Good Tuesday morning.
For a few years in my early 20s, I lived in Newport, Rhode Island. I really loved it there. I would probably still be there had it not been for two significant facts:
1) I broke up with my college sweetheart, who was the reason I ended up in Newport in the first place (he had to attend Surface Warfare Training as an entry-level Navy officer), when he moved across the country to San Diego, CA;
2) There aren’t a lot of jobs available (at least not in journalism, unless you work for the Providence Journal, from which I was repeatedly rejected).
Rhode Island is incredibly beautiful, if you haven’t had the chance to visit. Because it is so small, you’re never very far from the ocean, which is amazing.
It’s also very insular. I knew people in Newport, for example, who almost never went “off island” to Providence because it was too far away – an hour’s drive, tops. And there are families who have been there for generations (not just the infamous 400 richest whose roots date back to the robber baron era).
Rhode Island also has an entire lexicon all its own, particularly when it comes to food.
For example, there are quahogs, which are actually clams, also known as “little necks”, “cherrystones”, or “hard shell clams.” Also, there are “stuffies” – ie: a stuffed quahog, usually kitted out with some sort of seafood/breadcrumb combo.
And, of course, let us not forget the infamous Del’s frozen lemonade, (which also comes in flavors other than lemon), without which no trip to the beach is complete; and the hot dog known locally as a “gaggah” (don’t ask).
And last, but certainly not least, there’s not one, but TWO different types of creamy frozen and drinkable treats.
The first is an Awful Awful, made by the Newport Creamery, which is made out of whole milk, flavored syrup, and “secret” frozen ice milk, making it distinct from a frappe. You might know this version better as a “Fribble,” if you were someone who – like me – grew up with a Friendly’s nearby.
The second is a cabinet, which is usually coffee-flavored and is pretty much a fancy name for a milkshake, made with ice cream, coffee syrup and milk.
One of Rhode Island’s most famous coffee syrup producers is Autocrat, a local company founded in 1895, and this creation is also the basis for another local favorite: Coffee milk (AKA, the official drink of Rhode Island, as of July 1993).
Have you guessed by now that today is National Coffee Milkshake Day? If so, go make yourself one for breakfast. You get your caffeine fix AND bone-building calcium all in one fell swoop. What could be bad?
It still feels plenty warm to me, but we have gotten a break from the oppressive heat. Temperatures will be in the more appropriate (for mid-summer) low-80s, with partly cloudy skies.
In the headlines…
Pope Francis offered a sweeping apology to Indigenous people on their native land in Canada, fulfilling a critical demand of many of the survivors of church-run residential schools that were centers of abuse, forced assimilation, cultural devastation and death.
“I am deeply sorry,” Francis said at a former residential school south of Edmonton, Alberta. He called the school policy a “disastrous error” that was incompatible with the Gospel and said further investigation and healing is needed.
President Joe Biden slammed former President Donald Trump for lacking “the courage to act” as police defending the U.S. Capitol suffered through “medieval hell” on Jan. 6, pre-empting Trump’s plan to deliver a law-and-order-themed speech today in D.C.
Trump will return to the nation’s capital for the first time in 18 months with his grip on the GOP steadied and talk of a potential 2024 White House campaign heating up.
“Every day we rely on law enforcement to save lives. Then, on January 6, we relied on law enforcement to save our democracy,” Biden said in remarks delivered virtually to a conference for Black law enforcement officials being held in Florida.
Biden added: “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-cop. You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy. You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-American.”
The president’s comments came just four days after the House committee wrapped up its string of summer hearings with a prime-time meeting outlining Trump’s inaction as the mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop his electoral defeat.
The Biden administration said it intends to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people in the Affordable Care Act, officially reversing a policy adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services under Trump.
Biden has his first 2024 Democratic primary opponent: political activist Jerome Segal announced his decision to pursue the party’s nomination, with a campaign focused on job security and peace in the Middle East.
Calling semiconductors “the building blocks for the modern economy,” Biden asked Congress to move quickly and send him a bipartisan bill designed to boost the computer chips industry and high-tech research in the United States.
Severe weather delayed the Senate’s push to quickly pass funding to bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and boost U.S. competitiveness with China, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
The Biden administration is watching for any moves by China to close off the Taiwan Strait, and they would prefer that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cancel her planned trip there next month.
Biden and his doctor both delivered upbeat health updates yesterday, four days after the president tested positive for Covid.
Biden said that he’s on the road to recovery from COVID-19, but that with first lady Jill Biden away from the White House he’s had to rely on first dog Commander to wake him up.
As he recovers from Covid, Biden faces a new moment of truth about an economy that is stuck in an identity crisis and buffeted by unpredictable outside forces. His White House knows it, as advisers scramble to get ahead of a week of more gloomy data.
More than two years into the pandemic, most people worldwide have likely been infected with the virus at least once, epidemiologists said.
A rise in Covid-19 absences in recent weeks, combined with planned time off, has left restaurants, hotel chains, manufacturers and other workplaces struggling to keep operations running this summer.
Over the first three months of 2022, upper-middle-class families lost a bigger chunk of their stock portfolios than the people who make more than them, according to the Federal Reserve.
Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer while he was serving in the West Wing, he wrote in an upcoming memoir set to be published next month.
The Justice Department has pressed top advisers to Mike Pence in recent weeks about efforts by several lawyers for former President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election results, as prosecutors escalate their 18-month Capitol riot probe.
Marc Short, who was chief of staff to Pence, was subpoenaed in the Justice Department’s expanding inquiry into the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Fulton County’s top prosecutor can’t investigate Georgia’s Republican candidate for lieutenant governor over his alleged involvement in efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results because of a conflict of interest, a judge said.
The federal government adopted a wait-and-see response to the monkeypox outbreak, calling for more vaccines to be delivered only after cases were growing exponentially.
Danish biotechnology company Bavarian Nordic said the European Commission had given permission for its Imvanex vaccine to be marketed as protection against monkeypox, as recommended last week by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Bavarian Nordic has already supplied the vaccine, called Imvanex in the EU, to many different, often unnamed, European countries. The vaccine, called Jynneos in the U.S., already had a monkeypox approval here.
The Washington, D.C., health department has announced that it has postponed administering a second dose of the monkeypox vaccine to residents, citing shortages and an increase in cases.
The number of people who’ve tested positive for monkeypox in New York City surpassed 1,000 yesterday – a deeply worrying milestone as the Big Apple continues its efforts to manage that disease and COVID-19 simultaneously.
Gov. Kathy Hochul held a ceremonial signing for a new law exempting diapers from all local sales and use taxes in New York as she touted a $70 million influx of federal funds for child care.
The announcement comes as the governor says a lack of affordable child care options in the state is keeping some parents and guardians, especially women, from returning to work following the height of the pandemic.
“Our essential workers have to work in health care settings around the clock — they are cleaning our hotel rooms and our restaurants, they’re driving buses, they’re out there making this city run, the state run,” Hochul said.
Power Authority employees have been stuck flying commercial or driving for hours to far-flung worksites across New York since May while Hochul rides their Beechcraft King Air 350 airplane, sources said.
Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley will recuse herself from the case involving David Jakubonis, the 43-year-old Fairport man who is accused of attacking U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin at a campaign event last week.
The Monroe County DA faces criticism on two fronts: an ethics debate about her connections to Zeldin’s campaign, and a legal debate over her office’s handling of Jakubonis, who attacked the candidate in Rochester.
The state Democratic Party released a video that purports to reveal “the truth about Lee Zeldin’s role in perpetuating the January 6th insurrection,” concluding: “He’s too extreme for New York.”
Zeldin vowed to use his power over the state budget to press for tougher New York bail laws if he beats Hochul this November.
The 2021 legislative session marked North Country Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik’s lowest rating from the League of Conservation Voters since 2015, ending a trend of generally increasing scores.
A woman’s place is in the House – specifically representing New York’s newly drawn 12th Congressional district, a new television ad from Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney asserts.
One of Maloney’s primary opponents is making sure voters in New York’s 12th congressional district remember her past controversial comments on vaccines – arguing those views should disqualify her from the race.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushed back against criticism from a fellow progressive lawmaker, state Sen. Jessica Ramos, that she is missing in action from her district and not responsive to input from constituents.
Ramos doubled down on her withering criticism of “absent” Ocasio-Cortez, claiming the far-left’s darling is held to a “different standard” than other elected officials.
Hudson Valley Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney admitted mishandling the redistricting civil war that effectively forced fellow Democratic lawmaker Rep. Mondaire Jones out of his suburban district and into a decision to run in the crowded race for NY-10.
The hotly contested Democratic race to represent the new House district covering lower Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn got a jolt last week when former Mayor de Blasio dropped out early, bowing to pitiful poll numbers. More twists could be coming.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat endorsed City Council Member Carlina Rivera in the crowded race for a congressional seat covering Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, giving her campaign a boost from a top figure in New York City Latino politics.
Advocates for the homeless said that Mayor Eric Adams’s strategy of blaming the entire spike in shelter population on migrants is a distortion that distracts from the city’s homeless crisis, leaving vulnerable families caught in the middle.
Nicole Gelinas says the Penn Station plan backed by Adams and Hochul has “few benefits for Manhattan residents and commuters (and) will increase state government power and bureaucracy at the expense of the private sector and good governance.”
A showy pastor who was in the middle of delivering his sermon and his wife were robbed at gunpoint of more than $1 million worth of jewelry at a Brooklyn church on Sunday, the police said. The heist was caught on a livestream video of the service.
The service was being livestreamed when, according to the bishop, three to four men walked in with guns. He believes he was targeted.
One in three straphangers may never return to full-time subway commuting after the COVID-19 pandemic — potentially blowing a $9 billion hole in the MTA’s budget, a new study found.
MTA officials presented a 10-year plan to install equipment that lets riders use their phones in all of the subway’s underground tunnels.
Three correction officers and a captain at Rikers Island were arrested on charges that it took them nearly eight minutes to intervene in 2019 when an 18-year-old attempted suicide by hanging.
A forgotten co-defendant of the Central Park Five, who, like them, was charged with the rape of a jogger in a case that shook New York City and the nation, had a related conviction overturned in downtown Manhattan.
The late ex-Conservative Party Chair Mike Long Long was a fierce opponent of abortion rights, gay rights, same-sex marriages and higher taxes to pay for more spending by government, but he was generally respected and even liked by his political opponents.
The Albany metro area has yet to gain back all of the jobs the region lost during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The industries where the job gains are strong — and where they lag behind — could shape the region’s economy in the years ahead.
Proposed bus rapid transit stations that would have served the Melrose and Buckingham Lake neighborhoods have been removed from part of a long-planned Capital District Transportation Authority rapid transit line.
The next dean of the University at Albany’s engineering college will be Michele J. Grimm. She is currently a professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering at Michigan State University.
Jury selection was set in a trial that will determine for the first time how much Infowars host Alex Jones must pay Sandy Hook Elementary School parents for falsely telling his audience that the deadliest classroom shooting in U.S. history was a hoax.
This will be the first of three trials – two in Austin, one in Connecticut – to assess monetary penalties for defamation and emotional distress caused when Jones and others in his Austin-based InfoWars media system repeatedly portrayed the mass shooting.
Hope Solo, a former star goalie with the U.S. women’s soccer team, pleaded guilty to driving while impaired, four months after she was found passed out behind the wheel in the parking lot of a North Carolina Walmart, with her two children in the back seat.
“Goodfellas” actor and Brooklyn native Paul Sorvino is dead at 83.
A would-be singing star, Sorvino found success in Hollywood playing a variety of roles, but they were often quiet, dangerous men, like Paulie Cicero in “Goodfellas.”
