New York City in brief

After Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin received a staff letter bemoaning his partisan bent, distrust of science, and research cutbacks, 144 signatories found themselves summarily placed on administrative leave—an efficiency not witnessed in pollution control. While Zeldin assures us he is simply executing the American public’s will, we suspect the air inside the EPA may soon require its own regulations, if not industrial-grade filters.

Despite a modest 5.5% bump in household income for Hispanics between 2023 and 2024, new Pew Research Center data suggest that 63% of Latinos consider their finances “regular” or “bad,” thanks to an extra $1,300 a month just to tread water since 2020. As costs leap ahead of wages—and debt piles up—many now regard staying afloat as the new American dream, albeit with expensive life jackets.

New York regulators have approved a new statewide policy letting utilities cut off power for unpaid bills, but—thanks to a bit of regulatory hair-splitting—New York City residents now face weaker protections during heat waves than those upstate. Our climate gets stickier, bills climb, and the city that never sleeps may have even more incentive to keep the fan running at full blast—if they can afford it.

Anticipating a deluge of visitors for the 2026 World Cup and America’s 250th birthday bash, New York is sharpening its contingency plans by drilling ordinary residents through NYC CERT, its home-grown emergency-response squad. Volunteers have braved real flames and manufactured chaos on Randall’s Island, hoping to field-test their mettle before crowds descend for eight matches—including the final. We rather expect their cool heads to prove an undervalued currency this summer.

American households are now doling out an average $2,497 a year purely in credit-card interest, according to LendingTree and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, while balances have ballooned to a record $1.28 trillion. With average rates brushing 21% and minimal payments structured less to vanquish debt than to preserve it, we suspect issuers—not consumers—are the real beneficiaries of this never-ending minimum-wage marathon.