New York City in brief

After months of limbo and legal wrangling, Washington has unfrozen $205 million in funding for the Gateway project, reviving work on the $16 billion rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey that the Trump administration abruptly halted. Backed by litigation from state officials and noisy rallies, the project—vital to 200,000 daily commuters—will soon resume, proving that even in infrastructure, a dead tunnel can occasionally come back to life.

Thanks to the unexpected vacancies on New York’s Rent Guidelines Board—one appointee declined the job and another quit—Mayor Zohran Mamdani now finds himself wielding a decisive majority, appointing six of nine members including a new chair, Chantella Mitchell. The odds for his pledged rent freeze on over a million city apartments have never looked better—a rare case of administrative musical chairs putting the brakes on annual rent hikes.

Zohran Mamdani, New York City's mayor, has dangled a 9.5% property tax rise as his “last resort” should lawmakers refuse his proposed wealth tax, a policy pitched to patch a gaping municipal budget deficit. With City Hall’s coffers light and patience among homeowners lighter still, we are reminded that when searching for revenue, politicians rarely leave any stone—however expensive—unturned.

New York’s latest $4.5 billion proposal aims to tackle its perennial child care headache, which saps $23 billion from the city’s economy and pushes families—with annual care costs near $40,000—out of town. Home-based providers, mostly women of color, run 65% of the city’s licensed programs but earn barely minimum wage. More funding may help, but, as ever, bureaucracy and fine print threaten to outlast common sense.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani presented New York City’s preliminary budget, facing a $5.4 billion hole with two routes: tax hikes on the rich and corporations, or, failing Albany’s blessing, raising property taxes and tapping reserves. First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan and Budget Director Sherif Soliman discussed the fiscal puzzle on NY1, where optimism seemed, like the city’s coffers, in relatively short supply for now.