How New Yorkers Are Shaping the Trump Impeachment Trial |
Weather: Snow tapers off in the morning, and there may be a little sun later. High in the mid-30s. |
Alternate-side parking: Suspended today for Lunar New Year's Eve. |
 | | Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times |
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As the second impeachment trial for former President Donald Trump unfolds, New Yorkers in Congress are playing key roles. |
Last month, 20 New York representatives voted for impeachment, while six were against. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, helped set the structure of the trial. |
Convicting Mr. Trump would require a two-thirds majority in the Senate. If that happened, the Senate could then vote on whether to bar Mr. Trump from ever holding office again. |
Here's what senators and representatives from New York are saying about the impeachment trial: |
For weeks, Mr. Schumer worked with Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, to set the rules and procedures governing the trial. On Monday, the two Senate leaders reached a deal. |
"A president cannot simply resign to avoid accountability for an impeachable offense," Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor that day. "This trial will confirm that fact." |
Aside from the trial, Mr. Schumer is working to pass a huge coronavirus relief bill and pushing a plan to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt for each borrower. |
As the trial began, many New York Democrats continued to voice their support for impeachment. |
On Tuesday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat who serves parts of Brooklyn and Queens, and was an impeachment manager at the first trial last year, wrote on Twitter that the country needs to "defeat authoritarianism" and that "today we take another important step in that journey." |
A television interview from 2018 with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, was used in a video montage by Mr. Trump's defense team to argue that some Democrats have called for Mr. Trump's impeachment since the outset of his presidency. |
Representative John Katko, who represents Syracuse, was the only Republican from New York to vote in favor of the impeachment. In explaining his vote, Mr. Katko revealed that a former intern of his was beaten during the Capitol riot last month that led to the impeachment charge against Mr. Trump. |
"To allow the president of the United States to incite this attack without consequences is a direct threat to the future of this democracy," Mr. Katko said on the House floor. |
Staunch supporters of the president continued to stand their ground, including Representative Nicole Malliotakis, who represents Staten Island and part of South Brooklyn. "For the second time," she wrote Tuesday on Twitter, "Democrats have engaged in an unfounded, partisan impeachment process that cheapens the pillars of our democracy." |
The Christopher Street PATH station has the filthiest air of all Northeast transit hubs, according to a New York University study. [New York Post] |
The New York Police Department removed the last of the barricades surrounding Trump Tower. [Gothamist] |
Five current and former Long Island Rail Road employees pleaded not guilty to charges of falsely claiming more than $1 million of overtime. [Daily News] |
And finally: Remembering Joe Allen |
The Times's Peter Khoury writes: |
The coolest bar stool in Midtown just may be on the second floor of a townhouse on West 46th Street. There — before the pandemic — you could slip onto a zebra-print stool near a window, take in the theater crowd milling about outside on Restaurant Row and enjoy a cocktail among Broadway luminaries, in a bar that is perhaps Manhattan's best homage to the buzzy New York nightclubs of yesteryear. |
That place, Bar Centrale, opened in 2005 and was a last hurrah of sorts for Joe Allen, the storied theater district restaurateur who died on Sunday, less than two weeks shy of his 88th birthday. |
If you didn't know Joe Allen, you might not have realized that he was, at times, sitting at the same bar as you, drinking Stella Artois or red wine. Largely reserved and comfortably dressed, he did not advertise himself. He didn't need to. |
He opened the restaurant Joe Allen, next door to Bar Centrale, in 1965, and later created Orso, which is directly below Bar Centrale. |
I've been going to Joe Allen for more than two decades, but I didn't really get to meet the man until he opened Bar Centrale. We'd chat at the bar, and he'd invariably ask about something in the news. His interest in The Times was such that even the placement of the crossword puzzle interested him. |
Joe was not morbid about death. He told me a few years ago that when you die doesn't matter — "it's how." He had been in declining health and died peacefully in New Hampshire. |
His quiet end belies the indelible mark Joe left on the restaurant world, particularly in the theater district, where his three restaurants have temporarily closed during the pandemic. There, he remains as classic as the old black-and-white movies that continuously play without sound on a screen at Bar Centrale that you can see from the coolest bar stool in Midtown. |
It's Thursday — raise a glass. |
Metropolitan Diary: Her mum's hand |
I was brushing my teeth one morning, and I looked down at my hand resting on the counter. It was my mum's hand. |
I grew up in College Point, Queens. My mother never drove a car here in America, although she had driven a farm tractor back in Scotland as a teenager. So, my mother and father walked, and, as children, so did we. (If we needed to go to Flushing, we took the bus.) |
My predominant memory of walking with my mum when I was little is how fast she walked. I quickly learned to look both ways and to run across the street. |
Walking with my mother, I always hung on tightly to her hand. I was afraid to let go. I remember feeling like my feet left the ground when her skirts whipped around my legs as we walked. Block after block, my hand hung on to hers; it was my job not to get lost. |
I never liked my mother's hands, who knows why? I have always grown my fingernails long to make sure our hands looked different (though not so long now that I am nearing my late 60s). |
When I was young, I was told I had pretty hands. Now I see she must have had pretty hands when she was young, too. I used to ask her to pet my head. I remember her hands were gentle. |
Yes, I have my mum's hands. I'd say they are identical. |
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