SCDOT plans to release Momentum 2050 Plan to outline improvements on Thursday
'Yeah, it is a good way off 2050. But if we don't start funding and preparing and permitting now, we're never going to get there, ' said Sen. Larry Grooms, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee (R – Berkeley).
SC death row inmate granted stay of execution
The S.C. Department of Transportation said the state has changed drastically since the last plan was made. Secretary at SCDOT, Justin Powell said after the Covid-19 pandemic, there have been 360,000 new residents who have come to the Palmetto State.
They are expecting a million more new residents within the next 20 years.
'The questions are not about the pothole anymore. It's the 'I can't get across town like I used to,' it's those questions,' Powell said.
Grooms said they are committed to working with SCDOT on funding.
'We underfunded our roads for about 25 years. So, for 25 years in a row, our roads got worse, and now that we're getting too good, getting our handle, getting a handle on that, now we need to understand we have to do more to be able to expand the network,' said Grooms.
'Our roads have to be safe, and any unsafe bridges have to be repaired,' Grooms added. 'Now, we know others are aging out, so coming up with a schedule of which bridges get replaced and that's essential in having the revenue to do it.'
Another key issue addressed was railroad repairs and crossings.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Why top NYC restaurants are bringing in famed chefs from around the world
Top New York City restaurants are increasingly turning to collaborations with renowned chefs from around the globe to boost business and stand out from high-end rivals, Side Dish has learned. The collabs, while not a new phenomenon, have taken on added importance as President Trump's tariffs create challenges for chefs to source some of their favorite ingredients. However, importing talent from all corners of the globe – which at popular Tribeca haunt l'abeille means bringing in chefs from England, France, Belgium, Japan, Hong Kong and Thailand – remains tax-free. 7 l'abeille in Tribeca is importing talent from all corners of the globe. Eric Vitale Photography 'Global residences help everyone grow and learn — from the guests to the staff. They keep the restaurant interesting,' said Howard Chang, co-owner of Kuma Hospitality Group's l'abeille with partners Rahul Saito and executive chef Mitsunobu Nagae. The dinners these top chefs serve up at ticketed events aren't cheap. At a recent, prix-fixe collab dinner at l'abeille, Nagae worked with London-based chef Chet Sharma, who studied physics at Oxford and now helms the standout Indian-themed restaurant BiBi in London's swanky Mayfair neighborhood. The meal cost $325, with an additional $295 for wine pairings. The exclusive events, however, often don't bring in more money than regular a la carte dinners, restaurateurs told Side Dish. That's because the higher prices are offset by the cost of flying in the foreign-based chefs, along with some of their team members, and putting them all up in hotels. 7 Chet Sharma, left, and Mitsunobu Nagae collaborated on a prix-fixe dinner. Eric Vitale Photography 7 The collabs, while not a new phenomenon, have taken on added importance as President Trump's tariffs create challenges for chefs to source some of their favorite ingredients. Eric Vitale Photography The upside, they say, is that global collabs raise the restaurants' profiles, bring in new diners and offer educational benefits for staff. On the Upper East Side, Sushi Noz's executive chef Nozomu Abe is bringing in Michelin-starred Chef Endo Kazutoshi, a third-generation sushi master who trained in Japan before opening his namesake restaurant, Endo, at the Rotunda in London. 7 At Sushi Noz on the Upper East Side, executive chef Nozomu Abe, left, is bringing in Michelin-starred Chef Endo Kazutoshi. Hannah Wyatt Last week, the pair offered a rare collaborative omakase where they presented their culinary visions through the use of local fish and other influences. 'We started the Japan series in 2019,' said Hannah Wyatt, Sushi Noz's operations manager. 'Our goal was to showcase top chefs from Japan through collaborative dinners with chef Noz, with a focus on sushi and kaiseki chefs at the top of their respective fields.' In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the owners of Layla's began bringing in chefs during COVID and continue to have pop-ups for 'brand exposure.' 7 The dinners these top chefs serve up at ticketed events aren't cheap. Eric Vitale Photography 7 The exclusive events, however, often don't bring in more money than regular a la carte dinners, restaurateurs told Side Dish. Eric Vitale Photography The most recent international collab involved chef Kyle Garry and chef Whyte Rushen of Whyte's in London, who is now on a 'worldwide' tour. 'We did it once, and it was really successful and fun and now it's something we try to do as often as we can,' Samuel Lynch, one of Layla's co-owners along with Stefano D'Orsogna and David Lacey, told Side Dish. The trend has even extended to the Hamptons, where Mavericks Montauk will welcome the crew from Michelin-starred Parisian restaurant Contraste on July 31. 7 The upside, they say, is that global collabs raise the restaurants' profiles, bring in new diners and offer educational benefits for staff. Interior of l'abeille, above. Eric Vitale Photography The collaboration was made possible by the deep-rooted friendship between Mavericks' pastry chef Remy Ertaud and Contraste's Louis De Vicari. We hear … that celeb chef Scott Conant is opening a posh new Italian restaurant, Leola, in the Bahamas at Baha Mar this fall. Leola will be on the casino level of Grand Hyatt Baha Mar, joining hotspots including Jon Batiste's Jazz Club, Marcus Samuelsson's Marcus at Baha Mar Fish + Chop House, Daniel Boulud's Cafe Boulud, and Dario Cecchini's Carna. The 8,800 square foot space comes with 106 seats in the main dining room and 130 seats outside. 'Bringing Leola to life at Baha Mar is something I've dreamed about for a long time,' Conant said. 'I've always been inspired by the beauty and spirit of the Bahamas, and it felt like the perfect place to create a restaurant that's both personal and inviting. With Leola, we're blending the kind of food and hospitality I love—warm, soulful, and rooted in connection.' Conant will also participate in the Fourth Annual Bahamas Culinary & Arts Festival, which runs from Oct. 22-26.
American Press
2 hours ago
- American Press
Louisiana spotlight: Nungesser keeping state top of mind for those ready to explore
Traveling has been significantly increasing since the decline during the COVID-19 pandemic — and Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and his team are working hard to keep Louisiana top of mind for those ready to explore. Last year, Nungesser said his office used a U.S. Commerce Department grant to increase awareness of Louisiana as a travel destination in Mumbai and New Delhi, India; Madrid, Spain; and Milan, Italy. In a few months, the team will spend a week in Canada promoting the Bayou State and its French heritage. Canada 'is about 33 percent of our international market,' Nungesser told members of the Rotary Club of Lake Charles Wednesday afternoon. 'Those Canadians love them some Louisiana.' In Paris, the Louisiana Office of Tourism also wrapped taxi cabs serving as rolling billboards to inspire travel to the state and it sponsored the London Jazz Festival last year. Nungesser said Louisiana welcomed 43 million domestic and international visitors in 2023, the most recent data available. Those visitors spent a total of $18.1 billion, an increase of 5.4 percent over 2022. International visitation showed the most significant gain, he said, increasing 16.9 percent in 2023 with spending reaching $1.7 billion. Louisiana has also been on the national stage in recent months with an alligator-themed float that crawled the streets of Pasadena, Calif., for the 136th annual Rose Parade and again as host to the Super Bowl at the Superdome in New Orleans. 'Somebody asked me what do we do better than anyone else and I said Mardi Gras,' Nungesser said. 'So we found out what parades we could go to. We were in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade for three years and now we're in the Rose Parade.' Though the floats are professionally designed, they are decorated by volunteers days before the parade. Every float is covered in flowers, leaves, seeds, bark and other natural materials to honor the Rose Parade's history. Nungesser said volunteers from Louisiana are flown to California and are shuttled between the warehouse where the float is being built to their accommodations. A New Orleans native who now resides in California brings her beignets-only food truck each day to feed the volunteers during their shifts and the best of Louisiana cuisine is served each night. 'It's a trip everybody should make,' he said. For more on volunteering, visit Nungesser said participation in the parade 'allows us to drive awareness about our state as a vacation destination to a broad number of attendees, as well as viewers watching from home,' Nungesser said. 'The return on investment for the Rose Parade has been incredible.' Nungesser said the Rose Parade media coverage — thanks to a plethora of morning show interviews aired across the nation as the float is being built — for the past four years reached an estimated 10.4 billion people and was worth $144.9 million. State Parks When Nungesser took office nearly a decade ago, seven state parks were under the threat of closure. 'I was told, 'You don't have the money to keep them open and they're in pretty bad shape,' ' he said. 'Thanks to our sheriffs and local volunteers we were able to do a lot of repair and get them presentable and today those seven parks are making a profit.' The Louisiana Office of State Parks operates 21 state parks, 14 historic sites and a preservation area that comprises 45,000 acres, 110 miles of roads and 1.2 million square feet of rental facilities that welcomed more than 1.75 million visitors last year. He said his new goal is creating resort conference centers within some of the state parks to attract visiting conferences. 'We have over 350 groups that meet every year all over Louisiana,' he said. 'They don't meet in New Orleans because the hotel does not cover their per diem, but they meet everywhere else. There's usually 300-500 people and it's a great opportunity for us and it would be a great for the local economies. One thing we won't do is we won't let anyone open a restaurant (within the conference centers) or anything that would compete with local businesses.' One state park thriving at the moment is Bogue Chitto — a top destination for travelers nationwide for its mountain biking trails, which are maintained by the North Shore Off-Road Bicycling Association. 'A thousand people a month from 10-15 states go to Washington Parish for this mountain bike trail,' he said. 'We also have horseback riding. We brought a gentleman's horses into the park and let him run the business out of the park and he's knocking it out of the park, no pun intended. These two private-public partnerships have put Washington Parish on the map. Before they had very little tourism. It has changed that town forever.' Prime Video just completed a documentary on the mountain bike trails and 25 percent of the proceeds will go into building additional trails. He said the park recently acquired an additional 600 acres to expand the mountain bike and horseback riding trails. Museums Nungesser's office oversees nine museums; the Secretary of State's office and some local cities operate the rest. He said he hopes to introduce a bill next year that would force all museums to be open on the weekends — every museum operated under the Secretary of State's Office are not — when people are off work and more likely to visit. His office has also bought the website and plans to video every museum in the state. 'We did a video about the ghost that's upstairs at the Beauregard Gothic Jail — I don't know if it's there but the lady has me convinced and I'm not going up to check — and we test marketed to people who like ghosts and at Halloween, 4,000 people showed up to find that ghost,' he said. 'If you have a ghost, we will promote it and they will come.' He said most are aware of the World War II Museum in New Orleans. Now promotions will tie in Chennault Aviation and Military Museum in Monroe, the Louisiana Military Museum in Abbeville and others to draw in like-minded visitors. He also wants to give all museums the freedom to hire the directors of their choice. Right now, that responsibility falls under the office that oversees the facility. Louisiana seafood Several key pieces of legislation passed during the 2024 Regular Legislative Session affected the seafood industry in the state. Act 47 mandates restaurants serving imported crawfish or shrimp must officially inform their customers on the menu; Act 148 requires restaurants and food service establishments to label on menus all imported seafood as such, not just shrimp and crawfish; and Act 756 transferred the Seafood Safety Task Force to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board to help in the regulation of imported seafood. 'We want people to ask before they eat. The goal is to prevent imported seafood — which is filled with a lot of antibiotics — to come into this country and to level the playing field for our Louisiana fishermen,' he said. 'If you eat Boudreaux's crawfish tails, they're going to be from Boudreaux's. They're not going to be from Thailand.' Keep Louisiana Beautiful Love the Boot Week is Louisiana's largest litter removal and beautification effort. During 2024, 19,441 people volunteered a total of 100,712 hours at over 760 events, removing a record 347 tons of litter in all 64 parishes. 'It has become a movement,' Nungesser said. Their efforts diverted 293 pounds of aluminum cans and 330 pounds of plastic bottles from the landfill allowing the items to be recycled. Next month, the office will be handing out buckets at marinas around the state, asking boaters and fishermen to scoop up any trash they may see on the waterways and shorelines. 'We're not going to take our foot off the gas until we have no more trash in Louisiana,' Nungesser said.
The Hill
5 hours ago
- The Hill
Why Columbia gave in to Trump's extortion
On July 23, Columbia University entered into a resolution agreement with the federal government to settle claims that it didn't do enough to prevent harassment of Jewish students. Columbia promised to pay $200 million in fines, plus $21 million to settle employment discrimination claims. It also agreed to a raft of policy changes, pledging to further support Jewish students, to comply with laws banning consideration of race in admissions and hiring, to provide the government with admissions data and disciplinary information about international students, to ensure its Middle Eastern Studies programs are 'comprehensive and balanced' and to roll back DEI efforts. In return, the government agreed to close multiple civil rights investigations, release most of the $400 million in previously frozen research funding and consider future grant proposals from Columbia 'without disfavored treatment.' Earlier this month, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle President Trump's claims about prejudicial editing of a CBS News '60 Minutes' interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. Though many legal experts considered the suit baseless, Paramount executives feared it might become an obstacle to a multi-billion dollar sale of the company requiring approval by the Federal Trade Commission. That approval finally came, in a two-to-one vote, on July 24. In March, Paul Weiss, one of the country's top law firms, agreed to represent clients without regard to their political affiliation and perform $40 million in pro bono work for causes supported by Trump in return for termination of a manifestly illegal and financially crippling executive order restricting the firm's security clearances and barring its lawyers from federal buildings. The firm's offense? Primarily that it had a former partner who, while serving as a Manhattan prosecutor, had overseen the criminal investigation into Trump and then written a book urging his prosecution. These three cases demonstrate that, even in long-established democracies, a leader willing to ignore legal constraints and social norms ' has the cards,' as Trump would say, to settle personal scores with his long list of enemies, using one pretext or another. Columbia, Paramount and Paul Weiss could have all chosen to fight the Trump administration in court. Confronted with demands restricting its autonomy and authority, Harvard decided to sue. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Wall Street Journal, seems inclined to fight Trump's lawsuit over his newspaper's reporting on Trump's birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. Faced with executive orders similar to the one directed at Paul Weiss, four other law firms chose to litigate rather than capitulate. But Columbia lacks Harvard's resources. The Wall Street Journal is not for sale. The law firms that sued did not confront as grave a risk to their billings as Paul Weiss and the eight other firms who struck similar deals. Critics have praised those choosing to fight and pilloried those choosing to settle. It is worth noting, however, that lawsuits can turn into settlements and settlements can collapse into lawsuits. Also, in these three cases, those deciding to fight cannot be made whole. Lawsuits can stop some administration tactics but cannot stop them all. Suing may prompt Trump to double down on penalties, but may also serve as a bargaining chip in settlement talks. And settlements, especially with the Trump administration, can serve as the prelude to more demands. As Claire Shipman, Columbia's interim president, put it, 'The desire for a simple narrative: capitulation versus courage, or talking versus fighting' ignores the reality 'that real-life situations are deeply complex.' No tactic will immunize a university, media corporation or law firm from a government willing to color this far outside the lines. And individual institutions have no pathway to protect the rule of law against a government willing to ignore it. Columbia's settlement does set a dangerous precedent. As Joseph Slaughter, a Columbia faculty member, stated, the agreement normalizes 'political interference in teaching, research and the pursuit of truth.' The administration is already using the settlement as a template for negotiations with other universities, including Harvard, Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Brown. In our view, Columbia — which cannot survive as a research university without substantial funding from the federal government — had little choice but to cut a deal. Harvard may yet come to the same conclusion. It has won some short-term victories and will likely win more. But even if the university wins every case it brings, it cannot compel the government to award it future grants, issue visas to foreign nationals seeking to study or work at Harvard or block every perversely creative form of intimidation the administration dreams up. So even when it loses in court, the Trump administration still wins. Its goal is not just to intimidate its direct targets, but the sectors the targets represent: higher education, the media and law firms. These are the mainstays of the civil society of any democracy. Not coincidentally, they also house many of the president's most visible critics. Colleges and universities that care about their research funding, or fear the burdens of trumped-up civil rights investigations, must think twice about pursuing any action likely to incur the administration's ire. For this reason, many of them are already engaging in ' anticipatory obedience ' — terminating DEI programs, mandating tougher punishments for campus protesters and shying away from public statements on sensitive issues. As U.S. District Judge Richard Leon wrote when striking down Trump's executive order against the law firm WilmerHale, 'the order shouts through a bullhorn: If you take on causes disfavored by President Trump, you will be punished!' Law firms are listening, and even though those that sue are winning, a growing number are declining to take cases likely to upset the Justice Department, which is on the verge of becoming on a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization. And as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has observed, Paramount's settlement in the '60 Minutes' case sends a 'chilling message to journalists everywhere.' Authoritarian governments routinely seek to undermine civil society, but strong popular opposition can force a change in behavior. Most Americans disapprove of Trump's assault on higher education and the legal system, but they can do more to make their voices heard — in the organizations they support, with their elected representatives and, of course, at the ballot box.
