Good Tuesday moring.
Welcome to Primary Day. There are intraparty contests taking place across the state, but the most closely watched – and difficult to predict – contest is the battle for the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City.
This is the first major election in which ranked choice voting is being put to the test in the five boroughs, and it could be weeks – some even say months – before we know the outcome of today’s elections. (If you’re confused about how that works, join the club, and also, click here for the infamous bagel tutorial).
The candidates – and there’s a whole mess of them – are vying to replace the incumbent Demorcatic mayor, Bill de Blasio, who is blocked by term limits from running again.
There’s also a (much smaller) GOP mayoral primary. All told, 13 people are on the NYC mayoral ballot.
Today is also National Onion Rings Day. Now, I am partial to a nice, well executed onion ring – perhaps even more so than a nice, well executed french fry. (To be honest, I can’t remember the last time I actually consumed either of them, but when I did, I definitely preferred the former to the later).
The trouble is that there are so many BAD onion rings in the world. Soggy, flabby affairs shedding their crisp outsides and exposing their naked, slimy onion innards to the world. Sad.
Burger King used to do them right, though I haven’t been there in years either, so I’m not really up on their quality control. If anyone could recommend a good place for onion rings in the Capital Region, I might be willing to break my non-fried food streak.
Maybe.
Here’s something to add to the consideration: Moderate amounts of onion is reportedly beneficial for heart. The sulphur present in the vegetable prevents clotting of blood vessels, lowers cholesterol levels and prevents heart attacks.
Onion rings are found in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and some parts of Asia, but their exact origin is unknown.
A recipe called “Fried Onions with Parmesan Cheese” is included in John Mollard’s 1802 cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Easy and Refined. The recipe calls for cutting onions into 1/2 inch rings, dipping them into a batter made of flour, cream, salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese then deep-frying them in boiling lard.
AND, of course there’s a New York connection, as some believe that a recipe for French Fried Onions appeared in the Middletown, NY Daily Times on January 13, 1910, though it did not claim to originate the recipe.
The A&W restaurant chain is credited with popularizing onion rings across the U.S. in the 1960s. (Also, if you’re really jonesing for an A&W experience, there’s apparently still a franchise in Hudson…Road trip, anyone?) A&W, by the way, was the first American franchise chain to turn 100 back in June 2019.
And in a complete non sequitor, it’s World Rainforest Day, (actually, this is apparently a multi-day extravaganza). Wanna be depressed? If you want to start your day off on an upbeat note, you might want to skip this part and go straight to the weather…
Rainforests are vital for the survival of life on Earth, as they absorb carbon dioxide, stabilize climate patterns, and are home to half the world’s plant and animal species.
Yet every minute, we lose 40 football fields of rainforests. Deforestation causes 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions that accelerate climate change. That’s more than the what’s generated by all ther cars in the U.S. and China combined.
Natural climate solutions like protecting and restoring forests, however, could reverse global emissions by a third.
Today’s PSA: This is the final day of Amazon Prime Day, the retail giant’s epic annual savings bonanza. Get your online deals while you can.
What a weather roller coaster we’ve been on of late. Yesterday, sorching heat. Today? Temperatures in the 60s – yes, the 60s – with showers in the morning giving way to overcast skies later in the day.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden will continue discussions on U.S. infrastructure legislation this week, but the White House still has not agreed with lawmakers on how to pay for such a bill, officials said.
The first six months of an administration before lawmakers go home for the summer are crucial to enacting an agenda. So it’s crunch time for Biden to conclude an infrastructure deal while honoring his promise to voters to cooperate with Republicans.
The U.S. would tax capital gains and dividends for the rich at among the highest rates in the developed world if Biden’s proposal is enacted.
Biden will host a White House ceremony later this year to unveil former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama’s official portraits.
The Biden administration might ban imports of a critical solar panel material from China’s Xinjiang region – a move that would assuage bipartisan pressure to crack down on human rights abuses but also could undermine aggressive climate change goals.
Biden administration officials are insisting that the election of a hard-liner as Iran’s president won’t affect prospects for reviving the faltering 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. But there are already signs that their goal of locking in a deal just got tougher.
Most Americans support greater access to early voting, as well as increased requirements for voter ID laws, a recent Monmouth University Poll found.
A push by Democrats for the most expansive voting rights legislation in generations is set to collapse in the Senate, where Republicans are expected to use a filibuster to block a measure Biden and his congressional allies call a vital step to protect democracy.
U.S. stocks rallied yesterday, lifting the Dow Jones Industrial Average by more than 550 points, as shares of everything from banks to manufacturers climbed.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that job growth should pick up in coming months and temporary inflation pressures should ease as the economy continues to recover from the effects of the pandemic.
The global chip shortage is pushing up prices of items such as laptops and printers and is threatening to do the same to other top-selling devices including smartphones.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled the N.C.A.A. can’t bar relatively modest payments to student-athletes, underscoring the growing challenges to a college sports system that generates huge sums for schools but provides little or no player compensation.
More than 80 million people – a record – have health coverage through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, as enrollments surged due to Covid-19, according to new data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The White House acknowledged that the U.S. will likely fall short of the president’s goal to share 80 million doses of coronavirus vaccine with disadvantaged countries by the end of this month.
The Biden administration announced a list of countries that will receive the remaining 55 million COVID-19 vaccine doses that the U.S. has pledged to allocate by the end of this month.
The 55 million vaccine doses are the remaining portion of 80 million shots Biden has committed to donating abroad.
While Covid-19 is receding in much of the world, the pandemic is raging in South America, which has just 5% of the world’s population but now accounts for a quarter of the global death toll.
The highly contagious delta variant is the fastest and fittest coronavirus strain yet, and it will “pick off” the most vulnerable people, especially in places with low Covid-19 vaccination rates, World Health Organization officials warned.
Some states are making great strides in vaccinating their residents against Covid-19, but the ones that are not may soon be contending with a more transmissible variant, experts say.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to jail people who refuse to be vaccinated against the coronavirus as his country battles one of Asia’s worst outbreaks, with more than 1.3 million cases and 23,000 deaths.
A large number of poorer countries receiving Covid-19 vaccines through a global sharing scheme do not have enough doses to continue their inoculation programs, the WHO maintains.
Vaccine booster shots will likely be needed in the fall, according to experts, who are urging governments to organize them now.
Moderna is adding two new production lines at the rebuilt former Polaroid plant where it manufactures its Covid-19 vaccine, part of a push to prepare for making booster shots and the future of the pandemic.
Former President Donald Trump considered sending U.S. citizens infected with the coronavirus to Guantanamo Bay, according to a new book.
Swimming in cash from an unexpected budget surplus and federal stimulus money, California is planning rent forgiveness on a scale never seen before in the United States.
Nearly 4,000 fully vaccinated people in Massachusetts have tested positive for COVID-19, according to recent data from the state Department of Public Health.
The nation’s youngest adults remain the least likely to be vaccinated against the coronavirus — and their weekly rates of vaccination are declining, according to federal research released yesterday.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner, said the highly transmissible delta Covid variant, first discovered in India, could present challenges to U.S. schools this fall given lower vaccination rates among children.
Nearly a week after New York relaxed almost all COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions, coronavirus cases continue to decline.
The governor did not reopen New York to accommodate his daughter’s weddding, as some are claiming on the internet.
A bill that creates staffing committees at New York hospitals to assess guidelines for per patient staffing levels was signed into law by the governor, marking a key win for the union that represents nurses who have long argued the need to address the issue.
This is the first time New Yorkers have been able to vote early in a mayoral primary, and turnout was pretty good. According to the city’s Board of Elections, 191,197 New Yorkers came to the polls during the early voting period, June 12 to this past Sunday.
The next New York gubernatorial election is still nearly a year and a half away, but state Republicans are already trying to get behind a single candidate who they hope has a chance of winning in an increasingly blue state.
The state legislature has adjourned for the rest of the year, but the Senate Committee on Investigations is continuing its look into allegedly faulty bolts on the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Tappan Zee Bridge.
Assembly members convened virtually to hear from providers and advocates about the benefits of integrating care for mental illness and substance use disorder among those who struggle with both.
The men and women who would be mayor dashed through the five boroughs in one last attempt to win voters’ allegiance a day before a Democratic primary that will almost certainly determine the next mayor of New York City.
Ready or not, voters will make history as New York becomes the largest place in the country to use ranked-choice voting, a system where individuals select up to five candidates in order of preference that has been tried only in Maine and some smaller cities.
The winner of New York City’s long-awaited Democratic mayoral primary is unlikely to be crowned tonight due to the freshly implemented ranked-choice voting system — and final results aren’t expected until mid-July, according to elections officials.
Just a day before the last chance to vote in this year’s primaries for mayor, plenty of New Yorkers were still undecided.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams is the top choice of a plurality of voters in New York City’s mayoral race, but the former NYPD captain is not a popular second and third pick, according to a new poll released hours before today’s primary.
More than half of New Yorkers said crime and public safety was one of their top concerns, the poll showed. They were also concerned about the handling of Covid-19, affordable housing and the reopening of businesses, according to the poll.
Adams made his closing argument in a Daily News op-ed. Ditto Kathryn Garcia, Andrew Yang and Maya Wiley.
On the final full day of New York City’s mayoral primary campaign, the leading Democratic candidate, Adams, called a top rival, Yang, a “liar” and a “fraud.” Yang, in turn, suggested Adams “cuts corners and breaks rules.”
Yang said he left Adams’ name off his ballot in the Democratic Party primary for mayor.
A group fighting for the city to ensure that Orthodox Jewish children receive better secular education in yeshivas is launching an 11-hour assault against Adams and Yang — top contenders who are backed by various Hasidic leaders.
In a round of early-morning television appearances yesterday, Adams continued to criticize an alliance between two of his rivals – Garcia and Yang – as an attempt to prevent the city from electing its second Black mayor.
“African Americans are very clear on voter suppression. We know about a poll tax. We know about the fight that we’ve had historically, how you had to go through hurdles to vote,” Adams said.
Wiley called her rival Adams’s bid to undermine confidence in ranked-choice voting “cynical, self-interested and dangerous.”
In off-year elections from California to New York City and New Jersey and the increasingly blue state of Virginia with its crucial suburbs of Washington, D.C., the Republican Party’s feeble appeal to the country’s big cities and dense suburbs is on vivid display.
The eight candidates for Manhattan district attorney spent the final day before the Democratic primary election trying to sway undecided voters in a race with no clear front-runner.
The City Council candidate whose campaign flagged footage of his own BDSM session to The Post said that he was trying to get ahead of a political rival plotting to use the clip against him — and that he’s not ashamed of his sexual proclivities.
The city Education Department is reversing a steep hike in the fee to use public school buildings after an outcry from after-school program providers who said the price increase made running activities unaffordable.
City regulators at the Taxi and Limousine Commission are poised to vote on a regulations change that would end the attempt by the electric scooter company Revel to launch a for-hire vehicle service to compete with Uber, Lyft and yellow cabs.
Over the weekend, Foo Fighters played Madison Square Garden, the first full-capacity concert in a New York arena since March of 2020.
The Trump Organization sued New York City, saying it had wrongly terminated a lucrative golf course contract for political reasons after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol in Washington.
New York prosecutors are investigating whether a top Trump Organization executive, Matthew Calamari, received tax-free fringe benefits, as part of their probe into whether Trump’s company and its employees illegally avoided paying taxes on such perks.
A Chicago banker accused of loaning $16 million to Paul Manafort in a bid for a high-level post in the Trump administration will face trial starting today in Manhattan Federal Court.
A federal judge partly dismissed claims filed by Black Lives Matter, the American Civil Liberties Union and others accusing the Trump administration of abusing its power to violently disperse a protest outside the White House last year.
Albany Police Chief Eric Hawkins said he’s withdrawn his name as a candidate for police chief in Akron, Ohio.
Operating hours for the state canal system’s Waterford Flight, Locks E-2 through E-6 and Guard Gate 2, are being cut back starting on Thursday, June 24, due to a lack of staff.
A shuttle bus designed to ease the chronic parking shortages at popular Adirondack High Peak trailheads has yet to start running because drivers are hard to find.
Despite spurts of extreme heat earlier this summer and a drought devastating crops in the west, farmers in the Capital Region are feeling lucky this season.
More than 2,000 National Grid customers were without power as of 7:45 p.m. yesterday due to a major thunderstorm.
The Fourth of July fireworks will return to the Empire State Plaza this year after being cancelled in 2020 due to the pandemic.
The Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation in Saranac Lake is one of six grant recipients in a natural resource damages settlement from an oil tanker spill that occurred in Buzzard’s Bay, Mass, in April, 2003.
The Bethlehem bear, spotted from Olde Delmar to Five Rivers took a quick tour of the Bethlehem High School campus over the weekend and was captured by a maintenance department employee.
The ongoing labor shortage could make it hard for the New York State Fair to hire the 6,000 people it needs to run for 18 days.
Bard College, an American liberal arts college known for its artsy hipsters and A-list alumni, was banned from Russia after being declared an “undesirable” and “threat” to “order and security,” state media reported.
Raiders defensive lineman Carl Nassib became the first active N.F.L. player to publicly declare that he is gay.
