The Hochul administration in New York is awaiting something more concrete than televised threats from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who announced federal food stamp funds to 21 Democrat-led states, including New York, would cease unless they…
A report from the Center for an Urban Future finds New York City’s social service nonprofits—already trimming food aid and axing staff thanks to Trump administration cuts—face deeper woes as federal support shrinks further in 2026-27. With agencies like Food Bank for New York City and SAGE slashing programs, our famed safety net may soon be little more than a threadbare patchwork, albeit a fiscally “efficient” one.
Eager not to let New York’s $9 congestion fee outlive his social media proclamations, Donald Trump’s administration has pressed Judge Lewis Liman for a swift verdict to end the embattled toll south of 60th Street. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, smelling victory after an earlier court win, insists federal officials acted capriciously. With both sides urging Liman to wrap things up by year’s end, we brace for gridlock, judicatory or otherwise.
Con Edison’s latest plan to nudge New York electricity prices up another 2.8%—with gas not far behind—arrives as winter chills and wallets thin, prompting familiar protests from groups like Sunrise Movement and Equal Planet. Even the White House weighed in, noting fuel costs have fallen. The city’s Public Service Commission will settle the issue, but for now, heat and light remain luxuries one in three New Yorkers must juggle—financial gymnastics, Gotham-style.
Next week, New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority will swap the weekday East River tunnels used by the F and M subway lines, hoping to ease morning crowds from Eastern Queens and unclog the notorious Queens Plaza bottleneck, which slows service for a staggering 1.2 million daily riders. Confused Roosevelt Islanders must mind the clock for their train’s initial, but we suspect most prefer a brisker commute to consistency.
American prosecutors say they have dismantled “Greggy’s Cult,” a sextortion ring with ties to the international neo-Nazi network “764,” whose warped brand of online recruitment has combined sadism, self-harm and murder from Texas to Turkey. The group allegedly preyed on children via gaming platforms; its offshoots, inspired by obscure Satanist lore, have proven dismayingly persistent—showing that, even online, evil finds new ways to reinvent itself.
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority crows that its $9 congestion charge has thinned Manhattan’s traffic by 11% and exceeded $500m in first-year takings, though Port Authority figures and grumbling cabbies like Mohammad Haque beg to differ. With critics dismissing the MTA’s selective data as little more than creative accounting, we suspect congestion pricing may be moving more numbers on spreadsheets than cars on Second Avenue.
New York City councilman Erik Bottcher has tabled a bill to legalize the resurrection of SROs—shoebox-sized single rooms with shared kitchens and baths—in hopes of easing a deepening housing shortage. The plan, blessed by the city’s housing department, comes with stricter safety rules and a nod to changing demographics; even so, we suspect nostalgia for cramped, bygone flophouses will remain firmly optional.
Joe Biden’s administration, via NSPM-7, has set American legal eagles aflutter by broadening the scope of “domestic terrorism” to potentially catch dissenters in its net. The directive, which notably sanctions preemptive law enforcement, troubles civil liberties watchdogs who invoke the First Amendment—though, if past overreactions are any guide, we may yet see more heat than light as authorities test their new powers’ elastic limit.