Latest news with #Zwiener
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Texas House Republicans flex their might after Democrats threaten legislative priorities
Partisan rancor in the Texas House of Representatives threatened to boil over on Friday when a group of hardline Republicans killed a seemingly uncontroversial bill brought by a Democratic House member. Five members raised their hands in objection to a bill from Democratic Rep. Erin Zwiener of Driftwood on white tail deer population management, declaring they would kill all Democrat bills on the local and consent calendar. Zwiener's bill was the first from a Democrat on the calendar today. The move prompted Democrats to respond in kind, creating a stand-off of mutually assured destruction that ended with the House pulling all but two bills off the remainder of the calendar. Local and consent calendars typically feature uncontested and local legislation, including bills that fund local parks or water districts. The move threatens to take a traditionally low-key aspect of the House's work and turn it into a partisan battleground with just 38 days left in the legislative session. One Republican expressed frustration. 'We got a lot of bills still to be heard,' Rep. Stan Gerdes, R-Smithville, told The Texas Tribune. 'And we ain't got that much time on that. So, we need to cut the games and get back to work.' Others were exultant. 'Conservatives are done allowing dems to run the Texas House,' Rep. Andy Hopper, R-Decatur, posted on X, with a photo of five representatives who raised objections to the bill. 'Today patriots are standing together to declare that if Texas GOP priorities aren't to be prioritized or passed, that local & consent will no longer be mindlessly passed.' The photo showed Republican Reps. Briscoe Cain of Deer Park, Mitch Little of Lewisville, Nate Schatzline of Fort Worth, Tony Tinderholt of Arlington and Steve Toth of The Woodlands raising their hands in objection. Although Democrats have long been a minority of the Texas House, they have had some influence on the edges of issues. They managed to stop some Republican budget measures and are blocking constitutional amendments. The Republican hardliners' stated goals are twofold. They want Democratic Rep. Mary González of Clint to publicly apologize for quietly slipping in an amendment to the House budget that killed several conservative-backed budget amendments. Secondly, the hardliners want Democrats to end their blocks on the passage of constitutional amendments. 'The Democrat Caucus, with the exception of a few, has prevented constitutional amendments from passing, some of which would have benefitted mentally handicapped individuals,' according to vote reasoning signed by at least 15 Republicans. 'Mary Gonzalez's bills will continue to die because, in addition to the aforementioned reason, she lied with her amendment to the amendment on the budget.' González declined to comment. It takes 100 members to pass a constitutional amendment in the House, meaning at least 12 Democrats need to play along with the Republican majority. Although most of the Democratic caucus helped elect Dustin Burrows as speaker, most Democrats have withheld their votes on constitutional amendments for the past three weeks in an attempt to extract concessions from House leadership. On Tuesday, House leadership put House Joint Resolution 72 to a vote, testing Democrats' resolve with a sympathetic and bipartisan measure about creating a homestead exemption for the residences of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It failed to gain the two-third majority needed for passage. The two bills that were salvaged from the local and consent calendar wreckage were HB 155, from Rep. Richard Peña Raymond, D-Laredo. Raymond was one of a few Democrat who voted in support of HJR 72. The second bill from Austin Rep. Sheryl Cole honored a fallen police officer. Cole had been absent in recent weeks. Hardline Republicans articulated their reasons. However, they're concerned more broadly about the pacing of conservative priorities. The uproar from the far right comes as the grassroots have increased their criticism that the House has not passed any of its legislative priorities. On Wednesday, Texas GOP Chairman Abraham George posted a video on social media chiding the House for not yet passing any of the party's eight legislative priorities while the Senate has made more progress. After the House adjourned, Representative Shatzline said House leadership reassured his group of hardline conservatives that leadership is dedicated to passing Texas GOP priorities this session. 'There was no details given, and we want details or we're going to go through with our plan,' he said. 'I hope that it's the most conservative session we've ever had. And the ball's in their court.' After the bills were removed from the local and consent calendar, the House paused to let the local and consent calendars committee meet. The committee voted to send everything in their committee to the main calendars' committee, the first step before sending these bills back to the House floor for potential approval. Kayla Guo contributed to this report. Tickets are on sale now for the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Texas' breakout ideas and politics event happening Nov. 13–15 in downtown Austin. Get tickets before May 1 and save big! TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
New York Times
30-01-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Wolfgang Zwiener, Waiter Who Built a Steakhouse Empire, Dies at 85
Wolfgang Zwiener, who immigrated to New York City from Germany in 1960, ferried thousands of hissing platters of porterhouse to the oak tables as a waiter at Peter Luger in Brooklyn and then founded his own empire of 35 steakhouses stretching from Park Avenue to the Philippines, died on Jan. 23 at his home in Honolulu. He was 85. His son Peter, who confirmed the death, said the cause was lung cancer. In his 39 years at Peter Luger, Mr. Zwiener (pronounced ZWEE-ner) was on his feet six days a week. On Sundays and vacations, he liked to sleep on the beach. In retirement, it might have seemed that his only worry would be running out of sunscreen. Peter and his brother, Steven, had other ideas. They talked him into opening Wolfgang's Steakhouse, under the deep-blue ceiling tiles in the basement of the former Vanderbilt Hotel on lower Park Avenue. The porterhouse, the German potatoes, the apple strudel with schlag and a few more Peter Luger specialties came along. So did two men he had waited tables with, now his business partners. As proprietor, Mr. Zwiener traded black bow ties and cotton aprons for suits, silk pocket squares and buffed leather shoes. The crisp mustache, trimmed as straight and even above his upper lip as the teeth of a barbershop comb, stayed the same, apart from growing whiter. 'He had a debonair and overwhelming presence,' said Mark Solasz, the vice president of Master Purveyors in the Bronx, the company that supplies most of Wolfgang's meat in the United States and abroad. 'He reminded me of an actor from the movies, but he was real life.' In 2004, when Mr. Zwiener opened the first Wolfgang's Steakhouse, one of the owners of Peter Luger assessed his odds of success this way: 'He was just the waiter.' But this waiter had the loyalty of untold diners who called him Wolfie, always sat in his section and knew he would remember how they liked their steak. Many followed him to Manhattan. Some already lived there and found it was nicer to visit Mr. Zwiener in his new restaurant than to take a cab over the Williamsburg Bridge to his old one. He also had a sharp eye for anything in the dining room that went askew. He insisted that each place be set with a heated plate no more than two minutes before the aged prime beef arrived. If the time limit was exceeded, he would send servers back for fresh plates. Platters had to be even hotter, so scalding that the butter and juices would sputter and smoke under diners' noses, a flourish borrowed from Peter Luger. A steak that failed to sizzle was 'a D.O.A.' Those went back to the kitchen, too. Although Wolfgang's augmented its menu with things like crab cakes and tuna tartare, its fame rested on its prime beef. 'The meat was many wonderful things at once, or in rapid succession: crunchy, tender, smoky, earthy,' Frank Bruni wrote of the first location in a review in The New York Times in 2004. Such praise was common, but there were dissenters. Weeks after Wolfgang's Steakhouse opened in Beverly Hills in 2008, the Austrian-born chef Wolfgang Puck sued Mr. Zwiener in federal court for trademark infringement, unfair competition and several other alleged violations. Mr. Puck, accustomed to being the biggest Wolfgang in town, said that customers at this interloper's tables might believe they were in store for dishes from 'a world-famous and award-winning chef' but would instead be getting 'pedestrian' stuff. Mr. Zwiener countersued. Both parties had agreed four years earlier that Mr. Zwiener would use the name Wolfgang's Steakhouse by Wolfgang Zwiener in any locations outside New York City. Those were the words on the door in Beverly Hills, and a judge denied Mr. Puck's request for an injunction. Eventually, the case was resolved out of court. By that time, Wolfgang's Steakhouse was growing fast. There are now five steakhouses in Manhattan, one in New Jersey, two in Hawaii, one in Cyprus and more than two dozen in Asia nations that include China, Japan, South Korea and Thailand. Fifteen more, most of them in Asia, are scheduled to open later this year. Wolfgang August Fritz Zwiener was born on June 17, 1939, in Bad Salzbrunn, a spa town in what is now Poland, to Paul Friedrich and Elisabeth Charlotte Zwiener. A little more than 10 weeks later, World War II started. Mr. Zwiener rarely spoke about the war later in life, but he told his children that his father, a soldier, was killed by a land mine; that their house was lost; and that food was scarce. If he ever met his father, who died in 1942 in Nowosielce, he was too young to remember it. He was happier to talk about the restaurant and lodge that his parents once ran in Silesia, and how he had followed their path by enrolling in the hospitality program of a trade school in Bremen, Germany, in his early teens and serving a two-year apprenticeship. After graduating, he was hired as a waiter on cruise ships in the North German Lloyd line, circling the world for two years. Back on the ground in Germany, opportunities were thin. In 1960, after an uncle who owned an elevator company in Manhattan offered him a job and an immigration sponsorship, he sailed to the United States aboard the MS Berlin. He soon met Elena Delgado, who had moved to New York from Lima, Peru, and they married in 1962. He never warmed up to pulleys and counterweights, though, and with her encouragement he went back to the trade he liked to say was in his blood. Working his connections in the German community, he landed a job as a waiter at Sunnyside Brauhall in Queens, the banquet division of the new Hilton in Midtown, and at Lüchow's, the stained-glass cathedral of sauerbraten on 14th Street. Although the German family that founded Peter Luger had sold it by the time Mr. Zwiener started working there in 1964, nearly all the waiters had been born in Germany. 'They were all older, and they were all grumpy,' Peter Zwiener said. His father's demeanor stood out: 'He was the friendly guy.' Promoted to headwaiter, Wolfgang Zwiener took charge of scheduling shifts, assigning side work and distributing tips. When Peter and his brother were teenagers, he got them part-time gigs as doormen. He drilled his sons on the importance of saving money and going to college. He also warned them away from restaurant careers. 'You won't have a life,' he said. They took the first two pieces of advice, but not the last. Steven Zwiener now oversees the Manhattan steakhouses, and Peter is president of the company. They survive him along with his wife; two grandchildren, Alexandra Milligan and Nicole Wilson; and two great-grandchildren, James and Theodore Wilson.
