Dear Commons Community,

One year after the nation was brought to a near-standstill by the coronavirus, President Joe Biden used his first prime-time address (see 24-minute video above) last night  to announce his plan to make all adults vaccine-eligible by May 1 and “begin to mark our independence from this virus” by the Fourth of July. He offered Americans fresh hope and appealed anew for their help.

Speaking in the White House East Room, Biden announced moves to speed vaccinations, including lifting eligibility qualifications, deploying an additional 4,000 active-duty troops to support vaccination efforts and allowing more people — such as medical students, veterinarians and dentists — to deliver shots.

He is also directing more doses toward some 950 community health centers and up to 20,000 retail pharmacies, to make it easier for people to get vaccinated closer to their homes.

His aim: let Americans gather at least in small groups for July Fourth and “make this Independence Day truly special.”

Biden was marking one year since the onset of the pandemic that has killed more than 530,000 Americans and disrupted the lives of countless more.

“While it was different for everyone, we all lost something,” Biden said, calling the past year “a collective suffering, a collective sacrifice.”

Earlier Thursday, Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion relief package that he said will help defeat the virus, nurse the economy back to health and deliver direct aid to Americans in need. Some direct checks could begin arriving this weekend.

“This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country,” Biden said as he signed the bill in the Oval Office.

Most noticeable to many Americans are provisions providing up to $1,400 in direct payments and extending $300 weekly emergency unemployment benefits into early September. Also included are expanded tax credits over the next year for children, child care and family leave — some of them credits that Democrats have signaled they’d like to make permanent — plus spending for renters, feeding programs and people’s utility bills.

In his  address, Biden said that as vaccine supplies continue to increase, he will direct states and territories to make all adults eligible for vaccination by May 1. The U.S. is expecting delivery of enough doses for those 255 million adults by the end of that month, but the process of actually administering those doses will take time.

Biden said his administration is launching a nationwide website to help people find doses, saying it would address frustrations so that there would be “no more searching day and night for an appointment.”

Even as he offered optimism, Biden made clear that the July 4 timetable applied only to smaller gatherings, not larger ones, and requires cooperation from Americans to continue to wear face coverings, maintain social distancing and follow federal guidelines meant to slow the spread of the virus in the near term. He also called on them roll up their sleeves to get vaccinated as soon as they’re eligible.

This is “not the time to not stick with the rules,” Biden said, warning of the potential for backsliding just as the nation is on the cusp of defeating the virus. “I need you, the American people,” he added. “I need you. I need every American to do their part.”

The House gave final congressional approval to the sweeping package by a near party line 220-211 vote on Wednesday, seven weeks after Biden entered the White House and four days after the Senate passed the bill. Republicans in both chambers opposed the legislation unanimously, characterizing it as bloated, crammed with liberal policies and heedless of signs the crises are easing.

Biden originally planned to sign the bill on Friday, but it arrived at the White House more quickly than anticipated.

“We want to move as fast as possible,” tweeted chief of staff Ron Klain.

Biden’s initial prime-time speech was “a big moment,” said presidential historian and Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley. “He’s got to win over hearts and minds for people to stay masked and get vaccinated, but also recognize that after the last year, the federal government hasn’t forgotten you.”

Biden’s evening remarks in the East Room were central to a pivotal week for the president as he addresses the defining challenge of his term: shepherding the nation through the twin public health and economic storms brought about by the virus.

On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released initial guidance for how vaccinated people can resume some normal activities. On Wednesday, Congress approved the president’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan,” aimed at easing the economic impact of the virus on tens of millions of people. And the nation was on pace to administer its 100 millionth dose of vaccine as soon as Thursday.

Almost exactly one year ago, President Donald Trump addressed the nation to mark the WHO’s declaration of a global pandemic. He announced travel restrictions and called for Americans to practice good hygiene but displayed little alarm about the forthcoming catastrophe. Trump, it was later revealed, acknowledged that he had been deliberately “playing down” the threat of the virus.

For Biden, who has promised to level with the American public after the alternate reality of Trump’s virus talk, the imperative is to strike the correct balance “between optimism and grief,” said Princeton history professor and presidential scholar Julian Zelizer.

“Generally, the country likes optimism, and at this particular moment they’re desperate for optimism, but you can’t risk a ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment,’” he said, warning against any premature declaration that the threat has been vanquished.

Biden also made a point of condemning the hate crimes and violence against Asian Americans since the pandemic started.

Listening to his speech last night made me feel we have a president again in the United States!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Four former presidents (see video above) are urging Americans to get vaccinated as soon as COVID-19 doses are available to them, as part of a campaign to overcome hesitancy about the shots.

Two public service announcements from the Ad Council and the business-supported COVID Collaborative feature Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter as well as first ladies Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton, and Rosalynn Carter. All of them have received doses of the COVID-19 vaccines.

In a 60-second spot, the former presidents say what they’re most looking forward to once the pandemic ends.

Clinton, 74, says he wants to “go back to work and I want to be able to move around.” Obama, 59, says he wants to be able to visit with his mother-in-law, “to hug her, and see her on her birthday.” Bush, 74, talks about “going to opening day in Texas Rangers stadium with a full stadium.”

Carter, 96, says he got vaccinated to help end the pandemic “as soon as possible.”

The video features photos of the former presidents and their spouses with syringes in their upper arms as they urge Americans to “roll up your sleeve and do your part” by getting vaccinated.

A separate 30-second ad was filmed hours after President Joe Biden’s inauguration at Arlington National Cemetery. It features Bush, Obama and Clinton encouraging vaccinations.

“The science is clear,” Bush says. “These vaccines will protect you and those you love from this dangerous and deadly disease.” Obama calls them, the “first step to ending the pandemic and moving our country forward.”

Former President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania, do not appear in the campaign. Trump was still in office when the ex-presidents’ project began in December, according to the Ad Council, and he did not attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, when Obama, Bush and Clinton gathered together in person to film. A Trump adviser revealed last week that the Trumps were vaccinated in private before leaving the White House on Inauguration Day.

The ad campaign comes as U.S. supply of the coronavirus vaccines continues to ramp up and as public health experts worry that some Americans may choose not to get vaccinated, which would slow the country’s path toward “herd immunity” to the virus.

The “It’s Up to You” campaign encourages Americans to visit www.GetVaccineAnswers.org to get the facts about the vaccines.

My wife, Elaine, and I have received our first vaccine and are scheduled for the second shot later this month.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

CNN’s Brianna Keilar had a seven-minute segment (see video above) yesterday skewering Lindsey Graham for the way he has become a lapdog for Donald Trump.  Keilar reviews in detail Graham’s change.

In one part of the video, Sen. Lindsey Graham  prostrated himself before Donald Trump when he declared there was some “magic” in the ex-president that he was trying to channel for the greater good.

“There’s something about Trump. There’s a dark side and there’s some magic there. What I’m trying to do is harness the magic,” Graham told Axios’ Jonathan Swan.

“The only magic there is watching the Lindsey Graham we once knew disappear,” said Keilar, noting how Graham’s 2015 attacks on Trump transformed into adulation of the president once he’d moved into the White House.

“Trump isn’t a magician. He’s a carnival barker, whipping up an audience for a one-man circus,” she added. “Donald Trump has only ever acted in the interest of one thing, himself.”

I never was a Graham fan mainly because I didn’t agree with his hawkish positions, however, I thought he represented Republican Party values well.  The Graham we have seen in the past year sniveling at Donald Trump’s feet is a disgrace. Keilar tells it like it is!

Tony

Merrick Garland

Dear Commons Community,

Merrick Garland, a lawyer, federal judge and one-time Supreme Court nominee, was confirmed yesterday as the nation’s attorney general, a position in which one of his duties will be to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the U.S. Capitol attack on January 6^th.

The Senate confirmed Garland, 70-30, and had bipartisan support.  As reported by The New York Times.

“Attorney General Garland will lead the Department of Justice with honesty and integrity,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “He has a big job ahead of him, but I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have in his place.”

Judge Garland has vowed to restore public faith in a department embroiled in political controversy under President Donald J. Trump, who sought both to undermine federal law enforcement when it scrutinized him and his associates and to wield its power to benefit him personally and politically.

At his confirmation hearing, Judge Garland, 68, said that becoming attorney general would “be the culmination of a career I have dedicated to ensuring that the laws of our country are fairly and faithfully enforced and the rights of all Americans are protected.”

Judge Garland has amassed decades of credentials in the law. He clerked for Justice William J. Brennan Jr., worked for years as a federal prosecutor and led major investigations into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and others before being confirmed to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1997.

He was chosen by President Barack Obama in 2016 to join the Supreme Court only to see his nomination held up for eight months in an audacious political maneuver by Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader at the time. The move ultimately allowed Mr. Trump to choose his own nominee to fill the seat.

But Mr. McConnell, who said last year that he would support Judge Garland to serve as attorney general, was among the Republicans who voted for his confirmation and a day earlier to end debate over his nomination, paving the way for the full Senate to vote.

“I’m voting to confirm Judge Garland because of his long reputation as a straight shooter and legal expert,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor before he cast his vote.

Mr. McConnell said that he hoped Judge Garland would bring his “no-nonsense approach” to confront the challenges facing the Justice Department and the nation, and that he would keep the department on a centrist path.

Department employees have said that Judge Garland’s performance at his confirmation hearing, a largely amicable affair, made them hopeful that he would restore honor to the agency and lift up its 115,000-person work force demoralized by the Trump-era rancor.

Restoring trust inside and outside the Justice Department will be key, as Judge Garland will immediately oversee politically charged investigations, including a federal tax fraud inquiry into President Biden’s son, Hunter, and a special counsel inquiry into the Russia investigation.

The department will also be involved in civil and criminal cases related to issues that have bitterly divided the country, including systemic racism, policing, regulation of big technology companies, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and other civil liberties matters.

Judge Garland will also confront the rise of domestic extremism as law enforcement officials continue investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. His first briefings this week were expected to be with the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, to discuss the threat and with Michael R. Sherwin, the departing top prosecutor in Washington who has led the Justice Department inquiry.

During his confirmation hearing, Judge Garland said he would rely on his experience leading the department’s investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing to help combat domestic extremism.

“I supervised the prosecution of the perpetrators of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, who sought to spark a revolution that would topple the federal government,” he said. “I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”

Garland is a fine appointment for attorney general.  He should have been confirmed as a Supreme Court justice in 2016.

Tony

Andrew Gounardes                                      Karines Reyes

Dear Commons Community,

New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes and Assemblywoman Karines Reyes introduced a package of bills to end CUNY tuition and to mandate appropriate numbers of academic advisors, mental health counselors and full-time faculty in the CUNY system.  The “New Deal” legislation comments that New York State government  increase its investment in the CUNY system to eliminate tuition fees for students, improve working conditions, and repair crumbling infrastructure, a group of state lawmakers says.  In presenting this proposal, Senator Gounardes said:  “CUNY is this huge economic development engine…The more we shift costs onto students, it makes it harder for them to thrive and come out on the other side.”

CUNY was free for city residents until the crippling 1976 fiscal crisis. Undergraduate tuition for city residents now runs $6,930 a year for full-time students at four-year colleges and $4,800 annually for full-time community college students.  The bill would also provide money to hire more academic and guidance counselors so the ratio of students to advisers would drop from its current 2,700-to-1 to a more manageable 1,000-to-1.

The legislation would seek to improve working conditions for CUNY’s thousands of adjunct staffers, who teach a big chunk of the university system’s courses, but get lower pay and less job security than their full-time counterparts.

The bill would require CUNY to pull first from the adjunct pool when filling full-time positions, and raise pay for part-time staffers.

The law would also revive a CUNY capital plan that legislators say has been dormant for years and allowed college infrastructure to crumble.

“We’ve been doing the bare minimum for critical maintenance. It’s been a decade since we had a prospective, forward looking capital plan,” said Gounardes, who noted students at Manhattan’s Baruch College told him they only had one working elevator, with lines that stretched outside the building.

Cutting tuition would cost an estimated $800 million over five years, legislators say. Hiring additional counselors and tapping adjuncts for full-time roles would run an additional $680 million over five years, and a new capital plan would require more than $5 billion in new funding.

Gounardes acknowledged the daunting costs, but said officials need to compensate for years of declining state aid for the public university system.

“It was austerity politics that put CUNY on this path in the first place,” said Gounardes. “Education, frankly, should not be a victim or susceptible to austerity politics.”

Legislators say funding for the massive public education package would come in part from proposed tax hikes on the wealthy to generate revenue for the state.

The COVID quarantine economic crisis has bruised the university system.

CUNY students have also felt the sting of the recession, said state Assemblywoman Karines Reyes (D-Bronx).  

Some CUNY students lost the jobs they depend on to pay their tuition, Reyes said. In her view eliminating tuition fees next year could keep some students from dropping out, which will contribute to the city’s economic recovery.

“There are people struggling to pay their rent right now,” she said. “Deciding to either continue taking classes or pay rent, it’s a no-brainer.”

CUNY is our city’s engine of social mobility. The 1.4 million alumni who graduated over the past 50 years earn $65.8 billion annually — compared a projected $32.6 billion if they had obtained only a high school degree. CUNY reports that the vast majority of its graduates continue to live in New York after completing their degrees, contributing to our economy and our tax base.

This enormous success comes despite starving CUNY year after year. Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of the core budget covered by state funding decreased from 64% to 35%, per analysis by CUNY scholar Meghan Moore-Wilk. If CUNY had the same state funding per student today as it did in 1990, the budget would be $1 billion larger.

The lack of funding has tangible impacts. As tuition rises, students feel the strain. Some 2,900 adjunct faculty were pushed off CUNY’s payroll during the coronavirus pandemic, reducing course offerings and increasing class sizes. Approximately 1,000 were re-hired. Buildings have gone without maintenance. Before 1976, CUNY was tuition-free. Now students shoulder ever more of the tuition burden

To unleash the full potential of our CUNY system, we propose a bold plan, A New Deal for CUNY, that would create a fully free CUNY that is once again a crown jewel of our country’s public higher education system.

The New Deal for CUNY would transform not just the education the students receive, but the ability of many more New Yorkers to access it.

This is a matter not just of economic growth and opportunity but of racial justice. CUNY’s student body is one of the most diverse in the nation, with a student enrollment of 21% Asian/Pacific Islander, 25% Black, 30% Hispanic students and 23% White. CUNY brings more students into the middle class than every single Ivy League school. Just imagine what it could do if we actually invested in it.

The crisis that has been thrust on us is at once the product of a virus but also of poor political decisions; it is also an opportunity. This is a moment for wealthy New Yorkers to pay their fair share in taxes, and to recognize that investing in CUNY today will result in a healthier economy for everyone tomorrow.

We are fighting for a New Deal for CUNY because it is a fight for economic and racial justice. But we are also fighting for a New Deal for CUNY because it is the key to the city’s economic recovery, growth and mobility, now and in the future.

Thank you Senator Gounardes and Assemblywoman Reyes.

I was also happy to see Meghan Moore-Wilk’s dissertation on the the Erosion of State Funding for Public Higher Education… cited in the announcement.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A group of New York City students filed a lawsuit yesterday that accuses the New York City  public school system of perpetuating racism by means of  a flawed admissions process for selective programs that favors white students.

The lawsuit in state court in Manhattan argues that a “rigged system” begins sorting children academically when they are as young as 4 years old, using criteria that disproportionately benefit more affluent, white students.

As a result, minority students are often denied an opportunity to gain access to more selective programs, from elementary to high school, and are instead relegated to failing schools that exacerbate existing inequities, the lawsuit contends.  As reported by Reuters and other news media.

“The complaint asks a judge to order the school system to eliminate its current admissions screening process for intensely competitive selective programs, including gifted and talented programs and more academically rigorous middle and high schools.

“Racism thrives in New York City through its school system,” Mark Rosenbaum of the pro bono law firm Public Counsel said at a news conference. He is one of several lawyers, including prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, representing the students.

Rosenbaum described the case as “the first lawsuit of its kind in the nation: to secure for the children of New York City the constitutional right to an anti-racist education as an integral part of a sound and basic education.”

The city’s public school system is the country’s largest, with approximately 1 million students, and has long been seen as deeply segregated along racial and socioeconomic lines. Close to three-quarters of Black and Latino students attend schools that have less than 10% white students, while more than a third of white students attend schools with majority white populations, according to data collected by the City Council.

Two years ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio attempted to eliminate the admissions exam for elite specialized high schools, but the state legislature, which has authority over the exam, rejected his proposal.

In a statement, Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for the city’s education department, noted the de Blasio administration has recently made some changes, including using teacher evaluations rather than a standardized test to identify gifted 4-year-olds and temporarily suspending middle-school admissions screens.

“This administration has taken bold, unprecedented steps to advance equity in our admissions policies,” she said. “Our persistent work to drive equity for New York City families is ongoing, and we will review the suit.”

The lawsuit, however, argued those moves do not go far enough to address the problem.

At a news conference, de Blasio would not specifically comment on pending litigation. But he agreed that specialized high school admissions are “broken” and said the city needs a new system for its gifted and talented program.

The plaintiffs include IntegrateNYC, a youth-led nonprofit devoted to integrating the school system.

In addition to admissions criteria, the lawsuit also faults the school system’s curriculum, arguing that students of color learn that “civilization is equated with whiteness” and that history is taught from a Eurocentric point of view.”

The issue of racist policies and procedures in the New York City schools has been simmering for decades.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden’s signature will not appear on the new round of COVID-19 stimulus checks that are expected to go out to millions of Americans in the coming weeks. 

Last year, during the first and second round of checks, then-President Donald Trump insisted his signature be included in the memo section.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed Tuesday that Biden’s signature or name would not appear on paper checks that go out, saying, “we are doing everything in our power to expedite the payments and not delay them, which is why the president’s name will not appear on the memo line.”

“This is not about him, this is about the American people getting relief,” Psaki explained. 

She added that the stimulus checks will instead be “signed by a career official at the bureau of fiscal service,” and said that Biden didn’t think that having his name on the checks “was a priority or a necessary step.”

The House plans to vote Wednesday morning on the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 plan that the Senate approved over the weekend. Once approved by the House, the bill, which includes $1,400 stimulus checks for many, will go to Biden for his signature. 

The White House also said Tuesday they are working on trying to have as many eligible people as possible receive the next round of stimulus payments by direct deposit, which is faster and more efficient than paper checks. 

In what was called an unprecedented move, reports surfaced back in April 2020 that stimulus checks going out at the time would include President Trump’s name on them, according to reports by the Washington Post, New York Times and Bloomberg News.

It was the first time a president’s name had appeared on an IRS payment. The addition was made after Trump reportedly suggested the idea to then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Trump’s name appeared in the memo section on the left side of the checks as “President Donald J. Trump,” because as the New York Times reported, it was because Trump was not legally authorized to sign such checks.

Biden is not the obnoxious, self-obsessed boor that Trump is!

Tony

Donald Trump Arriving at Trump Tower in New York City

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Donald Trump was spotted outside Trump Tower Sunday night in his first visit back to New York City  since leaving office.

Trump pulled up to the Midtown skyscraper where he stays while in Manhattan just before 9 p.m.

He was seated in the backseat of a black SUV.  Upon his arrival, he waved to one lone supporter who was across the street next to the media.

The NYPD last month began removing some of the barriers in front of Trump Tower, which were erected four years ago when Trump entered the White House.

Born in Queens, Trump, who became a real estate developer in Manhattan, switched his legal residency to his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, in October 2019.

To say the least, Trump has become persona non grata in the Big Apple.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Republican National Committee yesterday told Donald Trump that it has every right under the First Amendment to continue mentioning him in fundraising missives, rejecting his demand last week to “cease and desist” from doing so.  As reported by the Associated Press and the Huffington Post.

“The RNC, of course, has every right to refer to public figures as it engages in core, First Amendment-protected political speech, and it will continue to do so in pursuit of these common goals,” General Counsel J. Justin Riemer wrote to the former president’s “Save America” political committee.

Trump on Friday had told the party to stop using his name or likeness in “all fundraising, persuasion, and/or issue speech,” which came just days after Trump, in his first public appearance since leaving office, told an audience of conservative activists that there was “only one way” to support good Republicans: by giving money to his Save America PAC.

One Trump adviser said Save America received “millions” based on that single request and predicted that Trump’s efforts would kill the GOP’s own small-donor program.

The Trump campaign and the RNC jointly built a list of more than 40 million supporters over the past five years, which includes several million donors who typically give $5 or $20 or $50 each month. Both have a right to use it.

Within days of losing the Nov. 3 election, Trump created the Save America PAC and then modified his existing joint fundraising agreement with the RNC to send 75 cents of every dollar raised to his PAC and 25 cents to the RNC. This arrangement continued through the Jan. 6 violent attack on the U.S. Capitol that Trump incited in his attempt to illegally remain in office. During those weeks, Trump collected about $76 million for Save America, which he can use for essentially any purpose, even to pay himself an eight-figure salary.

The RNC stopped small-dollar fundraising entirely after the insurrection attempt, then resumed solicitations that mentioned issues or RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, but then eventually started mentioning Trump again ― even though none of the money raised was going to Trump anymore.

On Sunday, for example, two days after Trump’s “cease and desist” letter, the RNC sent out an email inviting donors to become “Trump legacy members” for as little as $5.

“As a Trump Legacy Member, you will be a key player in our effort to DEFEND President Trump’s America First policies from Biden and the Radical Left,” the email said.

In his letter to Save America, Riemer wrote that Trump had “reaffirmed” in a weekend conversation with McDaniel that he was fine with the RNC’s use of his name. “The RNC has not sent any fundraising requests in President Trump’s name or used his image since before he left office, nor would it do so without his prior approval,” Riemer wrote, pointing out that Trump will be participating at an April retreat for the party’s largest donors in Palm Beach.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the RNC has agreed to host Trump’s speech at his Mar-a-Lago country club there and pay him for the dinner and the meeting space. The rest of the event will be at the nearby Four Seasons hotel.

From the time Trump became the GOP nominee through his four years in office, Trump’s campaign and the RNC combined spent $639,031 at Mar-a-Lago and $8.5 million in all at Trump’s businesses, as Trump insisted on directing donor money into his own pocket.”

The Republican Party is trying to tame and play nice with the Donald Trumpenstein monster it created?

Tony

Andrea Stewart Cousins and Carl Heastie

Dear Commons Community,

The two top Democrats in the New York legislature withdrew their support for Governor Andrew Cuomo yesterday amid mounting allegations of sexual harassment.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins became the first senior Democrat in the state to say the three-term governor should resign. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie stopped short of demanding that Cuomo quit, but said in a statement that “it is time for the Governor to seriously consider whether he can effectively meet the needs of the people of New York.”  On Saturday, another woman who worked for Cuomo publicly accused him of inappropriate behavior, on the heels of other allegations in recent weeks.

As reported by several news outlets including the Associated Press.

“Every day there is another account that is drawing away from the business of government,” Stewart-Cousins said in a statement. “New York is still in the midst of this pandemic and is still facing the societal, health and economic impacts of it. We need to govern without daily distraction. For the good of the state Governor Cuomo must resign.”

Her push for his resignation came shortly after a Sunday press conference where Cuomo said it would be “anti-democratic” for him to step down.

“They don’t override the people’s will, they don’t get to override elections,” Cuomo said during a conference call with reporters when asked about members of his own party calling for him to step down. “I was elected by the people of New York state. I wasn’t elected by politicians.”

Cuomo said the next six months will determine how successfully New York emerges from the coronavirus pandemic. “I’m not going to be distracted because there is too much to do for the people,” he said, noting that the state must pass a budget within three weeks and administer 15 million more COVID-19 vaccines.

Asked about Ana Liss, who told The Wall Street Journal in a story published Saturday that when she worked as a policy aide to the governor between 2013 and 2015, Cuomo called her “sweetheart,” kissed her hand and asked personal questions including whether she had a boyfriend, Cuomo said such talk was “my way of doing friendly banter.”

He acknowledged that societal norms have evolved and noted: “I never meant to make anyone feel any uncomfortable.”

Liss told the Journal she initially thought of Cuomo’s behavior as harmless and never made a formal complaint about it, but it increasingly bothered her and she felt it was patronizing.

“It’s not appropriate, really, in any setting,” she said. “I wish that he took me seriously.”

Cuomo’s workplace conduct has been under intense scrutiny in recent days as several women have publicly told of feeling sexually harassed, or at least made to feel demeaned and uncomfortable by him. The state’s attorney general is investigating.

Former adviser Lindsey Boylan, 36, said he made inappropriate comments on her appearance, once kissed her on the lips at the end of a meeting and suggested a game of strip poker as they sat with other aides on a jet flight. Another former aide, 25-year-old Charlotte Bennett, said Cuomo asked if she ever had sex with older men and made other comments she interpreted as gauging her interest in an affair.

Another woman, who did not work for the state, described Cuomo putting his hands on her face and asking if he could kiss her after they met at a wedding.

In a news conference last week, Cuomo denied ever touching anyone inappropriately, but apologized for behaving in a way that he now realized had upset people. He said he’d made jokes and asked personal questions in an attempt to be playful and frequently greeted people with hugs and kisses, as his father, Mario Cuomo, had done when he was governor.”

I don’t think this is playing out as Cuomo had hoped.

Tony