MARCH 17 — PRESIDENT HALTS NEW YORK 2ND AVE SUBWAY CONSTRUCTION MONEY AGAIN. GOVERNOR HOCHUL SAYS SEE YOU IN COURT

Posted on March 17, 2026 by John Bailey

For Immediate Release: 3/17/2026

GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL

STATEMENT FROM GOVERNOR KATHY HOCHUL

“Once again, New York has been forced to sue the Trump Administration to stop them from erratically shutting off billions of dollars in previously committed infrastructure funding. For nearly a century, leaders have made big promises to the people of East Harlem about the expansion of the Second Avenue Subway. For nearly a century, those promises have been broken. When I took office, I pledged to be the Governor who kept her promise to this neighborhood and finally got this subway built.

“We have already made enormous progress — work is underway and the project is moving on schedule and on budget. But Donald Trump’s unlawful funding pause has put this entire project at risk. His actions alone have jeopardized the commutes of over 100,000 New Yorkers and the jobs of thousands of union workers, but New York will not back down. We told Donald Trump that if he did not restore the funding for this project, we’d see him in court. Today, we are doing just that. Just like Gateway, Donald Trump has two options: restore the money now, or wait for a judge to force him to.”

MARCH 17 — JUDGE HALTS RFK JR.’S VACCINE RESTRICTIONS, ANTI-VACCINE APPOINTEES

Posted on March 17, 2026 by John Bailey

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A win for your access to vaccines, federal accountability, and health

AAP vs. RFK vaccine lawsuit

Katelyn Jetelina

Mar 17

READ IN APP

HERE. WE. GO.

After a year of chaos around vaccines in the United States, a federal judge just slammed the brakes.

In a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics against RFK Jr., a federal court ruled that the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee cannot move forward under the changes he imposed and reversed every action the committee had taken since summer 2025.

This is an incredible victory for kids who deserve barrier-free access to vaccines, for clinicians who need clear guidance and the autonomy to do what’s best for their patients, and for a country that deserves leadership capable of making both possible.

What happened?

ACIP is an external advisory committee to the CDC. It has an enormous influence on who should get which vaccines and when. Its recommendations shape what insurance covers, what physicians can routinely offer, and how easily families can access vaccines if they choose them.

Because of that influence, ACIP has traditionally relied on a few core principles:

Transparent meetings
Honest presentation of data
Rigorous review of safety and effectiveness
Flexibility when new evidence emerges

This process isn’t perfect, and there’s real room for improvement. But it works when evidence is weighed carefully, openly, and fairly.

That same influence also made ACIP a powerful lever. And RFK Jr., who has spent more than two decades publicly questioning vaccines and amplifying falsehoods about their safety and value, was well positioned to pull it.

Last June, after becoming HHS Secretary, he removed the entire existing committee and replaced it with new members whose expertise and interpretation of evidence raised serious concerns. The meetings that followed reflected those concerns:

Evidence was often presented selectively
Important context was missing
CDC scientists weren’t allowed to present their own data
Claims were made that didn’t align with the broader body of evidence on vaccine safety and effectiveness. The Evidence Collective’s endless documentation of fact-checking helped the case.

Science should include disagreement and hard questions, which is healthy. The concern is that a process designed to rigorously evaluate evidence instead becomes a platform for ideological beliefs.

Then, in January 2026, RFK Jr. bypassed his own ACIP committee, the CDC Director, and every scientific and clinical process we have, including rejecting public comment, to unilaterally make sweeping changes to the routine vaccination schedule for children in the United States. This change wasn’t based on new data or new evidence, but rather on political and ideological reasons.

What did the judge say?

The judge temporarily ruled that the decisions made over the past year are invalid, because the process itself broke the law in three ways:

The CDC bypassed ACIP, which Congress requires. Multiple federal laws covering insurance coverage, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, and the Vaccines for Children program explicitly tie benefits and obligations to ACIP’s recommendations. The HHS Secretary) cannot simply change the immunization schedule without ACIP’s involvement.
The new ACIP was not “fairly balanced” as required by the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Of the 15 members, the court found only about 6 had meaningful vaccine-related expertise. ACIP’s own charter requires members to be knowledgeable in immunization practices, vaccine use, or vaccine safety research. The rushed appointment process (replacing all 17 members in roughly two days, without normal outreach or vetting) further undermined the committee’s legitimacy.
Changes were arbitrary and capricious. The government gave no real explanation for departing from decades of established process, other than that it was following a presidential memo. That’s not enough under the Administrative Procedure Act.

The judge had some pretty incredible remarks in his ruling:

What’s next?

This ruling is a temporary hold on ACIP while the case moves through the courts.

A much-anticipated ACIP meeting this week was expected to include several votes, including on Covid-19 vaccines. ACIP meetings cannot proceed with the current members, so the meeting is cancelled.

Now, technically, this group of advisors handpicked by RFK Jr. could still gather informally. Anyone can meet anytime. They could hold a book club, a coffee chat, or a knitting circle. And they could find ways to megaphone their ideologies and cherry-pick studies. Many of them have very big online platforms.

But what they can’t do is operate as an official federal advisory committee: using government meeting rooms, staff support, travel funding, and government levers to shape your access to vaccines, like through insurance coverage or physician liability threats.

The real question now is what comes next:

Will RFK Jr. follow proper procedure in appointing a new set of ACIP members?
What will happen with the fall vaccines? (We still have some time for this one; June is typically the deadline.)
Will professional organizations, like the AAP, take the lead, and will they remain accountable through truly public meetings? So far, all deliberations have been behind closed doors.

While this pause is important, the medical decisions Americans make every day do not stop. Neither does the accumulation of new evidence, nor the development of innovative vaccines that are hopefully coming down the pipeline. It’s time to figure out what that next step is before this is clogged up too long.

What does this mean for you right now?

You can get the vaccines you want, for free, based on the best available evidence, and with the same trusted conversations with your doctor. All of the vaccine policy changes RFK Jr. put in place have now been reversed to their pre-June 2025 state.

This ruling is a temporary hold, and things could still change as the case moves through the courts.
To avoid policy whiplash, continue to rely on the vaccine schedules from specialty medical societies like AAP, AAFP, and ACOG as a steady guide through this storm.

The past year of shifting vaccine policy has left many people with questions and concerns. This ruling does not erase that confusion or immediately reach every family that fell through the cracks and remains unprotected against diseases. We have our work cut out for us.

It also cannot undo the enormous cost of countless hours spent responding to sudden policy changes, correcting falsehoods, and stabilizing guidance for patients and clinicians. This time, energy, and taxpayer dollars could have been used to solve real health problems.

Bottom line

This is a huge win. It restores access to vaccines (for now) and puts the process that determines who can access them back on track. That accountability matters. It protects Americans’ ability to make informed medical decisions and gives people a fair shot at the best possible health, even when so much in this country works against it. It’s a principle countless people have been fighting for, again and again, over the past year. And now, the federal court has confirmed that cutting corners and carelessly removing protections for Americans is not just bad public health policy. It’s illegal.

Love, YLE

Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded and operated by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife. YLE reaches more than 425,000 people in over 132 countries with one goal: “Translate” ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members. To support the effort, subscribe or upgrade below:

MARCH 16–FRANK AND PENNY SUNDAY MATINEE AT THE HAUNTED JACOB BURNS AT DUSK

Posted on March 16, 2026 by John Bailey

Frank and Penny out for a drive (Christiane Bale and Jesse Buckley) America’s VERY HOT Couple

WPCNR SHOCK THEATRE Review by Zacherle March 16, 2026:

JOHN ZACHERLE (ROLAND) GHOST HOST, CURATOR, WPIX SHOCK THEATER

I rose out of my crypt in the twilight yesterday just at dusk to go back in time to the “gory days” of 1930s movies to see Warner Brothers The Bride.

My bride the spectral Vampiress Janeta whose beauty never fades you know (she is a vampiress and is eternal) had shown me the reviews of the movie, selected by the curators of The Jacob Burns Staff to be shown this past week.

The way the reviewers saw this movie convinced me that this was a movie badly made. LIke most critics who do not make movies let alone understand them or acknowledge the movies standing, meaning in life, suggested to me it was confusing, silly and condemned it to a horrible opening weekend at the box office. ($17 Million)

Countess Janeta said “John darling, you have to go and see it before you decide not to see it.”

So in my eternal rest I decided to see The Bride at the Burns

The critics consider superhero and heroine “franchises” great because they are profitable dismissed this movie, not recognizing The Bride is an insightful homage to horror, and they havecreated an expensive $93 Million bomb, a nail in the Warner Brothers coffin and sealed in a mausoleum in Forest Lawn with so many Warner Brothers stars created in the past.

Having been a curator of horror classics since my days choosing the horror classics on Shock Theater on WPIX TV, with my assistant, Gasport. I am an expert in horror.

Horror movies, the classics, taught us about fear, evil, and human nature. As a youth I saw the original Frankenstein and saw in the townspeople’s hatred of the monster, the human nature of not liking people they did not understand. The monster’s killing of the little girl was an accident, because the monster did not understand, and Dr. Frankenstein’s rejection of the monster his lack of responsibility. This was my view of what that movie said to me about life.

Later, I saw Bride of Frankenstein which found a lonely monster asking Dr. Frankenstein to make him a companion. Unfortunately Elsa Lancaster the actress who played the first bride, rejected the Frankenstein monster.

That movie taught the lesson that strong feelings and need for another may not be returned and you as a man or a woman have to deal with it with compassion. Not rejection.

(It was not until I found a vampiress, (the eternal Countess Janeta, who liked my blood type and that took centuries), that I resolved this situation for myself.

The original Bride of Frankenstein ran 1 hour 15 minutes and took 36 days to shoot.

The Bride runs 2 hours and 6 minutes and sweeps the story of the Bride of Frankenstein into modern times the 1930s and creates a horror classic:

Director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s over-the-top overwhelming, melodramatic, horror romance that cannot die.

She has created in fantastic color, sound, action ,spectacle. It is the ultimate embellishment of horror’s appeal for those of us who appreciate the horror genre power to suspend disbelief and create buy-in acceptance of the impossible.

This movie is horror as inspiration, hope, happiness that all those who have fallen short crave. The Gyllenhaaling of James Whale’s(the director the original “Bride”) amps up the impact of the original, and brings out all horror’s powers to inspire

Right away it grabs us with Ms. Gyllenhaal far better looking than Alfred Hitchock in her own film, playing the spirit of Mary Shelley from one step beyond, saying she did not have time to write the sequel to Frankenstein because she died, but now she is back to say the things she,Shelley, wanted to say. I, horror aficionado, appreciates this. (We all leave undone things we wanted to do at the time we depart unless, unless you can come back, become a vampire or a monster that is invulnerable except for one thing: he is lonely.

Like the Frankenstein monster.

Gyllenhaal loops you in like a deranged talk show ghost host eerily discussing her new sequel she never got to write.

It begins with her monster viewing a 1930s song dance movie in a theater, tearing up watching Gyllenhaal’s brother Jack do a song and dance romantic fairwell to one of the many stars appearing in this horror epic. Seeing this movie if not a horror fan, you will see portrayed through the monster’s tears and joy at the film within the film. He has a broken heart. He is lonely.

A creature of the street– in a reach you can consider him a homeless person.

No other actor playing the monster—even the master, Boris Karloff—is as hunkie or as handsome and sensitive as Christian Bale’s “Frankie” who is self-educated, he reads, exactly the kind of man of interest a woman falls for. He needs love.

Man does this hit home.

This is why people go to movies. It seems to me critics have forgotten that. The movie fans seek ways to fill the loneliness and regrets of life and emotions they have never had. Horror movies make you feel more emotion than any genre, (except Shakespeare), (even those who empathize with the monster or two monsters as The Bride creates). The Mary Shelley ghost’s introduction is the framework of the movie lets you consider the impossible “what if” – the “hook” in horror that “hooks” you, dear movie goer.

Frank taking Ida to a Ronnie Read movie featuring his idol Read, whose movies he watches to experience feels of love.

The monster who has been roaming for years has now found love in watching Gyllenhall’s brother Jack playing a Fred Astaire type as he dances in 30s music style in a glitzy jazz age Chicago of the gangster age. Gyllenhall’s brother Jack plays Ronnie Reed with various stars you know as Reed’s partner.

Frank (Bail) encountering Jack Gyllenhaal playing Reed as he professes how much Reed’s movies mean to him. It will bring tears to your eyes.

Jesse Buckley acting out at the nightclub resulting in her untimely death. And she really acts showing her range of insanity and athleticism.

After the monster departs the movie crying, we are jazz-transported into a “hotsy-totsy” club with a table full of gangster types.Here Ida, Jessie Buckley a frizzy haired moll is acting out, slightly drunk and aggravates the table which ends with the gangster boss telling his cronies to get rid of her. Down the stairs she goes.

Fade to the monster hunched into his scarf walking to a tall building. He seeks out a scientist who wrote a book on resuscitating the dead.

She is a very scientific Dr. Euphronious played with arch evil, ambition and adventure by Annette Bening. She asks why Frank is seeking her out. His answer got me laughing (and really vampires never laugh.)

Them she asks why should I help you:

Bale as “Frank,” says, “I am so lonely.”

They need a dead woman’s body, and a dead woman is dug up by Dr. Euphronious and Frank.

Ida the rubbed-out gangster moll and Frank “meet cute” as she is on the table hooked up and in her spectacular laboratory Ida is goes from “corpse to cutie”—your body hums with electricity during this scene.

FRANK EXPERIENCES LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT AS IDA COMES BACK TO LIFE. THE BALE-BUCKLEY TEAM DELIVER THE LOOKS AND TOUCHES OF THINGS LOVERS DO. THEY ARE BEYOND CUTE– GOOD AND PERFECT.

As Ida takes to the streets, rejecting Frank, he follows her but she encounters thugs who try and assault her. Frank takes care of them and the romance from there rolls like a Harlequin romance novel. He cares consoles. She says forgedaboutit. I loved this aspect. Great acting love-hate-care. Love unfolds. I love that, don’t you? You yourself watching two people humanize through love’s growth.

The movie inspires women of Chicago to revolt against male dominance, and riots erupt.

Frank continues to escort Ida.

They are pursued by a police detective and state troopers, the entire police force of Chicago and New York. The couple is finally cornered will they survive?

You have to stay to the end like any romance. Happy ending? Will there be a sequel? No way. There are always tears for the monsters.

Horror movies never have a happy ending.

Mr Bale as Frank and Jessie Buckley as Ida whom Frank names Penelope are like Superman and Lois, always at odds, or Bogey and Bacall, tentative distant CRACKLING with electricity Tracy and Hepburn. Cary Grant and Laraine Day.

They hug with intensity. NEED grows.

You like romance. You like vast huge stagings of riots, chases and two people who don’t like each other cooperate, learn to agree and care for each other desperately.

This is a Horror movie classic.

Now Countess Janeta wants to see it.

The audience in the Burns Theater 5 which I playfully have nicknamed “The Crypt,” stayed rapt through the credits. No one left. They had to hear all of “Monster Mash” in the closing credits. They were transfixed. These two are monster heat.

Horror fans purists and Gen X’s go see. Learn. Feel the horror the love the emotion Hollywood used to deliver.

Go see it in the theaters.

The Bride gives everybody a reason for living—never give up! Like the two monsters who turn into lovers they found their way.

The last time a horror movie was this good was my favorite mummy movie “The Mummy’s TOMB” (1944) when Kharis the Mummy carries his beloved Princess Annunka into a swamp as she ages.

Hollywood establishment has a new hyperbolic word:

Gayllenhaalesque!

This was a graveyard smash of a movie.

For the record from Wikkipedia:

Bride of Frankenstein premiered on April 19, 1935 at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco,^[33][a] and went into general release the next day.^[34][35] The film was profitable for Universal, with a 1943 report showing that it had earned approximately $2 million, a profit of about $950,000.^[36]

The film was critically praised upon its release, although some reviewers did qualify their opinions based on the film’s being in the horror genre. The New York World-Telegram called the film “good entertainment of its kind”.^[37] The New York Post described it as “a grotesque, gruesome tale which, of its kind, is swell”.^[37] The Hollywood Reporter similarly called the film “a joy for those who can appreciate it”.^[37]

Variety did not so qualify its review: “[It is] one of those rare instances where none can review it, or talk about it, without mentioning the cameraman, art director, and score composer in the same breath as the actors and director”. Variety also praised the cast, writing that “Karloff manages to invest the character with some subtleties of emotion that are surprisingly real and touching … Thesiger as Dr. Pretorious [is] a diabolic characterization if ever there was one … Lanchester handles two assignments, being first in a preamble as author Mary Shelley and then the created woman. In latter assignment she impresses quite highly”.^[38]

In another unqualified review, Time wrote that the film had “a vitality that makes their efforts fully the equal of the original picture (Frankenstein)… Screenwriters Hurlbut & Balderston and Director James Whale have given it the macabre intensity proper to all good horror pieces, but have substituted a queer kind of mechanistic pathos for the sheer evil that was Frankenstein“.^[39] The Oakland Tribune concurred it was “a fantasy produced on a rather magnificent scale, with excellent stagecraft and fine photographic effects”.^[40] While the Winnipeg Free Press thought that the electrical equipment might have been better suited to Buck Rogers, nonetheless the reviewer praised the film as “exciting and sometimes morbidly gruesome”, declaring that “all who enjoyed Frankenstein will welcome his Bride as a worthy successor”.^[41] The New York Times called Karloff “so splendid in the role that all one can say is ‘he is the Monster'”.^[42] The Times praised the entire principal cast and Whale’s direction in concluding that Bride is “a first-rate horror film”,^[42] and presciently suggested that “the Monster should become an institution, like Charlie Chan“.^[42]

MARCH 15—–

Posted on March 15, 2026 by John Bailey

March 13, 2026

Redistricting saga continues
One house budgets released!
Events you won’t want to miss

Will Redistricting Ever End?

Potentially. But I’d bet 5 dollars we’ll be talking about redistricting until the next official cycle in 2030.

The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that would have required New York to redraw the 11th Congressional District, which includes Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. A state trial judge had found that the current district boundaries dilute the voting power of Black and Latino residents in violation of the state constitution, a decision that could have shifted the Republican-held seat toward Democrats.

Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis and the GOP co-chair of the State Board of Elections appealed, arguing that the proposed redraw amounted to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.

While New York officials and voter advocates said the dispute should be resolved in state courts first, the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay that will remain in place as the case moves through the state appeals process, and potentially longer if the Court ultimately agrees to hear it.

The unsigned order drew dissent from three justices, who warned that intervening before a final state court ruling could invite more federal involvement in ongoing election disputes nationwide, particularly as states prepare for the 2026 election cycle. Read more here and here.

One House Budgets Released!

This week we saw the Senate and the Assembly release their one-house budgets. What exactly is a one-house budget? Essentially, it builds off of the Governors Executive budget and includes everything the Senate and the Assembly would want to see in the final State budget. Here is what’s been included in each:

Senate One House includes:

Adds $10 million total in additional operating support for local BOEs.
Adds $10 million total to expand civic education.
Adds $30 million total for the New York State Office of the Census.
Adds $1 million total and New PPGG Part HH to create an Election Security Navigator Program to assist local boards of elections with cybersecurity (S.8615).
Adds $175,000 total to join the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC).
Accepts $2.5 million for Dr. John L. Flateau NY Voting and Elections Database, and restores $250,000 for related research and analysis at Medgar Evers College.
Intentionally omits PPGG Part S to expand and operationalize rules governing “materially deceptive media” in political communications. The Senate supports further discussions on how best to protect elections from misleading or deceptive AI content.

Assembly One House includes:

The Assembly provides $6 million for local Boards of Elections for operating costs associated with the general election to be held in November of 2026, including up to $1 million for polling sites at SUNY campuses, including early voting.
The Assembly provides $20 million for census planning.
The Assembly provides $500,000 for the cost of implementing a program to expand voting opportunities to eligible people in detention.
Removes Part S and R, which addresses voter obstruction and deceptive AI content.

What do we think?

We would have loved to see $35M in funding for local Boards of Elections, but are glad to see some direct funding in both the Senate and Assembly budgets
We are thrilled to see $500k in the Assembly budget for jail based voting and the Democracy During Detention Act! Check out Carla Michalak’s (LWV of Broome Tioga) op-ed about the bill here.
Article VII: The exclusion of PPGG Part S, Part R, and the Bivens Act is okay. There are stronger proposals already in the legislature related to civil rights protection, AI deception and voter obstruction.
We were happy to see funding in both the Senate and Assembly for Census Planning
Glad to see funding for ERIC, the John R. Flateau Database, expansion of civic education, and funding for the creation of Election Security Navigator Program in the Senate’s one-house
We would have liked to see direct funding for climate change education and funding for the Bigger Better Bottle Bill.

More thoughts to come as we continue to read through the budgets for specific changes to healthcare and education! Don’t wait for us though- check out this overview from NY Focus.

We didn’t spend the WHOLE week at the Capitol

Earlier this week, the League of Women Voters of the Mid-Hudson Region joined Ulster County officials for the opening of Women Shaping Democracy in Ulster County, now on display for the month at the Nina Postupack Gallery in the Ulster County Office Building in Kingston. The exhibit—organized by the Ulster County Clerk’s Office—features historical voter registration books, materials from the women’s suffrage movement, and records preserved through League donations documenting decades of civic engagement in the region. Campaign Director, Clyanna Lightbourn, joined the Mid-Hudson League for this event.

Get these events on your calendar before it’s too late!

Regional Trainings 2026: Join us for a regional training near you as we prepare for the 2026 election. We will discuss several topics to improve our impact and our reach in the communities we serve. Coffee will be served at 9:30 and the trainings will begin at 10am (15 minutes earlier for Rochester) and lunch will be included.

Saratoga Springs Regional Training- March 21, 2026 (9:30am – 3:30pm)
Rochester Regional Training- April 11, 2026 (9:15am – 3:15pm)

Women and Political Power: on March 26th at 5pm-8pm at the New York State Museum (222 Madison Ave, Albany, NY). Join us for an evening conversation on women in the New York State Legislature. Register by March 16th.

Featuring:

Carol Faulkner, Professor of History, Syracuse University
Lauren Kozakiewicz, Lecturer in History at the University of Albany, and author of Ladies’ Day at the Capitol: New York’s Women Legislators, 1919-1992.

Until next time,

P.S. Have a friend who isn’t receiving the Legislative Update? Have them sign up via this link!

Weekly Session Calendar

We are still waiting on the committee meetings for next week in the Assembly. Check out the updated Senate committee calendar here and the Assembly committee calendar here. Joint budget sub-committees will be held all week!

Monday, March 16th- Senate in session at 3:00pm, Assembly in session at 11am.
Tuesday, March 17th- Senate in session at 3:00pm, Assembly session start time has not yet been posted.
Wednesday, March 18th- Senate in session at 3:00pm , Assembly session start time has not yet been posted.
Thursday, March 19th- Senate in session at 11:00am , Assembly session start time has not yet been posted.