The 25th Hour

Here's your weekly recap of NYC to DC politics and news with THE 25TH HOUR!

• De Blasio announces the reopening of Coney Island and the City's beaches; the 2-case school closure rule is now the 4-case rule; a majority of students are still opting for remote learning.
• Cuomo repeals nursing home protections he put in place in the beginning of the pandemic; the Governor denied overseeing testing for family and friends; his anonymous accuser details years of subtle abuse; Republican challengers are coming out of the woodwork; the State passed a $212b budget aiming to take care of undocumented unemployed workers, raise taxes on the wealthy, fund schools, and more.
• Biden has been busy pitching his infrastructure plan, advancing his universal vaccination eligibility timeline, announcing gun reform executive actions, setting up a Supreme Court packing commission, and handling the migrant surge at the Southern Border.
• House Rep. Matt Gaetz is facing a House Ethics Committee investigation into his alleged child sex trafficking charges; Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings has passed away; Sen. Manchin continues to throw a wrench in Biden's infrastructure plan with a reduced corporate tax pitch and refusal to buck the filibuster; the Senate Parliamentarian is letting Dems use budget reconciliation two more times.
• The Derek Chauvin trial continues; 60 Minutes messes up an investigation into Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as he struggles to keep a polluted reservoir from overflowing; shootings continue to run rampant throughout the country; Prince Philip and DMX died this week.

We recap the week so you don't have to! Stay on top of the 24/7 news cycle and never forget a thing that happened in the news again with THE 25TH HOUR. Rate and subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts and become a Patron today!

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THE 25TH HOUR has hit 30 episodes! Now celebrate with us and catch up on the 24/7 news cycle.

• NYCs COVID numbers are rising again, this time thanks to the variants public health experts warned about, coupled with indoor events with maskless people.
• New York State is behind on its deadline to pass a state budget, with April 5th becoming the new date to keep an eye on. But marijuana is finally legal in the state now!
• Governor Cuomo was hit with  NINTH accuser, and is now also being investigated for getting his staff to do work on his memoir for him as nursing homes weren't getting tests.
• Biden announced his $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan, seeking to initiate an FDR-style transformation of the American economy paid for by raising corporate taxes. The country is still battling a record surge on the Southern border, however.
• Congress temporarily went on lockdown after a driver rammed a blockade and got a Capitol Police officer killed. The driver did not survive, and an investigation is ongoing.

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Stay on top of the 24/7 news cycle with THE 25TH HOUR!

• De Blasio announced reopenings while at the same time asking for Cuomo to slow down on reopenings.. huh? In any case, the Mayor said workers will come back to the office by May 3rd, announced vaccine sites for Broadway workers, and universal pre-K for 3 year olds.
• Cuomo is still weathering the storm, with news coming out that his friends and family took advantage of an express testing and vaccine program, including his brother CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. Pharmacies across the state expanded their vaccination pool.
• Biden held his first press conference of his Presidency, touching on a wide range of subjects from his running for re-election to his immigration policies, mostly staying on message. The President also decried the mass shootings in Georgia and Colorado, asking for the Senate to pass the House's gun reform bills.
• The Senate is on recess until April 12th, at which point, will they take up infrastructure? Taxes? Gun reform? The only one who truly knows is Chuck Schumer.

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Governor Cuomo was once a promising political upstart working on his father, Mario's, gubernatorial run, with his eyes on the stars, dreaming of big things. 

Now he's falling very deep, probably at the highest point he's ever been, as the man once rumored to have presidential ambitions is dogged by sexual misconduct scandals, allegations of purposely hiding the true number of dead nursing home residents in the state's COVID numbers, and almost the entirety of the state's Democratic Party officials turning their backs on him. 

Journalist Ross Barkan has authored a new book titled "The Prince: Andrew Cuomo, Coronavirus, and the Fall of New York," and was one of the earliest voices decrying the way Governor Cuomo handled NY's COVID pandemic while others adorned Cuomo for his near-daily press conferences filled with stats, figures, and strange imagery portraying the state's progress against the virus.

Host Dennis Futoryan, Esq., has a discussion with Ross about Andrew Cuomo's origins, his past misdeeds that everyone seems to have forgotten about, the current mess the Governor's in, and what his doomed political future looks like. 

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Time to stay on top of the 24/7 news cycle with THE 25TH HOUR!

* De Blasio heralds the vaccination of 3 million City residents and is encouraging more investigations into Governor Cuomo. Andrew Yang and other mayoral candidates decried the senseless gun violence in Georgia and the rising spate of anti-Asian hate crimes.
* Cuomo can notch another sexual accusation under his belt, this time from a named current aide. He was vaccinated this week though, so nothing to see here!
* Biden wants you to focus on his American Rescue Plan but the surge on the US-Mexico border of migrants is demanding time otherwise. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Blinken stared down the Chinese, and a declassified intel report blamed Russia and Iran for trying to interfere in the 2020 Presidential elections.
* The House is passing every Democrat's dream bills but the Senate graveyard proves to be more durable, likely to shoot down recent bills about immigration, domestic violence, election reforms, and more. 

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It's time for you to stay on top of the 24/7 news cycle! 

* De Blasio starts to slowly unravel NYC with movie theaters and dining reopening at increased capacity, and announcing the reopening of high schools!
* Cuomo's nine lives are up with seven accusations and seemingly the entirety of the Democratic Party turning against him, but he defiantly states he's not going anywhere.
* Biden celebrates the passage of his COVID relief bill, with stimulus checks hitting accounts as soon as this weekend. Meanwhile, a border surge of migrant children is set to give Biden headaches.

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THE 25TH HOUR is your answer to the 24/7 news cycle! Catch up with this week's news from February 28th to March 6th, 2021.

* NYC is steadily starting to open back up, as middle school students can return to in-person learning and a plan is reportedly in place to return high school students as well. 
* Cuomo had his emergency COVID powers revoked by the state legislature and three more women came out with accusations of inappropriate behavior from the Governor.
* Biden is riding the high from the Senate passing his COVID bill, sending it back to the House to approve changes made, as well as announcing a partnership with Johnson & Johnson and Merck to speed up distribution of the one-shot vaccine so that enough Americans have access to the vaccines by the end of May.

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Call it Cuomoception, because we have scandal upon scandal on this 25th episode of THE 25TH HOUR!

* De Blasio continues to calibrate the long lines at vaccine sites, revel in the reopening of middle schools, but also lost his Education Chancellor and NYPD Chief of Department (not that it seems many people mind). 
* Cuomo - what are we going to do with you? The Governor who seemed to soar to new heights in the beginning flew too high near the sun, and is now experiencing an Icarus-level downward slope following two sexual misconduct claims from former aides.
* Biden marked the US' surpassing of 500k deaths with silence, but tried sparking hope with the passage of 50 million first-time dosages and the FDA's approval of Johnson & Johnson's one-shot vaccine.
* The House passed the COVID relief bill and the Equality Act, so now the ball's in the Senate's court, with the handicap of the $15 minimum wage bill getting shot down by the Parliamentarian (don't worry, we explain all of that!).

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Trump is feeling newly emboldened, operating under the assumption that "second is the best" in his historic second impeachment - and acquittal. Now the party has already come crashing down thanks to the ocean of lawsuits meeting the Mar-a-Lago Man©. 

But is our 45th President going to jail? Is there any shot of that really happening?

New York Law School Professor and former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Rebecca Roiphe is here to answer your questions. In this conversation between Professor Roiphe and (her former student) host Dennis Futoryan, Esq., hear about how Trump's acquittal affects the future of the country's attitudes toward impeachable conduct, what it means for the guardrails of our already weakened democracy (if we can keep it), and what would a more "competent" version of Trump do in the future now that an insurrection has not become an impeachable precedent. 

And what of Trump's lawsuits? Outside investigations about the insurrection, frivolous election lawsuits, interference in Georgia's election, tax fraud and New York business dealings through the Trump Organization, no Presidential shield, defamation lawsuits from those he allegedly sexual molested, and more. Which lawsuits are weakest and which are strongest? What is expected of Trump's lawyers and how confident are the various prosecutors and plaintiff's counsels coming after the former President?

Rebecca Roiphe is a law professor at New York Law School, a former prosecutor, and formerly clerked for Judge Bruce  Selya at the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. Her expertise includes cross-examinations of American history with prosecutorial independence , Presidential power, and legal ethics.  Her written work can be found in law review articles and mainstream publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, the New York Law Journal, Bloomberg, and much more. Professor Roiphe also serves as a legal analyst on CNN and MSNBC, where she discusses the most mainstream legal issues of the day. 

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Catch up with this past week's news with THE 25TH HOUR!

* De Blasio is grinning from ear to ear looking at the Governor he's been feuding with since the beginning face a massive scandal. He might want to look closer to home, however, since he just sent half a thousand cops into the subways.
* Someone nurse Cuomo back to health, he is now facing a preliminary federal investigation into his coverup of nursing home death data to look better in his pandemic leadership. It was also probably a bad time to intimidate an Assemblyman...
* Biden is wobbling on his ambitious goals to get the US out of the pandemic, with Kamala Harris not doing any favors not being clear as to when it's safe for teachers to reenter classrooms, but the public is still giving the new President massive good will to solve our biggest issues.
* As Congress waits to come back into full session next week to start up on COVID relief, the House released its text of the relief measure and things are starting to heat up before the mid-March deadline.
* And finally, at least no one is Ted Cruz.

Don't miss out on the conversation between our host Dennis Futoryan, Esq., and the esteemed New York Law School Professor and legal analyst Rebecca Roiphe, as they discuss Trump's acquittal and his impending ocean of legal troubles.  It comes out today at 5PM.

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