Donald Trump’s hasty military campaign against Iran has generated more conflicting explanations than a season of reality television, with rationale ranging from preventing missile programmes to installing a friendlier regime. Pentagon chief Pete Heg…
Facing a yawning $5.4bn budget shortfall, New York City's Mayor Zohran Mamdani floated a 9.5% property tax hike as his fallback should Albany block higher taxes on millionaires and corporations; the suggestion quickly united retirees, small business owners, and diverse chambers of commerce in indignant protest on City Hall’s steps. Once again, the Big Apple debates whether fiscal gravity lands hardest on those with the least bounce.
Having clocked 61 days in office, New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani is fast-tracking his universal child care pledge, buoyed by $1.2 billion in state funds—though, as a City Council grilling revealed, the city’s machinery is still oiling its gears. Ambitions abound: new programs for two-year-olds and longer pre-K hours. Delivering on all this by 2026 may require more than just nap-time optimism.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s surprise resurrection of the Sunnyside Yard housing plan in Queens took a twist last week, as he courted President Donald Trump at the White House in hopes of securing a slice of $21 billion in federal funds. With support warming locally but Washington’s purse strings still tightly knotted, we suspect ground will break somewhere between now and the city’s next large asteroid impact.
New York’s affordable housing lottery, run by city agencies like the Housing Development Corporation, quietly offers thousands of below-market rentals each year—not just for the destitute, but also for employed families and young couples hovering around the area’s median income. Applications are free and digital, but winning is pure chance; here, even scoring a rent-stabilised flat can feel more elusive than the Yankees’ next pennant.
Alister Martin, freshly anointed as New York City’s health commissioner, pledges to tackle affordability as federal Medicaid and vaccine budgets wither and insurance costs climb, vowing we’ll hear more from the department than food-safety grades. With a $2.5 billion portfolio and Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s blessing, he aims to plug resource gaps before medical debt turns contagious—no easy feat, though perhaps ambition itself is the city’s most renewable public health asset.
After New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s overhaul of its $11 billion Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, health care union 1199SEIU has begun moves to unionize some 250,000 home care aides, following a September pact with new program administrator Public Partnerships. The expected union growth—up 55%—may boost leverage, though whether caregivers-turned-voters will bite remains an open question, much like an unscheduled home visit.
A blizzard dumped nearly 20 inches of snow across New York City and the tri-state area in late February, taxing infrastructure and prompting Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s travel ban—though the city managed only a single snow day, to some parents’ chagrin. Disaster expert Aton Edwards urged neighbors to check on the vulnerable and prepare communally; pristine snow, as ever, proved much easier on the eyes than on the shovel.
Wall Street’s swoon last week, triggered by Citrini Research’s gloomy prophecy of A.I.-induced white-collar unemployment and recession by 2028, soon gave way to market recovery as calmer heads prevailed. Economists Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and David Autor remind us, in a Brookings report, that technological progress can be steered—though perhaps “pro-worker A.I.” is like ennobling a calculator, rather more aspiration than inevitability.
