Good morning, it’s Monday.
For a hot second this year, I toyed with cooking Thanksgiving dinner.
My family traditionally goes to one of my favorite places, Mohonk, for the big meal. And while I love that place with all my heart, holidays there are…extra. The house is completely booked, there are multiple seatings, lines to access the food, lots of kids running around. It’s joyful and bustling, yes, but also not at all calm.
It has been a tough year on the family front. There has been illness, loss, professional and personal challenges. What we need for the holidays this year is good health, good food, and good company – all in a relaxed, no stress environment.
Cooking the Thanksgiving meal, even if it was just for four to six people at most, and even if I kept the menu relatively simple with a small charcuterie board as an appetizer, salad, roast turkey and a few sides (mashed potatoes and stuffing are a must), and a pie or two for dessert, seemed the exact opposite of chill.
Just thinking about the purchasing, the prep, and the timing of the whole thing made me feel exhausted.
I knew we wanted to go to New Paltz so my parents didn’t have to travel. I started looking around for somewhere that was doing dinners to go with all the fixings, and landed on The Main Course, which, if you’ve never been there, deserves a stop next time you’re in town. Their food is reliably solid and it has the benefit of being right up the street from my childhood home.
So on Thanksgiving morning, we will engage in the tradition of pre-feast exercise – haven’t decided quite what, yet, but enough to take the edge off the guilt of overeating later in the day. My parents will walk up the street shortly before 11 a.m. and pick up the food, and we will walk the dogs, get dressed, and head downstate.
We’ll warm things up and eat whenever everyone is hungry. There will be no stress and no mess. There will be leftovers – I made sure to over-order. And we’ll all be thankful (or so I’m hoping).
If you do happen to be the type of person who relishes tackling a homemade meal for the masses, I hope you’ve already pre-ordered your turkey, taken stock of what’s in your pantry, planned the menu and purchased your non-perishables to get ahead of the holiday shopping rush. If you’re feeling really ambitious, perhaps consider deep cleaning your kitchen and pantry.
These are the tasks the experts say you can do this far out from the big day.
More rain showers are in the forecast this morning. Things should dry out around noon or so, with clouds persisting throughout the remainder of the day. Temperatures will top out in the low 50s, which is going to feel downright chilly after the warmish weather we’ve been enjoying.
Looking ahead, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s some snow in the forecast. Helpfully, this will coincide with a trip to Florida that we’ve had planned for some time. I’ll try not to gloat too much about the sunshine and 75+ degree weather we’re enjoying.
In the headlines…
President Trump has admitted that his hardline immigration policy went too far after the GOP’s sweeping losses in the midterm elections last week.
Trump conceded that his immigration policies were “too tough,” saying in an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday that mass deportations hurt him during the midterm elections.
Trump is elevating Stephen Miller, his powerful domestic policy adviser and a deeply ideological Trump loyalist, to be his next chief of staff in the wake of shattering Republican losses in the midterm elections.
Trump’s decision to replace Susie Wiles with Miller, who conceived of the mass deportation policy Tump implemented since he took office, will fundamentally shift the circle of advisers around the president.
White House deputy chief of staff Richard Walters is departing from his role in the wake of Miller being announced as the new chief of staff.
Hakeem Jeffries, the likely next Speaker of the House, vowed that Dems will not work with President Trump’s new chief of staff, in the first big sign of friction after the party’s major upset in Tuesday’s midterms.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said he is ordering the DOJ to investigate what he calls “criminal extortion” by Democratic leaders, accusing them of threatening administration officials with impeachment and Republican donors with imprisonment.
In a post on Truth Social, the president said he offered Dana White, the president and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, a job as White House press secretary.
Trump shared an animated video depicting White as the new White House press secretary — with a team of professional fighters on hand to physically attack reporters.
Trump later said he was only kidding about the whole thing, but the UFC executive told reporters at a post-fight press conference in London that he planned to meet with Trump in Washington, D.C., today to discuss the offer.
Trump continues to assert that incumbent Alaska Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan is “leading substantially” in the state’s Senate race — despite figures showing an edge for Democrat Mary Peltola.
Sen. Chuck Schumer’s aides say he has locked down another term as majority leader, having secured commitments of support from enough Democratic senators to be elected majority leader in a private vote scheduled for next month.
“Some of the very same states where we won this election will offer new opportunities to expand our majority in 2028 — Iowa, Kansas, the Carolinas and more,” Schumer said.
Jeffries, the Democratic leader poised to become the next speaker of the House, said Sunday that he would support impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, joining the growing calls to remove one of Trump’s top Cabinet secretaries.
Even as Schumer and Jeffries prepare to lead Congress, primary challenges scenarios in 2028 are already emerging in New York.
Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi is warning Democrats not to blow their new political momentum by rushing to impeach President Trump, calling the prospect a “waste of time” that would turn off voters.
Twenty Democrats and six Republicans will be heading to Washington in January as New York’s delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives, according to the Associated Press.
Gov. Kathy Hochul admitted she’s open to raising taxes, especially when it comes to funding the estimated multi-billion dollar universal childcare program, which was also a campaign promise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Exactly one week before Election Day, Hochul had told NBC New York “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. All I know is my position is I don’t want — I will not raise taxes. I’m very clear on that.”
As Democratic leaders discuss potential options for the 2028 presidential election, the governor of New York — a position that often carries higher ambitions — has been largely left out of the discourse.
Hochul is moving to strip the Seneca Nation of its sovereign control over parcels of land in Buffalo and Grand Island, targeting a site where the tribe is building a controversial gas station and pot shop.
Hochul and Mamdani pledged more support for Puerto Rico on Friday as it remains mired in multiple crises, asserting during a trip to the island that the sweeping Democratic win in the U.S. midterm elections will be a boon for the U.S. territory.
Hochul’s husband Bill has been collecting deferred compensation from the same hospitality and gambling giant showering state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie with Boston Celtics tickets, Delaware North, though he claimed to have cut ties with the company.
New York’s stagnant and aging population is killing business expansion — with residents age 65 and older now making up nearly 20% of the state, according to a sobering report from Hochul’s office.
In a scathing NY Post op-ed, soon-to-be former North County Rep. Elise Stefanik lambasted New York Republicans for their performance in the midterm elections and called on them to rebuild their party infrastructure.
Unlike the rest of NYC and much of the US, Staten Island Republican candidates survived Election Day’s blue tsunami, where the GOP lost control of both chambers of Congress and Democrats expanded their dominance of the state Legislature by 14 seats.
Mamdani said that of all the platform items belonging to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which he is a member, the most “acceptable part” for “mainstream America” is abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
During a rapid-fire question-and-answer round with Fox News’ Shannon Bream, Mamdani denied wanting to eliminate borders, the Supreme Court — and jails.
Mamdani can’t be president, so he’s trying to be the next best thing: a progressive kingmaker for 2028. He reportedly has been meeting privately with union leaders, urgently talking up the need for a labor-aligned or leftist candidate to run for the White House.
The Mamdani administration will be forced to hand ICE the names and birthdays of certain residents of a city-run Bronx homeless shelter, according to a bombshell federal ruling.
The Mamdani administration is expanding two fresh produce programs that help SNAP recipients take home free fruits and vegetables.
New York City is providing $500,000 to some pantries to provide pet food during an affordability crisis that is affecting humans, but could also be a problem for their pets.
After a winter that saw New Yorkers die during a prolonged cold snap and residents struggle to dig out from a blizzard, Mamdani is putting $25 million toward an expanded emergency cold-weather response, alongside changes to how the city clears snow and ice.
The Mamdani administration will deploy more nurses and add warming buses and beds across the city this winter, to better protect New Yorkers sleeping on the street from extreme cold.
NYC Council Speaker Julie Menin on Friday announced plans for an oversight hearing on Nov. 20 “to examine residential fire safety, following a concerning increase in fatal fires, including battery-related fires, across the city.”
Katie Suarez, the 28-year-old woman who was fatally stabbed while jogging in Brooklyn, has saved four lives through organ donation, according to the nonprofit LiveOnNY.
The mother of the public school substitute aide and former NYPD cop arrested for killing Brooklyn Suarez is defending her son — even as new details emerge on how police tied him to the slaying.
Five years after opening their popular Moonrise Bagels shop in Woodstock and quickly expanding their stuffed-bagel business across the Hudson Valley, founders Ali Chetkof Rhodes and Jeremy Rhodes are hoping to get some “sharks” hooked on their creation.
The city of Albany is preparing to borrow $10 million on Wall Street to pay employee salaries and other expenses in the final months of the year.
The president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute just got reappointed — despite him telling the school’s board not to bother giving him a new contract.
An Albany man who carried out two different shootings last year, one of which targeted two city police officers, faces up to 75 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to a six-count indictment on Friday.
To muster enough votes to pass its annual budget, the Schenectady City Council added liberal sales tax projections to a risky city $122 million budget already heavily reliant on uncommitted state funding.
Pioneer Bancorp of Colonie, the parent company of Pioneer Bank, has agreed to a $6.2 million legal settlement to end a spate of civil lawsuits related to the Michael Mann bank fraud case back in 2019.
More than 1,000 runners ran through the City of Schenectady’s streets at Sunday’s 50th annual Stockade-athon road race.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
