Steady Habits: A CT Mirror Podcast

Yale Epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves doesn’t mince words about the US response to Covid, either on Twitter, or in person. He’s been calling for a wholesale overhaul of the nation’s public health infrastructure - which has been failed during the pandemic. In a new piece in The Nation , he calls on President-elect Joe Biden to create a “New Deal” for public health. But f...

The last legislative session in Connecticut was cut short by COVID-19. And this one is starting outside the state capitol, and will continue on Zoom. So what will this mean for lawmakers and their legislative priorities? What about advocates, lobbyists and citizens who want to be heard? In the first of a series of conversations previewing the session, John Dankosky talks with Mark Pazniokas, the C...

Miguel Cardona, Connecticut's education commissioner, is on a short list of candidates to become education secretary in the Biden administration. Politico reported Saturday that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has given its “enthusiastic endorsement” to Cardona in a letter to the President-elect.  As The Mirror’s Jacqueline Rabe Thomas reported today, if he got the job, Ca...

With the FDA approval of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, Connecticut is set for what Gov. Ned Lamont on Thursday called a “new spring” - but before we get there, we have a lot of work to do. Neighboring New York has said they’ll shut down indoor dining on Monday in an attempt to slow the rapid spread of the disease, which has spiked positivity rates, hospitalizations and deaths acro...

Last Wednesday night, I interviewed Gov. Ned Lamont as part of a special Connecticut Mirror Conversation. You can hear part one of this conversation on our last episode. We talked about where the state stands with pandemic response, vaccine distribution plans, and aid to businesses and individuals who are struggling through the economic downturn.  In this episode, I ask the governor about how...

Governor Ned Lamont is in a tough spot. This week, he had a group of medical professionals send him a letter saying the way to stop the spike in hospital admissions due to Covid-19 is to close businesses like indoor restaurants and gyms. Meanwhile, the business owners who run those restaurants and gyms are asking for looser restrictions so they can stay afloat during an economic collapse. He has p...

We’ve talked about it on the show before — a potential positive of the pandemic for CT is the newfound attractiveness of living outside of major cities like New York and Boston. Last month, Gov. Ned Lamont stood in the rain next to a U-Haul truck to tout the buying boom in the state. "More people are coming to Connecticut than ever before," Lamont said. "Tens of thousands of people hav...

More than a week after the 2020 election, it’s fair to ask, “what just happened?” The results point to deep divisions within both parties, and in many states, including Connecticut. We saw historic voter turnout, aided by special “pandemic rules” that made mail-in voting a reality for the first time here. But we still saw long lines at polling sites, and in some state...

The blue wave that swept through the state wasn’t as big as some had predicted, but anger over Donald Trump at the top of the Republican ticket helped Democrats gain seats in the state’s General Assembly, giving Governor Ned Lamont an even bigger majority to work with . Among the seats that flipped from red to blue was the 114th house district where Mary Welander became the first Democ...

Donald Trump's unpopularity in Connecticut helped state Democrats pick up even  more seats in the General Assembly. It looks likely that Democrats will hold a 24-12 edge in the Senate and a whopping 98-53 margin in the House.  And that will make Matt Ritter's job interesting. Ritter is the House majority leader, and incoming speaker of the House. Matt Ritter spoke to John Dankosky about...

Masks and MAGA hats are in. Candidate buttons and “poll watching” are out. You’ll see more, and younger, poll workers, and have more ways to vote. The results? Who knows when you’ll see them.  These are just a few of the realities of voting in Connecticut during the pandemic year of 2020. Secretary of the State Denise Merrill says she thinks that half of the votes cast...

CT’s economic recovery is going to be slow, but the question looms: How slow? According to the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis at UConn , it could take a decade or more to undo the pandemic's economic damage. Every sector of the economy is hurting, but damage to the restaurant industry might be the longest-lasting. The leisure and hospitality industry account for the largest number...

This close to election day, it's easy for all conversation about politics to be about the horse race. But as this year has shown us, there are some enduring issues surrounding this election: voting rights, systemic racism, the impact of the pandemic on our political life, and the health of our democracy. In this Steady Habits special election edition, John Dankosky was joined by Quinnipiac Univers...

COVID-19 has sent a shock wave through multiple industries over the past seven months, but of all of industries barely hanging on through the pandemic - the performing arts might be taking the biggest blow.  Many theaters, playhouses, music clubs and art museums already existed on thin margins, but what happens when you take away the crowds for a year, maybe more? There are still many lingeri...

It’s no secret the pandemic has hit Connecticut’s economy hard. It’s also no secret that the Covid shutdown has hit the state’s black and latino communities the hardest. Pre-Covid, there were some more signs of life in Connecticut’s cities, especially in downtown areas. But those gains weren’t always felt in the neighborhoods. City residents have been saying thi...

Anyone who follows Connecticut politics and the news media was shocked when they heard that anchor Dennis House and WFSB were parting ways . After over 28 years on-air, House had become the face of the station, and one of the most prominent TV journalists in Connecticut.  He hosted the Sunday morning political show, Face the State , which regularly broke news and highlighted some of the best...

Stanley Greenberg has been in the middle of Democratic Party politics for decades. His work as a pollster for Bill Clinton in 1992 helped reshape the party following years of losing ground to Republicans among working-class white voters. This year, Greenberg has been doing Zoom focus groups with some of these same types of voters - and he’s hearing about health care as the issue that’s...

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong’s lawsuit against Exxon Mobil charges the company with lying about climate change. He says decades of research by the company showed that their products were increasing global temperatures, and that they actively tried to hide this fact, and kept pushing people to burn more oil. The suit has been likened to the big tobacco lawsuits filed by states, i...

A series of big power outages in the middle of a pandemic has Connecticut residents mad at electric utilities again. They're asking lawmakers to get them refunds and to hold Eversource and United Illuminating responsible for not getting the lights on quickly enough. But Jan Ellen Spiegel, who covers energy and the environment for The CT Mirror says our focus on pointing fingers, and anger over ele...

Four years after quarterback Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the national anthem, and three months after the killing of George Floyd, sports are at the forefront of the national conversation about racism and police brutality, and athletes at all levels are using their voices to try and affect change.  But even after decades of activism in sports, many athletes are told to “sti...

We've been hearing for years that young people are leaving Connecticut. Why? Well, our cities aren’t interesting enough, and our suburbs aren’t built for the lives they want to live. It’s too expensive, there’s not enough public transportation, and there aren’t enough other other young people around. But, at least in Fairfield County, that trend may be turning around,...

The Republican convention starts today, and it’ll be interesting to see if it’s anywhere near as weird as the Democratic convention last week . With no live audience because of Covid-19, the convention played even more like a scripted TV show than these events had already become .  And with no big, live event to go to, Connecticut’s Democratic delegates didn’t gather with their colleagues from aro...

This week’s Connecticut primary doesn’t feature any big statewide races or a contested race for a presidential nomination. But it’s actually a lot more interesting than it’s ever been, because it’s a test run for a new, expanded absentee ballot system in the state, meant to keep people safe from Covid-19.  Letters went out weeks ago from the Secretary of State’s office, asking registered voters if...

The start of the school year is now less than a month away, and nobody really knows what it’ll look like. Governor Ned Lamont had been saying that the plan was for Connecticut schools to return to in-person classes in the fall, but early last week, he reversed course, saying that it would be up to individual districts to make that determination. That’s caused confusion among many parents - but the...

Now that August is here, and reopening plans for colleges and universities seem less abstract, the reality is starting to really set in about what campuses will actually be like in the fall. Expect restrictions on social contact - one of the big draws for many students living on, or near, campus. In the CT Mirror’s “Viewpoints” section today, in the latest installment of the “Millennial Pulse” ser...