Good morning, it’s Friday and also the first day of a brand new month. August is upon us, and since we’re looking at the back end of summer, however sad that might be, I feel it’s fitting to note that there are 57 days remaining until the Sept. 22 fall equinox.
Thankfully, it appears that a completely perfect weekend is on tap from a weather perspective – low humidity, copious amounts of sunshine and seasonally warm temperatures. Sunday will be slightly warmer than Saturday, with highs topping out in the low-to-mid 80s compared to the high 70s the day before.
Get out there and squeeze every drop out of these waning summer days. I know I will.
It will be nice to take a few days off from work, which has been unusually stressful of late for a variety of reasons I won’t bore you with here. Generally speaking, though, I really enjoy working. My career path hasn’t exactly been traditional.
Then again, what does that even mean anymore? Spending an entire work lifetime at one place and retiring with a plaque and a gold watch simply isn’t a thing.
It turns out that the average baby boomer held around 11.3 jobs between the ages of 18 and 46, statistically speaking. According to the latest available public survey data, which dates to 2019, the average person changes jobs 12 times in their lifetime, and, on average, spends about 4.3 years with one employer.
If you don’t count the jobs I held while I was a high schooler and college student (mostly in the hospitality industry), I’ve only worked in six places, and I’ve stayed longer than four years at three of them. If you DO include the waitressing and hostessing jobs, though, the number does go up to at least 12.
I also did not include internships in that tally, because I wasn’t paid for my time at those posts. They were, however, quite valuable – particularly the stint I did in the Ulster County Family Court judge’s office while still in undergrad. I thought at that time that I wanted to be an attorney and one day sit on the bench. But what I saw disabused me of that notion rather quickly.
Internships – a form of experiential learning in which a student and/or recent graduate gets to sort of try on what it might be like to pursue a job in their preferred academic field – can be very varied.
Some are paid, but most are unpaid, though might provide credits toward a degree. Some are required as part of a field of study, while others are independently pursued. Some are glorified busy work, while others truly offer students a valuable experience that can influence the trajectory of their professional lives.
About 60 percent of college students complete an internship before the graduate, according to The Hechinger Report. The problem is that there aren’t enough internships to go around – especially for students of color as well as low-income, community college, and first generation students.
Just about half of the 8.2 million students who wanted to intern in 2023 were able to do so, according to a Business Higher Education Forum report. And of the 3.6 million who did manage to land an internship opportunity, only 2.5 million said the experience they had was “higher-quality”, enabling them to expand their skillset and really learn something of value.
I had most exposure to interns when I worked at Spectrum News. One of them, Dan Clark, who I affectionately called “Intern Dan” when he worked for Capital Tonight, has gone on to have a really solid journalism career. (He’s now the author of the Times Union’s political and policy newsletter, Capitol Confidential, which, if you’re addicted to that sort of thing as I am, you really should subscribe to).
It’s incredibly gratifying to see the successful professional arc of a young person on whom you might have had a small amount of influence. If you have the capacity to mentor a young person – formally through an internship or even informally through one-on-one involvement or meetings – consider it. I think you’ll be glad you did.
And if you need a little encouragement: Today is National Intern Day, which was created by a company called WayUP, which connects college students and recent grads to employers.
We dispensed with the weekend weather at the top of this post. Today, we will again see cooler than normal temperatures to kick off August, with the mercury struggling to break into the high 70s. Skies will be partly to mostly cloudy with the slight chance of a rain shower.
In the headline…
President Donald Trump yesterday announced tariff rates for dozens of countries that will take effect on Aug. 7, potentially upending the global trade system.
Trump signed an executive order that modified tariff rates for dozens of countries after he had twice delayed plans to implement “reciprocal” tariffs on other nations.
Among the notable rates which will be charged at 12:01 a.m. Aug. 7 — rather than on today’s deadline initially announced by the White House — are 15% for Iceland and Israel, 30% for South Africa, 39% for Switzerland and 20% for Taiwan and Vietnam.
Syria, Laos and Myanmar were handed among the steepest rates of 40 to 41 percent. All countries not issued new tariff rates would be subject to a base line 10 percent rate, the order said.
Trump offered a reprieve to the US’ southern neighbor and largest trading partner, Mexico. The two countries agreed to keep talking about a potential trade deal for 90 more days, averting the heavier tariffs Trump had threatened to impose on Mexico.
The Justice Department scrambled to defend the legality of Trump’s sweeping tariffs, just one day before he is set to expand his highly contested global trade war with new duties on America’s closest trading partners.
Trump sharpened his threat to impose sanctions on Russia over its war in Ukraine, even while acknowledging that the weapon he once argued worked on everyone — the threat of financial ruin — may have no effect on its president, Vladimir V. Putin.
Trump unveiled plans for a glitzy new White House ballroom with a hefty $200 million price tag even as Republicans implement draconian cuts to health and other social programs.
Construction is set to begin in September on the new 90,000-square-foot space that would seat up to 650 people adjacent to the White House’s East Wing and would be paid for by the president and other donors.
The project poses myriad questions about potential conflicts of interest and the feasibility of such an undertaking, which Trump expects to be completed before he leaves office.
Trump’s super PAC is sitting on about $200 million that it can spend against his rivals, giving a term-limited president a never-before-seen amount of power in his party’s finances and future.
Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee rejected a so-called “poison pill” amendment Democrats say is intended to block Trump from taking the Qatari luxury jet that the Pentagon intends to use as Air Force One with him after his presidency.
The Senate Appropriations Committee rejected the Trump administration’s massive proposed funding cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), advancing a measure that would increase the agency’s budget by $400 million.
Trump signed an executive order to reinstate the Presidential Fitness Test in public schools as part of the administration’s goal to “restore urgency in improving the health of all Americans,” according to a statement released by the White House.
The world’s Arab countries for the first time have joined unanimously in the call for Hamas to lay down its weapons, release all hostages and end its rule of the Gaza Strip, conditions that they said could help the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The surprise declaration, endorsed on Tuesday by the 22 member nations of the Arab League, also condemned Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, which set off the devastating war in Gaza.
As governor of New York, Kathy Hochul has been unequivocal in her support for Israel. But yesterday, she joined other staunch supporters of Israel who have recently condemned its role in creating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Democrats and Republicans say they’re ready to aid dozens of cannabis business owners, who found out earlier this week they’re violating state law, even though the Hochul administration awarded them a license to operate in some cases over two years ago.
Hochul declared a State of Emergency for New York City and surrounding regions as heavy rain and potential flooding was expected to affect much of the region last night.
The National Weather Service posted flash flood warnings along parts of the Northeast urban corridor from the Washington-Baltimore region north through Philadelphia, Wilmington, DE, and into Newark, NJ, and the New York City metropolitan area.
Subway stations flooded. Cars got stuck on a Queens parkway. Park staircases became waterwalls in Brooklyn. But, overall, New York City mostly avoided the worst possible outcome from yesterday’s torrential rain storm.
The grieving husband and teenage daughter of slain Blackstone executive Wesley LePatner delivered heartbreaking eulogies at her funeral yesterday, telling hundreds of mourners at a Manhattan synagogue her loss has left “a huge gaping hole” in their hearts.
NYPD Officer Didarul Islam, who was gunned down in a Midtown Manhattan mass shooting, was posthumously promoted to detective first grade during his funeral as a sea of mourners, most of them police, gathered outside to pay their respects.
An estimated 15,000 people were on hand as a light rain fell on white-gloved hands in salute as his coffin was carried out of the Parkchester Jame Masjid mosque in the Bronx.
Five candidates running for New York City mayor — as well as hundreds of NYPD officers — paid their respects to Officer Islam. They all gathered at the Parkchester Jame Masjid, where Islam’s body lay.
At the funeral, Mayor Eric Adams praised the actions of the Police Department’s Strategic Response Group (SRG), which his opponent in the mayor’s race, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, has vowed to disband.
Adams said that SRG members “entered the building while the shooter was still alive, and they conducted a floor-by-floor search. They wanted to ensure that everyone in that building would have come out safely.”
Adams also spoke about his visit with late officer’s father, and the pain of parents having to bury their children.
Mamdani spent his political career criticizing the New York Police Department from the outside. Soon, he could be at its helm.
Officer Islam embodied the “most New York story there is,” serving his adopted city “with steadiness, with heart, with conviction” — and giving up his life to protect it in Midtown’s mass shooting, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in an emotional eulogy.
Adams vetoed a City Council bill that would decriminalize unlicensed street vending in the five boroughs, teeing up a likely override battle with the chamber’s Democratic members, who accused the mayor of playing into President Trump’s immigration agenda.
Adams said that street vending is a quality-of-life issue, and the council’s bill comes as the city is attempting to rein in illegal vending on Roosevelt Avenue in Queens and other locations.
Adams announced a plan that would give preference to city government workers and military veterans for an increased number of Big Apple affordable housing units.
Real estate agent and reality TV star Eleonora Srugo is known for starring on Netflix’s “Selling the City.” Now, she wants to sell New York on keeping Adams through a new independent expenditure committee.
The Democrat with the most absences in the Assembly chamber this year was Mamdani. But that pales in comparison to Long Island GOP Assemblyman David G. McDonough, 88, who did not physically enter the chamber once during the 2025 session.
Mamdani skipped the vote on the one bill he passed this year as a state lawmaker. He was in the Big Apple announcing a cross endorsement in the primary race with city Comptroller Brad Lander.
Republican Curtis Sliwa blasted Mamdani for what Sliwa says is hypocrisy when it comes to the armed security Mamdani has enjoyed in recent weeks while in Uganda.
New York City’s Education Department has yet to release highly anticipated high school admissions statistics, marking the first time in more than a decade that officials have not disclosed the results by mid-June.
Finally yesterday, the Department of Education announced that Black students received 3 percent of acceptance letters to the eight elite “specialized” high schools, while Hispanic students got just under 7 percent of all spots – both a decline from last year.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will end up $91 million over budget on a project to modernize a portion of the subway system, a new report said — but officials said everything’s going to plan even though it may be years behind schedule.
More than 3,500 transit employees who were injured on the job have had their workers’ compensation checks delayed due to failures by the MTA’s new claims-processing firm, the transport workers union said this week.
Edward A. Leon, dismissed by police 10+ years ago as a person of interest in the 2013 Schenectady fire that killed a young father and his three children, has been indicted on arson and homicide charges in a federal criminal case eligible for the death penalty.
New signs, road striping and flashing lights will be added to a four-way Westerlo intersection that was the site of a deadly crash last month — one of nearly a dozen wrecks that have happened at the crossroads.
Dan Wilson, a 77-year-old retired construction manager for BBL Construction in Albany and member of the Montgomery County Legislature, died Wednesday in the small plane crash on Block Island, R.I., that left two others injured, Wilson’s son confirmed.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
