Good morning, it’s Tuesday.
Summer brings a lot of great things: Warm weather, fresh produce (a little bit dodgy at the moment, I know), beach and lake days, vacations, time with friends and family, travel, fireworks, festivals and fairs…the list goes on and on.
There are also some not-so-great things about this season: Bugs. An uptick in food-borne illnesses, extreme heat, drought, wildfire smoke, sunburn, poison ivy.
And here’s something else to add to the “not great about summer” column: Higher rates of drunk driving accidents and deaths.
The stretch from Memorial Day to Labor Day is definitely a more dangerous time to be on the road, since you’re more likely to be sharing it with an impaired driver. This is due to a wide range of things – more people traveling, longer periods of daylight, and more social events like weddings, graduations, backyard barbecues, etc.
As an aside, the deadliest single DAY for drunk driving is New Year’s, according to traffic safety organizations, which can see up to a 129 percent increase in DUI arrests and crashes. That’s closely followed by July 4th.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 32 people die in drunk-driving crashes across the nation every day, which is about one person every 44 minutes. In 2024, 11,904 people died in alcohol-impaired driving traffic incidents – all of which could have been prevented had the drivers involved simply not gotten behind the wheel.
Today is Legal Drinking Age Day, which actually falls a few days AFTER the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, was signed into law by then-President Ronald Reagan on July 17, 1984. For those not in the know, this act raised the legal drinking age to 21 years old and forced any reluctant states to comply by threatening to withhold 10 percent of their federal highway funding if they refused.
A few holdout states – notably Wyoming and South Dakota – took a few years to comply. And it took Louisiana until 1996 (yes, you read that right) to finally close the loopholes in state law that enabled underage teens to purchase booze.
The CDC says that raising the drinking age to 21 has saved lives by reducing both incidents of underage drinking and the number of alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes that occur annually. Interestingly, though overall alcohol consumption has gone up across the nation, fewer young people are drinking these days, and last year, for the first time ever, a majority of Americans surveyed said that they believe consuming booze is bad for your health.
On the flip side of this encouraging trend is something troubling: While fewer young people are drinking alcohol, more of them are smoking weed, as state-level adult-use legalization continues across the nation and views about pot are changing. Also, for some reason that is completely unfathomable to me, cigarette smoking – or vaping – is again on the rise.
It’s harder for law enforcement officers to prove that someone is driving high than it is for them to determine that they’re driving drunk. But both are equally dangerous. Legal Drinking Age Day, which also happens to land on the birthday of a celebrated writer and significant boozer, Ernest Hemingway, provides a good opportunity to re-educate people who do choose to drink or smoke about the importance of doing so responsibly and safely.
It’s going to be a bummer of a day, weather-wise, with rain showers in the morning and the threat of powerful thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. High temperatures will struggle to make it into the high 70s.
In the headlines…
President Trump yesterday signed orders to impose a 50 percent tariff on a wide range of Canadian goods, claiming that Canada had discriminated against the United States in key industries.
The tariffs, which go into effect in 30 days, would be imposed on a range of Canadian exports, including wine, hockey sticks, cement, dairy products, plywood, paper and furniture.
The new tax will come as a shock to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, as Trump didn’t mention the forthcoming tariffs when the two men chatted during Sunday’s World Cup final.
The U.S. military launched another round of airstrikes against Iran on Monday, marking the 10th consecutive day of kinetic action as the death toll from the conflict rises.
One soldier finished high school in Texas last year and joined the Army after graduation. Another lived in Hawaii and served as an air defense artillery officer. Both were mourned when the Pentagon released their names as the latest U.S. casualties in the war with Iran.
President Trump quietly denied nearly 6,000 clemency applications this month from people who mostly lacked political connections and had waited patiently in a queue while he awarded pardons and commutations to allies who had skipped the line.
A Trump-nominated federal judge has ruled against the administration in a key case centered around local immigration policy in Minnesota.
According to a Monday filing, the Trump administration asserted that Minnesota sanctuary laws violate the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which states that federal law must be supreme to state and local law.
Sen. Darline Graham, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, announced that she’ll run for a full term for her brother’s old South Carolina seat.
“I’ve made a decision,” Graham told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in an interview that aired last night, according to a clip released in the afternoon. “I’m in.”
Firebrand Republican Rep. Nancy Mace announced that she will not run for the South Carolina Senate seat held by the late Lindsey Graham.
“I’m not running for the U.S. Senate, not because I’m backing down from a fight, but because the one I’m already in matters right now,” she said in a video announcement.
Troy Jackson, a logger from northern Maine who morphed from Republican to progressive Democrat across a long political career, has emerged as the clear front-runner to replace Graham Platner as the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín ordered a temporary halt to Paramount Skydance Corp’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, giving a 12-state coalition more time to argue the deal would harm competition in film and cable TV markets.
The restraining order will remain in effect for 14 days. The judge scheduled an Aug. 3 hearing on the states’ motion for a preliminary injunction, which would freeze the transaction while the legal process plays out.
The Department of Justice filed a motion in U.S. District Court arguing that New York statutes requiring law enforcement officers interacting with the public to forgo face coverings and display clear identification are an unconstitutional legislative overreach.
After New York banned cellphones in schools, state education leaders and Gov. Kathy Hochul say reductions in screen time could be next.
New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act would force Catholic healthcare providers to accommodate physician-assisted death despite their religious opposition to the law that Hochul signed in February, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Albany.
Hochul met with Buffalo area leaders and residents Monday to discuss the executive order signed last week pausing data centers. The moratorium halts approval for new data centers across the state until July 2027.
The one-year data center moratorium isn’t as far-reaching as some lawmakers hoped; still, it’s a tremendous blow to the AI industry, and there’s enough evidence to suggest Hochul, who is so far cruising to re-election this year, might be amenable to a longer pause.
Construction is expected to begin soon on a new cruise ship terminal along Buffalo’s Outer Harbor, a project the governor says will help attract more Great Lakes cruise traffic.
President Trump vowed that Benjamin Netanyahu won’t be arrested if the Israeli prime minister visits New York City, despite past threats by Mayor Zohran Mamdani to enforce an International Criminal Court warrant.
After Mamdani said there was an “active conversation” among his staff about whether to arrest Netanyahu when he arrives in September for the U.N. General Assembly, some Democrats were quick to condemn him.
Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations said there is “no legal basis” for an arrest and he accused the mayor of engaging in “political theater” to excite his “radical base.”
After being in office for more than six months and presiding over a Law Department staffed by hundreds of capable jurists, the mayor has yet to articulate a legal rationale for collaring a foreign head of state – likely because there isn’t one.
Mamdani is leaning heavily toward choosing a government veteran to become New York City’s next economic development leader, filling a glaring vacancy at an agency whose mission is somewhat at odds with the leftist leader’s ideology.
When New York City voters head to the polls in November, the Mamdani administration will likely ask them to weigh in on a package of proposals aimed at making city government faster and easier to navigate.
Mamdani unveiled more than 50 changes aimed at making it easier to open and operate a small business in the city — from eliminating a duplicative ice cream permit to assigning entrepreneurs a case manager to help them navigate city bureaucracy.
Meghan McCain, the daughter of former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said Monday that if the 2028 presidential nominee for the Democrats shares Mamdani’s tone about politics, Republicans have a “huge f—ing problem.”
A new New York City initiative, led by Mamdani’s Office of Mass Engagement, will send volunteer organizers into neglected buildings to help tenants organize, testing the role government can play in building collective working-class power.
Mamdani’s latest pro-tenant outreach is just more “performative politics” and dismally fails NYCHA and Mitchell-Lama residents battling rent hikes and horror conditions, furious New Yorkers say.
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards compared Mamdani’s allies in the Democratic Socialists of America to white supremacists as a bitter rift between Democrats spilled onto social media.
The blocks-long homeless encampment that has marred Manhattan’s West Side for weeks is largely still there, even after Mamdani’s seven-day deadline for tearing it down.
The union for the Big Apple’s horse-carriage drivers has unleashed a withering attack ad calling City Council Speaker Julie Menin a traitor for supporting a bill that would ban the rides.
Menin is demanding that Mamdani cough up answers on how the deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreak that has sickened dozens of New Yorkers festered on the Upper East Side.
Residents at the Upper East Side mega-complex Normandie Court are fuming after learning Legionella DNA was detected at their building — not from management, but through other news sources.
An armed man lit an “incendiary device” outside a building in Lower Manhattan Monday morning that houses federal immigration offices and courts, officials and law enforcement sources said.
The incident happened around 8:20 a.m. outside 26 Federal Plaza, according to the Department of Homeland Security. A pedestrian was grazed by fireworks and an officer was hurt wrestling the suspect to the ground, the agency said.
More than a third of positions in the health department unit dedicated to testing the city’s water supply for the Legionella bacteria are unfilled, as health officials scramble to deal with a Legionnaires’ outbreak that has so far killed three people and infected dozens.
More than 22,000 New Yorkers lost their monthly food assistance benefits known as SNAP in June due to new work rules implemented by the Trump administration, city officials said.
A 27-year-old woman died Sunday afternoon after she was injected with an “anti-aging therapy” at a Bronx holistic medicine center, police said.
A Department of Buildings safety inspection blitz has reviewed at least eight projects handled by a steel fabrication firm that was involved in the construction of the Midtown tower where key structural columns buckled this month, a Gothamist analysis shows.
The City of Albany’s auditor’s office says it prevented an unnecessary payment of more than $2 million to the city’s health insurer before the money was disbursed.
Skies will remain clear and decidedly orange-free early this week after wildfire smoke billowed into the Capital Region and Hudson Valley for several days last week.
A former Blaze Pizza restaurant in Clifton Park appears to be getting ready to become a Shake Shack, the popular burger chain that will soon open its first local standalone location.
Schenectady City Council President Carl Williams might be eyeing a new title. Filings from the state Board of Elections show the progressive Democrat registered as a candidate for Schenectady mayor. A PAC, “Supporters of Carl Williams,” was also listed.
A lightning strike on Saturday caused a Green Island home to catch fire, displacing six residents, according to village fire officials.
A tornado left a 15-mile path of destruction in the Southern Tier on Saturday evening, according to the National Weather Service in Binghamton.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
