Hochul at the head

I'm going to be. This is WSU's After All Things, with daily news and culture from around the Long Island Sound. A new poll shows New York Governor Kathy Hochul with a double-digit lead over her Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal wants an investigation into why unaccompanied immigrant kids are spending more time in federal care. President Donald Trump will visit Nassau County tomorrow afternoon. And are there more jellyfish than usual at the beach this year? Those stories and more are ahead. I'm Molly Ingram in for Sabrina Garone today. A new poll shows New York Governor Kathy Hochul with a double-digit lead over her Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman. But the race seems to be tightening. Jimmy Veilkind reports. A Sienna University poll of likely voters finds 49% of New Yorkers ready to support the Democratic governor for re-election and 39% behind her challenger, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. Kathy Hochul's lead has narrowed in Sienna surveys as pollsters included more Republicans in their sample, reflecting likely voter turnout. But poll spokesman Steve Greenberg says Kathy Hochul is trailing other Democrats in the heavily Democratic state. The fact that she's only up by 10. has to give Republicans some hope and has to give Democrats some pause. A hocal spokesperson says the contrast with Bruce Blakeman is clear. Bruce Blakeman's campaign says other polls show a closer race. In Albany, I'm Jimmy Viokind for the New York Public News Network. Immigrant children are spending an increased amount of time in federal detention. In 2025, an unaccompanied immigrant child spent an average of 117 days in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. That's up significantly since 2024, when the average was 30 days. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal wants an investigation into why. What the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the federal government seems to be doing is in effect stonewalling and slow walking application. Richard Blumenthal says none of his Republican colleagues support the investigation, so it's unlikely to come. President Donald Trump will visit Nassau County Friday afternoon. Officials advise residents of road closures and security measures in the vicinity of Nassau Community College. WSU's Janice Roman has more. Trump is expected to meet with Nassau County Executive Bruce Blatement, a Republican running for governor. Newsday reports that the area will be heavy with police presence and security enforcement by the U.S. Secret Service.

Uniondale, Garden City, East Meadow, Mineola, and Hampstead will have road closures all afternoon. Officials say the area will be locked down until 5 p.m. Event visitors will be able to enter off Stewart Avenue and will be led through security screenings. Nassau County officials say groups are planning to protest the president's visit. The protest area will be sectioned to Endo Boulevard and Parameter Road, which is a half mile from the training center. Janice Roman, WSHU News. If it seems like there are a lot of large red jellyfish at the beach this year, that's because there are. That story is coming up. From Gershwin's jazz-infused rhythms to the passion and drama of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, hear the Philadelphia Orchestra on Carnegie Hall Live. Your seat is reserved Saturday afternoon at 2 with an encore Thursday night at 8 on WSHU. Carnegie Hall Live is made possible by Suzuki Music Schools, Suzuki Schools.org. Groups in Mastic Beach, Brookhaven, and Port Washington will get $20,000 each to support pollinator conservation. The money will be used to expand community gardens and replace invasive plants with native ones that attract more bees. The grants come from a New York state settlement with Monsanto over toxic weed killers. Nearly a dozen people are charged with arranging green card marriages in eight states, including Connecticut and New York. Federal investigators say they set up more than 1,000 marriages between foreign nationals and U.S. citizens. That includes about 100 marriages in Connecticut alone. Town leaders in Orange, Connecticut voted to pause their contract with flock, maker of license plate readers. This follows weeks of national outcry. Governor Ned Lamont asked cities and towns to hold off on the tech last week. 25 years to life. That's the sentence for Stephen Schwally, the Long Island man who prosecutors say was drunk when he crashed into a deer park nail salon and almost 80 miles an hour, killing four people. A Suffolk County jury found him guilty of murder in June. His sentence is the maximum allowed under law.

If it seems like there are a lot of large red jellyfish at the beach this year, that's because there are. Craig Lamolt went to the New England aquarium to learn more about them, and he met some curious kids with great jellyfish questions. Six-year-old Margo Pepin stares into an illuminated tank at the New England Aquarium. The creatures inside are hypnotic. I like how they look. The South American sea nettles are mostly white with red Vs arranged in a circle. With each pulsing motion of the jelly, its red tentacles trail behind. Pepin turns to her mom with a question. Can you cut off these things? No, you can't cut them off, the tentacles? No. What happens if you do? I think they would be hurt. But axolados grow like new stuff on their body. It's true. You know, I came here to the aquarium to talk to Chris Dollar, who's part of the team breeding jellyfish like this one for their own exhibits and to share with aquariums around the world. And this six-year-old's question is just too good not to ask him. So if a jellyfish loses a tentacle, does it grow back? It does. Yeah, they have remarkable regeneration, even some of these long feathery oral arms that you see here. If they get dropped, they will sort of start to grow back, yeah. As for all the talk this summer about an invasion of red lion's mane jellyfish, Dollar says it's really not all that unusual. Some years, there's not as many, and they don't get as large, and then we have some summers where there just seems to be a lot of them. The jellyfish exhibit also includes a smaller tank of little guys called comb jellies. And five-year-old Emery Smith has a question about them. some small? That's a great question. Any others? Any anything else you'd like to know? Nothing. There's just one question that I just wanted to ask. Some jellies are so small you never see them, Dollar says. Others are evolved to just keep growing. Usually the jellies that are northern of the equator up into the Arctic tend to get larger. Their metabolism is much slower. They live where there's a... Plankton is plentiful, and they just sort of, like, do nothing but eat and grow and eat and grow. Another five-year-old Kenessa Bradway stares at the jellyfish. I ask if there's anything about jellyfish she doesn't know that she'd like to. I know nothing. What would you most like to know and understand? How they're made. That's the key question for Chris Dollar, several floors above. We are standing in our jellyfish culture lab. This is up on the fifth floor of the aquarium, sort of behind-the-scenes space that not many people get to see. Around the room are tanks with rounded Scott Bottoms where jellyfish of all sizes are circulating. Look at this guy.

Dollar says there are male and female jellyfish. The males have sperm, females have eggs. They spawn in the water when the conditions are right. That leads to a larval egg, which becomes a polyp. And those polyps can actually reproduce asexually. Inside a jar, Dollar shows off a petri dish encrusted with them. So each one of those tiny little polyps you see there can produce hundreds and hundreds of jellies. Back in the public area of the aquarium, N.V. McLean says she's a jellyfish fan, despite their most notorious trait. I like them, and they stink. Do you want to know why they sting? Um... Yeah. The stinging mechanism of the jelly is actually how they catch their food. And how that works is way more interesting than I realized. I always thought there was just a chemical that was getting onto your skin from them. Nope. If you looked real microscopically at a tentacle, it's sort of lined with these little balloons. Inside the little balloon is a harpoon. And when it comes into contact with something that it can sting, the harpoon fires out of the tentacle and has some toxin in it. Because of all that stinging, Dollar says he understands why jellyfish have a bad reputation. But they're really fascinating. They actually predate the dinosaurs, so I think that's something to be appreciated. But I can understand why this animal that has no brain and has no way of avoiding you when you're at the beach develops that sort of reputation. But I think they're pretty cool. And I have to say, I agree. For the New England News Collaborative, I'm Craig Bolt.

For the latest from Around the Long Island Sound, listen on the radio online with our free app and, of course, right here on the After All Things podcast every weekday morning. I'm Molly Ingram in for Sabrina Garon. I hope you have a great rest of your day, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.