Episode 48: August 8-14, 2021

August 8-14, 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 August 8-14, 2021, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation, the Census numbers have been released, Biden’s physical infrastructure bill passes the Senate, immunocompromised Americans get a third booster shot, and the Taliban have taken over Afghanistan 20 years after America stepped and spent almost $1t to drive them out and keep the peace. Now, onto the show; things may have changed by the time you hear this.

De Blasio

• COVID
  • The City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene confirmed that NYC reached more than 1m COVID cases since the pandemic began in earnest in March of 2020. In all, more than 33k City residents have died from the virus. Since the Delta variant spread throughout the City, the number of cases went up to more than 1800. Transmission rates went up as the Delta variant makes 90% of the new cases of COVID in the City. 
• Mayoral race
  • Democratic mayoral nominee and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams amended his tax returns to show his income from being a landlord after reporting during the primary showing continued lack of disclosures about Adams’ ownership of apartment units. The returns now claim that Adams broke even and didn’t make any profit from his Bed-Stuy property ownership. Adams goes up against Guardian Angels founder Curits Sliwa in the November general election.
  • Adams also gave his support for a rezoning of the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn. The rezoning of the neighborhood is currently in the land use process, with Adams’ support largely coming due to capital improvements to the Gowanus Houses and the Wyckoff Gardens complexes at the cost of $274 million. The rezoning would allow for more residential development. In the meantime, Adams officially disapproved of a rezoning in front of the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, where a developer is seeking to construct a tower that would potentially cast shadows over the garden. 
  • With Cuomo’s resignation, the question turned to whether Adams has any relationship with Kathy Hochul, Cuomo’s successor and replacement. Reporting shows that it may actually all turn out to be in Adams’ and NYC’s favor, since Cuomo was bullish against giving NYC independent control. Adams said that Cuomo stepping down was the best thing for the state to continue fighting against the pandemic. Meanwhile, de Blasio couldn’t hide his giddiness now that his nemesis, Cuomo, resigned, but said that the Governor should resign sooner, as there is still time for Cuomo to mess things up. 
• Other races
  • Queens Community Board 7 is ramping up a vote to oust one of its members, John Choe, next week, after recent allegations that Choe was taking kickbacks in exchange for approving community development projects, although that claim wasn’t substantiated after the Board investigated. However, the Board substantiated other claims of impropriety, including that Choe made social media pages for the Board without its approval and solicited campaign donations from Board members for his unsuccessful City Council run. 
• Census:
  • Census numbers were released this week, showing that in NYC, the population grew by 600k to 8.8m, but with the City’s black population decreasing by 4.5%. Brooklyn’s population grew the most, at 9.2%, reaching more than 2.7m, but the borough’s black population decreased by 8.7%. Staten Island is the only borough that grew its black population over the past ten years, by 5.7%. A huge jump in demographic numbers came from the Asian community, with a 43% increase in Brooklyn and 29% in Queens. The Census is also important for redrawing electoral maps, remaking entire districts that could decide who stays in elected office. 
• Schools
  • De Blasio said that the City is still working on a plan for what to do with students who get sick or quarantine from COVID since a remote option won’t be available for the fall semester. The lack of a remote option can hit Black students the hardest considering the vaccine hesitancy amongst the community. 28 percent of Black New Yorkers ages 18 to 44 years are fully vaccinated, compared to 48 percent of Latino residents and 52 percent of white residents in that age group, according to City data.
• Crime
  • The City is getting ready to launch a $1m violence prevention pilot program that will place people with a so-called risk of involvement in gun violence with a formerly incarcerated mentor, building on similar programs in other cities. The Advance Peace plan will launch in every precinct in every borough, giving participants a $1k a month stipend and bonuses for achieving certain life goals like obtaining a GED. 
  • Carlton Roman, who has spent almost 30 years behind bars for a murder he didn’t committ, was allowed to finally walk free after Queens DA Melinda Katz’s Conviction Integrity Unit, brought a review of Roman’s case. Prosecutors said that Roman’s original trial was tainted by unreliable witnesses.
• Development/Transportation

City Council

Cuomo

• COVID
  • Following the CDCs new rule that high transmission areas consider masking back up indoors, 33 New York counties have reached the CDCs definition of “high” transmission, including all of NYC and Long Island. 
• Scandals
  • Governor Cuomo has resigned following the release of a damning report by the State Attorney General Letitia James finding allegations of sexual harassment from 11 women to be credible. The report led to an uproar within the Democratic establishment, with state politicians and leaders all the way up to President Biden calling on Cuomo to leave office. After initially resisting and vowing to fight the report, it wasn’t until Cuomo’s closest aide, his Secretary Melissa DeRosa, resigned, that Cuomo released a recorded video saying he was leaving office within two weeks to ensure a smooth transition for Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who will become New York’s first female governor, to take his place. Hochul, who was never implicated in Cuomo’s scandals due to their already tenuous relationship over the years, promised she is ready to take the reins and to clear out any enablers within Cuomo’s administration once she takes over. We go into what the state Assembly decided to do with Cuomo’s impeachment proceedings shortly.
  • By way of reminding you, the listeners, Cuomo’s harassment and assault allegations are now being investigated by multiple county DAs, including in Albany and NYC, and he is also being investigated for covering up the true nursing home death data from the pandemic, as well as writing a COVID leadership book with the potential use of state resources. In an interview with New York Magazine’s Andrew Rice and Laura Nahmias, Cuomo continued to be defiant, saying that if the Assembly’s impeachment investigation continued, he would’ve beat it back, and that he doesn’t know what his next move is now considering he has to vacate the Governor’s Mansion and he doesn’t have another home. He probably doesn’t have to worry, though. There’s still the decision looming in the air whether Cuomo will run for another term as Governor.
  • Linda Lacewell, one of Cuomo’s closer allies within state government, emailed staff saying she is resigning as head of the Department of Financial Services, effective August 24th. Lacewell was reportedly part of the effort to slander Cuomo’s accusers and leak the employee files of one of them, Lindsay Boylan.
  • Camille Varlack, the Chair of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, also announced her departure, but it was pre-planned since June and doesn’t look to have anything to do with Cuomo.
  • Roberta Kaplan, who was the head of the women’s sexual survivor group Time’s Up, also resigned this week for her role in advising Cuomo at the onset of his harassment scandals. The Human Rights Campaign is also looking into their former chief Alphonso David’s involvement in pushing back against Lindsay Boylan’s claims against Cuomo.
• Races
• Schools
  • Jim Malatras, the current SUNY Chancellor, signaled that he is going to stay on in the role, saying that he looks forward to working with incoming Governor Kathy Hochul for months and years to come. Reports cast doubt on whether Malatras was going to stay because of comments he made years earlier against Hochul’s chief of staff.
  • The State Education Department recommended that schools within high COVID transmission areas cancel their sports and music activities unless all of those participating students are vaccinated.
• Environment:
  • The State’s Public Service Commission expanded its program offering low-income New Yorkers discounts on utilities, which could reach 95k customers 
  • While that sounds nice, wait until you hear this: The State Department of Public Service approved rate increases on utilities for 1.9m National Grid customers in the same service area as a fracking pipeline running from Brownsville to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. 
  • The state Port Authority said that despite Cuomo’s ouster, the LaGuardia AirTrain project will still go underway, as questions lingered whether Cuomo’s pet project would go down with him. Meanwhile, the has been some noise associated with renaming the Mario Cuomo Bridge back to the Tappan Zee Bridge, since the Governor named the bridge after his father some time back.
• Nassau:
  • Nassau County, Long Island, Executive Laura Curran is vetoing the police human rights bill after all. A bill by the county’s Republican legislature sought to add police officers and other emergency workers as a protected class under the county’s human rights law, which would have allowed the county prosecutor to sue on behalf of officers for alleged civil rights violations. Curran originally asked State Attorney General Letitia James to weigh in on the law, with critics already saying the bill would chill free speech, and James ultimately cited the same constitutional concerns. 

State Legislature

• Cuomo impeachment:
  • As we mentioned earlier, Cuomo resigned due to the pressure he was facing from his Democratic establishment, but the question remained as to whether the Assembly was going to continue its impeachment investigation against the Governor, which Speaker Carl Heastie announced would suspend its investigation once Cuomo leaves. Once Letitia James’ report was released, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie gave the Governor a little more than a week to give the committee more evidence that can defend his position, as the body’s investigation would wrap up within weeks. If the Assembly took up an impeachment vote, it would’ve then went to the state Senate where the 7-member Court of Appeals would sit to hear an impeachment trial with the State Senate sitting as the jury, which could all potentially end with Cuomo never having been allowed to run for office in the state again. But all of that came to naught, for when Cuomo announced his resignation, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced the impeachment committee was going to suspend its investigation into Cuomo once he officially leaves office. Heastie defended his decision to suspend the committee by citing constitutional concerns with having impeachment probes going on at the same time as law enforcement investigations that are looking into Cuomo’s sexual harassment and assault allegations. While Heastie said that he consulted with his colleagues, numerous Assembly Democrats said the majority never met as a conference to discuss shutting down the probe. 
  • Hochul already has her work cut out for her, as she has already needed to comment on whether schools are going to make kids wear masks following CDC guidance and how the legislature needs to strengthen tenant protections following the Supreme Court’s striking of part of the state’s eviction moratorium, which we go into in a bit. 

State Judiciary

• Child Victims Act:
  • The two year state of limitation tolling for child sexual abuse cases is coming to an end this week, after 9k cases were filed by the victims of those crimes. The Child Victims Act allowed those victims to file lawsuits against their abusers even if the time limit on filing those suits ran out a long time ago.
• Spota:
  • Federal Judge Joan M. Azrack sentenced former Suffolk County, Long Island, District Attorney Thomas Spota, and his former aide, Christopher McPartland, to five years in prison for the attempted cover up and obstruction of an investigation looking into an assault by the county’s former police chief James Burke in 2012, against Christopher Loeb, who was imprisoned for stealing Burke’s bag containing his gun and pornographic materials. 
• Amazon:
  • Federal Judge Brian M. Cogan dismissed a challenge brought by Amazon against NY’s investigation into Amazon’s handling of COVID at a Staten Island warehouse. Amazon tried arguing that Attorney General Letitia James is investigating the warehouse in bad faith, but the court swatted those arguments down as being too early in the procedural process. James launched the probe, saying Amazon’s cleaning procedures were inadequate and that management didn’t inform workers if their colleagues got sick with COVID. 
• Stringer v. de Blasio:
  • The First Department Appellate Division ruled against City Comptroller Scott Stringer in his attempt to get nonpublic communications from de Blasio related to the Mayor’s planning on how to tackle the pandemic. Stringer routinely audits the City’s financials, and was denied the ability to audit how the City handled COVID contracts until recently. The court said that the Mayor enjoyed a public interest privilege, in that the interests of keeping deliberative talks private was stronger than releasing them to the public. 

Biden

Domestic

• COVID
  • Education Secretary Miguel Cardona sent a letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, urging them to rescind their state orders prohibiting local counties from masking students in schools. The Republican governors paint the issue as a personal choice amongst parents, ignoring pleas from educators saying it’ll cause outbreaks amongst students and staff. Cardona also said the US stands behind local schools’ efforts to fight back against Texas and Florida orders against masking, such as in Dallas and Austin, Texas, while DeSantis threatens to pull teachers’ salaries if they resist. In the meantime, Texas state judge Antonia Arteaga struck down Greg Abbott’s ban on mask mandates, ruling that the masks are necessary to slow the spread of the Delta variant in accordance with San Antonio and Bexar County’s authority to protect their residents. The Department of Health and Human Services sent Florida 200 ventilators, 100 smaller breathing devices, and related supplies this week, with Governor DeSantis claiming he didn’t even know about the deliveries. 
  • The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index dropped below from its lowest point last year at the height of the pandemic to 70.2 in August, from 81.2 in July, reflecting consumers’ concerns over the Delta variant going through the country. Economists say it’s a temporary blip considering jobs and sales numbers are continuing to go up.
  • The FDA and CDC advisory panel gave their approval for a third booster shot for immunocompromised Americans to help them fight COVID. The agencies didn’t make a decision on a second booster shot from one-shot vaccines such as from Johnson & Johnson. Pfizer and Moderna have developed their booster shots, touting clinical trials showing stronger protection against COVID and chiefly against the Delta variant. Apart from those who are immunocompromised, Dr. Fauci said that booster shots for the rest of the population is premature at this time. 
  • The CDC urged pregnant women to get COVID vaccines as soon as they can, seeing an uptick in the number of expectant mothers that are getting sick and dying from the Delta variant. Combating false information and conspiracy theories, the CDC made clear that the vaccines do not increase the risk of miscarriage, and that contracting COVID is more dangerous to the health of the mother and baby. 
  • The Pentagon announced that they are going to follow through on plans forcing soldiers to take the COVID vaccine and be inoculated by mid-September by when the FDA fully authorizes one of the vaccines, whichever is earliest. Data shows that almost 65 percent of active-duty service members are fully vaccinated, ranging from 75 percent of Navy personnel to 59 percent of Marines.
• Environment:
  • The NOAA said that this past July was the hottest month since the government began tracking the nation’s temperature, another reality of climate change. The land-surface temperature for July was 2.77 degrees hotter than average in the Northern Hemisphere.
  • Harvard researchers have linked wildfire smoke with increased COVID infections in California and Oregon according to a new study. Almost 20 percent of infections were linked to elevated levels of wildfire smoke, with the CDC saying prior that smoke can cause lung infections. 
• Economy:
  • US economists projected that inflation is slowing down, as the business community and consumers are concerned over rising prices. The pandemic has seen consumers increase their demand while supply chains continue to be disrupted due to lack of workers and raw materials. From The Week: “The consumer price index rose 0.5 percent in July, or 5.4 percent from a year earlier, but core CPI — which strips out volatile food and energy prices — rose just 0.3 percent, below expectations.”
  • Jobless claims keep falling to pandemic lows as 375,000 unemployment claims were made last week compared to 387,000 the week before. 
• Immigration:
  • The US saw its highest number of encounters with migrants on the border in 20 years, as Customs and Border Protection said it apprehended a little less than 213k people with almost 96k of them expelled back across the border. 19k unaccompanied children were detained as well. Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Texas Border Patrol agents in leaked audio that he’s aware the agency has never faced such high numbers before and that the system is breaking. 
• Census:
  • The decennial Census finally released its findings and numbers, after being delayed to the pandemic and former President Trump’s attempts to politicize questions on the survey. The findings revealed that the US population has grown more diverse and urban, with the still majority count of white people dwindling in favor of more mixed-race Americans, and that more people are moving to the cities away from the rural heartland. White people now comprise almost 58% of the count, down from almost 64%. Latinos make up the second largest group of Americans at about 19%. The US’ population growth was still at its second lowest rate of growth in history, now standing at 331.4m people. 
• Nominations:
  • Biden announced his next slate of nominees for the US Attorney’s offices in New York. Damian Williams, the current head of the Southern District’s securities enforcement office, was chosen for Manhattan’s Southern District, making him the District’s first Black top prosecutor, and Breon Peace for Brooklyn’s Eastern District, returning to his roots as he worked there from 2000-02 under Loretta Lynch. Biden also chose Syracuse prosecutor Carla Freedman to head New York’s Northern District, becoming the office’s first permanent female chief, where she’s already in charge of the office’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.
  • The President has chosen acting Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar to permanently stay in the role. The Solicitor General is the administration’s attorney that argues before the Supreme Court. Before this role, Prelogar served in the Justice Department, where among other things, she took part in Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 election. 
• 9/11:
  • Following the release of a letter signed by 1600 family members of those who perished in the 9/11 attacks telling Biden not to visit memorials on the 20th anniversary of the attacks unless he reveals more information about Saudi Arabian ties to al-Qaeda, Biden signaled his willingness to release more information from the government’s 9/11 reports that had earlier invoked executive privileges. 
  • Partially as a result of the 20th anniversary of the attacks coming up, the Department of Homeland Security issued a new threat warning based on simmering political tensions from domestic terrorist groups, with the agency hearing the same activity as right before and after Biden’s Electoral College certification in January.
• Hunter’s art:
  • An art gallery is planning to sell the artwork of the President’s son, Hunter Biden, the darling of the conservative world trying to find a conspiracy around every corner with him. The gallery is seeking to sell Hunter’s pieces at $500k a piece which is high for someone at his artistic level, according to experts, but there are worries that foreign buyers are just trying to buy influence with the White House. The administration has come up with ethical guidelines that will prevent the knowledge of who bought the pieces, with the gallery promising to hide that information as well. 
• NSA:
  • The secretive National Security Agency said that it’s going to investigate claims made by Fox commentator Tucker Carlson that the NSA hacked into his personal information and spied on him. An NSA spokesman rejected Carlson’s claims at the time, but the NSA’s internal watchdog said that claims of Americans getting caught up in foreign surveillance is serious.

Foreign

• Afghanistan
  • The Taliban have retaken Afghanistan in just a week’s time, encircling the capital Kabul and demanding its unconditional surrender, with Afghan soldiers barely taking a stand after years of relying on US air support, and despite intelligence assessments giving the Taliban at least a month to do so. Biden ordered 5k US troops back into Afghanistan to help evacuate embassy staff in the capital Kabul and ensure a safe withdrawal. Biden is still insistent on ending the US mission in the country by the end of the month with the complete withdrawal of US troops, and air support has already been drawn back. Afghan president Ashraf Ghani had made his first televised appearance, saying that he was consulting Afghan leaders on keeping the country out of Taliban hands, but he was out of options as local warlords were the ones that negotiated the Taliban’s retaking of local provinces and has reportedly left the country himself. Public opinion is still out about Biden’s handling of the US’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, as the President maintains that the US has no mandate to be there anymore, and beyond helping Afghan interpreters and their families, has no plans to help the Afghan government hold off the Taliban, which have already assassinated government workers, forced women out of school and work, and taken over government offices.

Congress

House

• Infrastructure:
  • We’ll get to the Senate passing a physical infrastructure proposal in a moment, but House Speaker Pelosi reiterated that her chamber isn’t going to take up the proposal without a corresponding human infrastructure proposal which progressives are clamoring for. Moderate Democrats sent a letter to Pelosi this week, saying that time is of the essence, urging the Speaker not to wait for the human proposal and to put the physical proposal onto the floor as soon as possible. 
• Ron Kind:
  • US Democratic Representative Ron Kind, who has represented Wisconsin in the House for the longest time, said that he is not going to seek re-election next year, potentially opening up the seat to Republicans hand in an environment where history looks favorably upon the opposing party to take over.
• Greene:
  • The right’s favorite wunderkind Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was suspended for a week from Twitter again for spreading misinformation about the COVID vaccines, opposing the FDA’s upcoming decision to approve the Pfizer vaccine for full authorization because the vaccines, according to her, are failing, which is false. 

Senate

• Infrastructure
  • The Senate this week passed the $1.2t bipartisan physical infrastructure bill in a 69-30 vote, a major breakthrough for one of Biden’s major legislative aims to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, transportation, broadband, and water infrastructure. The bill came about after months of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats and the White House, with Republicans making bets that they can bring back investments into their districts. Before the Senate left town for their August recess, however, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also passed a major procedural hurdle to the Democrats’ $3.5t “human” infrastructure proposal, focused on policies for climate change, health, education, family leave, and more, by getting through what’s called a vote-a-rama, where Republicans offered amendments that would force Democrats to answer for their most controversial stances. With the vote-a-rama ending, the Senate can take up the human infrastructure plan as soon as the chamber comes back from recess on a simple majority vote thanks to budget reconciliation rules, which you may recall allow the Senate to bypass a supermajority filibuster on measures that have to deal with the federal budget. 
• Trump election interference:
  • Former Atlanta US Attorney, Byung J. Pak, reportedly told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Trump said he’d fire Pak if Pak didn’t say there was fraud in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. The Committee is investigating Trump’s attempted interference in the state’s presidential election last year, making false claims of fraud. You may recall that Trump also made a phone call to Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, asking him to look into false fraud claims, and saying that he needs Raffensperger to find nearly 12k votes to overturn Biden’s victory. Pak resigned from his position at the time.
• Rand Paul:
  • Kentucky Senator Rand Paul filed a late stock disclosure showing that his wife bought stock in Gilead Sciences, a company that produces antiviral drugs to treat COVID. Paul said he didn’t attend COVID briefings and had no advanced notice of the sale, filing reports as soon as he found out his wife bought the stock. Paul is known for his fights with Dr. Fauci on the science behind COVID, as well as whether the virus was created as a result of a leak out of a lab from Wuhan, China, where COVID originated. The Senator was recently kicked off YouTube for a week for posting videos casting doubt on masks’ effectiveness in fighting COVID. 

Federal Judiciary

• COVID
  • The Supreme Court made some decisions this week. First, Justice Amy Coney Barrett decided against taking a case from Indiana University students who tried challenging the school’s COVID policies, mandating vaccinations for those who want to attend classes. The students lost in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, with most of the students acquiring religious exemptions against their vaccinations in the first place, which Indiana University allows for. Barrett oversees requests from the region, but didn’t give any explanation for her rejection.
  • Florida federal Judge Kathleen Williams granted a preliminary injunction for Norwegian Cruise Lines against Florida’s ban on so-called vaccine passports, saying Florida Governor Ron DeSantis didn’t provide a factual basis for the ban, which would have fined cruise companies $5k a passenger if they adopted measures making passengers prove they are vaccinated. 
• Eviction moratorium
  • Meanwhile, the Court issued an emergency declaration striking down part of New York’s eviction moratorium which lasts til the end of the month, ruling against part of the law that prevents landlords from challenging tenants’ pandemic hardship certifications and initiate eviction proceedings. While the court’s liberal justices dissented, the opinion was written by Justice Breyer, who said courts can still make their own determinations about whether tenants faced financial hardships during the pandemic, which would in turn prevent landlords from evicting them. 
  • Meanwhile, a federal district court kept Biden’s emergency eviction moratorium lasting through October for Delta-stricken parts of the country in place, but doubted whether the Supreme Court was going to let the moratorium stand as it struck down an earlier one. DC District Judge Dabney Friedrich denied landlords’ request to strike down the October ban, saying an earlier appellate ruling tied her hands.
• Election fraud:
  • Washington state federal Judge Carl Nichols, who was appointed by Trump, allowed Dominion Voting Systems, one of the vendors that oversaw voting machines in the 2020 election, to continue with their $3b defamation lawsuits against Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, saying their demonstrably false claims of fraud hurt Dominion’s business and reputation. In total, Dominion has filed 7 lawsuits against Trump’s allies, and another voting software company, Smartmatic, has also filed lawsuits against Trump officials that spread lies about the 2020 election being rigged against Trump. 
• Trump taxes:
  • DC federal Judge Amit Mehta has allowed the House Oversight Committee to acquire former President Trump’s tax returns, but within a limited scope, ruling that following a Supreme Court case mandating consideration for separation of powers concerns, the Oversight Committee can only attain Trump’s returns from 2017 and 2018, but not from 2011-2016, saying they’re not necessary to broadly fix federal ethics legislation, but that the returns can be used to investigate Trump’s foreign business ties and the lease to the old federal Post Office Building in DC that Trump made into a hotel. The hotel was frequently visited by Trump’s foreign courtiers. 

National

• COVID:
  • The Delta variant continues to rip through the nation, with the highest percentage of cases coming out of the South, where the vaccination rates are also low. Arkansas said this week that they were down to their last 8 ICU beds, and Austin, Texas, only had 6. 
• Environment:
  • The US is facing a second deadly heatwave after the first blazed through the country, in the midst of wildfires and drought in the West. Temperatures hit 100 degrees throughout the Midwest and Northeast. The New York Times counted close to 450 heat-related deaths in Washington state alone from the first heatwave. The Parleys Canyon Fire in Utah forced the mandatory evacuations of close to 10k people. California’s Dixie Fire, the second largest on record, continues to burn almost 553k acres and is 31% contained as of the time of this recording. 
  • The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a stark warning that it’s too late to reverse climate change’s effects on the world for the next 30 years, but that governments can and should do more to head off disastrous environmental catastrophes beyond that, according to their highly-anticipated report. The UN Secretary General said the report should be a code red for humanity to go beyond the climate policies agreed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement, as the report laid out five scenarios - ranging from doing nothing to being more proactive - that the world is too late on heading off the worst of climate change’s most immediate consequences. 
• Jan 6:
  • The family of late Capitol Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, who was one of the four officers who took their life after the January 6th insurrection, have filed a lawsuit against his alleged assailant during the riot. DC police say they’re not publicly identifying the alleged assailant, but the person can be seen on video hitting Smith in the head, with a doctor writing in a letter that the blow contributed to Smith taking his own life.
• Texas voting rights:
  • In Texas, the speaker of the state’s House signed arrest warrants to detain the chamber’s 52 Democrats that fled the state to prevent a quorum to pass restrictive voting measures state Republicans say are necessary to fight election fraud, despite there being no proof of it being a widespread issue in the state. The claims are made in accordance with lies spread by former President Trump that the 2020 election was rigged against him. The signing of the warrants came after a Texas judge ruled in favor of 19 state Democrats that were subject to so-called “calls of the House,” which would let law enforcement track the lawmakers down. 
• Britney Spears:
  • Britney Spears may finally soon be left alone, as her father, Jamie, has agreed to step down as one of her conservators, according to court filings. Pop star Britney Spears has been under a court-appointed conservatorship, giving her father control over her life and fortune, and given the recent attention over her case in pop culture, she was able to change her lawyer and take steps to break down the court-mandated oversight into her personal life. 
• Jeopardy:
  • Jeopardy has found two hosts to replace the late Alex Trebek, actress Mayim Bialik and the show’s executive producer, Mike Richards. Richards was a controversial choice for his background in the show, despite ratings being high when he guest-hosted. 
• Epstein and Prince Andrew:
  • One of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, Victoria Giuffrie, has sued Britain’s Prince Andrew in federal court, alleging that Prince Andrew was one of Epstein’s clients and participated in raping Giuffrie, as well as violating child sex trafficking laws. Prince Andrew denies the charges but has refused to take part in investigations looking into the matter. Epstein died while in his prison cell in Manhattan.
• Haiti earthquake:
  • A 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti late this week, causing tremors of up to 5 on the Richter scale and killing more than 300 people as of the time of this recording. The country hasn’t caught a break since its President was assassinated in a plot that is still being investigated. 

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.