Last week, buried in a New York Times report on Joe Biden’s front-running yet listless campaign, was a brief account of nervous Democrats in Erie County, Pennsylvania. Biden’s limited presence had so unnerved Democratic leaders there that they had taken it upon themselves to go door-to-door distributing campaign signs, dropping off literature, and interacting with voters.
New York City is facing its most tumultuous school reopening in recent memory. The city’s Department of Education is the only major urban school system that is attempting to start the new school year with in-person learning, and the move will offer either a road map for districts everywhere or serve as a cautionary tale of what a city should not do. As of now, the DOE plans to reopen in-person instruction in staggered shifts, with the majority starting after September 29, delaying a start date from September 10 after pressure from concerned teachers and parents.
In the sprawling New Yorker profile of Joe Biden that appeared earlier this month, an unnamed Barack Obama administration official dropped an assessment of the presidential campaign that will resonate with liberals everywhere: “This country needs to just chill the fuck out and have a boring President.”
New York City is facing its worst economic crisis in 45 years. The unemployment rate stands at 20 percent and could rise higher in the months to come, as more small businesses and restaurants shutter in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed more than 20,000 city residents and forced most public and private institutions to temporarily close. Tax revenue in the city and across the state is down significantly from a year ago.
Though the traditional theater of the Democratic national convention is gone, the screaming delegates and balloon drops swapped for an endless procession of sleek videography, who speaks and for how long is still relevant to how the largest national party in America presents itself to voters. Embarrassed in 2016, the Democratic National Committee is trying once more to defeat Donald Trump and is proving, at least so far, it has learned nothing from its catastrophic failure.
There’s a natural feeling of loss when a person of certain renown dies. We didn’t know the man, but we remembered the era—or we read about it in books, heard of it from parents, peered backwards with the longing of those who can only imagine. The famous embody their time, their images and memories our own, joined to a collective consciousness.
New York state’s health commissioner struggled to answer a simple question during a legislative hearing last week: Why does New York have such a strange way of counting nursing home deaths from Covid-19?
Colleges and universities are in an unprecedented bind. Coronavirus continues to rage in many parts of America, making the sort of communal gatherings that are hallmarks of collegiate life outright dangerous. Lecture halls, libraries, football games and dorm-room parties can all be superspreader events.
New York City’s liberal mayor, elected on a platform of overhauling a police department accused of deep-seated racism and corruption, had a seemingly obvious idea for reform: instituting civilian oversight of the police.
Since Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in April that New York State’s budget could be slashed by as much as $10 billion because of the pandemic, local governments across the state have been left to wonder how much money would be left over for public schools, transportation, roadways, and social services when the cutting is done.