New York City in brief

Construction on the long-delayed Gateway tunnel beneath the Hudson is set to resume next week, after the Trump administration begrudgingly unfroze $205 million under judicial order. The states, irritated by presidential naming ambitions and dire warnings about California-style overruns, took the matter to court—and won. Some 1,000 jobs (and plenty of trackside grumbling) now return, with 2035 the predicted finish line—give or take a political detour.

The Trump administration scrapped the Environmental Protection Agency’s decade-old “endangerment finding,” which had classified greenhouse gases as threats under the Clean Air Act, with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum assuring us that since humans and plants coexist with CO₂, all must be well. Dismay from scientists, courts, and even certain oil titans seems unlikely to eclipse Myron Ebell’s gloating—pending litigation notwithstanding, victory for climate skeptics is apparently in the air.

The US National Weather Service warned New Yorkers from Manhattan to Suffolk County to expect up to 18 inches of snow and 55 mph gusts from Sunday morning through Monday evening, with whiteout conditions likely to make travel hazardous and power outages possible. We may grumble at winter survival kits, but in the face of this blizzard, discretion seems preferable to digging out one’s own sedan.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pitch for a 9.5% property tax hike—meant to plug New York City’s shrinking but stubborn budget gap—has left budget-watchers and lawmakers cold, who deride his “fiscal crisis” rhetoric as theatrical and his solutions as a false choice. As the defined deficit dropped from $12 billion to $5.4 billion, the performance, we note, offered more drama than dazzling new math.

New York City’s Local Law 97, ambitiously aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions from 63,000 buildings by 2030, has left co-op boards—like Glen Oaks Village in Queens—eyeing $50 million upgrade tabs they can scarcely afford. Federal aid is now scarcer, City Hall’s reassurance remains notional, and many expect to swallow million-dollar annual fines—hardly the electrifying transformation legislators had in mind.