Good morning, it’s Monday – that’s the bad news. The good news? It’s a four-day workweek (for a lot of people, anyway), thanks to the federal holiday Veterans Day, which will be observed tomorrow.
The start-stop nature of this week is bound to cause confusion. But we’ll get through it together.
Seeing all the little kids all dressed up for Halloween recently made me feel nostalgic. I had an unusual childhood, spending a number of my formative years traveling and living abroad with my mom and dad in the pre-divorce days.
I did a lot of reading as a kid, in part to keep myself entertained int he absence of any siblings, but also because my TV consumption was limited – by design by my mother who was way ahead of her time when it came to childhood brain development being impacted by screen time and also healthy eating. (This is a post for another day).
Among the shows I was allowed to watch was Sesame Street, which was deemed “educational” and therefore worthwhile TV. The iconic show, which features a blend of singing and acting by human and puppet characters along with infusions animation, debuted on this day in 1969.
Sesame Street is a well known household name today, but at the time of its inception it was a brand-new concept. It was the brainchild of a woman named Joan Ganz Cooney, who, along with a foundation executive named Llyod Morrisett, thought that an innovative TV show could help disadvantaged kids prepare for kindergarten through curriculum-based content that was also fun.
Ganz Cooney and Morrisett founded the Children’s Television Workshop, which was the precursor to Sesame Street. CTW is now known as Sesame Workshop. They then enlisted the famed puppeteer Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, to bring the show’s non-human characters like Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, Kermit the Frog, Big Bird, and others to life.
The idea was not only controversial – Henson himself was reluctant at first to join the project – it was downright radical.
Remember, this was the time of the assassinations of JFK Jr. and MLK, Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement. There was a lot of upheaval and upset over the realization that some kids – particularly inner-city children of color – were not able to access the same quality education and opportunities as their wealthier white counterparts.
Sesame Street was not only the first pre-school-focused TV show to integrate educational content with entertainment, it was the first show with a multicultural cast – an important factor for its founders, who wanted the viewership to be able to see themselves in the actors on the screen.
Sesame Street was an immediate smash hit and ended up longest-running kids program in TV history. Its list of accolades is extensive, including 227 Emmy Awards, 10 Grammy Awards, and five George Foster Peabody Awards. In 2019, the intersection of West 63rd Street and Broadway and Manhattan was officially named “Sesame Street” in honor of the show’s 50th anniversary.
This National Sesame Street Day comes at a perilous and uncertain time for the show, which airs on Netflix and PBS after breaking with Warner Bros. Discovery and the streaming service Max in 2024. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps pay for PBS, has closed as a result of the Trump administration’s decision to cut its funding.
The CEO of Sesame Workshop has said that the funding clawbacks are not an “existential threat” accounting for a relatively small portion of its budget, which is encouraging. I can’t imagine a world without Elmo.
It seems like the glory days of fall are over from a weather perspective. After a fairly dreary Sunday, we are on tap for a string of not-great days, with lots of clouds and (gulp) even some snow showers potentially showing up today, along with rain. Highs will only be in the low 40s.
Forecasters have placed New York City, Long Island, and parts of New Jersey under a freeze watch as unseasonably bone-chilling temperatures are expected to blanket the East Coast early this week.
Break out those heavy coats!
In the headlines…
A group of Democratic Senators broke with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer late yesterday to vote with the Republican majority on moving forward with temporarily reopening the federal government from its longest shutdown in history.
The deal would fund the government for several weeks and guarantee a later vote on extending Affordable Care Act tax credits that are set to expire on January 1. The legislation still needs to pass the full Senate and the House for the 40-day shutdown to end.
Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he hopes that the government shutdown will end before Thanksgiving. “Donald Trump needs to get off the golf course and get back to the negotiating table,” Jeffries said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The vote late yesterday was 60 to 40, with seven Democrats and one independent joining with most Republicans to advance the measure. Four of them are former governors of their home states and none are up for reelection in next year’s midterms.
The shutdown is not over yet. The 60-to-40 vote cleared the way for the Senate to formally debate the spending measure before a final vote. The House, meanwhile, has been on an extended recess and has not yet scheduled a return date.
The Trump administration told states they must “immediately undo” any actions to provide full food stamp benefits to low-income families, which added to the chaos and uncertainty surrounding the nation’s largest anti-hunger program during the shutdown.
New York began sending out full federal food assistance benefits yesterday, despite an overnight order from the Trump administration that called for states to “immediately undo” payments.
A spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state plans to get funds to all New York SNAP recipients by the end of the week “if the federal government upholds their commitment.”
Hochul’s office said yesterday that SNAP benefits went out to New Yorkers using federal funds after the longest-ever federal government shutdown cut off food stamp payments for the first time.
Air Force One did a flyover of Northwest Stadium in Maryland yesterday as Trump arrived to watch and participate in a Veterans’ Day “Salute to the Service” halftime ceremony.
Trump granted pardons for 77 individuals tied to a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election – including his close allies Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro, a Justice Department attorney announced late last night.
The full list of those pardoned, each of the president’s co-defendants who faced charges related to the 2020 “fake electors” plot, was posted to X just before 11 p.m. by Trump’s “clemency czar” attorney Ed Martin.
Those given a “full, complete and unconditional” pardon were allegedly entangled in a scheme to organize alternate slates of electors from battleground states that former President Biden won, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Darryl Strawberry, the baseball slugger who won the World Series while with the New York Mets and Yankees, but whose career was tainted by drug use and other legal problems, received a pardon last week for his three-decade-old tax evasion conviction.
In a social media post on Friday, Strawberry, 63, said that he received a call from Trump telling him about the pardon in his 1995 tax case. “This has nothing to do with politics — it’s about a Man, President Trump, caring deeply for a friend,” he wrote.
The director-general of the BBC has resigned amid scandal after the British state broadcaster shared doctored footage of Trump speaking on Jan. 6.
Tim Davie, who has headed up the publicly-funded media outlet for five years, said he was taking “ultimate responsibility” for recent “mistakes” made in a statement published by the BBC.
Thousands of flights were canceled this weekend after federal restrictions on flying were put in place at the nation’s busiest airports. And the cuts are expected to grow in the coming days, threatening to wreak further havoc for airlines and travelers.
As of last night, over 7,200 flights traveling into, from and within the U.S. have been delayed and almost 2,200 have been canceled, according to FlightAware.com.
Among airports with the longest delays — almost all blamed on staffing — are those in the New York City region, according to FAA advisories.
At LaGuardia in Queens, the average delay for a departing flight is more than 2 hours, 30 minutes, the FAA says. The airport said on X early today that an “increased number of travelers” would affect flight times.
The FAA is slated to limit business jets and other private flights to some of the country’s largest airports to ease strains on air-traffic personnel during the government shutdown.
A “substantial” number of Americans will likely miss Thanksgiving with their families because of air-travel snarls thanks to the government shutdown, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned yesterday.
Republican U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik’s formal entrance into the governor’s race sets up the prospect of an unprecedented matchup in which women are expected to be their major party’s nominees to lead New York.
In the weeks leading up to her widely anticipated campaign, Stefanik had escalated her criticism of Hochul, regularly attacking the incumbent over her decision to endorse Mamdani.
Stefanik ripped into Hochul last night for endorsing “raging antisemite” Zohran Mamdani for mayor as she accepted an award during the annual gala of the Zionist Organization of America.
In response to Stefanik’s attacks, Hochul said on CNN: “I will never stop being a moderate Democrat.”
New York has approved permits for a controversial pipeline that would transport natural gas from Pennsylvania through New Jersey and to an offshore transfer point near Queens, where it would increase fuel supplies for New York City and on Long Island.
As the longest-ever federal shutdown stretches into its second month, thousands of upstate New Yorkers who rely on heating assistance are at risk of being left in the cold.
The state attorney general’s office will not file charges against a State Police trooper who fatally shot a man in a mental health crisis three years ago, though investigators concluded that officers should receive better training for dealing with such scenarios.
Lawyers for the New York attorney general began a high-stakes effort on Friday to convince a federal judge to dismiss the criminal case against her, calling it a “flagrantly unconstitutional” prosecution fueled solely by President Trump’s animus.
New York state made major progress over the summer in controlling an invasive species that has decimated hemlock trees up and down the East Coast by introducing two additional species not native to the East Coast that consume the damaging one.
The rapid development of solar projects across upstate is helping New York try to reach the mandates of the 2019 Climate Act — which many have said are unattainable under the statute’s time frame — but also dividing communities and families.
Hochul on Saturday said she remains confident Jessica Tisch will stay on as NYPD commissioner under NYC Mayor-elect Mamdani.
Hochul, who controls the MTA, the state agency that operates the city’s public transit, told reporters in San Juan, P.R., that she was not ready to move forward with Mamdani’s free bus plan and that she would prefer to subsidize fares only for low-income riders.
Hochul spent the week celebrating Mamdani’s historic mayoral victory. Then, on Saturday in Puerto Rico, she made clear how far she’s willing to go with his progressive agenda.
The governor and New York City mayor-elect projected unity in Puerto Rico, but couldn’t completely paper over ideological cracks.
Hochul said she’s also looking at expanding a universal childcare program statewide, but the total price tag is $15 billion – all the state’s reserves – so she prefers to phase in an expansion with certain age groups and “geographically” underserved communities.
The heated contest to become City Council speaker took shape in Puerto Rico, where the leading contenders jockeyed for votes. Mamdani dodged questions about whom he supports for the job, and it is not clear if he will publicly back someone.
Mamdani ran on free childcare for babies and toddlers. When the mayor-elect takes office, his administration will have another huge group of children to worry about: the nearly 900,000 students in the city’s public schools. It will not be easy.
New York City public schools shed another 22,000 students this year, with enrollment plunging 2.4%, the steepest decline in four years, according to preliminary Department of Education data — and experts say this trend will only get worse under Mamdani.
At Somos, an annual gathering in Puerto Rico for New York’s political class, former Mamdani foe put aside their differences and tried to get information about his inner circle.
A top New York City rabbi has issued a chilling now-viral warning after Mamdani’s mayoral win: The pol’s positions on Israel may “severely threaten Jewish safety everywhere in the city.”
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch delivered his blistering take on the radical extremist in a fiery sermon at his liberal Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side on Friday.
Jamaal Bowman, the disgraced fire alarm-pulling former congressman who illegally managed a middle school without a principal’s license, is “pushing hard” to be the city’s next schools chancellor and is vowing to lead a “revolution in our public schools.”
Real estate is booming in parts of tony Connecticut as wealthy Big Apple residents rush to snap up homes there thanks to “the Mamdani Effect,” according to brokers.
New York’s political and civic leaders have been quietly preparing for the possibility that Trump will follow through on this threats to deploy federal troops and immigration agents to the city.
Alarmed at what Trump may do in response to Mamdani’s election, Hochul has devised a virtual war room and convened a series of conversations with law enforcement, business officials and activist groups to stop or at least mitigate any federal incursion.
Nassau County leaders unveiled a marketing campaign Friday to reel in New York City dwellers and businesses fearful of Mayor-elect Mamdani’s incoming socialist regime.
City Councilman Chi Osse is preparing to challenge Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in the US House next year — against the explicit objections of Mayor-elect Mamdani.
Former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio is reportedly back on the market after an alleged affair with an out-of-state elected official put the brakes on his 10-month relationship with progressive activist Nomiki Konst.
Former Bronx Assemblyman Michael Blake, who is looking to unseat Rep. Ritchie Torres in a 2026 primary, blasted Torres as beholden to pro-Israel lobbying group after deleting social media posts showing him rubbing elbows with the same organization.
Patrick D. Brady, 42, a veteran New York City firefighter, died in the line of duty on Saturday after suffering a heart attack while battling a blaze in Brooklyn, city officials said.
A former top federal prosecutor who resigned rather than abandon a criminal case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York City is joining a law firm that has occupied an unusual niche during the Trump administration.
The massive Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was lifted into place in the Midtown hub Saturday, marking the official start of the holiday season.
A Lake Luzerne man seeking a rare amendment to the Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan Map has asked the Adirondack Park Agency to withdraw his proposal for now. The agency said no.
A preliminary report on a plane crash in Saratoga County last month that killed the pilot and seriously injured a passenger shows that the aircraft began losing power almost immediately after taking off.
Paul Tagliabue, who presided over an era of labor peace, soaring revenues and expansion for the NFL in his 17 years as commissioner while facing rising concerns over a lack of minority hiring, the effects of concussions and the use of drugs, died at 84.
Pitchers Emmanuel Clase and Luis L. Ortiz were indicted by prosecutors in Brooklyn, N.Y., on charges related to an alleged scheme to rig bets on pitches thrown in MLB games.
“The defendants’ alleged greed not only established an unfair advantage for select bettors, but also sullied the reputation of America’s pastime,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Christopher Raia said in a statement. The two have denied any wrongdoing.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
