Congress members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ritchie Torres, representing the Bronx, have joined the chorus lambasting Donald Trump for launching deadly strikes against Iran—including the unprecedented killing of Ali Khamenei—without Congressional sign-off, as the war escalates across the Gulf. Trump’s gamble on regime change finds few domestic fans, except perhaps among bunker manufacturers now eying an uptick in demand around New York’s embassies.
New York City in brief
Top five stories in the five boroughs today
Donald Trump’s revived plan to bar families with undocumented members from subsidised public housing threatens thousands of New Yorkers in mixed-status households, risking a surge in homelessness just as Mayor Zohran Mamdani pitches $21 billion in affordable housing repairs and grand rail-yard schemes. We could witness NYCHA tenants traded for political points, though Mamdani’s silence on public housing is, for now, deafening rather than decisive.
New York’s Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani has pitched to President Donald Trump an audacious $21 billion federal grant for decking over Sunnyside Yard to make way for 12,000 affordable homes—half with Mitchell-Lama pedigree—plus new schools and parks. Both sides claim to relish transparency and speed, though such mega-projects tend to encounter more meetings than milestones, especially when union jobs and fiscal prudence are in the air.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has revived New York’s Sunnyside Yard deck plan—originally mothballed in 2020’s Covid fog—by pitching it to President Donald Trump. The $14.4bn scheme envisions 12,000 affordable homes atop Amtrak’s Queens rail hub, assuming federal chequebooks and inter-party amity materialize. Much like the city’s planners since the 1960s, we await the day developers finally outwit a stubborn tangle of steel and ambition.
New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has inherited a yawning $5.4 billion budget gap and proposes trimming private contracts to help plug it—hardly a novel prescription for urban fiscal headaches, but one that tests his social democratic vows early and often. We will see whether pragmatism trumps principle, or if Gotham’s contractors should start packing up their golden staplers.