President Trump’s refusal to release $205 million in Department of Transportation funding has brought New York’s $16 billion Gateway Tunnel overhaul to an abrupt halt, much to Governor Kathy Hochul’s chagrin. With 1,000 workers idled and commuters’ patience now almost as worn as the 116-year-old tunnel itself, we can only hope practical concerns soon outweigh the allure of branding rights beneath the Hudson.
New York City in brief
Top five stories in the five boroughs today
Donald Trump’s bid to tinker again with the American census—this time via a pilot in Alabama and South Carolina, grilling 150,000 households on migration status—puts the constitutional requirement to count “the whole number of persons” in each state under a fresh lens. We suspect the perennial effort to shrink certain political voices may count for more than a genuine desire for statistically neat data.
New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, has unveiled a raft of executive actions and legal tweaks—candied as the “Let Them Build” plan—to loosen the State Environmental Quality Review Act’s grip on new building projects. She claims outdated bureaucracy can add $82,000 per unit and up to 56% in time, spurring a housing squeeze; if only paperwork could be repurposed as affordable homes.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is off to Albany, “tin cup” in hand, seeking relief for New York City’s $12 billion shortfall—a situation he attributes to his predecessor Eric Adams and state parsimony. Despite pleas for tax hikes on the affluent and ambitious plans for universal child care, Governor Kathy Hochul remains cool on revenue-raising, leaving Mamdani well-practiced in passing hats, if not budgets, for now.
Mount Sinai and Montefiore nurses in New York reached tentative deals to end a nearly month-long strike, with voting on the contracts—boasting 12% raises over three years and fresh staffing and AI safeguards—expected to conclude by Wednesday, say union and hospital sources. Nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian are still wrangling. Hospitals claim continuity of care, though the $10,000-a-week temp nurses may miss the picket-line camaraderie.