Good morning. It’s Monday. Today we’ll find out about a cross-country trip that’s re-enacting one from 1916. We’ll also look at why investigations into Jeffrey Epstein in the 1990s and early 2000s seemed to go nowhere.
It is a re-enactment with some twists, Jeryl Schriever said about a cross-country car trip to promote women’s rights — following the route of an expedition in 1916. The goal then was the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which recognized women’s right to vote. Two suffragists drove from New York to California and back in a two-seater that had to be cranked to start. As Schriever noted in a book she wrote about that trip, Woodrow Wilson was in the White House and the Army was chasing the elusive Pancho Villa along the Southern border. Europe was caught up in a war that the United States had not yet joined. The same make and model of car began a similar trip on Sunday. This time the goal was to promote a joint congressional resolution that would add the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. The amendment has been ratified by the necessary 38 states, but it has never been officially certified. “We are where the suffragists were in 1916 when they did the same drive,” said former Representative Carolyn Maloney, who is spearheading a campaign to recognize the E.R.A. “They decided in 1916 that the 19th Amendment was stalled and they had to raise awareness. Now the E.R.A. is stalled.” Few women in Congress had more influence or leverage than Maloney, who pushed for the E.R.A. during her 30 years in office, until redistricting put her in a race against Representative Jerrold Nadler, another longtime Manhattan Democrat. He defeated her in 2022. “When I left Congress — what do you do when you leave Congress?” Maloney said. “The first thing everyone wants is to hire you as a lobbyist, but if everyone wants to hire you as a lobbyist, it’s probably for something you don’t believe in.” She said she decided to make her mission the E.R.A., which would strengthen the legal protections against gender-based discrimination. She spoke at a conference on Sunday at the New York Historical in Manhattan. Kim Villanueva, the president of the National Organization for Women, echoed Maloney’s statements about the importance of the amendment, saying that “women’s rights are under attack from the highest levels of our government.” “We need full constitutional protection before more rights are stripped away,” she said. Congress passed the E.R.A. in 1972, with a catch: At least 38 states had to ratify what would have been the 27th Amendment by a 1982 deadline. When it arrived, 35 states had approved the E.R.A. Nevada and Illinois later did so, and Virginia became the 38th state in 2020. Then, three days before President Joseph Biden left office last year, he said he believed that the E.R.A. had met the requirements for ratification and was part of the Constitution. But Colleen Shogan, the archivist of the United States at the time, had already said that she would not take the final step in the process. Biden did not order her to.
On the roadThings are different for the cross-country trip this time around. The car, a much-restored version of the one from 1916, won’t make the trip on its own. The vehicle is traveling most of the way in a trailer, to be rolled out for events in the places the suffragists stopped. Susan Nourse, a former police chief from Freeport, Maine, is at the wheel and said the car took getting used to. The gas pedal is in the center and the brake on the right, and the vehicle doesn’t have power steering or power brakes. “You can’t jam the brakes on and expect to stop,” she said. Driving the car “takes a lot of concentration.” Alex Huppé — who owns the car, along with several others like it — said it had the same type of suspension that Bugattis had back then. Schriever, who is married to Huppé, said that the two suffragists “got stuck in rivers” along the way and ran out of water in the desert after leaving Phoenix. A newspaper article quoted in her book said that “men in a passing vehicle” had refused to help, saying they were in a hurry. But the men told the women they could get assistance in a town a few miles away. The suffragists walked there. “That was the longest six miles of our journey,” one said. WEATHER Today will be mostly cloudy before gradually becoming sunny, with a high near 31 degrees. Expect increasing clouds tonight with a low around 26. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING Suspended for snow removal. QUOTE OF THE DAY “She’s an influencer. If you have been to Columbia, you know who she is.” — Delfina Roybal, a student at Columbia University, on her classmate Elmina Aghayeva, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last week and released after Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked President Trump to intervene. Aghayeva has 114,000 followers on Instagram. The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Why the Epstein investigations seemed to go nowhere
Years of tips and investigations about Jeffrey Epstein led to charges against only two people. Why? The recently released Justice Department emails, prosecutorial memos, interview transcripts and other records — millions of pages in all — provide some answers. My colleagues Benjamin Weiser, Matthew Goldstein and Mike Baker write that there were missed opportunities, like a tip in the 1990s that the F.B.I. apparently did not follow up on. There was also a plea deal in Florida, struck over the objections of a prosecutor who had drafted a 54-page indictment that would have charged Epstein and three assistants with trafficking minors for sex. But the documents released by the Justice Department do not explain why R. Alexander Acosta, who as the U.S. attorney for South Florida was the prosecutor’s boss, worked out the so-called nonprosecution agreement. Acosta — who stepped down as labor secretary in 2019 amid an outcry over the deal — has said that putting Epstein on trial would have been “a roll of the dice.” Outside the United States, law enforcement is moving to build cases based on revelations in the newly released records. The police in Britain arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, last month. Investigations have also been opened in France and Norway. But Justice Department officials have said that they do not plan to file additional charges related to Epstein based on information in the files. METROPOLITAN DIARY New Year’s Eve
Dear Diary: This past New Year’s Eve, I was headed to a Scottish social dancing party at a Brooklyn church rec room and racing to get there before midnight to celebrate with my friends. I ordered a car, and a driver named Gelson picked me up. On the way, we stopped at a deli so I could get a six-pack (I did not want to arrive empty-handed), and I offered to buy Gelson something. He asked for an energy drink. On the rest of the short ride, we spoke to each other in Spanish — mine is not great, but I like to try — about our New Year’s Day plans and the weather. We got to the church 10 minutes before midnight. I walked in and greeted a few friends. As we prepared for the countdown, I reached for my phone to capture the moment — and realized I had left it in the car. After a moment of panic, a feeling of calm came over me. “There’s nothing to do about it right now, so just don’t worry about it,” I thought to myself. We rang in the New Year, stood in a large circle while singing “Auld Lang Syne,” did a Scottish line dance and mingled some more. Half an hour into 2026, I walked across the room to fetch a drink, and there was Gelson, standing in the middle of the dance floor. “I think you left your phone in my car,” he said. I gave him a huge hug, and he went back out to get more fares. Naturally, I tipped him well. — Jenny Gersten Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
