Episode 45: July 18-24, 2021

July 18-24, 2021

Good afternoon, I’m Dennis Futoryan, and this is the 25th hour, helping you remember everything that happened beyond the 24/7 news cycle. Now, in this week’s news for the week of July 18-24, 2021, de Blasio mandates vaccinations on City hospital staff, one of the federal investigations into Cuomo’s nursing home scandals is dropped, Biden focuses on combatting the rising threat from the COVID Delta variant, House Speaker Pelosi rejected Trump-supporting Republicans from joining the January 6th committee, and a key vote to move forward on infrastructure reform fails in the Senate. Now, onto the show; things may have changed by the time you hear this.

De Blasio

• COVID:
  • The Delta continues to be the dominant COVID strain in NYC, with case averages soaring to 32%. De Blasio instituted a vaccine mandate for every public hospital employee, leading nurses, including those part of the SEIU union, to protest this week. Almost a third of City hospital staffers remain unvaccinated. Nurses are allowed to forego vaccines if they prove they’re not infected with COVID by taking weekly tests. The Mayor also pleaded with private sector employers to think about enacting vaccine mandates to combat the Delta variant. Councilman Mark Levine, chair of the Council Health Committee, recommended that indoor mask mandates be put back in place, even for those who are fully vaccinated, but the Mayor rejected the move. Additionally, the Mayor said that pop-up vaccination sites would appear at 25 Summer Rising schools throughout the City.
  • Even though other counties throughout the state have seen their unemployment rates drop as the country was crawling out of the pandemic, NYC still has pretty high numbers, standing at 10.1% last month, down from 18.7% the year prior, even though some metro areas have cut their rates by half. 
  • It may have been bad timing, but de Blasio is receiving flak for moving 8k homeless men back to congregate shelters out of hotels during a time when the Delta variant is causing COVID numbers to creep back up again. 
  • But despite the rising numbers and the concern, de Blasio continued to announce details of upcoming “homecoming” concerts meant to signify the City’s return to normal from the pandemic.
• Elections:
  • The presumptive next mayor of NYC, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, continues to make the rounds with other New York officials against gun violence. Adams appeared with Senator Kirstin Gillibrand, as the Senator unveils her new bill to add gun trafficking as a federal crime. Adams said that lawlessness has become the norm in NYC, and revealed that he has begun transition discussions with de Blasio, including plans to tackle crime in the City, all before he even goes against the Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, in November. Adams also said that he might split time between Gracie Mansion and his Bed-Stuy home if he’s elected Mayor.
  • With great power comes great responsibility, as Uncle Ben would say, as reporters started looking into whether Eric Adams’ Brooklyn Borough Hall staff were violating ethical rules against working in government and campaigning at the same time at the behest of the boss. Adams’ deputy borough president, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, for example, kept earning her $172,900 annual salary while at the same time working on Adams’ campaign, receiving a total of $40k through June 30th, according to records and reporting by the news publication The City. Adams’ campaign replied that Adams didn’t force anyone to work for his campaign and that Lewis-Martin worked under a special schedule that separated her official and campaign duties.
• Other elections:
  • The Republican nominee for Comptroller, John Tabacco, filed a police report claiming that Board of Election chief clerks Don Bosco and Anthony Andriulli kicked him out of a ballot-counting session for Republican Borough President candidate Vito Fossella, and got cops to come in and arrest him for not wearing a mask even though one wasn’t required. Tobacco filed countercharges against Bosco and Andriulli for assault.
  • We reported a few weeks back that Queens Community Board member John Choe was being investigated by his Community Board for soliciting campaign donations from his fellow Board members, started an unauthorized Facebook group for the Board, didn’t keep up a good attendance record, and defamed fellow Board members by calling them corrupt, but a recent special committee couldn’t substantiate the big allegation of Choe trying to push for the Flushing Waterfront Development Plan “for the right price” at a Board hearing. Nevertheless, it was recommended by the Board’s special committee that Choe be kicked off the Board, and it happened the same day that the City Board of Election certified Choe’s third-place finish in a City Council race.
• Schools:
  • An audit released by Comptroller Scott Stringer found that poor management made schools miss out on $180m in federal relief funding, which made students miss out on those funds as well. Stringer said that Education Department officials missed the deadline to submit paperwork that could’ve given them reimbursements for speech, occupational and physical therapy sessions.
  • The nonprofit Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter has announced an initiative to provide subsidized housing for homeless CUNY students. 18% of CUNY college students said they were homeless in a 2019 survey, with a pilot program focusing on the Bronx. 
  • Bronx parents and teachers protested in Manhattan this week asking for a remote schooling option for the fall as the City prepares to go back to a full in-person schedule. The Delta variant and limited vaccinations amongst students are at the top of their concern.
• Crimes:
  • De Blasio sent in a team of police officers to clear out illegal vendors that set up shop at a Plaza at Webster Avenue and East Fordham Road in the Bronx, a regular mainstay for the vendors that the City said haven’t acquired the proper permits to do business there. Shop owners in the area have complained that vendors were illegally doing business there and the Mayor pledged to tackle the issue. While de Blasio was quick to send in the cops, he’s late in his own legally-required appointment of four members to the Street Vendor Advisory Board, which the City Council has already done its part in choosing its six appointees.
  • A pilot program aimed at making sure police respond less to mental health 911 calls isn’t seeing the results some want, as police are still responding to the majority of 911 mental health calls.
  • The nonprofit Transportation Alternatives released data that shows traffic deaths are on the rise this year, with 124 deaths recorded from January 1st to June 30th.
  • The Manhattan DAs office has charged NYPD Sergeant Phillip Wong with assault and attempted assault during two arrests made. One episode saw Wong punch an already handcuffed man in a Harlem holding cell in 2019, and another episode involved Wong kneeling on a man’s back and bouncing on it in an Upper West Side subway station last year.
• Development:
  • The state team from the Empire State Development group working on fulfilling Cuomo’s $306b project to redevelop Midtown Manhattan to expand Penn Station are putting on a new offensive to get local Community Boards 4 and 5 on board with the plan, saying the neighborhoods can miss out on their chance to get federal funds tied to development if they don’t act fast. The Empire Station Complex doesn’t have to go through the local land use review procedure but still needs community input. 
  • A cluster site of homeless shelters in the Bronx, 14 in total, may be transformed into 777 affordable housing units at the cost of $122m, after a deal was reached between developers and City housing officials. 
  • The SoHo rezoning has hit another snag as Councilwomen Margaret Chin and Carlina Rivera are accusing the City Planning Commission of ignoring local community input, which is an essential function of the land use rezoning procedure. Chin and Rivera are saying the rezoning plan is sorely lacking in the area of building more affordable housing. 
  • The City Planning Department released a 10-year strategy on their website with a sprawling wishlist to build new city infrastructure, everything from new schools, housing, and transit stops.
  • In the midst of the devastating flooding that occurred last week in the City’s subways and the stark dangers presented by climate change, the Gothamist reported on new research that shows the City’s flood maps are outdated by 14 years.
• Transportation:
  • The MTA has decided to wait a year to raise fares, pointing to the suffering commuters went through from the pandemic. Larry Schwartz, the MTA’s finance chair (who is also being investigated for allegedly mixing public and political acts as Cuomo’s vaccine czar when he called county officials gauging their support for the Governor after his scandals blew up), told reporters outside of MTA offices of the delay. Under an agreement with state lawmakers, the MTA has been raising fares every two years since 2009.
  • The transportation agency has one of its most severe worker shortages, with a 15% decrease in June that can potentially continue the delays in subway service. The agency later in the week said that there would be a 15% cut to service in 2023, saying it was just a need to adapt to the City’s current pandemic landscape. 

City Council

• Kepi v. Carr:
  • The race for a Staten Island City Council seat is in the midst of a brutal hand recount as US Marine Marko Kepi and chief of Staff to Councilman Steven Matteo, David Carr, trade insulting barbs with one another. Carr has accused Kepi of election fraud, as Kepi has been credibly accused of fraud by the City Board of Elections and is being investigated by the Staten Island DA for alleged ballot harvesting and forging voter registrations. Kepi has accused Carr of racism for discriminating against his Albanian background. 
• Ranked choice voting:
  • With the City’s first grand experiment into ranked choice voting finished for the most part (there are still some hand recounts as you have just heard), those that are against the new voting method are starting to try and seize the moment to paint RCV as faulty and wrong. City Councilman I. Daneek Miller (D-Queens)’s proposed legislation to put RCV back on a ballot referendum - letting City voters decide the issue - was dismissed by Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who said that most City voters approved ranked choice voting and that instead of getting rid of it, the City has to educate the voters how to use it. 
• Chaim Deutsch:
  • The staff for disgraced former Councilman Chaim Deutsch are out of a job officially starting this week, putting the Southern Brooklyn residents that were part of his constituency out of a way to get direct constituent services. Some of the workers are now working for the Council’s central office but residents say that office is unresponsive to concerns and doesn’t know the district’s issues.

Cuomo

• COVID
  • Continuing the push to target specific areas with low vaccination rates, the Governor continued to close mass vaccination sites throughout the state, including 4 more this week.
  • Relief from the state rental aid program has finally started being sent out after last week’s reporting that the $2.4b program hadn’t started moving yet. Even though checks are being sent out, there is still anxiety about whether renters are going to be able to pay their landlords in time before eviction proceedings. 
• Scandals
  • Cuomo is refusing to release records about junior staff overtime information, saying that those records are now compiled for law enforcement purposes and that releasing them would interfere with investigations, most likely having something to do with probes looking into whether Cuomo used staffers to edit his COVID book while they were working.
  • The Joint Commission on Public Ethics is now looking into Larry Schwartz’z calls to county officials at the height of Cuomo’s scandals. The former vaccine czar and top Cuomo aide was calling county leaders, ostensibly to ask how their vaccine rollouts were going, and allegedly gauged the leaders’ support for the Governor, potentially mixing state business and politics. 
  • Meanwhile, Rich Azzopardi got on Assemblyman Charles Lavine’s wrong side, as Lavine, who is in charge of Cuomo’s impeachment committee, didn’t like Azzopardi’s tweet calling the sexual harassment investigations into Cuomo led by the State Attorney General Letitia James, are politically motivated, because Azzopardi thinks James can run against Cuomo for the governorship. Lavine sent a letter to Cuomo warning him to keep his aides in check. In response, Cuomo’s lawyer, Paul Fishman, wrote a letter back to Lavine saying Lavine’s own letter raised so-called constitutional concerns for singling out Azzopardi for speaking his mind.
  • Cuomo also got a sigh of relief as the Department of Justice dropped an investigation into the Governor’s handling of government-run nursing homes during the pandemic, with allegations of civil rights violations against COVID patients who were sent back to nursing homes from hospitals with the virus. The DOJ is still looking into whether Cuomo manipulated his nursing home death toll data.
• Crime:
  • Police are now officially no longer arresting airport travelers to the state for low-level amounts of weed, seizing it, or issuing tickets for it, continuing the state’s liberal marijuana policies. 
  • Jones Beach may have their concerts back now, but Cuomo isn’t having it with underage drinking and hooliganism, as the Governor announced he’s cracking down on fake IDs and teenage alcohol sales, and will be stepping up police presence at the concert venue.
  • Cuomo announced a $16m gun violence prevention initiative, following up on his disaster declaration for the state to tackle the problem. The money will be sent to 20 cities around the state for workforce training and job placement programs.
• Development:
  • The Federal Aviation Administration has approved Cuomo’s $2.1b pet project of building a monorail between LaGuardia Airport and East Queens. There were delays in the plan because of concerns that the transportation option would be slower than just driving to and from LaGuardia. 
  • The state’s Independent Redistricting Commission, tasked with seeing how to change the state’s gerrymandered electoral districts, had their first in-person and virtual hybrid meeting in Queens, with 100 residents testifying about how they would like to see the maps redrawn. The Commission is set to hold more hearings in other regions of the state before issuing their recommendations. 
• Bills:
  • Cuomo signed into law this week a measure that would give non-parent relatives kinship caregiver status, which would give guardians more legal power over raising kids they consider their own and would affect 200k kids in the state, according to AARP New York.
  • The Governor also approved a measure to raise the age of consent for marriage to 18 as part of a series of overall bills trying to end child marriage. 17 year olds can still be allowed to marry with the permission of either parents or courts.
• Drug settlement:
  • New York State Attorney General Letitia James has reached a $1.1b settlement with McKesson, Cardinal and AmerisourceBergen, three of the nation’s largest opioid distributors, for their role in the opioid epidemic in New York, which has killed hundreds of thousands. Although the companies don’t admit wrongdoing, it’s a significant victory in court for James. The state will receive the money over 17 years and will go towards addiction prevention, treatment, and recovery services. The settlement is part of the national lawsuits around the country against the distributors and Johnson & Johnson which we go over shortly.
• Nassau:
  • It’ll be prosecutor Anne Donnelly facing off against Democratic State Senator Todd Kaminsky for the battle of Nassau County District Attorney this November, as the county GOP chose Donnelly.
• Monroe:
  • In Monroe County, the Executive Adam Bello went on the offensive against his Republican legislature for introducing a so-called ethics reform bill that would ban outside employment for staff, with Bello calling it either an attack on the workers.
• Albany:
  • The Albany Common Council voted to pass what’s called a “good cause” eviction law, requiring landlords to meet one of ten conditions before they start eviction proceedings against tenants, giving tenants protection from arbitrary proceedings that can kick them out of their homes. 
• Rochester:
  • Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren appeared in court this week to plead not guilty on the firearms possession and child endangerment charges a grand jury indicted her for this week. Her husband was arrested on drugs and guns possession for paraphernalia found in the home, with Warren crying foul that the arrests happened before her reelection, which she lost to local Councilman Malik Evans. 

State Legislature

• Bail laws:
  • State Republicans have asked for an official review from the Office of Court Administration and the state Division of Criminal Justice Services about whether changes to the state’s bail laws, which have seen suspects be released due to a ban on cash bail, are linked to an increase in crime. The law has been staunchly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats for not giving judges enough discretion on whether to hold a criminal suspect, whereas bail conditions before the law would detain someone for a completely unreasonable amount of time before they’ve even got their day in court.
• Boards of Election:
  • Assemblywoman Latrice Walker has been under the spotlight in the press this week, as she is being accused of nepotism for being part of the Election Law committee overseeing the state’s boards of election despite having 4 people close to her working for the City Board.

State Judiciary

• Environmental settlement:
  • Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics and Honeywell International, 3M and DuPont Co., have agreed to settle with the upstate village of Hoosick Falls for a record $65.25m for allegedly polluting the water supply in the village. Residents of the village found toxic PFOA, or perfluorinated chemical, contamination in their own bloodstream. The settlement must still be approved by Albany Federal District Judge Lawrence E. Kahn.
• Hudson Yards tenant discrimination:
  • A lawsuit filed by three prospective low-income tenants are alleging that the developers of a Hudson Yards high-rise, Related Companies and Ery South Residential, racially discriminated against them and violated the Fair Housing Act, when the tenants were offered to live at a different address without all of the same amenities offered in the units being offered from a affordable housing lottery.
• Steve Levy:
  • Former Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy filed a notice of appeal, trying to battle the recent court decision that would publicly release a 2011 agreement settling an investigation into his violations in exchange for Levy to resign from his position. The news publication Newsday had originally requested a copy of the agreement through the Freedom of Information Law after Levy made comments about the agreement in the first place. 
• Eric Garner judicial inquiry:
  • The judicial inquiry spearheaded by Eric Garner’s mother Gwen Carr and the recently-victorious Alvin Bragg of the Democratic primary to become the next Manhattan DA will now feature sworn testimony by PBA President Patrick Lynch, as well as Internal Affairs and communications officials from the Police Department, about how they handled the death of Eric Garner. 
• Mario Batali:
  • Attorney General Letitia James, apart from the drug settlement we just mentioned, announced a settlement in a labor law case against chef Mario Batali and his business partner for fostering a hostile work environment at several of their restaurants that allowed a sexualized culture. The settlement is going for $600k.

Biden

Domestic

• COVID
  • US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said this week that he supports local mask mandates to help combat a surge of COVID infections amongst the unvaccinated due to the more contagious Delta variant. Places like Los Angeles reinstated an indoor mask mandate last week. 
  • Biden is going to increase spending on COVID testing by $1.6b as a fourth wave spurred on by the Delta variant threatens the blooming recovery the country is going through. The White House said the testing would be focused on high-risk institutions such as prions, shelters, and more. $398m has already been earmarked for small rural hospitals.
  • The State Department and the CDC jointly said that Americans should seek to avoid the UK as Britain is experiencing a resurgence in COVID cases. While the CDC said only fully vaccinated people should travel to the UK, the State Department gave out one flat sentence: Don’t travel to the UK. 
  • The Canadian government said that starting August 9th, the border with America will open up for fully vaccinated individuals, and unvaccinated kids under 12 don’t have to quarantine as long as their parents are vaccinated. The Biden administration also renewed bans on nonessential travel from Canada and Mexico until August 21st.
  • A week after Biden said Facebook is killing people with the amount of misinformation being shared about COVID and the vaccines, the President sought to walk back his comments by saying Facebook isn’t the one killing people, but the group of 12 individuals responsible for starting groups and networks spreading falsehoods about the virus, which make up around 65% of false vaccine and COVID posts. The President still urged Facebook to do more to stop the spread of misinformation, as reports came out that anti-vax groups tried going around Facebook’s filters by classifying their groups as dance parties. 
• Economy:
  • The number of unemployment claims jumped up this week, going up to 419k last week from the revised 368k claims the week before. The news of the claims made stocks on the Dow Jones go down, coupled with concerns over the Delta variant. 
  • The Treasury Department reported that only 6.5% of rental aid was released in the first half of 2021, as 7.4m renters report being behind in June. 
• Commerce Dept:
  • Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo, announced $3b in new grants for a slew of programs for regional governments as part of the American Rescue Plan. Raimondo said the grants can be used in coal mining communities or for regional tourism, as long as it’s about “investing in America,” including a $100m Build Back Better challenge, referring to Biden’s campaign slogan. 
• DOJ:
  • Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department formalized a rule to stop letting the Department easily get journalists’ records in leak cases, after announcing the effort since the Trump administration obtained secret court orders for journalists’ emails. 
  • Garland also released a new directive restricting the ability of Justice Department staff from communicating with the White House to restrict political interference, a reversal of Trump-era practice which saw a corrupt blurring of lines between the DOJ and the White House. 
  • The Attorney General was also in Chicago late this week touting gun violence prevention programs, including a firearms trafficking strike force extending to four other cities. Garland attended a listening session with those working on the task force, and met with law enforcement. 
  • The Biden administration revealed in court filings in 7 cases that it won’t seek the death penalty in those cases, continuing an overall policy not to rely on capital punishment, unlike the Trump administration which restarted the federal practice, killing 13 inmates.
• Guantanamo:
  • The Biden administration transferred its first Guantanamo Bay inmate out of the prison located in Cuba, repatriating him back to Morocco. Obama attempted to close the prison, rife with claims of torture and illegal detainment, but couldn’t do it by the end of his second term. Guantanamo now holds 39 prisoners.
• Trump:
  • The former head of Trump’s inaugural committee, Tom Barrack, was arrested this week for not registering as a foreign agent, since Barrack was lobbying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. Barrack plans to plead not guilty. Barrack was released from jail on  a $250m bond, secured with $5m in cash, $21m in securities, and Barrack’s home in California. Barrack has to wear a GPS ankle bracelet and can’t transfer money overseas as part of his bail conditions.
  • The super PAC that solicited donations from Trump supporters for a legal defense fund to combat false voter fraud hasn’t even used the nearly $75m it got this year. The situation underscores Trump’s strategy of defrauding his supporters to raise money for his personal and campaign use, as the former President tells confidantes he’s gearing up for a 2024 rerun for the White House.
  • The Department of Justice announced that it won’t be prosecuting former Commerce Secretary under Trump, Wilber Ross, for allegedly giving Congress false testimony related to Trump’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census. The question never ended up on the Census and efforts to sue it into existence have failed as well.
• Outer space:
  • Elon Musk’s orbital company SpaceX won a contract to launch NASA’s mission to Jupiter’s moon, Europe, in October 2024, building a $4.25b spacecraft to explore the potentially vast ocean underneath Europa’s icy surface. The contract went for $178m.
• Nominations:
  • Biden has named Jonathan Kanter, a known anti-tech lawyer, to head the DOJ antitrust division, as the administration takes a harder stance against alleged monopolies on the part of Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech companies. 
  • A week after reports laid out Repubican opposition to Biden’s pick to lead the Bureau of Land Management, Tracy Stone-Manning, due to her past of fighting logging companies as part of what they call “eco-saboteuring,” Stone-Manning advanced past the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a party-line vote.
• Nuclear football:
  • The Defense Department’s Inspector General announced a review of the safety procedures for what’s called “the nuclear football,” the briefcase containing the US nuclear launch codes. The review was announced due to how close January 6th rioters were to the briefcase, which were held by Secret Service agents on former Vice President Mike Pence’s security detail. 

Foreign

• Afghanistan:
  • About 2500 Afghan interpreters who assisted the US military since its arrival in the country after the 9/11 attacks are set to be housed in Fort Lee, Virginia, as they wait for their visa paperwork to be approved. The interpreters had agreed to assist the military in exchange for safe passage to the US. 18k Afghans are eligible for the visas, with thousands of interpreters set to be housed in neighboring countries Kuwait and Qatar, with others still stuck in Afghanistan as the Taliban gains ground in the face of the US’ withdrawal after 20 years of war, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, saying that the Taliban appears to have strategic momentum in their fight to control the country. The country has imposed a 10PM curfew in 31 provinces in response to the Taliban threat.
  • The US military is also supporting Afghan troops fighting against the Taliban with airstrikes, having conducted overnight bomb drops this week against equipment captured by the Taliban. Up to seven strikes have been launched in the past month, according to Defense Department sources.
  • Biden has approved $100m in aid to Afghan refugees, along with $200m in services and articles, as evacuations begin for interpreters and their families. 
• Iraq:
  • US troops in Iraq may be the next to go, as Iraqi and US officials agreed that US soldiers should completely withdraw by the end of the year. 
• Germany:
  • Looks like that visit with Merkel paid off. The US and Germany have officially reached a deal concerning the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the one that sends natural gas from Russia into Germany. The deal allows for the completion of the construction of the pipeline, while Germany and the US agreed to punish Russia if it “gets out of line,” as well as providing $1b in renewable energy investment in Ukraine. 
• Cuba:
  • As Cuba sees a wave of dissent unseen on the island in years, Biden called out the government’s “mass detentions and sham trials” of protestors, and ordered sanctions against Cuba’s military generals and a special forces team cracking down on demonstrators, while at the same time having his administration figure out how to reopen the US consulate in the country so it can issue visas to Cuban dissidents.
• Carlos Ghosn:
  • A Japanese court sentenced two Americans for their role in helping former Nissan executive Carlos Ghosn to escape Japanese officials as he faced financial fraud. Michael Taylor and his son Peter Taylor, snuck Ghosn onto a private jet to Lebanon in 2019. Michael received two years and Peter to a year and eight months, capping a weird episode when the father and son were arrested in the US in 2020 and extradited to Japan. Ghosn, meanwhile, is still hanging out in Lebanon, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Japan.
• China:
  • The US and other allies from the European Union, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and NATO have officially blamed China for hacking into Microsoft’s Exchange server, with resulted in tens of thousands of businesses and organizations vulnerable for more hackers to try and pry sensitive proprietary data. The Justice Department had announced charges against four Chinese hackers allegedly working with the country’s Ministry of State Security.
• Havana Syndrome:
  • The new CIA director, William Burns, said that he has already started investigating the root causes of the mysterious Havana Syndrome, which causes dizziness, vertigo, and a slew of other health ailments, which were first reported by Cuban American diplomats stationed there and which have now been reported all throughout the world. As many as 200 Americans reported having symptoms of the syndrome.

Congress

House

• Jan 6 Committee:
  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed two of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s picks to join the January 6th select committee that seeks to investigate Trump and other officials’ role during the insurrection against the Capitol building. McCarthy’s picks included Reps. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks, both of which defended Trump for his role in the insurrection and voted against Biden’s Electoral College certification. Pelosi said she has a responsibility not to place Republicans on the committee that played their own role in encouraging the rioters. McCarthy afterwards pulled all of his nominees, saying Pelosi was playing a political game and abusing her power. Republican committee member Representative Liz Cheney blasted McCarthy, saying he’s playing his own game and preventing proper investigation into what happened on January 6th. Pelosi said later in the week that it’s her plan to also recruit Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger onto the committee, another outspoken Republican against Trump.
  • Another rioter was sentenced for taking part in the insurrection, Floridian Paul Hodgkins, who will serve an 8 month sentence in jail, plus 2 years of supervised release. Meanwhile, a DEA agent was charged for their role in the riot; Mark Ibrahim from Orange County, California. Ibrahim had his gun and badge on him during the insurrection when he entered the Capitol building, and is also being charged with lying to federal officials.
  • J. Thomas Manger has been chosen as the new Chief of the Capitol Police, hoping to restore confidence in the force that is now under a microscope for failing to protect the Congressional structure. Manger served as chief of the Montgomery County, Maryland, police for 15 years. 
• Afghanistan:
  • Seeking to help the Afghan interpreters that helped the US military, the House voted 407-16 to increase the number of special visas for Afghans from 11k to 19k, as well as increasing the number of eligible special visa applicants, including any surviving spouse and children of deceased interpreters.
• Greene:
  • Twitter had suspended Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene off its site for 12 hours this week for posting COVID misinformation. Greene is known for her controversial and provocative statements, including attempting to start a group in the House based on “Anglo-Saxan American values” and compare COVID lockdowns to Nazi war crimes. Greene stated that COVID wasn’t dangerous for Americans unless they are obese over 65 years of age, further stating vaccines shouldn’t be required. Greene’s state, Georgia, has seen a 193% rise in COVID cases in the past two weeks.
• House mask fines:
  • And speaking of Greene, she, along with two of her fellow GOP colleagues, Thomas Massie and Ralph Norman, lost their appeals against $500 fines for not wearing masks on the floor of the House. The House Ethics Committee upheld the fines, pointing out that the mask requirement was put in place under the recommendation of the Capitol physician. The requirement is no longer in effect.

Senate

• COVID:
  • Minority Leader Mitch McConnell pleaded with those who haven’t gotten vaccinated yet to get their shots now, as the number of unvaccinated Americans points to red-state and Republican-led areas. 
  • In a viral moment, Dr. Fauci and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul duked it out during a Senate hearing in which Paul accused Fauci of lying to Congress about whether the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases funded what’s called “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan viral lab in China, in the first place where COVID was detected. Gain-of-function research refers to when scientists modify viruses to take on more viral characteristics. Fauci denied lying to Congress, and blatantly said Paul didn’t know what he was talking about, pointing to federal research papers pointing at US grants issued for the purpose of studying viruses, not design them to become more infectious or transmissible to humans. 
• Infrastructure:
  • Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer may have tried to force a procedural motion on the chamber to start debate on infrastructure, but as Republicans promised, they blocked the motion for what’s called cloture - or close debate - for an infrastructure proposal without any bill text. Democrats needed 10 Republicans to cross over and vote with them, but reading the tea leaves, Schumer will bring up the motion later. Currently, a bipartisan proposal for physical infrastructure and a much larger “human” infrastructure proposal just from Democrats is on the way, with bill text set to be released sometime this month. 

Federal Judiciary

• School COVID mandate:
  • Northern Indiana District Judge Damon Leichty ruled in favor of Indiana University’s requirement for students to be fully vaccinated against COVID. Eight students sued the policy, arguing their bodily autonomy is taken away from them, while the judge agreed with the university has a legitimate interest in public health for the rest of its students, faculty, and staff.
• Abortion:
  • Mississippi has blatantly asked the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that safeguards a woman’s right to an abortion in the first trimester, as well as Planned Parenthood v. Casey, wherein it was established a law may not place undue burden on a mother’s ability to get an abortion before the fetus is viable. MS made the request in a brief filed concerning a case about Mississippi’s own law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, way before even viability is considered in Casey. The Supreme Court agreed to take on the case after the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck the law down, with the Court likely to hear arguments beginning in November. 
  • Meanwhile in Arkansas, federal Judge Kristine Baker of the Eastern District of Arkansas blocked a law from the state that would ban nearly every abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or in situations that would save the life of the mother. The bill was passed specifically to challenge Roe v. Wade. 
• Kavanaugh:
  • When Brett Kavanaugh was being considered for the Supreme Court and the FBI was investigating him for claims he raped Christine Blasey Ford and others in his college-age youth, the FBI had sent the most compelling of 4500 tips sent in directly to the White House in 2018, which muddled the sanctity of the vetting process, the New York Times published. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Coons got hold of the numbers through a letter sent by the FBI in response to the Senators own questions.
• Proxy voting:
  • A three judge panel on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by House Republicans against Speaker Nancy Pelosi for what’s called proxy voting, which allows one member of Congress to vote for others as they’ve designated. The panel ruled unanimously that the court didn’t have the power to review the Congressional policy, as the Constitution allows the House to come up with its own procedures in Article 1.

National

• COVID
  • Just in the last two weeks, the number of Americans infected with the Delta variant of the COVID virus tripled, with 13,700 cases from July 6th to 37k at the start of this past week. 
  • The Texas Democrats that escaped their state to prevent Republicans from passing repressive voting laws, among other conservative items off their wish list, have tested positive for COVID at an alarming rate. So far, 5 of the legislators have COVID, even though the whole group is fully vaccinated. 
  • Federal data released this week found that the pandemic lowered Americans’ life expectancy by a year and a half in 2020, with Black and Latino Americans getting hit worst, at double the loss in life expectancy from their white peers.
  • US economists predicted in a published report in the Wall Street Journal that the Delta variant won’t stop the country’s recovery, with a positive forecast in the second half of 2021 thanks to vaccinated Americans spending cash they’ve been saving for the past year and a half.
  • The number of people catching the common cold has returned back into the fold after a steep drop in 2020, as people have started coming out of their houses and hanging out with others. A new CDC report showed that after dropping to a 1997 low, a resurgence in flu cases may be more severe this fall and winter.
  • Despite CDC guidance saying otherwise, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended at the start of the week that all kids over 2 years old should mask up in the upcoming fall school semester since most of them can’t be vaccinated right now without any vaccine approved by the FDA.
• Wildfires:
  • Wildfires continue to blaze at a record level in the Western US due to an unprecedented heatwave and drought that only made matters worse. About 200 people had to evacuate their homes near Markleeville, California and Lake Tahoe because of the Tamarack Fire, which burnt 30 square miles. There are 80 major fires burning in the region, with the largest in Oregon burning 476 sq miles, and 20k firefighters battling the galmes across four states. Even the smoke from Oregon wildfires made their way as far as New York, with the skies turning hazy and the sun appearing more red than usual. 
  • Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility company in California, said that it would bury power lines in areas that are known to have wildfire risk, in an effort to avoid sparking a wildfire like it possibly did with the Dixie Fire currently blazing in California under a megafire status as it is burning 221 square miles, and in 2018 with the Camp Fire, which led to 85 deaths when a faulty transmission line ignited the blaze. Although burying power lines could cost an estimated $3m per mile, CEO Petricia Poppe said it was too expensive not to bury them.
• Pegasus:
  • An investigation by 17 news and media organizations have revealed that a secret prive contractor, NSO Group, has provided a number of governments access to a surveillance program that hacked into the cellphones of reporters, activists, and politicians. 50k smartphones appeared on a list that are suspected of being used by governments such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, and more.
• Louisiana removes Confederate statue:
  • Just a couple of weeks after Charlottesville, Virginia, removed a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Lafayette, Louisiana, removed a statue of another Confederate general, Alfred Mouton, reaching an agreement with the United Daughters of the Confederacy to pay for a new base for the statue wherever it’ll be placed next.
• Olympics:
  • Amidst worries of rising COVID infections and the lack of excitement for this year’s Olympic Games in Japan, US tennis player Coco Gauff said she tested positive for COVID and won’t be able to make it. Jennifer Brady, Jessica Pegula, and Alison Riske are representing the US team. Meanwhile, the US women’s softball team beat Italy 2-0 and the women’s soccer game lost to Sweden 3-0, ending a 44-match streak. The games officially began with its opening ceremony, which featured tens of thousands of drones making a makeshift globe on top of a deserted stadium as spectators were banned due to the pandemic. The US received its first series of gold medals after coming short on the first day, acquiring the gold in the 400-meter individual swimming medley and men’s freestyle, as well as in rifle competition, fencing, and Taekwondo.
• NBA Championships:
  • The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Phoenix Suns this week to become the NBA champions, led by Giannis Antetokounmpo with 50 points for a 105-98 victory.
• Cleveland Guardians:
  • Cleveland’s baseball team has changed their name from the Indians to the Guardians, getting rid of the racially-insensitive name since 1915, and opting for a name referring to the statues that line Cleveland’s Hope Memorial Bridge.
• Outer space:
  • The founder of Amazon took his turn to launch himself into outer space this week, following last week’s 50 upward mile journey by Virgin Galactic founder and billionaire Richard Branson. Jeff Bezos traveled 62 miles above Earth, to the so-called Karman Line, where loss of gravity initiates floating. Bezos and Branson seek to start the beginning of a consumer space travel industry with their rocket launches.
• Opioid settlement:
  • Johnson & Johnson, as well as three drug distributors, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, and McKesson, have agreed to settle cases brought by every state in the US along with DC regarding the companies’ roles in opioid epidemics throughout the country, for $26b. If the states agree, the pharmaceutical giants would pay out the money over 18 years, would create an independent entity to provide transparent data about where drugs are being sent, in exchange for the companies not admitting any wrongdoing. Washington state’s attorney general Bob Ferguson already said that he wouldn’t sign onto the deal, saying it wasn’t good enough for his state. 
• Weinstein:
  • Disgraced movie mogul and convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein was extradited from NY to LA to face more sexual assault charges. Weinstein pled not guilty to four counts of rape, and has been accused of assaulting 5 women in the area from 2004-2013. Weinstein has denied all charges.
• Internet outage:
  • A brief Internet outage that blocked several major companies gave people a little scare this week, thinking it was a major hacking attack. FedEx, Delta Air Lines, HSBC, and McDonald's were some of the companies that had their servers knocked out for a little, with the problem really due to service providers Akamai and Oracle facing system disruptions due to a software bug that was promptly fixed with an update.
• Surfside
  • The recovery operation over at the Surfside, Florida, condo collapse has been turned over to the Miami police as firefighters recovered all but 1 of the victims of the collapse. 96 victims were recovered, and the police will look for personal belongings.  

And that’s it for this week’s show of THE 25TH HOUR, helping you stay on top of the 24/7 news cycle. Don’t forget to rate us on Apple Podcasts, share us with your friends, and subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. You can email your tips and suggestions at the25thhournews@gmail.com and become a Patron today for as low as $2 a month to support the show at patreon.com/the25thhournews! Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.