Good morning, it’s Wednesday.
The great dig out from the first big storm of the season is underway. Things look pretty right now, which is nice. I guess it’s the right time of year for this sort of thing. Assuming this snow sticks around, (or if it melts and we get another dump), we’ll be having a classic white Christmas.
Lots of things were preemptively cancelled yesterday in anticipation of the storm. I was on the Northway at about 8 a.m. and things were already getting hairy. I drove by no fewer than three accidents, which appeared not to be terribly serious, but more of the car-off-the-road variety. Still, I was thankful to make it home in one piece.
Since we live on a dead-end street in a technically suburban/rural area (we’re on the Town of Brunswick/City of Troy line and the former, not the latter, handles the roads), the plowing situation leaves something to be desired. Nevertheless, one thing that can be depended on, even in terrible weather, is the mail.
This is the busiest time of year for package delivery. Some 22.4 billion packages are delivered every year in the U.S., and about 2.3 billion of those are expected to be sent during the holiday season alone – a projected 5 percent increase over 2024, most of which is realized by private carriers like FedEx and Amazon.
The busiest mail day of the year is usually the Monday before Christmas, through there is a decided uptick in activity between Thanksgiving and Christmas, generally speaking. If you want to be sure your packages make it under the tree in time, proverbially speaking, you should really get everything into the mail by Dec. 17, though if you’re willing to pay more for expedited service (and a little more time) Dec. 23 is the drop dead cutoff.
The increase in packages sent has led to an increase in packages stolen. Depending on which report you believe, somewhere between 250,000 and a whopping 1.7 million packages are swiped and/or go missing each day, and those numbers increase significantly around the holiday season. The cost to consumers and retail companies is in the many billions of dollars.
The best way to protect yourself against so-called “porch pirates” is to be home to accept your deliveries and make a signature upon delivery a requirement. Of course, this isn’t feasible for many of us, and so the nest best thing is to have your packages delivered to a secure location – a locked box, your workplace, or even the home of a trusted neighbor. You should also consider insuring high-value items.
Today is National Package Protection Day, which was established in 2016 by Ring.com (maker of a wide variety of home monitoring systems), to raise awareness about the need to guard against package theft – especially as more and more people opt to do their holiday shopping online.
The winter storm warning ended at 1 a.m. Today will be dry (with the exception of whatever starts to melt on the ground), with considerably cloud cover in the morning that MIGHT thin enough for the sun to break through in the afternoon. Temperatures will top out in the low 30s.
In the headlines…
President Donald Trump said that National Guard troops will soon head to New Orleans and bring another federal surge to the city that is already awaiting a separate immigration crackdown that is expected to begin this week.
Trump did not say how many troops would be sent or exactly when they would arrive. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, who asked the Trump administration in September for up to 1,000 troops to fight crime, said he expected the Guard to arrive before Christmas.
The president lashed out at Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar during his Cabinet meeting yesterday, calling the congresswoman “garbage” and saying he doesn’t want Somali immigrants in the country.
Even for Trump, who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries, his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry, coming as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.
“These are people that do nothing but complain,” Trump said at the tail end of a cabinet meeting at the White House, during which he sometimes appeared to be fighting sleep. But when the subject turned to immigration, Mr. Trump made a point of lashing out.
The Trump administration is prioritizing the deportation of Afghan nationals who were previously ordered to leave the US, part of a broader crackdown on refugees from Afghanistan after last week’s shooting of two National Guard troops in Washington.
Costco is suing the Trump administration to stop and recover tariffs the president imposed earlier this year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), arguing the federal government overstepped its legal authority.
The wholesale giant argues that IEEPA — a 1977 U.S. law that gives the president authority to “regulate a variety of economic transactions following a declaration of national emergency” — does not authorize Trump to impose tariffs.
After ticking off what he claimed were trillions of dollars of investments and other economic accomplishments, Trump at his cabinet meeting yesterday called the issue of affordability a “fake narrative” and “con job” created by Democrats to dupe the public.
Trump formally pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, fulfilling a vow he had made to free the man at the center of what the authorities had characterized as “one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
From a U.S. prison cell, Honduras’ ex-president secured a likely pardon for drug trafficking thanks to a letter he penned praising President Trump — whom he called “Your Excellency” — and a persistent lobbying campaign by longtime Trump pal Roger Stone.
Matt Van Epps, a Republican former state official and Army veteran, won a special election for the House in Tennessee, holding off a stiff Democratic challenge in an overwhelmingly Republican district that drew a flood of national attention and money.
“Congratulations to Matt Van Epps on his BIG Congressional WIN in the Great State of Tennessee,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “The Radical Left Democrats threw everything at him, including Millions of Dollars.
Almost every election night this year has gone poorly for the Republicans — a familiar position for the party that occupies the White House.
James Solomon, a city council member since 2017 who ran as a progressive reformer, was elected mayor of Jersey City, thwarting former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey’s bid for a political comeback.
It is the second time in a month that a former governor who quit in disgrace has failed to persuade voters that he deserved a second chance in politics, after Andrew Cuomo lost his campaign for mayor of New York City to Zohran Mamdani.
Rep. Elise Stefanik accused House Speaker Mike Johnson of “blocking” one of her initiatives in an intraparty spat that threatened Congress’ defense package.
“The Speaker is blocking my provision to root out the illegal weaponization that led to Crossfire Hurricane, Arctic Frost, and more. He is siding with Jamie Raskin against Trump Republicans to block this provision to protect the deep state,” Stefanik posted to X.
New York natural gas plants, metal refineries and landfills will have to report greenhouse gas emissions under regulations finalized by the state Department of Environmental Conservation this week.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has until next Friday to act on 93 bills lawmakers delivered to her desk on Monday. Among them are two high-profile measures, one of which she vetoed thrice before.
Hochul is reviewing a bill that could help victims of coerced debt — a form of financial abuse that refers to non-consensual credit-related transactions demanded by an abusive partner.
Hochul signed a law changing how the state’s 57 small city school districts calculate their financial borrowing limits. It’s supposed to give districts in cities with under 125,000 residents more wiggle room to pay for building repairs and safety projects.
Hochul announced that the design phase will begin soon for a $450 million upgrade and expansion of SUNY Upstate Medical Hospital’s emergency departments, burn unit and operating rooms.
Gas-powered lawn mowers are negatively impacting the environment, according to a study by the New York Public Interest Research Group that found New York has the fourth-highest emissions total from those tools in the nation.
A hearing scheduled Thursday in U.S. District Court will focus on whether two subpoenas served on state Attorney General Letitia James by acting U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III are invalid due to the manner in which he was appointed to his position.
Mayor Eric Adams sat down with Zohran Mamdani at Gracie Mansion yesterday, marking their first face-to-face since Mamdani won last month’s race for City Hall; the meeting appears to have been cordial despite long-running tensions between the two men.
“It went well,” Mamdani said after the hour-long meeting. “I appreciated the conversation that I had with Mayor Adams and his team, and we focused on how to make this as smooth as possible of a transition and how to continue to serve New Yorkers.”
“He can make the determination of what projects he wants to continue, every mayor brings of their pet projects and what I must do is show what we have accomplished and turn over documents so he can determine if he wants to continue or not,” Adams said.
In a wide-ranging interview on “Inside City Hall”, Mamdani said he has been back in touch with President Donald Trump since their almost chummy meeting in the White House last month.
The newest challenge to New York’s rent-stabilization law is, on its face, a narrow dispute over a handful of long-vacant apartments. But the attorneys who filed the complaint say they’ve got a specific audience in mind: the U.S. Supreme Court.
MTA Chair Janno Lieber said next month’s retirement of the MetroCard will enable the agency to ramp up its crackdown on fare evaders because requiring all riders to use the digital tap-to-pay OMNY system makes it easier to check whether someone paid.
Lieber patted himself on the back for balancing the MTA’s budget — conveniently ignoring fare hikes and a $1.5 billion casino money boost.
Members of an online group known as “Greggy’s Cult” traded child pornography and sexually exploited children after meeting them on internet gaming platforms, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged yesterday.
When an Altoona, Pennsylvania police officer texted his supervisor to say he was responding to a tip that the suspect in a nationwide manhunt was sitting in a local McDonald’s, the supervisor was incredulous.
The Pennsylvania patrolman said a superior had offered him a hoagie if he responded to a call at a local McDonald’s. The officer recognized the suspect and then played for time.
A Brooklyn middle-school principal denied a parent’s request to have a Holocaust survivor speak to students about antisemitism — saying the victim’s pro-Israel views are not appropriate for a public school.
A nor’easter swept into upstate New York yesterday, dropping several inches of snow on the Capital Region and Hudson Valley, and reminding drivers of the peril of navigating roads during a snowstorm.
An NYU student thrown to the sidewalk in an unprovoked attack while walking to class in lower Manhattan has shared what she described as the “scariest experience” of her life on social media — and warned her assailant has attacked other women.
Platinum-selling rapper Toosii is taking time away from music to play college football, despite being 25 years old. He announced his commitment to Syracuse University on social media Monday.
Troy police are continuing their investigation into a violent encounter over the weekend that left a parolee in the hospital after a shootout with two city patrol officers.
A Palo Alto, Calif.-based company called xLight is getting $150 million from the Trump administration to build a particle accelerator at Albany NanoTech.
Plug Power has started its first-ever contract with NASA to supply the U.S. space agency with liquid hydrogen.
Investigators in Saratoga County have released the name of the man who they say died by suicide after shooting a 54-year-old woman on Thanksgiving night.
Police have identified a man who was found dead at Albany International Airport on Sunday as Dajohn Woodberry Jr. Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said Woodberry, 21, died of hypothermia.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
