Episode 56: November 14-20, 2021

November 14-20, 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 episode for the week of November 14-20, 2021, de Blasio announces spectators can watch the ball drop on New Years again, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams has entered the governor’s race, Biden signs his infrastructure bill into law, with the House passing his human infrastructure proposal, and accused murderer Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people during the Jacob Blake riots and protests, was acquitted. Now, onto the show; things may have changed by the time you hear this.

De Blasio

• COVID
  • De Blasio was happy to announce that the New Years Eve balldrop can have spectators back. This comes on the condition that those who attend are fully vaccinated, even little kids.
• Adams:
  • Frank Carone, who serves as the lawyer for the Brooklyn Democratic Party, may be getting a cabinet position in Adams’ administration. Carone, who’s also in charge of the law firm Abrams Fensterman’s Brooklyn office, is known to be a close ally of Adams, and is rumored to be considered for the Chief of Staff position.
  • Adams joined Councilman Keith Powers this week to ask de Blasio to reverse his position on banning propane heaters for outdoor dining. De Blasio instituted the ban in the first place because of potential fire hazards, but with winter coming and the pandemic still in full swing, Adams doesn’t want to close off an avenue of revenue for businesses. 
• Schools
• Crime
  • A new civil rights unit is coming to the US Attorney’s office in Manhattan. Noting a rise in anti-Asian and antisemitic hate crimes, the first black US Attorney for the Southern District, Damian Williams, announced the formation of the civil rights unit this week to focus more on criminal prosecutions of hate crimes. 
• Development:
  • North Brooklyn pipeline:
    • A second federal agency has launched a civil rights investigation against National Grid’s North Brooklyn pipeline. The Department of Transportation has joined the Environmental Protection Agency in scrutinizing whether the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation’s approval of the pipeline violated federal antidiscrimination laws because of the pipeline’s construction in minority neighborhoods without adequate safeguards. The pipeline is set to run between Brownsville to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. 
  • Coney Island boardwalk:
    • The Coney Island boardwalk is set to get a $100m facelift. The redesign of the officially named Riegelmann Boardwalk will be the first “comprehensive” redesign since its opening in 1923, and is set to include a more resilient boardwalk, with new decking, railing, and more. 
  • Tenant legal representation:
    • Every tenant hauled into Housing Court can now be legally represented for free, with limits, with the lowest-income tenants eligible for completely cost-free legal representation. Thanks to a $166m cash infusion from the latest state budget, the City’s Right to Counsel policy is in full effect. 
• Horse carriage ban:
  • Despite de Blasio’s dwindling time in office, the Mayor wants to try banning horse carriages again. De Blasio tried to do it before at the start of his first term but was hit with heavy opposition from the horse carriage union, and left horse carriages in place around Central Park. This time around, it looks like de Blasio’s efforts are stuck because the Economic Development Corporation agency had not yet reached a deal with an engineering firm to look into de Blasio’s idea to replace the horses with showcars. 

Council

• Bay Ridge’s Councilman Justin Brannan can finally breathe a sigh of relief. After counting absentee ballots, Brannan eked out an official victory over his Republican opponent Brian Fox, for Brannan to keep his Council seat. Democratic hopeful Tony Avella, on the other hand, ended up losing a chance to take an open seat in Queens to Republican Vickie Paladino, bringing the number of Republicans in the Council from 3 to 6.
• The City Department of Education got its feet held to the fire at a recent Council education committee hearing looking at the Department’s progress in bringing special education students up to speed following the pandemic. After de Blasio announced $250m in special education programs in July, parents and activists said the City is moving too slowly, with Councilman and Education Committee chair Mark Treyger acknowledging failure. The Education Department said that a number of schools have already started implementing individual education plans, but due to a low number of teachers following the pandemic, they’ve had a harder time getting special education programs off the ground.
• The Council took aim at automatic hiring tools this week. The body passed a bill banning the employment practice unless a yearly audit can show that the business doesn’t discriminate against applicants with the automatic hiring tool based on race or gender. The bill also requires that a human being review the AI that conducts the automatic hiring process. 
• Steven Matteo is signing off. The former Republican minority leader in the Council is officially resigning his seat on November 26th to serve as CEO of youth and family agency United Activities Unlimited. Joe Borelli, who just won re-election in Staten Island, will now serve as the Republican Minority Leader in the Council. 

Hochul

• COVID
  • Hochul wants workers back in their offices next year. At a breakfast event in Manhattan this week, the Governor said that she wants workers to make getting back to their office desks part of their New Year's resolutions. 
  • The masks are staying on for now. The Department of Health’s Public Health and Health Planning Council approved a continuing plan to keep masks on in schools, healthcare facilities, jails, shelters, buses, and more, hours after the Governor announced that 80% of New Yorkers 18 and older are fully vaccinated.
• Election:
  • Hochul received two more endorsements from state legislators as the governor’s race starts heating up just over a year away. State Senators Tim Kennedy and Diane Savino approved of Hochul’s attempt at a full term, representing some establishment backing from the heads of the Transportation and Labor Committees, respectively. 
  • Public Advocate Jumaane Williams has officially entered the race for Governor, amidst worries from progressives that he will siphon off votes from Attorney General Letitia James. Williams released a campaign video this week bolstering his activist bona fides.
  • De Blasio in the meantime, hasn’t announced his candidacy publicly but has already pitched a year-round schooling policy throughout New York state, which would be fully funded by taxing the wealthiest New Yorkers at the tune of $5.4b. 
• Cuomo:
  • The state’s ethics panel, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, voted this week to reverse its approval for Cuomo’s book deal, which netted the former Governor over $5m in profits in the midst of his handling of the pandemic. The book deal became controversial in light of disclosures over Cuomo’s hiding of the true nursing home death toll and his sexual harassment allegations of a dozen women.
  • Cuomo’s lawyer Rita Glavin has asked State Attorney General Letitia James to recuse herself from the Cuomo investigation. Following James’ announcement that she’s running for Governor, Glavin said James is obviously making moves based on politics when she forced Cuomo out of the job with her August 3rd report, which substantiated the dozen sexual harassment allegations reported by current and former Cuomo employees, as well as women who had general interactions with the former Governor. 
• Crime:
  • A real estate boss with ties to Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin was indicted for fraud and identity theft connected to concealing contributions to Benjamin’s comptroller campaign. Gerald Migdol told donors how to bundle contributions so as to hide the true sources of those political donations to Benjamin’s Comptroller campaign, which included even an episode where it seemed like a toddler donated. Prosecutors made clear that they’re not implicating Benjamin himself.
• Transportation:
  • With the federal infrastructure bill now being signed into law, Governor Hochul announced that the MTA will be holding off on a fare hike for now. Despite making it sound like fare hikes will be held off for the foreseeable future, a subsequent meeting of the MTA Board made it clear that fare hikes can still happen next year.
  • Janno Lieber might be hearing some good news. The acting CEO of the MTA may finally become the permanent CEO, as reports show Hochul wants Lieber to stay in his role instead of in an acting capacity.
• Health:
  • Mobile anti-addiction units are coming to remote areas in the State soon. Thanks to $2m in federal funds, addiction treatment providers will be able to establish trucks and buses that can park in hard-to-reach areas for the purpose of dispensing medications against relapse and overdose.
• Economy:
  • The state’s unemployment rate went down again, albeit still at a slow pace. The rate fell to 6.9% from 7.1% last month, with the state adding 40k more jobs. 
  • Long Island homeowners can now apply for state aid to prevent foreclosures. The Treasury Department has approved a request by the state to use $539 million in federal funds for the policy, which would provide foreclosure moratoriums to homeowners that experienced financial hardship due to COVID. 
• Nassau County:
  • Nassau County is getting a new Executive. After incumbent Democrat Laura Curran was holding out hope that mail-in ballots would put her over the edge against her opponent, it just wasn’t enough, and Curran this week conceded to Republican Bruce Blakeman.
• Buffalo:
  • Election results were made official in Buffalo, where incumbent Mayor Byron Brown officially won re-election through a write-in campaign against Democratic Socialist India Walton. Walton beat Brown in the Democratic primary, which set off a panic amongst establishment liberals. Brown, despite losing the primary and a court fight to be named on the ballot, launched a write-in campaign against Walton, and won.

Legislature

• Cuomo:
  • As if Cuomo didn’t have enough trouble on his hands with the State Attorney General, the state Assembly Judiciary Committee agreed to review Cuomo’s impeachment report this week. The much anticipated report is the result of more than 165 interviews conducted by attorneys from Davis Polk & Wardwell, and was expected to be released earlier had Cuomo not resigned. Members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee have reviewed a 45-page report about Cuomo’s sexual harassment, COVID book deal, and nursing home deaths coverup, and Mario Cuomo Bridge construction claims, with Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh saying the report included things that made her jaw drop, and Assemblyman Phil Steck to say that the report would have led to Cuomo’s impeachment. The report is expected to be publicly released before Thanksgiving.

Judiciary 

• Malcolm X assassination:
  • Manhattan judge Ellen Biben approved the exoneration of two men that were earlier convicted of assassinating civil rights leader Malcolm X. After a Netflic documentary raised questions about evidence held back from Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam’s involvement in X’s death, the Manhattan DA Cy Vance moved forward in asking the court to exonerate the two men. Both men were paroled in the 80s, and Khalil Islam had since passed away in 2009.
• Teaching certification tests:
  • Teachers are set to get $660m in damages in a long-running class-action lawsuit against how NYC uses certification tests in an allegedly discriminatory way. Black and Latino teachers accused the City of using the tests to prevent them from getting seniority status.

Biden

Domestic

• COVID
  • The CDC has approved Pfizer and Moderna’s booster shots for all adults this week. Director Rochelle Walensky made the announcement after a unanimous vote by a CDC advisory group clarified confusing regulations about which groups of Americans were allowed to get the boosters after their second shots. 
  • The US is also paying Pfizer close to $5.3b for 10 million courses of an antiviral COVID drug the company is developing, on the condition that US regulators approve it. Pfizer has recently asked the FDA to grant emergency approval for its anti-COVID pill, which the company says reduces hospitalizations and deaths by 89%. 
  • Dr. Anthony Fauci warned this week of a “double whammy” in infections from the Delta variant alongside waning vaccine protection. At an interview with STAT, Fauci said he’s worried that there’ll be a rise in cases this winter stemming from people visiting each other for the holidays, and not in time for enough people to get their booster shots.
• Health
  • Kamala Harris briefly became the nation’s first female and Asian-American President without much fanfare. Biden went to sleep under anesthesia for a routine colonoscopy this week, invoking a temporary 25th Amendment provision that would hand Presidential power to the Vice President, as is routine in these situations. The procedure went off without any complications.
  • Overdose deaths have high a record high in the US. The CDC reported that over 100k overdoses occurred in a 12-month span through April, marking a 29% rise in overdose deaths than a year earlier. About 75% of the deaths are linked to fentanyl-related overdoses. 
• Hacks:
  • The FBI is investigating an attempted elections hack in Ohio. The agency said the hack, spurred by a private laptop being hooked into Lake County’s election network, didn’t result in anything being taken and looks like an earlier attempt in Colorado which was caused by elections officials trying to prove Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
  • The US has also charged two Iranians with attempting to influence the 2020 elections. Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and Sajjad Kashian tried pulling off an online disinformation campaign, according to US authorities, illegally obtaining voter information, and breaking into a media company’s computers. The US also sanctioned six other Iranian individuals and one organization for meddling in the US elections. 
• USPS:
  • Biden has replaced USPS Postmaster Louis DeJoy’s allies on the Board of the Postal Service. DeJoy, a holdout from Trump’s administration that can’t be easily removed by Biden, is criticized by Democrats for planning to slow down the USPS in an effort to reduce bloating within the postal agency. By announcing his nominees to replace DeJoy’s allies on the postal board, if they get approved, the Board might finally get rid of DeJoy, something Biden and other liberals wanted all along.
• Bureau of Land Management:
  • Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office released a report finding that Trump’s Interior Department Secretary David Bernhardt made the decision to move the Bureau of Land Management from DC to Colorado in order to push out black staffers, which led to staffing shortages, amongst other obvious problems. The decision had since been reversed. 
• Economy:
  • Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen came back to lawmakers this week to tell them that the federal government will have enough money until December 15th. Congress had earlier kicked the can down the road in passing a temporary debt ceiling increase, after Republicans refused to approve a longer-term increase in the nation’s borrowing limit. 
  • Unemployment claims fell by 268k last week, a drop of 1000 the week prior. 
  • The amount of positive economic indicators is not convincing the majority of Americans, with polls showing that Americans are worried about inflation and the drag of the pandemic. Biden himself faces his lowest poll numbers of his Presidency. Yet despite the worries, retail sales increased by 1.7% in October, with companies enjoying record profits in the backdrop of pandemic-caused supply bottlenecks.
  • And trying to tackle the high price of gas, Biden has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether fuel companies are colluding with one another to keep prices high, as the President’s role in gas prices is actually limited. The average price of gas throughout the country increased to a seven-year high of $3.41.
• Bills:
  • The President signed three bills this week that will support first responders, including police officers, including increased benefits, peer support, and granting bigger jurisdiction over crimes against federal officers abroad, according to the New York Post. Biden took the chance to ask Congress to push back on calls to defund the police. 
  • The Department of Justice also announced it’s giving out $139m to states to hire 1000 new officers, with the goal of expanding community policing and mental health services.
• Communion:
  • Biden won’t have to worry about being denied Communion for a while. At a meeting of US Catholic Bishops, the group voted 222-8 to approve an official document that avoided answering the question of whether public officials that support abortion wouldn’t be allowed to take Communion in church, referring to the part where churchgoers drink wine and eat bread representing Jesus’ body.

Foreign

• UAE Chinese port:
  • The United Arab Emirates wasn’t going to have a Chinese military port, as long as the Biden administration had anything to say about it. The Wall Street Journal reported that this past spring, as soon as US military intelligence found out that the UAE may be having the Chinese build a port in its country, the administration quickly got them to stop construction, saying that allowing the port to be built would lead to strains between the US and the UAE. 
• Chinese talks with Xi Jinping:
  • Speaking of China, Biden had just finished a three-hour virtual talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping, representing the first time the two talked in a long time. Although the thorniest topics were avoided, Biden and Xi agreed to relax limits on allowing journalists into each other’s countries, agreed to work together against climate change, and brought up the possibility of arms control.
• Afghanistan:
  • More than 28k Afghans applied for humanitarian entry into the US right before the Taliban took over Afghanistan. The number that were approved at the time? 100, according to US officials. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials blamed the low approvals on a mishandling of the high demand of applicants.
• Chinese Winter Olympics:
  • Biden is thinking about boycotting the Chinese Winter Olympics. The President said he’s considering a diplomatic boycott because of China’s human rights record, including its current genocide against the Muslim Uighur population, which Chinese officials are currently rounding up, putting in cages, forcing “re-education” on them, and in some cases, even conducting forced sterilizations. The diplomatic boycott would allow US athletes to participate in the games, but keep officials away.
• US-Mexico-Canada meeting:
  • Biden has met with the leaders of Canada and Mexico in the three countries’ first summit in 5 years. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador talked about trade and immigration, with Canada worried about a US policy that would close off the Canadian-US electric vehicle market and Mexico worried about continuing bilateral attempts at stopping unauthorized crossing at the US-Mexico border. 
• Danny Fenster:
  • Myanmar has released US journalist Danny Fenster from captivity. The military junta in the country held Fenster for 6 months after convicting him of shaky spying allegations and sentencing him for more than 50 years in prison. Fenster left with the help of US diplomat Bill Richardson, who negotiated his release. 

Congress

House

• Infrastructure:
  • The Congressional Budget Office finally released its score of the human infrastructure bill that moderate Democrats have been waiting for. Under an agreement between moderates and progressives, progressives voted for the physical infrastructure proposal in exchange for moderates agreeing to consider the human proposal as long as the CBO released a score. According to that score, the House’s version of Biden’s Build Back Better bill would add almost $1.9t to the national debt, compared to $1.2t in revenue. The score undercuts Democrats’ argument that the bill is paid for, saying the CBO ignored revenue brought in by increased IRS enforcement of the rich.
  • Following the CBO score, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi scheduled a vote on the human infrastructure bill, with the House version of the bill including provisions challenged in the Senate, including paid family leave and immigration reforms. The bill passed 220-213, with Pelosi losing only one Democrat. The bill now heads to the Senate, where it’s almost guaranteed to undergo revisions. Before the vote, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy gave a would-be filibuster of the bill for 8.5 hours, decrying the Build Back Better proposal but also veering off-topic. 
  • A little-noticed provision that made it through the Build Back Better bill was a deal to revise the state and local tax deduction, which increased the cap from $10k to $80k, spearheaded by Long Island Democrat Tom Suozzi. Better known as the SALT cap, the deduction allows taxpayers to reduce state and local taxes from their ultimate federal tax bill, and is mainly used in high-tax states like New York. A cap of $10k was put in place during Trump’s tenure, when Republicans passed a tax cut package.
• Gosar:
  • Republican Paul Gosar from Arizona was censured by the House this week mostly by party lines. After Gosar tweeted an edited anime clip depicting him killing Democratic Rep AOC and going after President Biden, the chamber voted 230-199 to kick Gosar off his assignments to the House Oversight and Natural Resources committees. Gosar ended up retweeting the video after the censure, followed by former President Trump endorsing Gosar for reelection and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy promising to give Gosar better committee assignments if Republicans win control of the House after the 2022 midterms. 
• January 6:
  • Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon was arrested, indicted, and charged this week for defying a subpoena by the January 6 Committee in the House. After surrendering his passport, Bannon was released of his own recognizance and remained defiant. Meanwhile, other former Trump officials are also pushing back against the Congressional subpoenas for the Committee to learn more about what Trump and his people did during the insurrection on that day, including Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former DOJ attorney John Eastman, and former trade advisor Peter Navarro. 
  • DC District Judge Amit Mehta blamed former President Trump for the January 6th insurrection. In his sentencing of an individual rioter, John Lolos, to two weeks in jail, Judge Mehta pointed out the small sentence was in part because Lolos broke into the Capitol under Trump’s direction, and essentially was a “pawn.”
  • And the infamous so-called QAnon shaman, Jacob Chansley, who was dressed up in Viking horns on the day of the insurrection, was sentenced to 41 months in prison by District Judge Royce Lamberth. Lamberth said that although Chansley seemed genuinely remorseful for his conduct storming the Capitol and yelling at police officers, but that his actions still merit prison time.
• Retirements:
  • Another House Democrat is biting the dust. Texas Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson, the first registered nurse to have been elected to Congress, said she will be retiring at the end of her current term. Johnson has been in Congress for 30 years, and said she has decided to retire after going back and forth over whether to run for re-election, but assured party members she will endorse a successor.
• Government funding:
  • As we mentioned earlier, Treasury Secretary Yellen said the government has until December 15th to be able to fund itself. In response, House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro said that Congress should pass another short-term continuing resolution kicking the can down the road by December 3rd to head off another legislative game of chicken.

Senate

• NDAA:
  • Another item that was set high on the Senate agenda aside from taking up the House’s version of the Build Back Better agenda was passing the National Defense Authorization Act, which sets guidelines on how the Executive Branch can use military force. Senate Democrats originally wanted to pass a new version of the Act before Thanksgiving, but Republicans objected an amendments package that sought a compromise by leaving out Democratic proposals, forcing the issue until after Thanksgiving break.
• Leahy:
  • Longtime Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy also announced his retirement from Congress. Leahy was the longest-serving member of the Senate at 81 years of age, saying “it’s time to put down the gavel.” Leahy said he made the decision about a month ago, already having told the President.

Federal Courts

• The florist who refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding has dropped her Supreme Court challenge. Barronelle Stutzman said she settled with the two men for $5k and is now retiring. 

National

• COVID
  • The number of deaths from COVID in the US this year has surpassed the number from last year. According to Johns Hopkins University and federal data, the total COVID death toll of 770,800 is more than twice the 2020 death toll of 385,343.
  • A report published in the journal Science points to the pandemic starting in China, amidst tensions regarding investigating the origin of the pandemic. With China on the defensive, the country has spread conspiracy theories that COVID actually originated in the US and was brought to China thanks to naval vessels, but a new report published by scientist Michael Worobey, suggested that the first person with the virus was a Chinese wet market vendor in Wuhan. China continues to stonewall efforts by the international community to get to the bottom of how the virus spread, with most credible information pointing to a natural zoological development that jumped to humans.
• Who said the Constitution was free? One of the 13 surviving copies of the original Constitution was sold this week for $43.2m, with the individual investor beating out a group of cryptoholders.
• Two important criminal cases holding implications for the country’s relationships with race rested this week.
  • In the Kyle Rittenhouse case, the jury deliberated for a number of days. Following a rocky trial encompassing the unique Judge Bruce Schroeder fighting with prosecutors and barring MSNBC from the courtroom following an allegation a producer followed the jury around and seeing the Defendant sob on the stand, the jury acquitted Rittenhouse of murder. Protests erupted in front of the courthouse and in places like New York but without wide scale damage as feared. Supporters of the verdict say that it was consistent with the law of self-defense, while critics say that it’ll only embolden other would-be vigilantes to go look for a fight and claim self-defense when it happens. 
  • Meanwhile in Georgia, the prosecution rested in the trial over Ahmaud Arbery’s three murderers, who stopped a jogging Arbery in a suburban neighborhood before shooting him dead last February. Travis McMichael, his father Greg McMichael, and William Bryan, are on trial for 25-year old Arbery’s murder, saying they thought Arbery was in the midst of committing a crime. Travis McMichael, who was put on the stand, admitted that he didn’t feel threatened before pointing his shotgun at Arbery and shooting him. 
• Meanwhile, in Aurora, Colorado, the family of Elijah McClaim, who was killed by police in 2019 when they injected a fatal dose of ketamine into his body, received a record $15m settlement from the city. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced criminal indictments in September against the three police officers and two paramedics involved in McClain’s death.
• Peng Shuai:
  • China has shared videos of tennis star Pen Shuai this week in an effort to head off growing calls for concern of Shuai’s disappearance. After American tennis stars like Naomi Osaka pointed out the disappearance of Shuai after Shuai accused one of China’s vice premiers of sexually assaulting her, the noise grew too loud for China to ignore. Steve Simon, the chief executive of the Women’s Tennis Association, said the videos are insufficient. Shuai ended up reappearing at a Beijing tennis tournament on Sunday.
• Elizabeth Holmes:
  • In another high-profile court trial, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes took the stand this week. Holmes is being accused of fraud for misleading investors in her medical start-up Theranos, which claimed to have developed a way to bring people blood test results from home, but was ultimately revealed to be pure fiction. While prosecutors painted Holmes as intentionally deceiving investors in order to rake in money, the defense is arguing that Holmes was simply naive in running her business. 
• Julius Jones:
  • Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt granted clemency to death row inmate Julius Jones at the last minute after continued pleas by activists. Jones has consistently maintained his innocence in a 1999 shooting of insurance executive Paul Howell, saying that Jones’ co-defendant pinned the murder on him. Stitt converted the death row punishment to life imprisonment without parole. An Oklahoma Parole Board earlier recommended reducing Jones’ death sentence to life with the possibility of parole. 

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.