Dina Levy, freshly minted as commissioner of New York’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, says she’ll forge new ways to prevent tenants from being ousted when they can’t pay rent—a tall order in a city where affordable housing is a…
From March 16th, commuter trains will roll over the new Portal North Bridge in Kearny, New Jersey, replacing an ancient lift bridge notorious for holding up 200,000 daily riders on America’s busiest rail corridor. NJ Transit promises the second track by autumn, presumably to double the pleasure. With any luck, the Hackensack won’t see such hair-raising delays until the next bridge lasts 116 years.
New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and FIFA chief Gianni Infantino wrapped up closed-door talks fine-tuning their grand plans for July’s 2026 World Cup final at MetLife Stadium—where billions will watch and not a few dollars will change hands. Logistics sparkle, controversy lingers: President Trump has “welcomed” Iran’s team, only to caution them to stay home. Apparently, even football can’t quite dribble past geopolitics.
With a $5.4bn budget hole looming, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s radical memo to Albany proposes slashing New York’s estate tax exemption from $7m to $750,000 and boosting the top rate to 50%—measures billed as “tax the rich” but likely to catch many an unsuspecting brownstone in their sweep. If enacted, the mayor could find the exodus of assets rivals the flight of pigeons from Central Park.
After a joint U.S. and Israeli air assault on Iran, Tehran’s new Supreme Leader has closed the Strait of Hormuz—the oil world’s jugular—sparking further tanker attacks near Iraq and sending crude over $100 a barrel. Gasoline in America is up more than 20%, the Dow down 4%, and Donald Trump’s shrugging bravado has yet to fill either strategic reserves or the disconcerting gaps in his administration’s memory.
The U.S. Department of Justice, eyeing the 2022 midterms, has sued 29 states and Washington, D.C., pressing for access to swathes of voter data in the name of election security—a move raising eyebrows among those wary that the Trump administration is preparing to dispute inconvenient outcomes. We note that counting votes is hard enough without adding lawyers armed with fishing rods to the ballot box.
After Columbia University published a report on Robert Hadden—a former OBGYN found liable for sexually assaulting hundreds of women—Assembly Member Grace Lee and fellow critics dismissed it as a thinly veiled attempt to “save face,” urging Attorney General Letitia James to intervene. Given that Columbia has paid over $1 billion to more than 1,000 claimants, we suspect this story’s roots run deeper than a student essay.
Donald Trump boasted that U.S. forces “annihilated” all military targets on Iran’s Kharg Island, a linchpin for Tehran’s oil exports, in what he called one of the Middle East’s most powerful airstrikes. Sotto voce, he warned infrastructure was left intact—unless Iran hampers shipping in the Strait of Hormuz—thus keeping some oil in the global pipeline, and perhaps a little powder dry for future tweets.
Jonathan Haidt, whose book "The Anxious Generation" helped ignite global debate over social media’s impact on young minds, now sees his warnings echoed in legislative halls from Australia to California. As lawsuits and new laws attempt to pin some blame on the Metas and TikToks of the world, we marvel that the digital foxes remain largely in charge of the algorithmic henhouse—for now.
