Good morning. It’s Monday. But you knew that.
We’re already embarking on the second week of May, which is home to lot of observances, including National Foster Care Month – a time to raise awareness about the more than 400,000 kids across the U.S. who are in foster care, ranging in age from infants to as old as 21 (depending on the state).
The average age of a child in foster care is 8, and there are slightly more boys than girls in the system.
In New York alone, there were close to 15,000 kids in foster care as of June 2021, which is actually down from 26,725 in 2010. Nationally, the number of kids in foster care rose from 407,856 to a high of 441,190 in 2017, and then dropped back down to 426,613 in 2019, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
In New York, kids 5 or younger are most likely to be placed in foster care for a variety of reasons, though the biggest among them is drug abuse by parents.
More often than not – about 85 percent of the time – New York kids in foster care live either in boarding and/or adoptive homes. .The remaining 15 percent are in group homes or other institutional settings.
They said the average time a child spends in foster care is one to two years, with New York City skewing toward the longer end of that spectrum. The sad truth is that the longer one stays in foster care, the less likely one is to get out of it (via adoption, or repatriation with the family, generally speaking).
If you’re interested in becoming a foster parent, there are requirements and guidelines. Click here for more information on that.
As with so many other things, the COVID crisis had a significantly negative impact on the foster system and everyone in it, as services and support and court dates were suspended due to closures and restrictions put in place in an attempt to reduce transmission of the virus.
Closed courts caused delays in adoptions and placements, and while they were waiting, some kids aged out of the system entirely.
The mental health impacts of the pandemic, which have taken a particular toll on the country’s young people, were perhaps exacerbated for foster kids, who were already no strangers to stress.
A John Burton Advocates for Youth (JBAY) study of about 600 individuals between the ages of 18 and 24 who were either in foster care or had experienced homelessness found that four out of five said COVID had a major impact on their mental health and wellness. Also, 27 percent reported feeling “down, depressed or hopeless” nearly daily since the outset of the pandemic.
Former foster kids are in particularly precarious situations. Young people just starting out in life need support – emotional and financial – but after the age out of the system, they are often struggling to make it on their own and are at greater risk of poverty and homelessness.
The 2020 federal COVID relief package included some extra stimulus cash to fund benefits for former foster kids. But that money was short-lived, and these young people need support.
President Biden, in a proclamation honoring National Foster Care Month, noted the racial inequities in the system, in which Black and Native American kids are likely to stay longer than their white peers, as well as lack of individualized services and safety measures for LGBTQI+ and disabled youth.
The administration has proposed a series of reforms to improve the system and also additional funding.
Complete aside: Bill Joel turns 73 today.
We are in for what looks like a stretch of really amazing weather – I’m talking temperatures in the 80s, and even flirting with 90 degrees, later on in the week, and plenty of sunshine. FINALLY. Today, we’ll see sunny skies and temperatures in the low 70s.
In the headlines…
On a day of commemoration of the end of World War II in Europe, the war in Ukraine was marked by posturing and signaling yesterday, as each side ramped up its rhetoric and resolve.
International visitors from First Lady Jill Biden to Canada’s Justin Trudeau and U2 rock stars visited Ukraine over the weekend in high-profile shows of support as Ukrainians braced for what could be a week of growing danger in Russia’s brutal invasion.
Jill Biden spent part of Mother’s Day making an unannounced trip to Uzhhorod, Ukraine, a small city in the far southwestern corner of Ukraine, a country that for the last 10 weeks has been under invasion by Russia.
At a converted school that now serves as temporary housing for displaced citizens, Jill Biden met with Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, who has not been seen in public since the start of the war on February 24.
Members of U2 performed a surprise show in Ukraine on Saturday, playing in a Kyiv subway station that has been used as a bomb shelter during Russia’s brutal invasion.
President Joe Biden authorized another tranche of military aid to Ukraine and leveled new sanctions on Moscow this week, as the West braces for a possible escalation of the conflict from Russia’s unpredictable leader today – Victory Day in Russia.
More than two months into the invasion of Ukraine, Red Square in Moscow will reverberate with the distinctive roar of the May 9 Victory Day parade, an annual display of carefully choreographed military muscle that has few equals anywhere in the world.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has routinely ended his nightly wartime addresses by announcing state awards for Ukraine’s soldiers. Yesterday, he honored a fighter who is perhaps the country’s smallest — a little bomb-sniffing dog named Patron.
Police seek a band of smiling thieves in the theft of hundreds of bullet-resistant vests in Manhattan that were meant to protect Ukrainian forces in the Russian invasion.
President Biden will deliver remarks on inflation tomorrow, a White House official said, as his administration looks to further address one of the key economic concerns for voters heading into November’s midterm elections.
Biden will draw a contrast between his economic plans and those of Republicans in remarks focused on inflation.
Sen. Joe Manchin says he’s still interested in passing major pieces of Biden’s agenda — but sources close to Manchin, D-W.Va., say Democrats may be making a big mistake by waiting for him to lay out precisely what he’d support.
Proposals to reform the Supreme Court are getting new attention from Democrats in the wake of a leaked draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that would overturn Roe v. Wade, one of the most consequential civil rights decisions of the past 50 years.
Democrats rang alarm bells on about the likelihood that Republicans would try to restrict abortion nationwide, two days after an interview in which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said a ban was “possible” if his party gained control in D.C.
When the Supreme Court heard arguments in December over the fate of the constitutional right to abortion, it was already clear that other rights, notably including same-sex marriage, could be at risk if the court overruled Roe v. Wade.
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said that multiple Supreme Court justices lied in their confirmation hearings about abortion, echoing the statements of Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins in the wake of the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion.
New York Attorney General Letitia James called for a State Constitutional amendment that would ensure the right to abortion under state law.
The high court’s decision could lead to legal battles between states over whether providers and patients could be held responsible for abortions that, had they occurred in an anti-abortion jurisdiction, would ignite either civil or criminal judicial proceedings.
The Senate will hold a vote this week that will force lawmakers to share their stances on abortion publicly, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
The U.S. could see 100 million COVID infections this fall and winter—and potentially a sizable wave of deaths, the White House warned this past week.
Covid cases surged during the last two winters and are likely to again this year — unless the country can prepare and act, White House Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said.
Dr. Jha reassured the public after The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced new restrictions on Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines due to concerns over rare blot clots.
The White House has been asking Congress for $22.5 billion in emergency aid to continue responding to the pandemic, but Republicans have insisted on a much lower number.
Studying the coronavirus variants that have faded away could help us prepare for what comes next, scientists say.
As Covid hospitalization rates stabilize, at least for now, and federal and state Covid relief funding dries up, travel nurse contracts that were plentiful and lucrative are vanishing.
Some hospitals grappling with rising nurse salaries are seeking to raise prices by up to 15%, touching off contract fights with health insurers and businesses and threatening higher premiums.
Approximately 13% of hospitalized COVID patients have serious neurologic symptoms.
Obesity may weaken vaccine protection in the never infected.
Rep. Elise Stefanik wrote to state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa demanding a “complete accounting” of how her department is spending the billions of dollars it received in COVID-19 emergency funding — including for any CRT-related instruction.
Some local pols claimed that the Adams administration has definitively decided to bar unvaccinated public-school students from prom — even as City Hall denied a decision had been made.
Amy Schumer is on the mend after testing positive for Covid-19, the comedian shared on Instagram. She cancelled a performance at the Netflix Is A Joke festival after confirming the diagnosis on Saturday following a successful appearance the night prior.
Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Twitter that she had tested positive for the coronavirus — the worst sort of Mother’s Day surprise for the state’s first mom governor.
Aides said that Hochul was asymptomatic, and that the virus had been detected as part of the governor’s testing routine in Albany. As a result, she cancelled a trip she had planned to Washington, D.C., to see her family and week-old granddaughter.
Hochul spent the weekend in Albany, where the risk of infection is high, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cases upstate have swelled in recent days, one of just a few such spikes in the country.
A Hochul spokesperson said the governor will “be following the guidance” from federal and state authorities to isolate for five days.
Hochul, citing a Capital Region payroll scandal that rocked local and national businesses, signed legislation that will study the industry’s health and its impact on consumers.
Hochul said she hasn’t lost any sleep about her disgraced predecessor Andrew Cuomo potentially launching an independent bid to oust her.
Rep. Tom Suozzi’s candidate for lieutenant governor, Diana Reyna, owes $138,658 to the city Campaign Finance Board for “outstanding repayments of public funds.”
Manhattan Assemblywoman Deborah Glick has spent years blocking a building-safety measure she once championed, as she has hauled in tens of thousands of dollars in donations from architecture and engineering special interests that oppose it.
New York is not likely to allow its first recreational marijuana sales for over a year and a half after legalization. But data from the rest of the country show that the delay is hardly an outlier: most states took between one and two years to open dispensaries.
Schumer joined other lawmakers, advocates and celebrities in New York City on Saturday to speak at a marijuana rally as he works to finalize a bill to end federal cannabis prohibition.
Senate Democrats plan to pass a package of bills this week aimed at addressing issues raised by the deadly January fire that ripped through a Bronx apartment building and left 17 people dead.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams penned an ode to his late mother in the Daily News, writing: “I want to take time to remember all the things my mother taught me, all the ways she supported me, and to say thank you to her and all the mothers of this city.”
Adams has rewarded 10 ex-City Council members with plum leadership posts in his administration since taking office in January.
Political insiders are largely unimpressed with both Hochul and Adams, giving the state’s two most powerful leaders dismal approval ratings.
As a rent hike of up to 6% looms for New Yorkers living in rent-regulated apartments, Adams once again avoided taking a clear stance on exactly how far landlords should be allowed to go when it comes to raising their prices.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani slammed Adams as a “failure” for attending social events instead of solving the city’s crime problems in his first detailed comments on the city’s new leader.
The Partnership for New York City’s Kathy Wylde warned that the Big Apple could see a “long-term decline” of workers commuting to Manhattan’s office buildings if crime isn’t reduced.
The MTA is ordering its bus drivers not to automatically open their vehicles’ rear and center doors for customers — to try to thwart free-loading scofflaws.
A 25-year-old homeless man is believed to have committed suicide at the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City on Saturday evening, according to people familiar with the case.
Louis A. Molina, commissioner of New York City’s Department of Correction, has less than two weeks to present a detailed solution for a problem no other commissioner has solved, or risk a federal takeover of the jail.
The second-highest-ranking member of the NYPD was accused of cheating on his sergeant’s exam nearly 30 years ago — and was disciplined in four other misconduct cases, newly unearthed records show.
To many New Yorkers, the late Ed Koch was their brash and blustery mayor. But friends are now describing the private strain endured by a public man laboring to conceal the fact that he was gay.
In a sign that federal labor officials are closely scrutinizing management behavior during union campaigns, the National Labor Relations Board said Friday that it had found merit in accusations that Amazon and Starbucks had violated labor law.
Alfreida Davis, a housing activist and lifelong Brooklyn resident, died on Nov. 1, 2020. A month later, a district leader in Coney Island filed an official form signing up the late matriarch for a seat on the Brooklyn Democratic Party’s county committee.
Ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio described forcing out a pioneering white female NYPD chief, and three other chiefs, as merely “the human reality for a few individuals” as he sought in 2017 to burnish his credentials on race, emails obtained through a lawsuit reveal.
Councilwoman Inna Vernikov — a Ukrainian-born American Jew — revealed in an open letter to museum donors that she will no longer give the money to the Museum of Jewish Heritage after it allegedly barred Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from speaking in June.
Attorneys who represent victims of Harvey Weinstein and those victimized by ex-Olympian Conrad Mainwaring are urging the state Assembly to pass legislation to allow adults a one-year window to file lawsuits that are barred under current statutes of limitations.
The attorney for Keith Raniere wants a new judge to consider the NXIVM leader’s latest bid for a retrial, saying the judge who presided over Raniere’s trial lacked “judicial temperament” and showed a “personal distaste” for the former Halfmoon-based guru.
Sam Mills was crowned Albany’s newest Tulip Queen in Saturday’s ceremony at Washington Park. Mills is the first nonbinary contestant to be crowned Tulip Queen in the ceremony’s history.
A leading civil rights group is calling on the Schenectady City Council to spike its pending vote on expanding the presence of police in city schools.
The bench trial of two “dedicated community organizers” on a low-level disorderly conduct violation stemming from an encounter with city police last summer is set to get underway today before Schenectady City Court Judge Carl Falotico.
Fed up with low pay and little job security, the nontenured teaching faculty at Skidmore College have vowed to unionize.
A federal judge has tossed a lawsuit filed last year by former President Donald Trump against Twitter and its then-CEO Jack Dorsey over alleged censorship, an issue that the company’s potential new owner, Elon Musk, has said he would clamp down on.
From California to Texas to Indiana, electric-grid operators are warning that power-generating capacity is struggling to keep up with demand, a gap that could lead to rolling blackouts during heat waves or other peak periods as soon as this year.
With inpatient psychiatric services in short supply, adolescents are spending days, even weeks, in hospital emergency departments awaiting the help they desperately need.
Big-name jockeys and owners and exiled trainers were outdone and outshone by a group of racing no-names who brought a storybook finish Saturday at Churchill Downs.
An 80-1 long shot named Rich Strike, who did not even earn his spot in the starting gate in America’s greatest horse race until Friday, seemed to follow Moses’ path through the Red Sea to a three-quarter length victory that had appeared impossible.
The horse’s jockey, Sonny Leon, had never won a graded stakes race, considered the majors of the sport, before Saturday. He never had a mount in the Derby.
Now the newcomers intend to take Rich Strike to Baltimore for the Preakness Stakes on May 21 to race in the second jewel of the Triple Crown.
