Episode 61: January 16-22, 2022

January 16-22, 2022

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 January 16-22, 2022, Eric Adams faces public safety emergencies after an Asian commuter was pushed in front of a train and a police officer was killed, Kathy Hochul unveils her state budget and campaign war chest, Biden gives his first news conference in 10 months as his voting rights agenda fails, and the Supreme Court gave Trump no cover after denying to shield his records from the January 6 select committee. Now, onto the show; things may have changed by the time you hear this.

Adams

• COVID
  • The Omicron surge continues to decline on a downward spiral, with Mayor Eric Adams saying COVID numbers are leveling off.
  • The MTA has reported that out of its 67k staffmembers, almost 18k have had a positive case of COVID since December 2nd last year.
• Appointments:.
  • Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro has announced his retirement after 50 years of service.
• Trip to DC:
  • Adams took his first trip to DC as Mayor this week, where he urged his fellow urban Mayors to not shirk from the challenges facing their cities.
• Crime:
  • Commuter Michelle Go was pushed onto the train tracks this week by Martial Simon, a mentally challenged individual who begged for a judge to commit him to a mental hospital. Hundreds gathered in Times Square for a vigil in Go’s honor. A rise in subway deaths by pushing people onto the tracks and fear of mentall ill individuals causing trouble in the trains has spurred even Mayor Adams to say he doesn’t feel safe riding the City’s subways. Governor Hochul responded by deploying mental health workers into the City subway system to address the homelessness crisis rampant within it. MTA leaders are exploring placing shields and doors on train platforms.
  • Cop Jason Rivera killed, second cop critical, after responding to domestic violence call. Adams held a roundtable meeting concerning gun violence. The shooting saw the fourth cop shot across the City in 72 hours.
  • Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg consulting with a crisis communications specialist after the release and criticism of his priorities memo. Bragg admitted that he could’ve handled the release of the memo better but stood by it.
  • Hate-crime complaints have increased in the City last year, with anti-Asian hate crimes being reported three times more than the year before.
  • State Comptroller Brad Lander has started to release his first official audit results, starting with the NYPDs promise to hire 415 civilian employees, but a lack of data makes the results of that goal a mystery.
• Infrastructure:
  • Mayor Adams promised to redesign 1000 intersections in NYC for the purpose of giving pedestrians safer crossings. The Mayor said he wants to change regulations to force drivers to fully stop whenever a pedestrian crosses the street, whether or not there’s a crosswalk, and increase police enforcement.
• Union:
  • The Chairman of the Municipal Labor Committee, Harry Nepoli, may have some explaining to do after he talked trash about a group of City retirees fighting a change in their public health insurance. A DeBlasio-City union deal scheduled a change in retirees’ health insurance to Medicare Advantage Plus, which some retirees claimed puts their benefits into the hands of private insurers and changes coverage, and those who refuse to make the switch have to pay a nearly $200 a month penalty. The NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees sued against the plan, and Adams has not indicated how he plans to proceed.
• Bitcoin:
  • As he promised, Adams has converted his first three paychecks as Mayor into Bitcoin and another cryptocurrency, Ethereum.

City Council

• Committee chairs:
  • Council members were given their committee chair assignments this week. Diana Ayala was given the role of Deputy Speaker and chair of the General Welfare Committee, Keith Powers was named Majority Leader and Chair of the Rules Committee, and Selvena Brooks-Powers was named Majority Whip and Chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Rafael Salamanca Jr. kept his chairmanship of the Land Use Committee, Justin Brannan was given Chair of the Finance Committee, and Rita Joseph replaced former Councilman Mark Treyger as Chair of the Education Committee. Former Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer was given the Oversight Committee. A full list can be found on the Council’s website.
• Non-citizing voting:
  • The City Board of Elections formally asked the State to review whether the Council’s recently-passed non-citizen voting law is legal. The law would allow legal residents to vote in City elections, excluding state and federal races.
• Paladino:
  • A week after submitting her first vote as a Council member from inside the Republican Minority Leader’s office, Republican Queens Councilwoman Vickie Paladino received a COVID exemption after testing negative for the virus and was allowed to place her first vote inside the Council chamber this week.

Hochul

• COVID
  • The state’s COVID positivity rate has fallen down to less than 10% for the first time in more than a month.
• Budget
  • Governor Hochul delivered a speech outlining her budget proposals, pitching a $216.3b package. Some highlights include projecting a balanced budget through 2027, investment in infrastructure, affordable housing, and public universities, improvements to nursing homes, healthcare facilities and personnel, relief for small businesses and workers, funding for childcare, tuition-assistace, and climate change programs.
• Race:
  • Rep. Tom Suozzi has $5m in his campaign coffers. Hochul? Over $20m.
  • Former NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio officially bowed out of the Governor’s race this week. 
• Benjamin:
  • Lt. Governor Brian Benjamin paid out $25k this week that was owed to car loan payments and other personal expenses that were charged to his State Senate campaign account, a source of questions from his time even before he was picked by Hochul to be her second in command.
• Malatras:
  • Despite his ouster as SUNY Chancellor, Jim Malatras will be allowed to take what’s called a “study leave” while earning his $450k salary and then will take up a tenured position as a Professor within the SUNY system. Malatras was pressured out by the SUNY Board following his role in Cuomo’s scandals.
• Elections:
  • Hochul signed absentee voting into law this week that would last through 2022, citing the COVID pandemic.
• Alcohol in theaters:
  • The State Liquor Authority took a unanimous vote this week to allow movie theaters to serve beer and liquor to patrons, so get ready to buy those overpriced beers with your overpriced popcorn.
• Cuomo:
  • State Attorney General Letitia James released her office’s transcripts of Cuomo’s investigation, including the former Governor himself. Part of the disclosure was the discovery that Cuomo’s former state inspector general, Letizia Tagliafierro was the one who green-lighted the move to place a relatively novice female state trooper onto Cuomo’s protective detail, who Cuomo would allegedly sexually harass later on.
• Trump Organization:
  • James also laid out new details regarding her investigation into the Trump Organization for fraud in new court filings this week, saying Trump and his children put their signatures on a myriad of documents low-balling assets to escape taxes while inflating the value of those same corporate assets to gain access to loans.
• Sports betting:
  • A week since online sports betting was legalized in New York, the state Gaming Commission reported that New Yorkers have already placed $603m in bets.
• Syracuse rezoning
  • Syracuse is launching an $800m infrastructure project where the City is trying to replace housing projects with mixed-income neighborhoods.
• Nassau:
  • Nassau County’s Police Department will now release the names of those who have been re-arrested after being let out on bail, a push by the Republican members of the County to continue shedding light on what they call an inadequate bail reform system.

State Legislature

• MTA:
  • The state Legislature confirmed Janno Lieber as the permanent head of the MTA this week, transition him from his Acting role. One of Lieber’s first statements in his new role was to say that the MTA doesn’t wany any fare hikes for all of this year.

State Courts

• COVID
  • A Cornell Law professor filed a federal lawsuit to challenge state Health Department guidance that would prioritize underserved demographics over white New Yorkers regarding COVID treatment.
  • Poughkeepsie City Court Judge Frank Mora continued to return to his courtroom maskless despite having been barred from his own courtroom for violating the mask mandates. Mora has moved onto conducting criminal arraignments over Zoom.

Biden

Domestic

• COVID:
  • Fauci said it’s too soon to say Omicron will be the last surge. 
  • Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley tested positive for COVID.
  • CDC data released this week shows that Pfizer and Moderna’s booster shots against the Omicron variant are 90% effective against hospitalizations.
  • Other studies released by state and federal officials found that vaccination and prior COVID infection reduces a person’s chances of reinfection and hospitalization in a six-month window.
  • The website that allows people to order up to 4 rapid tests for their households went live a day earlier this week, with the Postal Service now scheduled to deliver 500m test kits within weeks.
  • After the Treasury Department threatened to take back COVID relief money from the state of Arizona if their Governor Doug Ducey continues to withhold that same money if schools don’t adopt an anti-mask policy, Arizona turned around and sued the US to proactively stop the clawback of relief funds.
• News conference:
  • Biden had his first in-person news conference with journalists in 10 months, defending his record and going after Republicans for opposing his legislative agenda. The President did, however, concede that his pandemic response was less than stellar and said that his agenda would have to be broken up in separate parts instead of a huge legislative package.
• Minimum wage:
  • Biden ordered all federal agencies to raise the minimum wage of their workers to $15 an hour, taking effect starting at the end of the month, affecting 70k workers as over 2m workers already receive that wage or more.
• Economy:
  • Tech company Intel announced that it’s going to invest at least $20b to build a chip-making factory in Ohio. A worldwide semiconductor chip shortage has contributed to the overall decline in the global supply chain.
  • CNBC reported that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm violated a stock disclosure law 9 times when she failed to disclose her stock sales within 45 days as required.
  • Jobless claims rose to 286k last week as the Omicron surge started to peak.

Foreign

• Russia:
  • Talks with Russia have stalled as the country positions more troops alongs its border with Ukraine. An invasion is feared to be imminent within a month or so. Biden got into some hot water with the Ukrainian President for measuring the degree of an invasion necessary for an American response. The British government on Saturday said that the Kremlin is planning to install pro-Russian leaders in Ukraine and overthrow the current President there. The US is thinking about pulling out the families of its diplomats in Ukraine as a precautionary measure while observers have noticed the families of Russian diplomats have already started to go. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov held what they called “frank and substantive” talks in Geneva, and promised to continue their dialogue to head off any confrontation between Russia and Ukraine.
  • The Treasury Department also sanctioned four Ukranians for their roles in spreading Russian propaganda to set the stage for a Russian invasion. Two members of the Ukrainian Parliament, Taras Kozak and Oleh Voloshyn, were sanctioned, along with two former government officials. 
• Japan:
  • Biden held bilateral talks with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumi Kishida this week, discussing economic and environmental issues, as well as the geopolitical issues regarding China. Kishida reportedly invited Biden to visit Japan, which Biden accepted.
• Belarusia:
  • US authorities charged four Belarusian officials for their role in committing what’s called air piracy when they forced a Ryanair jet plane to land in Minsk so that a dissident can be arrested last year. Listeners may recall that Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko was facing mass protests following a rigged election, and feigned a bomb threat on the plane to force its grounding.
• Venezuela:
  • The Treasury Department extended a ban on bond transactions held by the oil refinery company Citgo which operated in Venezuela. The US continues to support opposition leader Juan Guaido’s self-declaration as President against the current one, Nicolas Maduro. The kicker is that Guaido controls Citgo, and celebrated the move by the Treasury.
• Havana Syndrome:
  • The CIA released a report disclaiming Russia or China’s involvement in creating the so-called Havana Syndrome, a recently discovered ailment affecting US diplomats around the globe with bouts of nausea, dizziness, and other neurological symptoms. Instead, the sickness deems to be coming from environmental causes or stress, disappointing those seeking answers.

Congress

House

• Jan 6 Committee:
  • The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has subpoenaed Ivanka Trump, the first person in Trump’s family to have been called forth by the committee. The panel is interested in Ivanka’s conversations with Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump himself that day. Trump commented on the news, saying it would be unfair to seek Ivanka’s testimony. The Committee also subpoenaed the phone records of Eric Trump and Donald Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle.
  • Documents approved to be released by the National Archives from Trump’s time in the White House have already shown that Trump had a draft executive order ready to declare a national emergency after the 2020 Presidential election and seize voting machines.
  • The Committee is also reportedly looking into a group of fake Republican state electors who tried to certify Trump as the winner of their state’s presidential elections by nefarious means, despite actually losing to Biden. Former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was allegedly instrumental in overseeing the plot. He was subpoenaed by the Select Committe along with Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, and Trump campaign advisor Boris Epshteyn for their role in spreading false propaganda about voter fraud and launching spurious lawsuits across the country.
  • Fulton County, GA, DA Fani Willis asked for the convening of a grand jury to help investigate whether Trump’s attempts to interfere in the Presidential election in that state constituted any crimes. Listeners may recall Trump’s phone call with Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to help find him votes to overtake Biden’s lead in 2020. 
• Stock ban law:
  • A proposed bipartisan law aimed at banning lawmakers from trading stocks during their time in office has gained steam, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who earlier defended lawmakers’ right to take part in the stock market, continues to say she trusts her members not to do anything improper. However, she said that if the measure continues to gain steam, she’ll review the bill.
• Rep. Cuellar:
  • The FBI conducted a raid at the office and home of Democratic Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, seizing his computer. Cuellar said through a statement that he is fully cooperating with any investigation.
• Democrat retirements:
  • Democrats Jim Langevin of Rhode Island and Jerry McNerny of California both said they’re not going to run for re-election next year, bringing the number of Democratic retirements in the House to 28.

Senate

• Voting rights and filibuster fails:
  • Republicans filibustered two voting rights bills that Democrats knew were doomed, as two Democrats, Manchin and Sinema, torpedoed an effort to carve out the filibuster for civil rights legislation. The John Lewis and Freedom to Vote Acts sought to restore parts of the original 1964 Voting Rights Act provisions that would give the federal government oversight over states that historically suppressed minority votes and also would overturn recent Republican legislative moves to subvert the vote with increased enforcement against virtually non-existent voter fraud propagated by Trump after losing his re-election.
  • Arizona Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema was censured by the Arizona Democratic Party for her stance to refuse budging on the filibuster.
  • Rep. Jamaal Bowman was arrested when he took part in protests supporting voting rights.
  • Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had to do his own bit of cleanup when he said "African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans" on Wednesday when he was speaking as to why the Democrats’ voting rights bills should be voted down in the Senate. McConnell pointed to his own time being in the audience during Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and organizing civil rights marches during his time in college.
  • Congressional Democrats are now trying to figure out the way forward in salvaging Biden’s agenda, with most opting to break apart the Build Back Better plan into separate pieces and passing them that way. Compounding the problem is Biden’s sagging approval rating, hitting a new low of 43% according to recent AP poll. The President’s average approval is down to 41.9%.
• Antitrust:
  • An antitrust bill was actually moved out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan fashion this week. The bill would place limits on tech platforms such as Apple, Amazon, and Google from favoring its own products over other businesses when consumers use their search engines.

Federal Judiciary

• SCOTUS
  • As alluded to earlier, the Supreme Court ruled against former President Trump’s bid to shield his White House documents from the January 6th Commission based on a novel argument of executive privilege for former Presidents. All Justices except for Clarence Thomas refused to let Trump hide his documents, allowing the National Archives to release them.
  • The Court also decided to take up a case revolving around whether the state of Oklahoma can prosecute crimes committed by non-Native Americans in tribal territory, but expressly rejected Oklahoma’s request to overrule the landmark McGirt case which ruled that half of the state was Indian territory, giving the federal government jurisdiction to prosecute.
  • In a separate case revolving around the city of Boston’s decision to reject a camp’s request to fly a Christian flag on a pole owned by the City, the conservative majority seemed to side against Boston, citing the government’s willingness to fly gay pride flags but not Christian ones.
• Texas abortion law:
  • A 5th Circuit panel sent the Texas abortion to the Texas Supreme Court. In the meantime, the US Supreme Court handed down a ruling blocking continued litigation against the law while it winds through the state courts.
• Federal worker vaccine mandate:
  • A Texas federal judge placed an injunction against the federal government’s vaccine mandate on its own workers and contractors that work with the federal government, although 95% of the federal workforce has reported being vaccinated. 
• Puerto Rico bankruptcy:
  • Puerto Rico has gotten approval from a federal judge to exit bankruptcy after restructuring its $33b in public debt, the largest restructure in US history.

National

• COVID
  • Apart from the March for Life that we go into in a bit, thousands of protestors are expected to show up in DC later today to protest vaccine mandates. The rally is called “Defeat the Mandates DC” and raised at least $200k, with anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children Health Defense fund helping organize the event.
  • Citing Census Bureau data, CBS news reported this week that 9m Americans stay home from work because of COVID in early January, marking 6% of the US workforce at home.
• Texas synagogue hostage situation:
  • A multi-hour standoff at a Texas synagogue ended in the death of a hostage taker when a person posing as someone in need of shelter took a rabbi and members of his congregation hostage. 44-year old British national Malik Faisal Akram demanded the release of convicted extremist Aafia Siddiqui, although he has no relation to her. Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker took the chance to throw a chair at Akram and escape with his congregation, after which Akram was shot dead by SWAT.
• March for Life:
  • As they do every year, pro-life protestors showed up in DC in what’s called the March for Life, hoping the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, which gave women the constitutional right to an abortion. Trump gave a virtual speech to the group a couple of years prior, and the protestors are hopeful now more than in a long time that the conservative majority is going to curtail Roe in March.
• Fruman:
  • A former associate of Rudy GIuliani’s who tried helping him find dirt on Biden in Ukraine, Igor Fruman, was sentenced to a year in jail this week for an unrelated campaign finance crime.
  • In the meantime, prosecutors investigating Giuliani for fraud had received thousands of texts from his seized phones.
• Laundrie:
  • The FBI reported that a notebook found by the body of suspected murderer Brian Laundrie claimed responsibility for the death of his former girlfriend, Gabby Petito. The couple captured the attention of the nation for its “true-crime” elements after the disappearance of Petito as the couple went on a cross-country road trip. Laundrie came back to his Florida home alone and then disappeared, sparking a nationwide manhunt after Petito’s body was discovered. Laundrie’s own body was found in a Florida park.
• Louie Anderson:
  • The comedian Louie Anderson passed away this week at the age of 68 from cancer complications. Anderson was known for his show “Baskets,” his myriad acting roles, as well as his time hosting Family Feud.
• Meat Loaf:
  • Legendary musician and actor Meat Loaf also passed away this week. Known also by his real name, Michael Lee Aday, he is known for his single “I’d Do Anything for Love” from his album “Bat Out of Hell II,” and his enormous cult following. Meat Loaf is suspected to have died from COVID but an official cause of death is pending. He was 74.
• University of Michigan sex abuse settlement:
  • The University of Michigan agreed to a $490m resolution to settle 1050 sexual abuse lawsuits by former athletes alleging former football team doctor Dr. Robert Anderson took advantage of them. Anderson died in 2008.

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.