boroughs. That has since shifted in recent years due to ongoing immigration trends to Israel, Ireland, and Puerto Rico.
But now, this long-held aphorism has been upended, enabling a little-known Socialist Democrat assembly member, Zohran Mamdani, to cobble together a new, diverse coalition that appears poised to propel him to victory in the Nov. 4 general election.
Historians and pundits will no doubt be studying and opining on this phenomenon for years to come. But the human toll of the Oct. 7 attacks and subsequent war is already clear.
The UN has declared the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to be “catastrophic”, as famine, disease, and displacement of some 90 percent of the population – in some cases more than once – continue and aid into the war-torn region is severely restricted. Meanwhile, an estimated 48 hostages are still being held in Gaza by Hamas and other militant groups, with only 20 believed to be still alive.
There appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. Peace talks got underway yesterday in Egypt – indirect talks, that is, between Israel and Hamas, moderated by the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt – on at least some points of the 20-point proposal unveiled last week by President Donald Trump. Hamas has said it is willing to release the remaining hostages and Israel has, in turn, agreed in principle to a limited troop pullback – on the condition that Hamas disarms.
There is clearly a LONG way to go here. I would be lying if I said I was optimistic, but I am hopeful. And I guess that’s as good as it’s going to get right now.
The weather forecast is bringing a mixed bag for us today, with a mix of clouds and sun in the morning. The clouds will steadily increase throughout the day, with showers starting early in the evening that become heavier as the night progresses. The high temperature will still flirt with 80 degrees, but it will be cooler than yesterday.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump called on Democrats to reopen the government, saying he will only discuss a potential deal on extending health care tax credits once they support the GOP funding proposal.
In a statement on Truth Social, Trump appeared to shift from his earlier comments, when he signaled he was open to a deal with Democrats on health care, an issue at the core of the shutdown debate.
The Senate yesterday pushed the government shutdown to the one-week mark as Democrats blocked the GOP’s “clean” stopgap funding bill from advancing for a fifth time.
Senators voted 52-42 on the House-passed bill, which needed 60 votes to advance and would have funded the government at Biden-era spending levels until late November.
Trump believed the government shutdown would deliver Republicans a swift and decisive political victory. But with the stalemate now likely to spill into a second week, that calculation is looking increasingly shaky.
In a surprise announcement, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that she will support extending the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidies to prevent premiums from doubling.
As Republicans try to pin blame for shutdown damage on Democrats, they are hailing a federal bureaucracy they normally bash as wasteful and overreaching.
Two years since Hamas’s deadly terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Trump’s push for peace in the Gaza Strip appears within reach as Israeli and Hamas officials started indirect negotiations in earnest yesterday in Egypt.
The second anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks comes with peace talks underway, but with hostages still in Gaza, more than 67,000 Palestinians dead and Israel more isolated than ever before.
Trump is set to meet today with Edan Alexander, an Israeli-American who had been held hostage by Hamas for 19 months, to mark two years since the attacks in Israel that killed hundreds.
The president expressed satisfaction with the “technical talks” on implementing his 20-point Gaza peace plan — saying Hamas is “agreeing to things” during negotiations in Egypt.
A federal judge declined to block the deployment of National Guard units to Illinois as Trump threatened to assume emergency powers to bypass court battles and send in the troops.
Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act — an 1807 law that grants the president emergency powers to deploy troops on U.S. soil — in response to recent court rulings that have blocked his efforts to deploy the National Guard in major American cities.
Air travelers are starting to see the impact of a government shutdown, as both Denver International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport experienced ground delays Monday because of air traffic staff shortages.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused yesterday to consider Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to appeal her conviction for trafficking teenage girls and young women to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein.
The decision means Epstein’s right hand and the only person criminally tried for aiding the late financier’s extensive abuse has little hope for release from her 20-year sentence, outside of a presidential pardon.
Democrats are blasting Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., for waiting to swear in a freshly elected soon-to-be Democratic House member and specifically arguing he is doing so to delay a vote on releasing files on Epstein.
The Trump administration defended its plan to mint a $1 coin bearing the image of President Trump despite the fact that an 1866 law dictates that only the deceased can appear on U.S. currency.
Initial designs for the coins released by the U.S. treasurer last week stirred controversy and accusations that the Trump administration was violating the law so the president could honor himself by putting his face on a coin.
Gov. Kathy Hochul backed out of events in the North Country Saturday where protesters upset with her prison policies were waiting to greet her, sources told The NY Post.
A compromise plan would nix the so-called “100-foot rule” that provides free natural gas connections to new homes.
State Sen. Peter Oberacker, a Republican from Otsego County, announced that he’s running for Congress against U.S. Rep. Josh Riley, the Democrat incumbent.
Hochul’s “bell-to-bell” cellphone ban has been in effect at schools across New York State for a month now. How do you feel about the ban?
State mental health officials have authorized the opening of 13 new certified community behavioral health clinics, federally approved facilities that integrate mental health and substance-use treatment under one roof, Hochul announced.
New York is investing another $15.5 million through its ConnectALL initiative to expand broadband and mobile access.
A top prosecutor in Virginia has informed colleagues she plans to decline to seek charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, resisting intense pressure from Trump, according to two people familiar with her discussions.
With only three months left in office, Mayor Eric Adams announced yesterday that he’s taking a trip to Albania – with lodging and ground transportation paid for by the Albanian government.
The four-day trip, which started yesterday and ends Thursday, came at the invitation of the prime minister of Albania, Edi Rama, who featured prominently in the successful 2023 corruption prosecution of a former top F.B.I. spycatcher.
The decision by Adams, a lame-duck mayor, to spend nearly a week of his remaining time in office visiting the Balkan nation raised eyebrows back in New York.
Mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo said that he no longer kisses people on the cheek unless they “initiate” the smooch — as he’s grown more careful since his “painful” sexual harassment scandal.
Socialist mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani admitted that he might need another plan to fund his $10 billion freebie-filled agenda if he can’t score tax hikes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations.
Mamdani is giving New Yorkers a chance to see how much cash they would save under his administration — if he’s able to make good on his campaign promises.
Mamdani’s campaign launched a “Savings Calculator“—a novelty tool (and email collector) where voters can tabulate how much a rent freeze, free bus service, and free childcare would save them annually.
Mamdani, the 33-year-old favorite to be the next mayor of New York, had a “less than comforting” meeting with the city’s business leaders one month before election day.
Cuomo launched a scathing attack on Mamdani for posing with an official from Uganda who pushed a law to put gay people in jail for life.
There has been little evidence that Adams’s decision to end his re-election bid has had a major effect on Cuomo’s bid to attract donors or voters.
GOP mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa revealed that he’s receiving around-the-clock security because of “credible” threats urging him to drop his longshot campaign — but the NYPD said it has no record of them.
Rudy Giuliani, who served as mayor of New York City from 1994 until 2001, endorsed Sliwa for the same position in the upcoming 2025 election.
MTA Chair Janno Lieber said Amtrak keeps delaying work on a new transit line in the Bronx because their crews won’t show up to work, and became visibly incensed when he was asked about the MTA’s ongoing Penn Access project.
NYPD Chief of Department John Chell has told close associates he’s planning to put in his papers to retire soon, possibly as early as this week, after an at times tumultuous tenure as the city’s top uniformed cop, according to multiple sources.
Chell is exiting the department after serving as the highest ranking uniformed officer since the start of the year and helping oversee a notable drop in major crime since the city grappled with post-pandemic highs.
Scores of illegally-parked vehicles – mostly driven by city workers and contractors – in downtown Brooklyn are brazenly flouting the law, prompting “dangerous” road conditions for passersby, a new bombshell report revealed.
A 60-year-old woman was killed yesterday morning after two men riding on the same e-bike slammed into her along a popular bicycle route near the Brooklyn Navy Yard, police said.
A Nassau County judge has upheld a local law that bars transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports at county-run facilities, a decision the New York Civil Liberties Union says it will appeal.
A Long Island school district, which launched a new controversial bathroom policy barring transgender students from using restrooms based on their gender identity, has been hit with a civil rights lawsuit.
Any Schenectady resident looking to get into politics by serving on the City Council may be asked to submit their resume in order to be considered for the high-profile post vacated in August by Joe Mancini.
Lorenz Kraus, the local man who admitted in a TV interview to killing his parents in 2017, faces grand larceny and identity theft charges that accuse him of stealing from his parents’ banking accounts and investments in the years since they disappeared.
A fire on Twiller Street in Albany yesterday left five people dead. When fire crews arrived at the two-story home just before 10:45 a.m., they found the house engulfed in flames, with fire shooting out the first-floor window. More than 40 firefighters responded.
Towns along Lake Champlain are closely monitoring their drinking water supplies as the dry weather has impacted their operations.
Members of Troy’s largest government labor union are getting a long-awaited raise. The new contract ratified last week for the Civil Service Employees Association’s Troy unit includes a 4% increase in effective and retroactive pay.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
