New York City in brief

On Monday, nearly 15,000 nurses from NewYork-Presbyterian, Mount Sinai, and Montefiore hospitals in Manhattan and the Bronx walked off the job, prompting what officials called “robust” contingency plans—chief among them, enlisting replacement staff. City and state overseers insist care remains smooth, though data suggests hospital strikes raise mortality by almost 20%. We await the verdict from New Yorkers enduring this bedside manner experiment.

Governor Kathy Hochul, fresh from controversy over pausing congestion pricing, is pushing to expand New York City’s subway system, including a possible westward extension of the Second Avenue line under 125th Street. While the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $68 billion capital plan mostly just patches up creaky tracks, Hochul’s eye for legacy might yet bring actual mileage—political and literal—if her ambitions ever leave the drawing board.

A federal judge greenlit Summit Properties USA’s $451m buyout of more than 5,100 long-neglected, rent-stabilized New York apartments, despite Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s resistance and tenants’ protests over past squalor and dodgy family ties between seller and buyer. Summit’s plan to mend 6,500 code violations won his honor’s approval—though enforcement is another tale, and New York landlords’ reputations tend not to appreciate over time.

Mount Sinai, embroiled in New York’s largest nurses’ strike—with 15,000 walking out—has dismissed claims that patient deaths resulted, insisting its trio of hospitals are fully staffed with over 1,400 replacements and functioning smoothly. Both union and hospital officials now deny direct links to fatalities, while the state’s health department reports no “serious operational issues”; care, and tempers, continue apace—if not always bedside manner.

As nearly 15,000 members of the New York State Nurses Association downed tools at Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian, and Montefiore, we find data—not rhetoric—overshadowing the picket lines: research by MIT’s Jonathan Gruber links nurse strikes in New York to a 19% rise in hospital mortality and poorer care, though collective bargaining can yield long-term gains. Healthcare’s chronic ailments, alas, persist unshaken by even the loudest whistles.