Faced with a $7.5 billion annual federal funding cut under President Trump’s latest domestic bill, Governor Kathy Hochul is rushing to rescue New York’s Essential Plan, which insures 1.7 million low-income residents—many immigrants included by court…
Over 10,000 nurses traded picket signs for scrubs as they returned to work at Mount Sinai and Montefiore hospitals after a month-long strike—New York City’s largest of its kind—having secured three-year contracts featuring a 12% pay bump and stronger staffing guarantees. Yet with more than 4,200 NewYork-Presbyterian nurses still out, labor peace may be contagious, but evidently not airborne.
A Trump-era warning that federal emergency housing vouchers were evaporating has left New York City patching leaks with a stopgap plan for just 2,000 families, while the Housing Authority’s fix for another 5,500 has flopped after a funding snub from HUD. State lawmakers have kicked in $50m—barely a bandage. For thousands teetering on eviction’s edge, “long-term solution” remains something of a unicorn.
Amtrak and NJ Transit will funnel commuters onto a single track between Newark and Secaucus for a month, beginning Sunday, to shift trains from the cranky 115-year-old Portal Bridge to its sleeker successor, Portal North. While weekday service into Penn Station shrinks and Hoboken braces for crowds, officials promise this short-term mess means fewer sledgehammers and signal headaches—a win after a century-long wait, if not a painless one.
New York City officials are, at long last, sketching out Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s universal free child care plan, starting this autumn with 2,000 two-year-olds—just a drop in the city’s ocean of unmet need. Providers, squeezed by costs and shaky enrollment, remain wary, though extra state funding from Governor Hochul offers a modest lifeline. For now, we await more details—preferably before these toddlers head off to college.
Surveys such as SmartAsset’s suggest that by 2026, a single New Yorker will need $130,000-$140,000 a year to live “comfortably”—roughly four times the state’s minimum wage—and families may need over $200,000, especially if they fancy Manhattan over, say, Hoboken. Rent remains the wallet’s sworn enemy, and even modest thrift now seems a high-priced commodity in the tristate area. We suppose financial planning is the new local pastime.
A severe January storm left New York City blanketed in nearly a foot of snow and bracing for record subzero temperatures, prompting Mayor Zohran Mamdani to praise emergency efforts while admitting that at least five unhoused residents died before the snow even fell—tragedies that cast doubt on the city’s much-touted “Enhanced Cold Blue” response, which moved 170 people to shelters but, as ever, couldn’t quite thaw out policy’s perennial gaps.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s vow to fund fare-free buses and universal childcare via “tax the rich” is facing frigid headwinds: the Citizens Budget Commission and Governor Kathy Hochul both demur, warning more taxes may turn New York City into a ghost town for the wealthy. With a $7 billion budget gap but $118 billion in spending, perhaps the real treasure is streamlining City Hall—always harder than passing the hat.
Seized by a data center gold rush, New York is asking tech giants—active at sites from Greenidge’s crypto farm by Seneca Lake to dozens more statewide—to shoulder ballooning electricity costs instead of passing them to everyday ratepayers. Governor Kathy Hochul, unimpressed by mammoth power requests and modest job creation, wants firms to pay up or plug in elsewhere, lest the digital future leave locals in the dark.
