#governor cuomo

[thebreakfastgenie]

Billy Joel only played a fundraiser for a presidential candidate once and it was for Obama in 2008 and I'm really fascinated by this. Partly it was because Bruce Springsteen guilted him into doing it but he didn't get involved in 2016 or 2024 (2020 doesn't count because you couldn't hold big fundraisers that year) even though he hates Trump (I have sources) and thinks he's dangerous. It seems like what moved him to do a fundraiser for Obama was less "we need to win this election for our survival" and more a sense of wanting to be part of history. I need to understand the Baby Boomer ethos.

[fexalted]

also, can't believe i have driven over the (new) tappan zee bridge three times in the past couple months and only this most recent time have i realized that it is in fact no longer called that

[hellonew-yorkgirl]

8. "Kopflose Reiter" am Hudson und verträumte Kleinstädte in Connecticut

[elierlick]

If you're in New York, now is the time to call Kathy Hochul and ask her to remove Eric Adams as mayor. This is what Andrew Cuomo resigned over and we have to keep up the pressure. (518) 474-8390

New York City mayors cannot be recalled or impeached. The governor is the only individual with the power to remove them. If Eric Adams, the most conservative mayor since Giuliani, is fired, Jumaane Williams will hold the position until a new mayor is elected. Williams is far from perfect but he was at all the major defund/George Floyd rallies and would actually move bloated police funding to necessary programs like healthcare, housing, transportation, and pre-K.

Over the past few weeks, Adams has gutted libraries and schools, blamed migrants for budget deficits, and conducted some of the largest mass arrests of Jews since the Holocaust for protesting Israeli apartheid. It is more urgent than ever to have him ousted.

[mariacallous]

Women who are raped are in many countries – perhaps in most – violated and abused again by the legal system. And yet during her reckoning with the crimes of her husband and 50 other men, all now found guilty in a historic set of verdicts, Gisèle Pelicot seized control of the narrative, becoming a hero in France and around the world.

After she discovered her husband had been drugging her and offering her up online to strangers to come and rape while she was unconscious, Gisèle left her home, her marriage and the story she had told herself about her life, and spent some time in seclusion.

When she emerged, she made two key decisions that transformed her into a feminist hero. The conviction of her rapists and the husband who orchestrated them is justice of a sort (despite some of their sentences seeming shockingly short), but it could all have taken place in the context of the same old story: the shaming, blaming and bullying of a woman in court. She broke that story, and wrote her own instead.

One decision was practical: to waive her right to anonymity and go public. Her lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, said that had she kept the matter private, “she would be behind doors with nobody but her, us, perhaps some family, and 51 accused men and 40 defence lawyers. And she didn’t want to be jailed in a courtroom with them for four months, her on one side and 90 other people on the opposite benches.”

It was a bold decision, and one that meant, ultimately, that even if 90 people were on the opposite benches, millions who support women’s rights were with her, offering her flowers, cheers and support as she entered and exited the court day after day; demonstrating in her name, demanding France come to terms with its rampant misogyny. These actions represent another verdict - one that is perhaps even more powerful than the court’s.

This huge public response is a result of Gisèle Pelicot’s other moral and psychological decision: to reject shame. Rape victims are often privately and publicly shamed at every stage after the sexual assault – by the rapist, his lawyer, the police, the court system, the media. They are blamed for what happened and told it was their fault; upbraided for their past sexual activities, their choice of clothing, their decision to be out in the world, to interact – if they did – with the rapist, to not fight even if they were threatened with death. They are routinely discredited if the trauma of the event scrambles their memory. They are told they are not believable, that they are vindictive or unreliable or dishonest. Often the shame that is so prevalent in this society is internalised at the outset, repeating what rape itself does: disempowers, silences, traumatises.

It is against this backdrop that Pelicot’s story electrified women all over the world. She came and went from the court with dignity, accepting her visibility as lines of supporters began to form to cheer her on and brought her flowers. She showed no desire to hide. She declared: “I want those women to say: ‘Mrs Pelicot did it, we can do it too.’ When you’re raped there is shame, and it’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them.” For the rapists, she meant, not the raped.

Many women decline to press charges because of a reasonable fear of these consequences. This is not a problem of the past. As recently as 9 December, a woman dropped a federal lawsuit for sexual harassment she had filed against the former governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned after an inquiry found that he sexually harassed multiple women in 2021. Gothamist reported of the former staffer: “Charlotte Bennett and her lawyer, Debra Katz, accused Cuomo of weaponizing the discovery process by making ‘invasive’ requests that were designed to ‘humiliate’ her, including demands for documentation from gynecologist visits and other medical records.” (Cuomo’s lawyers claim Bennett withdrew “to avoid being confronted with the mountains of exculpatory discovery … that completely refute her claims.”)

France has long offered refuge to Roman Polański, who fled the US after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old he had also drugged. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was in 2011 the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a prominent member of France’s Socialist party, was accused that May by a New York hotel cleaner of sexual assault. He denied the charges and she was disbelieved and discredited brutally by much of the press and Strauss-Kahn’s powerful friends, her history as a refugee who had suffered female genital mutilation combed over, while conspiracy theories circulated which exonerated Strauss-Kahn. (The charges in the criminal case were dropped in 2011 with the prosecutors citing substantial credibility issues with the maid’s evidence. The civil claim was settled out of court in 2012.)

France is a country where accusations of male sexual crimes have long been ignored; the accused excused or even celebrated by conflating being libertine with being liberated. Will that change now? Some, I hope; not enough, I expect.

Gisèle Pelicot’s heroic boldness in facing the horrific things that had happened to her – in rejecting shame, in standing up for her rights – is admirable. It’s also not a response available to all survivors. Not every case is so clearcut and so well documented that the public and the law have no doubts about the guilt and innocence, the right and wrong. Not everyone will have the excellent lawyers and public support that she has – in fact most won’t, and more than a few will receive death threats and harassment for reporting sexual assault, as some of Donald Trump’s accusers have. I don’t know that Gisèle Pelicot hasn’t received threats, but I do know she has received an unprecedented amount of support. Despite this support, lawyers for the rapists have made familiar accusations – that she’s vengeful, an exhibitionist for allowing the videos to be shown in court, insufficiently sad (rape victims are always supposed to walk the fine – or nonexistent – line between not emotional enough and too emotional).

What I have written is what a lot of people have written about this case: Mme Pelicot has been extraordinary; Frenchwomen have poured out to support her; women around the world have followed the case, discussed it, thought about it. But have men? Until men engage earnestly and honestly with the pervasiveness of sexual assault and the aspects of the culture that celebrate and normalise it, not enough will change.

Many of Gisèle Pelicot’s rapists denied they were rapists, assumed that her husband was entitled to give them permission to assault her while she was unconscious, and all of them demonstrated that they were eager to have sex with a drugged, unconsenting older woman while her husband watched and recorded their crimes. Their sentences may instil fear of the consequences of committing sexual assault, but will they change the desire to do so?

The criminal justice system cannot change culture and consciousness; that happens elsewhere. Feminism has done astonishing work in changing the status of women these past 60 years, but it is not women’s work to change or fix men. And while many men are feminists, far too many men are immersed in the kind of rape culture on display in this trial. One can at least hope that the Gisèle Pelicot case is an occasion and instigation for this work, these conversations, this transformation.

May her example give weight to those trying to change the culture, may the convictions of her assailants serve as a warning, may her dignity and poise inspire other victims and, most of all, may there be fewer victims in a better culture.

Those are the things I can wish for. It will take the will of many and the transformation of institutions to reach those goals. But the example of Gisèle Pelicot offers inspiration – and hope.

[beardedmrbean]

Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo committed “medical malpractice” and publicly undercounted the total number of COVID-related nursing home deaths in New York during the worst period of the killer pandemic, a damning final investigative report released by a key House panel found.

The report from the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, released Monday, also concluded that Cuomo “likely gave false statements” about his role in pandemic decision-making.

That includes him actually being “directly involved” in the infamous March 2020 edict directing nursing homes to admit recovering COVID-19 patients — and downplaying pandemic-related deaths of residents in a July 2020 report, the House panel found.

In another finding, the report concluded that Cuomo “acted in a manner consistent with an attempt to inappropriately influence the testimony of a witness and obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation,” referring to his contacts with former adviser James Malatras.

The House had previously released documents laying out the allegations about Cuomo and his administration’s actions — but the more-than 500-page final report paints a devastating picture of the three-term Democratic governor’s decisions that the subcommittee claims undermined public health.

Cuomo — who is weighing a political comeback run for mayor after resigning as governor in 2021 amid sexual misconduct accusations he denied — ripped the report as a partisan GOP witch hunt.

“This is the same weak gruel the MAGA Republicans on this committee have been peddling for months if not years,” said Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi.

But Rep. Brad Wenstrup, an Ohio Republican who chaired the panel, said in the opening letter of the report that there was bipartisan consensus on numerous topics including “that former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo participated in medical malpractice and publicly covered up the total number of nursing home fatalities in New York.”

A more than 40-page section of the report focuses solely on Cuomo and the state government’s response to the pandemic. Cuomo’s name appears in the report 203 times.

Among the findings alleged in the report are that:

The Cuomo administration’s March 25, 2020 directive to admit or readmit recovering COVID-19 patients into nursing homes was “medical malpractice,” “antithetical to known science” and inconsistent with federal guidance — and the Executive Chamber “attempted to cover it up.”

Contrary to his denials during House testimony, Cuomo and his top aides and advisers were “directly Involved” in and approved the infamous directive, which was later rescinded following public outcry.

Cuomo administration officials testified that the governor ordered the controversial July 6, 2020 state Department of Health report — which was criticized for lowballing nursing home resident deaths from COVID — to combat criticism of the March 25 edict.

Cuomo was directly involved in editing the July report and directing people outside the government — such as Northwell Health CEO Michael Dowling and Greater NY Hospital CEO Kenneth Raske to review it. In a memo shortly before the report’s release and obtained by the House panel, Dowling offered to help “rewrite” it.

Cuomo’s executive chamber decided to remove “out-of-facility” fatalities — such as nursing home residents who died from COVID after falling ill and being transferred to hospitals — from the July report, thus dramatically reducing the total death toll.

The panel also concluded that “Mr. Andrew Cuomo Likely Gave False Statements to the Select Subcommittee in Violation of 18 U.S.C” — a federal crime that if proven could result in a sentence of five years in prison.

The committee in October said it had referred Cuomo’s “criminally false statements” to the US Department of Justice for potential prosecution.

Cuomo’s rep, Azzopardi, claimed the House was out to get “perceived political enemies.”

“From the very beginning this has been an abuse of power and a waste of taxpayer money aimed at punishing perceived political enemies – like Dr. [Anthony] Fauci [then Director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases], Governor Cuomo and ‘the deep state’ – that does nothing to make us more prepared for the next pandemic,” he said.

He claimed federal data showed that New York ranked 39th in terms of per capita nursing home deaths in 2020.

“The DOJ -three times – the Manhattan DA and others looked at the nursing home issue and found no wrongdoing, while the meritless civil lawsuit launched by the very same people who have been working arm and arm with this committee was tossed out of court,” Azzopardi added.

Families of loved ones who were nursing home residents and died from COVID said Cuomo was finally being held to account.

“Cuomo has been lying about following the Trump CDC guidelines for years,” said Peter Arbeeny, whose father, Norman, died from the virus after being released from a Brooklyn nursing home.

“If the Cuomo administration would have followed the Trump [administration] CDC guidelines and also used the the USS Comfort ship and Javits Center [for more patients], thousands of lives would have been saved.”

[covid-safer-hotties]

NYT: Cuomo Personally Altered Report Which Understated Nursing Home COVID Deaths by Over 50%, Emails Reveal - Published Sept 19, 2024

By Joseph Feldman

NEW YORk – Former Governor Andrew Cuomo personally altered a state report that significantly underreported the number of nursing home deaths from COVID-19 by over 50%, according to emails cited in a new report.

The New York Times revealed that emails and congressional documents challenge Cuomo’s claim, made during a congressional hearing, that he had no recollection of seeing or reviewing the state Health Department’s report.

In June 2020, Cuomo’s assistant reportedly sent an email to his senior staff with the message, “Governor’s edits are attached for your review,” according to the Times.

Cuomo, who recently testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, was not under oath during his testimony but was warned he could face criminal charges for knowingly making false statements.

The former governor’s actions during the early stages of the pandemic have drawn criticism, particularly an order to send elderly COVID-19 patients back to nursing homes, which may have led to as many as 9,000 additional deaths. Cuomo acknowledged he referred to this March directive as “the great debacle” in an email sent to his inner circle.

A July 2020 state Department of Health report downplayed the number of nursing home deaths, a move that a U.S. House committee described as part of a “cover-up.” The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic alleged Cuomo’s office had altered the report, but the emails suggest Cuomo was directly involved.

The Times report indicates Cuomo personally added language to the report that placed blame on nursing home staff, visitors, and family members for spreading the virus. During his June questioning by House members, Cuomo claimed he had no recollection of reviewing or editing the report before its release on July 7, 2020.

Although Cuomo is known for avoiding the use of email, the Times noted that none of the emails in question were sent by him.

During a Capitol Hill hearing on September 10, Cuomo’s repeated denials prompted Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) to label him a “lying sack of s—t.”

Vivian Zayas, co-founder of Voice for Seniors, whose mother died in a Long Island nursing home after contracting COVID-19, attended the hearing. She accused Cuomo of lying, stating, “If he lied to Congress, he committed a crime. He should definitely be investigated.”

Cuomo’s spokesperson, Rich Azzopardi, responded to the email revelations by insisting that nursing home staff spread the virus, aligning with the findings of the original report. Azzopardi also emphasized that Cuomo cooperated fully with the congressional inquiry and argued that the findings align with CDC guidelines in place at the time.

Cuomo, who stepped down in August 2021 amid sexual misconduct allegations, has been rumored to be considering a run for New York City mayor as current Mayor Eric Adams faces growing scandals.

[transgenderer]

Peanut was an eastern gray squirrel found and rescued in 2017 by Mark Longo after the squirrel's mother was killed by a car in New York City. Longo sought a shelter for Peanut but was unsuccessful, and he bottle-fed the squirrel for the next eight months before deciding that Peanut should be returned to the wild. Longo released the animal into his backyard, but about a day later, he found Peanut on his porch with half of its tail missing. Longo said he "opened the door, [Peanut] ran inside, and that was the last of Peanut's wildlife career." It is illegal to keep squirrels as pets in the state of New York, and in the seven years spent in Longo's care in his hometown of Norwalk, Connecticut, no license was obtained to legally keep Peanut. Longo has stated that he was in the process of filing paperwork to have Peanut certified as an educational animal at the time of the seizure, however, he has not explained why he did not pursue a license in the preceding seven years.

While in his care, Longo created an Instagram account sharing videos of Peanut, and by October 2024 the account had amassed 534,000 followers. Peanut's social media following also helped steer viewers to Longo's OnlyFans account, where he called himself "Peanut's dad" and produced pornography, drawing in $800,000 over one month. In April 2023, Longo and his wife moved from Norwalk to upstate New York to found the P'Nuts Freedom Farm Animal Sanctuary. They contributed to half of the sanctuary's expenses, most of which was raised through Peanut's social media presence. According to them, the sanctuary had rescued over 300 animals by November 2024, however, Longo was not licensed as a wildlife rehabilitator.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) began investigating Mark Longo in January 2024 after complaints were received alleging that Longo was keeping wildlife illegally. In an interview with the New York Post, Longo speculated that the anonymous complaints were motivated by jealousy due to the success of his OnlyFans account.

On October 30, 2024, the NYSDEC took Peanut, along with a pet raccoon named Fred, from Longo's home in Pine City, New York. Two days later, government officials alleged that after his seizure, Peanut had bitten one of the personnel involved, and the pets were euthanized to test for rabies, as there are no ante-mortem rabies testing methods for animals approved by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Longo stated that the decision to euthanize the squirrel "won't go unheard". The incident has been widely criticized as an example of excessive government intrusion into personal lives and pet ownership rights. Longo claimed that the NYSDEC used excessive force during the raid, which, according to Longo, lasted five hours.

Peanut's death triggered widespread public backlash, social media outcry, condemnation from several lawmakers, and a proposed bill aimed at preventing similar incidents in the future.

The death of Peanut was used as a cause célèbre by the MAGA movement, who blamed it on Democrats. Several prominent Republican figures complained about the killing of the squirrel, with some Trump campaign supporters claiming that the Biden-Harris administration was too firm regarding licenses for owning wild animals like squirrels as pets. Both New York governor Kathy Hochul and Vice President Kamala Harris turned down a request to comment on the incident. The Republican vice presidential candidate of the 2024 U.S. election, JD Vance, posted on X that "Don is fired up about P'Nut the squirrel"; the official Trump campaign TikTok account also condemned Peanut's death. Nick Langworthy stated his irritation with the NYS DEC, saying that "instead of focusing on critical needs like flood mitigation in places like Steuben County, where local officials have to struggle just to get permits from the DEC to clear debris-filled waterways, they're out seizing pet squirrels." Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo of the Democratic Party also criticized the DEC, as did actor William Shatner. On X (Twitter), Elon Musk commented that "Government overreach kidnapped an orphan squirrel and executed him."

Jake Blumencranz, a NYS Assemblyman from Long Island's 15th Assembly District, has proposed a bill called "Peanut's Law: Humane Animal Protection Act", an amendment to the New York State Environmental Conservation Law limiting government animal seizures

Really an incredible tale

[darkangel1791]

I’m an Environmentalist. That’s Why I Can’t Vote Green.

Award-winning filmmaker and director of Gasland Josh Fox on why he will never vote for Jill Stein.

November 1, 2024

The Nation

Milanville, Pennsylvania—Progressives can truly win in this election, even though we have a moderate Democrat on the ticket. And it’s not by voting for Jill Stein. But first, a little history…

Not long ago the entire upper Delaware River basin in Pennsylvania—one of the most beautiful areas in the country, in the watershed for New York City, southern New Jersey and Philadelphia—was on the chopping block for fracking.

A 75 mile stretch of the Delaware River could have become a toxic oil field. Fracking is an environmental apocalypse: millions of gallons of toxic fracking fluids, radioactive waste, underground water contamination, hundreds of thousands of truck trips, air pollution, land scarring, massive public health crises, and depleted water supply. Everything about the practice is toxic; it is inherently contaminating in the long and short term.

Our community was quick to understand the threat and organize and mobilize against it. Every little town along the Delaware across New York and Pennsylvania had a mom-and-pop anti-fracking group spring up. My film Gasland, on HBO, was part of this campaign, and our Gasland tours went from town to town, Johnny Appleseed–style, fostering our new movement.

Amazingly, we won. We banned fracking in the Delaware River basin and in New York State, saving the water supply for 16 million people. One of the greatest achievements of the environmental movement in this century.

We did this by convincing the Democratic governors of New York and Delaware and the president at the time—Barack Obama—to ban fracking here. These were all moderate Democrats. Not exactly Bernie Sanders, if you know what I mean.

I consider myself far to the left of Andrew Cuomo and Barack Obama. But I know that if those moderate Democrats hadn’t been in office, there’s no way we would have won.

Republicans would have just said no. This whole place would have been completely fracked to hell. We would have lost. And the whole gorgeous, life-giving national treasure of the Delaware River would have been a toxic fracking zone.

Our victory against fracking kept more carbon and methane in the ground than almost any other single environmental win in history—making it a huge win for the climate as well.

Here is the key point: I’m not in love with Kamala Harris’s positions on fracking. I find it utterly infuriating when moderate Democrats think that they need to pay lip service to a toxic destructive climate monster of an industry to win Pennsylvania. I don’t actually think that is true, because studies have shown that 70 percent of Pennsylvania residents want fracking either banned or much more tightly regulated.

But I don’t need to be in love. I need to be able to vote strategically.

Hundreds of thousands of people showed up to protect this place and to hold moderate Democrats accountable, and that was the key to victory here.

You know who didn’t show up for this place? Jill Stein. She doesn’t show up for these frontline battles. Ever.

Stein says she’s against fracking, but Stein has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in the oil and gas industry. Did you know that? Did you know that she actually profits off of the oil and gas industry, that she has had investments in the Keystone XL pipeline and multiple fracking companies?

Did you know that she has investments in Raytheon, that she’s had investments in ExxonMobil? Did you know that she has investments in Home Depot—one of the most rapacious companies in the world, guilty of horrific deforestation throughout the world?

How is it that the Green Party candidate hasn’t divested her own personal fortune from fossil fuels? It’s sheer hypocrisy. And so is the strategy of running for president every four years but never showing up for battles like this.

In 2016, Stein defended these investments by saying they are mutual funds and indexed retirement funds.

But that, plainly speaking, is bunk.

Her claims are a slap in the face to the entire fossil fuel divestment movement. It is easier now than ever to have investments that are fossil free; doing so is a huge plank of the environmental cause. Hundreds of real activists were arrested this summer in New York City calling for Citibank to divest as part of the Summer of Heat campaign. For Stein to ignore all this and still attempt to call herself an activist is beyond hypocrisy, it is political malpractice. Shame on you, Dr. Stein! Shame on you for profiting from fracking and oil drilling.

I’m not in love with Kamala Harris’s positions—on fracking, and on some other issues. But I will tell you what I am in love with. I’m in love with our movements.

I’m in love with what we can do. The entire history of progressive progress in this country is of movements pushing moderate presidents. It happened with FDR and the labor movement. It happened with LBJ and the MLK and the civil rights movement. It happened with Obama and Biden and the movement for gay marriage. We organize and push them—and that’s how we get what we want. That’s our progressive history in America.

But in order for us progressives to do our jobs and fight effectively for a more just and equitable world as a movement, we need to have Harris in office. If we have Donald Trump in office, there’s no chance in hell that we’re actually going to advance an environmental agenda.

So I urge you to please believe in us as a movement. Love us. Believe in our power. We have done this before—and we can do it again with a moderate Democrat in office. Which is the only choice we’ve got right now.

If everyone in who voted for Stein in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan had voted for the Democrat instead, Trump would never have been the president.

We have the true power. It comes from the bottom up.

And I believe in us.

A vote for Harris is a vote for us, a vote for our movements to have a fighting chance for change. Progressive politics and advancing our agenda in this country is not something that happens every four years when you vote, or every four years when a toxic egomaniac like Stein (or Trump, for that matter) runs for president. It is a daily commitment. So vote for Kamala Harris. Join the movement—and I’ll see you on the front lines.

[0atm11k]

New York state’s Fourth Judicial Department has reinstated a controversial policy that empowers the state government to lawfully order people to involuntarily isolate or quarantine in order to prevent the spread of highly contagious diseases.

Originally passed in February 2022, the dramatic expansion of the rights and abilities of the State Health Commissioner, collectively referred to as Rule 2.13, was struck down in July of that same year in the state Supreme Court, following a lawsuit filed by Republican lawmakers Sen. George Borrello, Assemblyman Chris Tague and U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, who was a member of the Assembly at the time of the filing.

Last Friday, the Fourth Judicial Department repealed that decision, stating that the Republican challengers, who had argued that Rule 2.13 gave undue power to the executive branch and disregarded the authority of the state legislature, had not established how their authority had been negated.

The court’s Democratic Supermajority, in a unanimous vote, ruled that the “Legislature retains its power to address the regulation,” essentially stating that New York legislators still maintain the authority to change the laws which originally empowered the Governor’s office to pass new and stricter public health policies. Furthermore, the Fourth Judical Court wrote “that the legislator petitioners failed to fulfill the injury-in-fact requirement to establish standing” arguing that the state legislators who originally brought the suit did not have the legal standing to do so.

The lower court ruled that Rule 2.13 did not nullify any vote cast by the plaintiffs or strip them of any due authority, thus the challengers had no grounds on which to personally sue.

“Inasmuch as the legislator petitioners merely asserted an alleged harm to the separation of powers shared by the legislative branch as a whole, they failed to establish that they suffered a direct, personal injury beyond an abstract institutional harm,” wrote the court.

Republicans have categorized the Fourth Judical Departments ruling as a technicality, and have vowed to continue challenging the policy.

“The court seems to insinuate that the only person with the right to sue is someone who has been forcibly locked in their home against their will” Bobbie Anne Flower Cox, the attorney representing the petitioners, wrote in a blog post following the lower court’s decision.

Rule 2.13 was fi rst made possible when, during the early days of the Covid 19 Pandemic, the state legislature amended executive law and gave then Governor Andrew Cuomo broad power to suspend laws and issue directives through executive orders.

The new ruling supersedes the conclusion of Supreme Court Justice Ronald Ploetz of Cattaraugus County, who stated Rule 2.13 violates the constitutional requirement for a separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches when establishing actions as severe as involuntary isolation.

With Rule 2.13 reinstated, the State Commissioner of Health now resumes the authority to “whenever appropriate to control the spread of a highly contagious communicable disease, issue and/or direct the local health authority to issue isolation and/or quarantine orders, consistent with due process of law, to all such persons as the State Commissioner of Health shall determine appropriate.”

[realtalkingpoints]

From the piece:

During his testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic earlier this month, Cuomo denied any responsibility for the March 25, 2020, directive that required nursing homes to take in patients with COVID-19, saying instead that it was developed entirely within the NYSHD. Cuomo also vehemently denied being involved in the drafting of the NYSHD report that downplayed the role of the March 25 order by instead blaming the high number of nursing home-related deaths on staff who had COVID-19. The former governor told the select subcommittee during his public hearing this month that he had not even seen a draft of the report before it was released to the public. But emails obtained by the New York Times indicate that Cuomo personally wrote parts of early drafts of the NYSHD report.

[politicaldilfs]

New York Governor DILFs

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Nelson Rockefeller, W. Averell Harriman, Charles Poletti, David Paterson, Mario Cuomo, George Pataki, Herbert H. Lehman, Eliot Spitzer, Malcolm Wilson, Hugh Carey

[commonsensecommentary]

“I sometimes wonder whether the desire of so many voters for a parental style of government that provides every need and want—while also imposing all sorts of equally parental restrictions on thought and behavior—is an outcome of the breakdown of family stability and traditional institutions in America over the past several decades.”

(From my blog archive)

[mariacallous]

ALBANY, New York — Gov. Kathy Hochul has begun to examine a long-dormant power that lets governors remove local officials such as New York City mayors, following Thursday’s indictment of Eric Adams.

Lawyers in Hochul’s office on Thursday internally discussed the legal and constitutional framework for removing an elected official, according to two people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the talks.

The discussions were not an indication that Hochul is planning to remove Adams, but are being viewed internally as a way of keeping the governor’s options open.

“Of course the counsel’s office would be prepared to present to the governor on any possible legal scenario related to this matter,” Hochul spokesperson Avi Small said. “But as the governor has made clear, she is reviewing the details made public this morning and it would be inappropriate to make any further comment at this time.”

Hochul, who has long maintained a close working relationship with Adams, said after an event in the Syracuse area Thursday morning that the charges appeared to be a “very serious matter,” but that she had not yet been briefed on them. She promised more information on her response soon.

“I will be deliberative, I will be thoughtful, but we’re going to come to the right resolution on what to do in this moment,” she said.

Governors need to give officials who they seek to remove a chance to defend themselves. Before taking the formal step of removal, they can suspend a mayor for a month while considering charges.

But the power otherwise appears to be absolute. Franklin Roosevelt, the last governor to make significant use of it, declared he would be both the judge and jury in such cases.

Roosevelt’s most famous use of the power involved former New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker, whose bank accounts had large infusions of money from city contractors.

“The evidence against Walker was in a report by a special prosecutor,” Tammany historian Terry Golway said. “The scenario that faces Hochul is worse than the scenario that faced FDR, because this was an indictment.”

Walker wound up resigning before he was removed, after a judge ruled in 1932 that Roosevelt’s power to oust officials was essentially unlimited. The judge concluded that a mayor has the right to have witnesses testify before a governor, but that the state’s chief executive otherwise only needs to answer “to the people and his own conscience” in instances like this.

As Tuesday carried on, it became clear that Hochul would indeed face a difficult path evading some sort of a response.

“With the city reeling from crime, the migrant crisis, and high-level government corruption, Gov. Hochul has a responsibility to act,” Conservative Party Chair Gerard Kassar said in a statement. “She should immediately begin the process of removing Mr. Adams from office so that a new election can be held.”

The governor’s powers to remove officials are rarely used. At least three borough presidents were kicked out of office in the early 20th century, though the most recent removal was FDR’s ouster of Manhattan Sheriff Thomas “Tin Box” Farley in 1932.

Requests for the governor to utilize the power have come up practically every year in recent history. They often end with the officials in question resigning before charges are filed. But several recent governors have made clear that the option still exists.

“Technically, the governor could remove a mayor,” Andrew Cuomo occasionally reminded people when he feuded with Adams’ predecessor Bill de Blasio.

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Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is set to publicly testify Tuesday before Congress on his administration's nursing home policies during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The hearing, before the Republican-led House Oversight and Accountability Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, will see Cuomo defend his decision to allow COVID-19-positive patients back into nursing homes and long-term care facilities while the pandemic was underway.

Cuomo previously testified before the subcommittee during a closed-door hearing in June. Transcripts from that interview, as well as with high-ranking officials during Cuomo's administration, will be released ahead of the public hearing.MORE: Andrew Cuomo subpoenaed by congressional subcommittee investigating COVID-era handling of nursing homes

"Andrew Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York's nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic," subcommittee Chairman Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said in a statement last week. "On September 10, Americans will have the opportunity to hear directly from the former governor about New York's potentially fatal nursing home policies."

In March 2020, as COVID-19 cases were surging, Cuomo issued an order requiring nursing homes to readmit all residents who were "medically stable" and returning after being hospitalized for the virus.

"No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19," the order read. It further stated that nursing homes were "prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission."

At the time, Cuomo explained that the order would help expand hospital capacity to meet the demands of caring for the sickest COVID-19 patients. After facing criticism from nursing home advocates, however, the governor amended the order in May 2020, prohibiting hospitals from discharging patients to nursing homes unless they first tested negative for COVID-19.

Cuomo fought back against criticism of his policies and, in July 2020, a report from the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) stated that COVID-19 was introduced into nursing homes by infected staff, and that peak staff infections correlated with peak nursing home resident deaths. The report also found that "admissions policies were not a significant factor in nursing home fatalities."MORE: Andrew Cuomo testifies before House panel on COVID nursing home policy

However, in January 2021, New York Attorney General Letitia James released a report that found the NYSDOH had undercounted the number of nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 by as much as 50%, and failed to count in its official death tally nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 after being admitted to hospitals.

In 2022, Cuomo's representative said the Manhattan District Attorney's office would not file criminal charges in connection with the former governor's handling of nursing home deaths during the pandemic.

Earlier this year, an independent investigation, commissioned by current New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, found that although Cuomo's nursing home response policy was based on "the best available data at the time," communication to the public was poor and caused anxiety for family members of nursing home residents.

"Even the most well-intentioned policy had unforeseen consequences in [New York state] nursing homes," the report read.