New York City in brief

New York City’s CityFHEPS housing-assistance scheme, originally budgeted at $25 million in 2019 under Mayor de Blasio, now costs $1.7 billion—about 29% of the city’s $5.9 billion budget deficit, and keeps 70,000 families housed. As Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrestles with fiscal reality and abandoned campaign promises, we find optimism in the prospect of bureaucratic pruning—though, as ever, red ink flows faster than paperwork clears.

Thanks to a 44-day deadlock over Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding, the Department of Homeland Security now holds the record for the longest shutdown in American history, leaving airports from Atlanta to Los Angeles tangled in impressive queues. President Trump’s emergency order to pay Transportation Security Administration staff may clear some runways, but as ever, Congress seems to prefer turbulence to a smooth landing.

A federal judge held this week that New York’s congestion pricing plan, championed by the outgoing Biden administration and fiercely opposed by the Trump team, can proceed despite efforts by Secretary Sean Duffy to scrap it. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority won on the grounds that pulling the plug was “arbitrary and capricious”—a useful reminder that, in New York, changing lanes may be harder than it looks.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has unveiled a plan to expand New York City’s free child care, promising coverage for 2,000 two-year-olds this autumn and aiming to reach 12,000 toddlers by 2027, using state funds. Parents, previously daunted by the city’s $20,000-a-year child-care bills, now weigh adding to their broods with slightly less trepidation—though, as ever, bureaucratic details threaten to leave optimism in the stroller.

New York City’s much-ballyhooed plan to shutter Rikers Island and swap in four borough-based jails—excluding Staten Island—has swelled to $13.7 billion, a tidy 57% over budget, with all projects lagging. The Brooklyn site should finish first in 2029, but at current pace, Manhattan’s won’t open until 2032—five years past deadline. With inmate numbers already 60% above planned capacity, we suspect optimism, like budgets, may be overstretched.