Good morning, it’s Tuesday. Someday it will stop raining long enough for us to truly enjoy summer. That day, sadly, is not today.
Let’s just get this out of the way, shall we? There will be showers and thunderstorms today, with temperatures topping out only in the mid-70s. I really would like to get some pool time in this summer and not worry about the damn thing overflowing due to an abundance of rain and flooding the yard.
I know, I know. First world problems and all that.
Not that I’ve even been home long enough lately to actually SEE the pool, or the yard, or the doggies. It seems like as soon as I get back from one trip and unpack I’m turning around and heading back out again. I was in and out of New York City twice last week, and once the week before. Tomorrow, I’m driving to Buffalo.
I used to be a big fan of hotel life – you can call for room service (in some hotels, anyway), and don’t have to make your bed! But it’s getting old fast. I like to have my own coffee maker and my own closet and my own, well, everything, close at hand.
I do have my hotel routine down to a science, though.
The first thing I do upon entering the room is turn off the air conditioner and open the window. I hate air conditioning and I don’t like being cold. Then I check under the bed and in the closet and in the shower – a girl can’t be too careful these days. And last, I strip any decorative coverings and pillows off the bed, pull the sheets back and do a VERY close inspection for signs of bed bugs.
You think this is overkill? Au contraire. New York City, according to Terminex, is the No. 2 most bed bug infested city in the nation, second only to Philadelphia. Here are some helpful hints to avoiding bedbugs, again from our friends at Terminal:
- Inspect mattress seams, the headboard and furniture – don’t overlook the couch and armchair in your room, also the nightstands, and inside the dresser drawers – for rust-colored stains, shed bed bug skins or even live bed bugs, which are very small and dark (around the size of an apple seed).
- Use a flashlight – assuming you have this feature on your phone, you don’t have to travel with one, per se – to get a good look into folds, crevices, and corners.
- DO NOT PUT YOUR LUGGAGE ON THE BED!!
- When you get home, consider unpacking your bag outside – the garage works – and store your bag inside a zipped plastic bag after you have vacuumed it throughly, preferably somewhere far away from your bedroom.
- Consider getting your clothes dry cleaned, or, at the very least, put them in the dryer before washing. Thirty minutes on the highest heat possible is going to kill any live bugs or eggs you might have picked up along the way.
Perhaps this strikes you as excessive. If that is the case, you have never had a bed bug infestation. I personally have experienced that while traveling in Europe and it was not at all fun. I was bitten on my face, which was very unsightly and uncomfortable, and can cause allergic reactions and/or infections.
Getting rid of the little buggers is not easy – they are quite persistent and determined bloodsuckers.
Today is National Bed Bug Prevention Day, which, as far as I can tell, was established by a pest control operation. That business obviously has skin in the game (see what I did there? Kind of gross, but effective, I know), but nevertheless I think this is worthy public service announcement – especially at a time when summer traveling season is fast approaching.
We already dispensed with the (rather disappointing) weather report at the top of this post, so let’s get down to business.
In the headlines…
The US Northern Command announced it has “activated” about 700 Marines to help protect federal personnel and property in the Los Angeles area, the agency said in a statement.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office said its understanding is that the Marines mobilized to respond to protests in Los Angeles “are not being deployed,” according to a post on X.
The Pentagon mobilized 700 Marines and 2,000 more National Guard troops even as the president said the situation was “under control.” Newsom condemned the escalating response.
Even though the demonstrations have been largely contained to specific areas and mostly peaceful, Trump claimed on social media that the protesters were “insurrectionist mobs” and that LA had been “invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals.”
Vice President JD Vance, in the latest back-and-forth between the administration and officials from the state of California, called on Newsom to “do your job.” “Do your job. That’s all we’re asking,” he wrote in a post on X.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries hammed Trump over the clashes in Los Angeles, saying the president is purposefully escalating tensions to distract the country from a volatile economy.
LA Mayor Karen Bass blamed the riots ripping apart her city on ICE agents trying to uphold the law. She added that while Los Angeles is “peaceful now,” the city could quickly devolve into further chaos if the federal immigration raids continue.
Finneas, the brother of singer Billie Eilish, said he was impacted by the anti-ICE protests in downtown Los Angeles over the weekend.
The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced in a WSJ column that he retired all 17 members of an advisory committee on immunization to the CDC, arguing that the move would restore the public’s trust in vaccines.
Kennedy said the panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, “has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest.”
In a challenge to Trump, the Smithsonian said that it retained the power over personnel decisions, a statement that came in the wake of the president’s announcement that he was firing Kim Sajet, the director of the National Portrait Gallery.
“All personnel decisions are made by and subject to the direction of the secretary, with oversight by the board,” said a statement from the Smithsonian, which oversees that museum and 20 others, as well as libraries, research centers and the National Zoo.
GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, who is mulling a run for governor, visited the state Capitol to lambast the results of New York’s “single party Democratic rule” as the legislative session comes to a close.
Stefanik called Hochul a “hypocrite” after the governor joined other Democratic governors in calling Trump’s National Guard deployment in California over the weekend “an alarming abuse of power.”
Stefanik made a rare visit to Albany to outline a vision for New York that may form the basics of a Republican campaign platform next year.
A board member of the state’s cannabis regulating board has been confirmed by the New York state Senate to lead the panel, Hochul announced.
Hochul and the state’s two most powerful lawmakers warned that federal cuts in Trump’s budget bill would slash $13.5 billion from New York’s state health care system.
Democrats who control New York’s Legislature say they’ll have to return to Albany this year to cut health care benefits and federally funded jobs if the U.S. Senate approves the omnibus spending bill recently passed by the House.
State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli said that the state budget adopted last month fails to adequately account for threatened federal aid cuts estimated at more than $10 billion that could also more than double the number of New Yorkers without health insurance.
State officials said they needed more time for “stakeholder engagement” on cap and invest regulations, but groups involved with the program have gotten crickets as there’s little sign that Hochul’s administration has continued those efforts.
The New York State Senate approved a bill that would allow people facing terminal diagnoses to end their lives on their own terms, which the bill’s proponents say would grant a measure of autonomy to New Yorkers in their final days.
The state Senate voted 35-27 in favor of the Medical Aid In Dying Act, which would allow patients to request a lethal prescription if they have an incurable diagnosis that leaves them with six months or less to live.
The bill, which passed the State Assembly earlier this year, will now head to Hochul’s desk for her signature. It is unclear whether she plans to sign it; a spokesman for her office said she would review it.
If Hochul signs the bill into law, New York will be the 12th state to legalize ending someone’s life if doctors estimate they have six months or less to live due to a terminal illness.
For the first time since 1999, New York’s Endangered Species list is being updated. During this time, extensive work has been underway in the background across the state by the DEC, universities and non-profits.
State Sen. James Skoufis is raising concerns over Amazon’s application for property tax breaks on a proposed new facility in Wawayanda, in Orange County.
The Democratic primary for New York City mayor is effectively a two-person race between Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani, two new internal polls show.
A survey conducted by Data for Progress on behalf of a super PAC for Mamdani found Cuomo up by just two points, while a poll from the ex-governor’s camp showed Cuomo with a 12-point lead.
Mamdani has indicated he would not visit Israel if he is elected mayor, saying he does not believe that such a trip is necessary “to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers.”
Mamdani has won over young, left-leaning New Yorkers with his energy and progressive ideas. But is he capable of running the largest city in the country?
Mamdani, a progressive state lawmaker who is running for mayor of New York City, visited The New York Times for an interview.
Cuomo’s mayoral campaign clawed back more than $500,000 that had been withheld by the Campaign Finance Board as it continues to investigate whether the former governor illegally coordinated with a super PAC.
A Super PAC supporting Cuomo’s candidacy got $2.7 million from donors with business before the city. The contributions, which are legal, effectively run around strict limits on what entities on the “doing business” list can give to his formal campaign.
With exactly two weeks left to go in the Democratic primary for mayor, polling frontrunner Cuomo hasn’t said a peep about how he feels about bus lanes, bike lanes or any number of transportation issues.
The saga of Cuomo’s bridge-lighting boondoggle is finally drawing to a close — and from a financial perspective, the end is shaping up to be dim.
In an extraordinary fire sale, the state Power Authority is auctioning off a huge storehouse of unused decorative bridge lights — which were supposed to be part of a $106 million project to brighten up the city’s spans by Cuomo, but which never got installed
New York City mayoral long-shot candidate Michael Blake is suing the city’s powerful campaign finance agency in a last-ditch bid to be allowed onto the Democratic primary debate stage later this week.
Blake’s campaign argues in the suit that he had, in fact, met requirements necessary to debate — receiving $255,313 matchable dollars from 1,592 matchable donors — and that it was the CFB’s system errors that mistakenly made it seem that he hadn’t.
Mayor Eric Adams urged those protesting ICE raids in New York City to do so peacefully, saying that the NYPD was at the ready to keep things orderly in the Big Apple.
Hundreds of protesters swarmed into lower Manhattan yesterday evening to decry the mass arrests of detainees by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
As protests over Trump’s immigration enforcement escalate in Los Angeles, some New Yorkers are asking whether the same thing could happen here.
Adams announced the shuttered Vernon C. Bain Center jail barge in the South Bronx will be removed with the location being converted to a terminal for off-loading freight from cargo ships.
A top NYPD chief and a New York City deputy mayor met Trump at his New Jersey golf course over the weekend — as tensions continue to ratchet up in the city between immigrant advocates and federal authorities carrying out a crackdown.
The NYPD is bringing 38 new surveillance cameras to high-crime areas in upper Manhattan, including outside some bodegas, officials said yesterday.
A new law banning broker fees for tenants in New York City, except in cases where tenants proactively hire brokers to help with their housing searches, is set to take effect tomorrow.
The Port Authority will soon offer PATH train riders with disabilities 50% reduced fares, and the agency is opening applications for the program next Monday.
A decommissioned barge that once served as a “floating jail” nicknamed “the Boat” will be removed from its location on the Bronx waterfront to make way for a new marine cargo terminal that New York City officials say will boost economic activity and deliveries.
Jurors weighing Harvey Weinstein’s fate pleaded for a dose of caffeine as their grueling deliberations continued yesterday, with yet another dramatic revelation about apparent dysfunction in the jury room.
Two women whose company promoted “orgasmic meditation” as a tool of female empowerment were found guilty of running a forced labor scheme in which they coerced vulnerable employees to perform degrading sex acts for little or no pay.
Ex-Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, who is serving a 12-year prison sentence on corruption charges but recently saw an appeals court overturn two of the charges, is requesting that his resentencing be put on hold until he petitions the Supreme Court.
A Long Island judge accused of invoking his position to chastise his local school board for not making his son valedictorian and to keep police from “booting” an acquaintance’s car has been censured by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct.
Dramatic police body-camera footage showed a Chester police officer and a bystander rescuing a trapped woman from her burning car in Orange County.
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan, Police Chief Brendan Cox and several community leaders gathered yesterday to tout an across-the-board decrease in crime in the city over the last 12 months.
The restaurant Daley’s on Yates in Schenectady will close next week almost exactly seven years to the day after it opened in a gut-renovated former taxi garage a few blocks from City Hall.
An Athens man was arrested on Saturday during the Belmont Stakes for allegedly using a concealed cellphone to take images up the skirts of unsuspecting women.
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit that the actor Justin Baldoni had filed against his former co-star Blake Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, as well as The New York Times.
Sly Stone, the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer whose run of hits in the late 1960s and early ’70s with his band the Family Stone could be dance anthems, political documents or both, died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 82.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
