Good morning, it’s Tuesday.
Summer marks the beginning of wildfire season, which technically is defined by the date of the first large blaze of the year and the last large fire control, according to the USDA. The wildfire season has lengthened considerably since the 1970s, extending from five months to seven, while the number of large fires and acres burned has significantly increased since the 1980s.
The forests of the Northern Rocky Mountains, Pacific northwest and southwest have been particularly impacted by this increase in conflagrations. Says the USDA:
The average burn time of individual fires has grown from 6 days between 1973 and 1982, to 52 days between 2003 and 2012. Increases in large fire activity and area burned have been driven by rising temperatures, reduced winter snowpack, earlier snowmelt, reduced summer precipitation and increased evaporation. Under climate change we can expect the wildfire activity to increase as temperatures continue to warm, lengthening the fire season further, and as drought continues to afflict wildland ecosystems.
Here in the Northeast, we’ve had our share of forest fires. The Great Fire of 1903 in the Adirondacks comes to mind. More recently, there was a big one at Minnewaska State Park in 2022, that involved more than 200 firefighters and at one point spread over 270 acres.
But I would hazard to guess that it wasn’t until the major impact on our air quality as a result of last year’s Canadian wildfires that people started to really take notice of this trend. (Oh, and by the way, we could be seeing a repeat of this, so don’t be surprised).
To be clear, fire plays a key role in forest longevity. It is one method – natural or managed through controlled burns – for beating back invasive species, ensuring new growth of native plants can occur, and getting rid of overgrown undergrowth.
There is ample evidence that the lack of preventative forest management – coupled with logging, overdevelopment, and climate change – are in part to blame for the uptick in forest fires.
There has been a lot of data collection and analysis of the impact of traditional (structural, mostly) firefighting on the human body. Needless to say, it’s not the safest job – by definition – in the world. But there have been far fewer studies on wildland firefighters, who, as mentioned above, are facing longer and more intense firefighting seasons.
According to the CDC, 400 wildland firefighters died on the job between from 2000 to 2019. And these incidents have been high-profile, generating headlines, film adaptations, at least one TV movie, and quite a few books. The work of smokejumpers, in particular, who parachute into the heart of raging fires, has been memorialized and lionized.
But that figure does not take into account the long-term health impacts that are unique to wildland firefighters, which undoubtedly contributes to – at the very least, breathing issues – and at most, shortens lifespans.
Today is National Wildland Firefighter Day, highlighting the (many) agencies and individuals involved in combatting the fires that engulf thousands of acres of largely (but not entirely) wild and uninhabited land across the U.S. every year.
It will be dry (be careful with those campfires!) and mostly sunny today, with highs in the mid-80s.
In the headlines…
The US Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution for “official acts” during his presidency — without saying whether his alleged 2020 election subversion falls under that.
The nation’s top court instead left it up to the lower courts to decide what constitutes an “official act” by a sitting president.
In a 6 to 3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the panel stressed that the “president is not above the law,” and that “not everything the President does is official.” All three liberal justices dissented.
President Joe Biden condemned the Supreme Court’s decision which ruled that presidents have an absolute immunity from prosecution for core official acts, and issued a stern warning over a possible second term for former President Donald Trump.
“There are no kings in America. Each, each of us is equal before the law. No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” Biden said in a speech from the White House.
Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said that he’s “scared as s‑‑‑” after the Supreme Court ruled that former President Trump has presumptive criminal immunity for official acts.
The Democratic National Committee is rolling out a new ad campaign against Trump in major swing state newspapers today, labeling him as a “fraud,” “liar,” denier,” and “a threat to our democracy.”
The Court avoided a definitive resolution of challenges to laws in Florida and Texas that curb the power of social media companies to moderate content, leaving in limbo a GOP effort that promoted such legislation to remedy an alleged bias against conservatives.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office was expected to make its recommendation to a judge on whether to imprison Trump for his recent felony conviction, a crucial step in the first criminal sentencing of an American president.
Trump began an effort to throw out his recent criminal conviction in Manhattan and postpone his upcoming sentencing, citing a new Supreme Court ruling that granted him broad immunity from prosecution for official actions he took as president.
Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon was taken into custody yesterday after surrendering at a federal prison to begin a four-month sentence on contempt charges for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the U.S. Capitol attack.
Bannon arrived at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, around noon and was formally taken into federal custody, the Bureau of Prisons said.
Speaking to reporters, Bannon called himself a “political prisoner,” said Trump was “very supportive” of him and slammed Democrats, including Attorney General Merrick Garland. His podcast will also continue to run in his absence.
Biden’s top campaign official was scheduled to hold a crucial conference call with donors yesterday to try to convince them that the president can still win the race against Trump.
More than 7 in 10 voters have already decided whom they will vote for in the November presidential election, according to a new poll.
Around Biden, a siege mentality has set in post-debate, one at odds with the persistent concerns of voters who view him as too old to be effective.
With the White House scrambling to prevent Biden’s candidacy being enveloped in a full-blown crisis, several state governors were said to be subtly positioning themselves as late substitutes while avoiding being seen to do so.
Several of Biden’s leading possible Democratic replacements and top aides have started to think through what an unprecedented last-minute fight into the August convention might look like.
When Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer telephoned a senior official with Biden’s campaign last Friday night, she wanted to convey a clear message: She hated the way her name was being floated as a replacement for Biden and she wasn’t behind the chatter.
Whitmer has ruled out running for president, but also reportedly said the president’s poor debate performance will cost him her state in the general election. (She insists she did not say this).
“Anyone who claims I would say that we can’t win Michigan is full of s‑‑‑,” Whitmer wrote on social media, attached to a Biden campaign video featuring the governor.
A federal court has halted the Biden administration’s pause on new approvals for natural gas exports.
Hurricane Beryl was barreling west toward Jamaica as a Category 5 storm early this morning, hours after it carved a trail of destruction across the southeast Caribbean and killed at least two people, officials said.
Beryl made landfall on the island of Carriacou in Grenada as the earliest Category 4 storm in the Atlantic, then late in the day the National Hurricane Center in Miami said its winds had increased to Category 5 strength
The National Weather Service (NWS) is warning of “persistent, dangerous heat” for much of the week, especially in the southern and southwestern parts of the country.
The “early July heat wave” is expected in the Southern Plains, Gulf Coast, Southeast and Mid-Atlantic Coast, Central Valley of California and Mojave Desert of California and Nevada, the NWS said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s top counsel, Elizabeth Fine, is planning to leave the administration by September to pursue a job in the private sector.
Hochul announced that in the two years since she announced a major crackdown on wage theft, the New York State Department of Labor has investigated and recovered more than $63 million in stolen wages for nearly 65,000 workers across New York State.
The future of Hochul’s ambitious plan to build the much-needed public transit option for Queens and Brooklyn residents appears to be uncertain, almost entirely as a result of her 11th-hour pause on the implementation of the MTA’s congestion pricing plan.
The latest idea for finding money for the MTA might be called the “take a page from the Brits” campaign, because when London started it’s tolling plan the fee was 5 pounds, or $6.32 in American currency.
Hochul decision to pause congestion pricing will allow carnage to continue to spread on Manhattan streets, as drivers kill and maim pedestrians and cyclists throughout the would-be tolling zone.
A new interactive map of Manhattan south of 60th Street — where congestion pricing tolls were supposed to launch on Sunday — tracks daily car crashes to highlight the way streets in the Central Business District remain unsafe.
On the first day of what would have been the implementation of congestion pricing, the New York Times tried to determine how much tolls would have generated and came up with the figure of $200,000 in one hour.
Transit activists rallied outside Hochul’s office in Manhattan yesterday to demand an end to the congestion pricing pause.
A group of ex-law enforcement wants Hochul to veto a bill that would let New York micro-liquor distillers and cideries directly ship to customers, claiming it will increase underage drinking.
Mayor Eric Adams yesterday celebrated the City Council’s approval of New York City’s $112 billion budget for the 2025 fiscal year and emphasized its significance in assisting everyday New Yorkers.
Adams, who initially said the cuts to the city’s libraries were necessary, celebrated the restoration of some $58 million to bring back seven-day service.
As a candidate, Adams promised at least 1% of the city’s overall budget would be dedicated to parks. But the latest budget deal moves in the opposite direction, committing the lowest share of the overall budget to the Parks Department in the last decade.
Two of Adams’ top advisers met in spring 2022 with a businessman who had months earlier registered as an agent for China’s government, but the executive didn’t disclose the sitdown to U.S. authorities, a reporting lapse that could raise legal concerns.
State Sen. Zellnor Myrie, of Central Brooklyn, is trying to carve out the competency lane in his uphill battle to challenge Mayor Adams in 2025.
New York City officials are significantly expanding a contentious program that distributes debit cards to migrant families staying in city-funded hotels, allowing them to buy their own food as the city tries to reduce the costs of caring for migrants.
Anas Saleh, the man accused of warning Zionists to get off a subway train, which got city and state officials thinking about a mask ban, appeared before a judge yesterday.
Ambulance response times in New York City are getting longer — reaching their highest levels since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic four years ago, Gothamist has found.
The controversial new city law requiring NYPD cops to file reports on all low-level investigative stops with New Yorkers officially kicked off yesterday, and rank-and-file officers weren’t happy.
Members of the Karen community in Utica, N.Y., said they’re hoping for changes “right away” following the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Nyah Mway.
A lawsuit filed last Friday accuses a Guilderland nursing home of negligence and medical malpractice after a 62-year-old retired state Department of Transportation employee died in December 2021 after allegedly going untreated for a minor infection.
Negotiations between the St. Peter’s Health Partners hospital system and the major health insurance network UnitedHealth were ongoing as they faced a deadline yesterday to work out a final contract.
City of Albany homeowners who challenged the recent reassessment of their property should soon find out if they will get any relief.
Bruce Hornsby announced on Facebook that he and his band the Noisemakers will not headline Thursday’s Price Chopper/Market 32 Fourth of July celebration at Empire State Plaza “due to a vocal issue affecting Bruce’s ability to sing and speak.”
The discharge of muddy water from New York City’s Ashokan Reservoir into the Lower Esopus Creek in Ulster County will be limited going forward, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Five members of a Georgia family — including two children — died Sunday in a plane crash in the Delaware County town of Masonville, State Police said. They had been in the area to attend a baseball tournament in Cooperstown.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
