Good Wednesday morning.
On this day in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Organic Act, creating the National Park Service. As a result, “Founders Day” is celebrated annually on this day in all national parks across the U.S. to honor the agency’s creation.
National parks across the country are hosting in-park programs and virtual experiences. Entrance fees are also waived, which is kind of a big deal, considering how popular the parks have become since the onset of the Covid crisis.
The National Park System encompasses 423 national park sites in the United States. They span across more than 84 million acres in each state and extend into the territories, including parks in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Guam.
At the height of the pandemic, NPS largely closed locations that attracted crowds in confined spaces (like, say, the Washington Monument), but national battlefields and open spaces were still accessible, though amenities and visitors’ centers were often shuttered to prevent the spread of the virus.
At this point, most parks have reopened, but some are limited in their capacity and require reservations – especially for popular attractions, campsites and hikes.
Also, given the lack of things to do when we were mostly all in lockdown, the parks started getting more visits than usual, and we were, in effect, loving them to death.
The overcrowding and overuse situations are only growing worse, and the lack of a confirmed National Parks director, who would perhaps use his/her/their authority to push through much-needed visitor management plans, is not helping matters. Also, the parks have been chronically underfunded and understaffed, with billions of dollars in repairs going undone.
The same held true, at least in part, closer to home – both in the Adirondacks and the Catskills.
Though some of the damage done by overuse will take some time to undo, there is one silver lining – it’s getting policy makers to pay serious attention to the need to be better stewards of our natural treasurers and recognize that we have to figure out a way to protect them and make them more accessible to everyone.
I will keep my personal opinions on this particular issue to myself, though if you used to watch Capital Tonight, you probably know where I land here.
If you’re thinking of sneaking off to a visit to one of our local parks – state, national, municipal, any park will do – you’ve got some good weather for it. The forecast is calling for sun with some variable cloudiness and highs in the high 80s. But it’s going to feel a lot warmer; the heat index could reach 100 degrees.
Bring sunscreen and plenty of water. Also, bug spray.
In the headlines…
Hours after being sworn in as New York’s first female governor, Kathy Hochul delivered her first address from Albany, laying out an agenda largely focused on combating the pandemic and saying she wants people to “believe in their government again.”
Hochul, dressed in all white – a color long associated with women’s suffrage – took part in a ceremonial swearing in event at 10 a.m. yesterday, one her elderly father attended.
“I’ve been in the trenches with local health leaders and officials battling the pandemic day after day after day,” Hochul said in an 11-minute speech. “Your priorities are my priorities, and right now, that means fighting the Delta variant.”
“We need to require vaccinations for all school personnel, with an option to test out weekly — at least for now,” Hochul said.
Hochul said her administration will use $335 million in federal funds for a new Covid testing program in schools, that will be run by local health departments and BOCES agencies.
NYSUT called Hochul a “breath of fresh air” and expressed support for mask wearing, better ventilation and more testing in schools.
The new governor began her term by meeting with leaders of the state Assembly and Senate to discuss steps to fight Covid-19 and protect people who are facing eviction as a moratorium expires on Aug. 31.
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins in a news conference said she would be “okay with doing what has to be done expeditiously” on masks for schools.
Hochul sat down with The New York Times for her first one-on-one interview after becoming governor, and said she’s a “Biden Democrat” who feels “a heavy weight of responsibility on my shoulders.”
After she was sworn in, Hochul became one of nine female governors currently serving across the U.S. – a record.
Reinforcing old relationships and building new ones with the Legislature, which was often treated scornfully by her predecessor, could be crucial to Hochul’s fate – now and as the next election season comes into focus.
GOP consultant Susan DelPercio, who once worked for Cuomo, writes: “On the road to being elected to the state’s highest office, Hochul has a New York City problem — not a Cuomo harassment problem.”
The Empire Center’s EJ McMahon writes that “prospects for businesses of all sizes will be dampened if the new governor’s promised “proactive” measures to tamp down COVID-19 translate into added restrictions on indoor gatherings for the vaccinated.”
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been stripped of the honorary Emmy given to him for his Covid briefings last year.
The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced the revocation hours after he stepped down as governor in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal.
“The difference between me and Andrew Cuomo? Neither of us is governor, but I still have my Emmy(s),” Cuomo’s onetime primary opponent, actress Cynthia Nixon, tweeted.
Cuomo commuted the sentence of the San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s father on Monday evening as part of six people granted clemency, according to a release from his office.
Relatives of the two cops killed in the infamous 1981 Brinks armored car heist in Rockland County blasted Cuomo for his last-minute decision to give one of the murderers a shot at parole.
Cuomo’s former top aide, Melissa DeRosa, issued a statement confirming that he does not intend on making a return to electoral politics.
People who worked for disgraced Cuomo traded horror stories about the ex-governor’s dog as The NY Post spotted maintenance workers moving Captain’s dog house out from the backyard of the executive mansion.
Cuomo has been dubbed by critics “the worst dog owner in America.”
State Sen. Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat, introduced a bill that would require kids be immunized against coronavirus in order to attend school in New York once the shots receive full federal approval.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who toured the current Bills’ stadium in Orchard Park a few years ago, said he wants the team to “stay where they are” but wouldn’t say whether he supports spending public money on a new stadium.
In non-Albany news…
Joe Biden has rejected the pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops in Afghanistan for evacuation efforts beyond the end of the month, citing the growing threat of a terrorist attack.
After two decades of combat, Americans, by more than 2-1in a new poll, say the war in Afghanistan, launched in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, wasn’t worth it.
The Taliban said that the group will not allow Afghan nationals to leave the country and opposes any extension of evacuation flights, a development that comes one week before U.S. and coalition forces are slated to depart Afghanistan.
CIA Director William Burns met secretly with the Taliban’s top figure in Kabul on Monday amid a chaotic U.S. effort to evacuate American citizens and Afghans allied with the U.S. in advance of an Aug. 31 deadline, U.S. officials said.
Airbnb will offer free, temporary housing for 20,000 Afghan refugees around the world, the company said.
Two U.S. congressmen quietly slipped into Kabul airport yesterday, saying in an interview that they hoped to gather on-the-ground information to provide to their fellow elected officials about the chaotic evacuation effort in Afghanistan.
Biden administration officials were furious that the lawmakers had entered Afghanistan on an unauthorized, undisclosed trip, arguing that efforts to tend to them had drained resources badly needed to help evacuate those already in the country.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied the Biden administration’s request to pause the implementation of a Trump-era immigration policy.
Biden canceled the Trump administration Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly called the Remain in Mexico policy, responding to criticism that it forced vulnerable migrants to wait out their cases in violent border cities.
Striking a deal with moderates, House Democratic leaders have muscled Biden’s multitrillion-dollar budget blueprint over a key hurdle, ending a risky standoff and putting the party’s domestic infrastructure agenda back on track.
Ultimately, the House voted on a rule to advance both the budget deal and a separate $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. Due to a procedural maneuver, passage of the rule also approved the budget resolution, bypassing a separate vote.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the advancing of the Democrats‘ $3.5 trillion budget proposal as a “great day of pride” for America and pushed Biden’s Build Back Better agenda amid the crisis in Afghanistan.
The House voted to restore federal oversight of state election laws under the 1965 Voting Rights Act and expand its reach, as Democrats move to strengthen a crowning achievement of the civil rights era amid a renewed national fight over ballot access.
If the U.S. recovery is going to progress, it will need the help of efforts to fight the delta Covid variant, and there are signs that the tide might be turning, albeit slowly.
Vietnam has shut down factories and imposed strict new measures to fight a rising wave of Covid-19 after escaping largely unscathed from the first 14 months of the pandemic.
Last week, the number of Covid-19 cases in children in the U.S. reached levels not seen since the winter surge. And with school in session, the Delta variant on the rise and winter approaching, health officials are concerned it could get worse.
Biden received a classified report from the intelligence community that was inconclusive about the origins of the coronavirus, including whether the pathogen jumped from an animal to a human as part of a natural process, or escaped from a lab in China.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company believes a COVID-19 vaccine-resistant variant will likely one day emerge, though the company has a system in place to turn around a variant-specific jab within some three months.
The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, now marketed as Comirnaty, was granted full FDA approval this week, but when could vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson and Moderna win full approval?
Some parents eager to vaccinate their children under 12 against Covid-19 are hoping that the FDA’s full approval of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s vaccine could make that happen even before the FDA authorizes shots for emergency use for that age group.
Disney reached a deal with unions representing workers at Disney World in Florida that will require workers to show proof of Covid-19 vaccinations, among the first private-sector unions to reach such a deal.
Goldman Sachs told employees that it will require anyone who enters the bank’s U.S. offices, including clients, to be fully vaccinated starting on Sept. 7, making it the most prominent Wall Street bank to issue such a broad requirement.
The coronavirus pandemic has heated up the long simmering debate on whether a swath of workers should need a license for jobs such as hair braiding, nursing and fitness training.
Human clinical trials have begun in study of so-called nano-bodies, a smaller, eminently stable version of coronavirus antibodies derived from llamas. Such antibodies may be the key to saving humanity from Covid. Now it’s being tested in people.
Hawaii Gov. David Ige asked tourists to voluntarily stay away from the state amid a record surge in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations, though he stopped short of placing onerous restrictions on out-of-state visitors.
Iraan, a small oilfield town of 1,200 people in west Texas, has been struck so hard by the coronavirus pandemic that the entire town has essentially shut down, including the school district and local businesses.
The National Rifle Association announced it was canceling its annual meeting in Houston due to Covid-19, as the recent surge of the delta variant threatens to overwhelm hospitals throughout Texas.
A supplement brand won’t support an upcoming Arnold Schwarzenegger bodybuilding event anymore after the actor ripped those who won’t wear a mask.
The Metropolitan Opera has struck a labor deal with its orchestra, paving the way for its musicians to return to work and for the company to resume performances next month after being shut down for more than a year by the pandemic.
Tourists visiting Times Square will get a chance to be taken for another kind of ride today when a new ferris wheel makes its Broadway debut.
A federal monitor said that staff shortages at Rikers Island had led to a sharp deterioration in conditions at the jail complex over the summer.
The report filed by the court-appointed watchdog, Steve Martin, in Manhattan Federal Court places further pressure on the embattled Department of Correction, which is reeling from a staffing crisis amid a surging jail population.
New York schools are struggling to hire bus drivers and other non-instructional staff as they prepare to reopen at full capacity in early September.
Scott Presler, a political activist identified as a former top strategist for an anti-Muslim group, canceled an appearance today in Wilton that was touted by U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik and the local Republican Party.
Fighting with the mining interests in the Town of Sand Lake is part of the community’s cultural landscape, but the latest faceoff over the property assessment of a 254-acre mine hits as the election for control of the Town Board is shaping up.
Freihofer’s Run for Women organizers announced they are looking for volunteers for a variety of positions both for the race at 9 a.m. on Sept. 25 and during the week leading up to the prestigious all-women road race.
A subsidiary of the company that operates the LaFargeHolcim cement plant in Ravena is undertaking a government-funded study to see how to use construction waste as potential fuel for kilns and potentially recycle the waste into new cement.
All it took to scare R. Kelly’s young girlfriends during a high-profile interview with Gayle King was a quick cough from the singer, one of the women testified.
Overweight adults should be screened for Type 2 diabetes and abnormally high blood sugar levels starting at age 35, five years earlier than currently advised, an expert task force recommended.
Federal Duck Stamps will no longer be required to show hunting imagery, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said as it reversed a Trump administration decree.
Igor Fruman, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani who helped him search for damaging information about Trump’s political rivals, is expected to plead guilty next month in an unrelated campaign finance case.
A judge declared a mistrial in the trial of Michael Avenatti on charges that he stole millions of dollars in client funds.
Charlie Watts, whose strong but unflashy drumming powered the Rolling Stones for over 50 years, died in London. He was 80.
