Good Monday morning. Do you know what time it is?
In today’s public service announcement, let me take this opportunity to remind you that yesterday marked the end of Daylight Savings Time (DST), which means we all gained an hour, theoretically speaking. (Remember: Spring ahead, Fall back).
This always takes place on the first Sunday of November, so the specific date shifts around from year to year. The change officially occurred at 2 a.m. with an eye toward creating the least disruption possible for early shift workers. And now we’ll all be getting up AND coming home in the dark.
Yippee.
The idea behind DST is to make better use of the limited daylight hours available at this time of year as the earth orbits around the sun. When we move the clock ahead an hour in the spring, we get more daylight during the evening hours. And then (for those of us who don’t rise before dawn), turning the clock back grants us slightly more light on winter mornings.
Germany was the first country to enact DST in an effort to reduce energy use and save money during WW II. The U.S. and much of Europe followed closely behind.
But the concept of manipulating time in the interest of husbanding money and resources dates back far further. In fact, no less an American icon than Benjamin Franklin suggested back in 1784 that a significant amount of candle wax could be saved in the City of Paris if all its occupants got into the habit of rising and retiring with the sun.
This never caught on, and maybe that was also because Franklin also floated the idea of shooting off canons in the streets to “wake the sluggards effectually, and make them open their eyes to see their true interest.”
Initially, the U.S. made DST optional after the war ended, which resulted in a crazy quilt of policies across the nation. One could travel across state lines and never be quite certain what time it was.
Congress in 1966 finally moved to standardized DST by passing the Uniform Time Act. DST was initially six months – from April to October – and was extended by the federal government to seven months in 1986, and to the current eight months in 2005.
DST has been waning in popularity for years now. More than 60 percent of the reset of the world (sanely) uses standard time. The number of countries observing DST has gone from 81 to 74 since 2013, according to timeanddate.com.
The National Conference of State Legislatures found that 19 states have passed legislation or resolutions to eliminate the biannual time adjustment. In 2018, California voters approved a ballot measure that would do away with DST.
Other states are in various stages of studying the matter. But the final word ultimately rests with Congress.
The only states in the union that don’t observe DST are Hawaii and Arizona, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. The territories – American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands – don’t use it, either.
A national bill – the Sunshine Protection Act, which sounds like a renewable energy proposal, but isn’t – was proposed in 2021 by a bipartisan group of senators led by Florida Republican Marco Rubio (hey, even a broken clock…) to make DST the new year-round standard time. It passed the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent this past March, but hasn’t yet been taken up by the House.
The bill so far has stalled in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and if no action is taken on it before the end of the year, it will die and have to be reintroduced by the new Congress, whose members will be voted in tomorrow and will take office in 2024.
Americans are a little bit divided on this issue. While a March CBS News poll found that eight in 10 would prefer not to be messing around with their clocks twice a year, they didn’t feel strongly one way or another on whether they preferred DST or standard time.
There is a public health case to be made for doing away with DST, as i has been linked to everything from depression and strokes to cardiovascular disease.
It also isn’t great for your sleep patterns, and Lord knows we are collectively terrible sleepers – especially since the pandemic. According to the CDC, more than one in three Americans are sleep deprived, which is downright dangerous and not great for productivity.
(Raises hand, sheepishly…looks at clock. Ugh. Pops another melatonin).
Yet again, I seem to have managed to ramble on far longer than I meant to on this topic. Maybe I did you a favor and helped you nod off. If so, you’re welcome. Sweet dreams.
The weather has been…just off the hook. Seventy-plus degrees in November? Things will cool off slightly today, with dropping down to the mid-60s, though skies will be mainly sunny. Tomorrow will be cooler still, though nice and dry. Optimal voting weather.
We’ll talk more about that tomorrow….and who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky and not sign on ever again.
In the headlines…
President Biden had hoped to preside over a moment of reconciliation after the turmoil of the Trump years. But the fever of polarizing politics has not broken ahead of tomorrow’s midterm elections.
Americans have cast more ballots ahead of Election Day than they did during early voting before the last midterm election, continuing a trend of increasingly relying on early voting despite vocal objections from some Republicans.
Georgia voters have broken midterm records for early voting, with more than 2.5 million in-person and absentee ballots cast as of Friday, Georgia’s secretary of state announced Saturday.
Four battleground states will likely determine control of the U.S. Senate for the next two years, and with Election Day looming, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada are all too close to call. Dems need to win three of the four to stay in power.
The midterm campaign is closing with a potent reminder of the Biden-Donald Trump rematch that may await in 2024.
Trump’s apparent plan to soon announce his candidacy is challenging Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s desire to show that the Justice Dept. can operate above partisanship.
Trump took aim at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a campaign rally on Saturday night, coining the nickname “Ron DeSanctimonious” for the politician who is widely viewed as Trump’s greatest competition for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
DeSantis and Trump held dueling rallies yesterday as they battle for supremacy of the Sunshine State and the heart of the GOP.
Trump taunted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during his rally in Florida, days after her husband was attacked with a hammer at their home in San Francisco.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that nobody should be surprised that Trump is reportedly set to announce his 2024 run.
Sen. Joe Manchin on Saturday slammed Biden after he called for coal plants across the US to be shuttered, saying Biden’s remarks are “outrageous and divorced from reality” and suggesting it’s “time he learn a lesson.”
Nearly half of registered voters want a “great deal” of change in how Biden is leading the U.S., according to the last NBC News poll before the midterm elections.
Biden called out Elon Musk, saying the billionaire had purchased a social media platform that “spews lies all across the world.”
Nearly a year after Biden signed the biggest infrastructure bill in decades, decisions about how to spend all that money are just getting underway. And his party is struggling to reap the electoral rewards.
Polls show most voters have no idea Congress even passed the legislation — let alone that it’s already set to provide tens of billions of dollars to projects such as rail tunnels under the Hudson River.
A pair of polls released the final weekend day before the 2022 midterm elections draw to a close appear to show just how close the battle for Congress will shake out.
There are serious doubts, including among Democrats, whether Biden’s doomsday portrayal of Republicans has broken through as stubborn inflation and pocketbook issues weigh on voters.
A rally on Saturday in Philadelphia was the first joint campaign appearance by Barack Obama and Biden since Biden took office, adding a twist to the relationship of what has always been a political odd couple.
On the final weekend day before Tuesday’s midterms, Biden traveled not to a battleground state, but to the Democratic stronghold of New York to stump for incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is attempting to stave off a tough Republican challenger.
In Yonkers, Biden called on the students at Sarah Lawrence College to vote, to maintain US democracy. “You are the best educated, you are the least prejudiced, you are the most involved generation,” he said. “If you show up to vote, democracy is sustained.”
Biden also addressed several areas on which Republicans have attacked Democrats, including laying blame for inflation on the president and the Democrat administration’s policies.
New York’s neck-and-neck race for governor has suddenly gotten the attention of prominent national democrats — for all the wrong reasons. Party bigwigs appear to be in panic mode, critics note.
Ex-President Bill Clinton joined Hochul during a whirlwind final weekend of campaigning Saturday, urging New Yorkers to vote Democratic in her tight race against Zeldin.
Clinton spoke to a few hundred people — many who were members of local unions — packed into an event space in Downtown Brooklyn two days after Hochul took the stage with Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Hochul appeared with Clinton and Mayor Eric Adams at BKLYN Studios in Downtown Brooklyn on a day where she also stumped in Manhattan and Queens, with tomorrow’s election looming.
“For that torch to be extinguished on our watch … that’s what’s on the ballot on Tuesday,” Hochul said. “Because we are facing a contrast … there’s never been a greater contrast between us versus them.”
It should be a historic moment by any measure. But the sell to elect Hochul, to make her “the governor … again,” hasn’t inspired the urgency from voters she now needs in the final days of the midterm election.
Democrats hope the polls that show Hochul and Zeldin in a neck-and-neck race serve as a wake-up call to their base — whose sheer enrollment dwarfs Republicans and independents combined.
Hochul accused Zeldin of using crime concerns to cynically attack her, but also acknowledged that the issue was rooted in sincere worries among the voters who will decide her political fate next week.
Zeldin blasted former President Bill Clinton for making light of his stand on crime during a rally for Hochul, saying the comments indicate how much the two Democrats “care about your life and safety.”
Zeldin spent time in the Hudson Valley on Saturday. His rallies, including one in Putnam County, had strong turnouts.
Zeldin appeared with former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently left the Democratic Party after being a prominent critic of the party, and urged voters to convince their friends on the fence to vote for the GOP candidate.
Zeldin believes a red wave will once again wash over Long Island and help the GOP gain seats in the state Senate.
Ron Lauder, 78, the cosmetics heir, philanthropist and art collector who is among the richest men in New York, has become the most prolific state political donor in memory this fall, fueling Zeldin’s surging candidacy in one of the country’s most liberal states.
Hochul was called out about the state’s out-of-control crime surge on MSNBC, where an anchor on the ultra-liberal network even told her “we don’t feel safe.”
A female protester at a Hochul rally in Manhattan was choked by a man during a skirmish Saturday evening that also involved a Brooklyn Councilwoman Crystal Hudson, footage shows.
With crime dominating the headlines and the airwaves, multiple Democrats are pointing to Adams, accusing him of overhyping the issue and playing into right-wing narratives in ways that may have helped set the party up for disaster tomorrow.
Adams is actively campaigning for Hochul and not openly supporting her GOP rival Zeldin, but multiple insiders say that the mayor sees more opportunity to advance his initiatives on crime and public safety if the Republican wins the governor’s race.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani accused Adams of going too soft on Hochul by refusing to publicly admonish her failure to roll back bail reform.
A national Republican wave is threatening to curb progressive gains in the state Legislature and vanquish the Democrats’ veto-proof supermajority, as Republicans seek to expand their diminished foothold at the Capitol in Albany.
Over her four years as state attorney general, Letitia James has built a formidable national profile through her office’s inquiries into Trump, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the NRA. It has made her a polarizing figure – and a GOP target.
Cuomo appeared as a guest on the Cats at Night radio show on WABC Radio 770 AM and predicted that his successor, Hochul, will narrowly win tomorrow.
The state’s last Republican governor, George Pataki, believes Zeldin has a real shot to replicate his own stunning upset over three-term incumbent Democrat Mario Cuomo that year.
Democrats are clinging to control of the House, but the party has barely lifted a finger to help Max Rose, a Staten Island moderate, reclaim his old seat from New York City’s lone Republican member of Congress, Nicole Malliotakis.
Trump called on voters Saturday to back Malliotakis’ congressional re-election campaign, because her Democratic challenger Rose is a “a soft-on-crime radical” too “weak” to do the job.
Firefighters, using ropes and dangling off a high-rise in Midtown Manhattan, rescued a woman who was trapped in a fire that injured at least 38 people on Saturday, officials said.
The city’s firefighter unions are sounding the alarm over an Adams administration plan to transfer some structure inspections from the FDNY to the Buildings Department — and even allow certain “self-certification” by landlords.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards ripped City Councilman Robert Holden, a fellow Democrat, and his supporters as “white supremacy” in a Twitter spat about congestion pricing.
Former Buildings Commissioner and onetime political candidate Eric Ulrich spent nearly $40,000 in campaign funds at several food businesses with past reported links to mobsters, a review of records shows.
As the city upgrades to 5G wireless, the streetscape is changing, thanks to new 5G antenna towers erected by LinkNYC, the latest hardware in New York’s sweeping technological upgrade. Not everyone is impressed.
The NYPD praised a Manhattan North precinct honcho who “took responsibility” for his subordinates’ actions in the on-duty drinking scandal at the Electric Zoo music festival.
The NY Post spoke with 14 current members of the NYPD, including patrol cops, detectives, sergeants and lieutenants spanning a wide range of ethnicities and time on the force, who painted a picture of a department in crisis.
From M.T.A. workers to buskers to shopkeepers, the people whose livelihood depends on the subway system offered a complex portrait of its safety as ridership approaches pre-pandemic normalcy.
A plan to curb the flow of illegal drugs into Rikers Island by changing how detainees get packages and letters is being slammed by advocates as law enforcement overreach.
The secure facility in Colonie where a 19-year-old died last week has struggled with staffing and safety issues for at least the past year, including losing two executive directors in less than four months.
Scientists at GE Research in Niskayuna have been awarded a $6.4 million grant from the Department of Energy’s research arm to develop new technologies to recycle spent fuel from nuclear power plants in the United States.
With just three days until Election Day, an emergency motion has been filed seeking clarification of a Dutchess County Supreme Court ruling that the county’s Board of Elections must grant Vassar College a polling site in accordance with a new state law.
Aaron Carter, the pop singer who became a star at 9 years old but saw his career spiral as he faced mounting financial and legal problems, died Saturday. He was 34.
The CDC estimated that Omicron subvariants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1 accounted for about 35% of coronavirus cases in the country in the week ending Nov.5 compared with 23.2% in the previous week.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered an unprecedented rise in mortality that translated into life expectancy losses around the world, with only a few exceptions.
The rate of deaths that can be directly attributed to alcohol rose nearly 30% in the U.S. during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new government data.
A new study by Pfizer and BioNTech suggests that their updated coronavirus booster is better than its predecessor at increasing the antibody levels of people over age 55 against the most common version of the virus now circulating.
Paxlovid, the antiviral pill that reduces the risk of hospitalization and death from Covid-19, also reduces the risk of long Covid, according to a new study by researchers at the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
In a new study published in Molecular Psychiatry, researchers from Sweden and a Harvard-affiliated hospital in Boston tried to find out by creating “brain organoids,” or miniature brains about the size of a pinhead, and infected them with COVID.
China has reiterated its unswerving commitment to its longstanding zero-Covid policy, despite mounting public frustration the stringent measures are costing the very lives they’re intended to protect.
China reported its highest number of new Covid-19 infections in six months, a day after health officials said they were sticking with strict coronavirus curbs, likely disappointing recent investor hopes for an easing.
Apple has said that shipments of its latest lineup of iPhones will be “temporarily impacted” by Covid restrictions in China.
Demand for high-end smartphones assembled at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant has helped Apple remain a bright spot in a technology sector battered by consumer spending cutbacks amid surging inflation and interest rates.
The Brooklyn Nets and the Anti-Defamation League sent a letter to Amazon asking it to address the “deeply and unequivocally antisemitic” documentary and book connected to Nets guard Kyrie Irving’s suspension. A disclaimer might be forthcoming.
The weekend spurt of warm weather is nearing record-breaking status in the Capital Region.
The UAlbany field hockey team, ranked 17th in the nation, is headed back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2018 following a thrilling 2-1 shootout victory over Stanford in the America East championship game yesterday.
A $6.6 million expansion project is under way at the Commission on Economic Opportunity’s (CEO) Community Resource Center in Troy, where a new facility will offer early childhood education, youth and senior programming and nutrition and wellness support.
The Fort William Henry Hotel in Lake George is undergoing a renovation project that will transform its historic 19th-century Carriage House into a rentable space for wedding receptions, as well as business meetings and performing arts programs.
Meta is set to lay off thousands of employees this week, as it looks to downsize amid sliding stock prices.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, said last month that many “teams will stay flat or shrink over the next year” as his company faces economic challenges.
Evans Chebet won the New York City Marathon men’s race, adding the victory to his triumph at the Boston Marathon earlier this year, and Sharon Lokedi won the women’s race as the pair of Kenyan runners made a splash in their Big Apple debuts.
