Construction on the $16 billion Gateway tunnel beneath the Hudson River will resume next week, after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to release $205 million in frozen funds. The project—America’s largest public works effort—had grou…
Responding to a Trump administration order and threatened loss of $73 million in federal highway funds, New York has stopped issuing commercial driver licenses to many immigrants, leaving up to 200,000—mostly truckers and school bus drivers—at risk of job loss. As legal wrangling unfolds, the driver shortage tightens, and we wonder whether the only thing moving slower than city traffic will be the courts themselves.
After a federal judge forced the Trump administration to release $77 million in frozen funds for the $16 billion Gateway rail tunnel under the Hudson, construction remains in limbo, with officials promising that shovels will eventually hit soil. Workers await go-ahead, while President Trump dubs it a “future boondoggle,” and local governors ring his phone in hope—proving even infrastructure delays can be built on a foundation of political theatre.
Governor Kathy Hochul says she will restore an estimated $60 million annually in public health aid to New York City, unwinding former governor Andrew Cuomo’s pandemic-era cuts and easing Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s $1.5 billion budget headache. The funds let the city resume essential services—vaccinations, disease control, and the like—without quite so much creative accounting. Now, if only pathogens respected budget revisions.
As Artificial Intelligence rewires hiring and entry-level pathways, New York faces the challenge of reskilling its workforce to dodge obsolescence and, ideally, keep everyone gainfully employed. Nonprofits and organizations like Per Scholas scramble to supply training, while even Salesforce’s cleverest AI tools still need human operators. As forecasts predict 60% of jobs transformed by 2030, we brace for disruption, hoping opportunity doesn’t end up as vaporware.
New York City will receive $1.5 billion in additional state funds over two years, after Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani ironed out a fresh budget deal to trim the city's multibillion-dollar deficit. Lawmakers like Jessica González-Rojas celebrated a $60 million public health boost—partially restoring funds lost in 2019—though with $30 million still unrecovered, local optimists will need to mind the fiscal gap for now.
New York’s Mayor Mamdani is threatening a 9.5% property tax hike to plug what was a $12 billion city deficit—now, apparently, a $5.4 billion gap thanks to fresh funds from Governor Hochul—but critics from the Citizens Budget Commission say he’s peddling a false dilemma and skirting real spending reform. For now, the debate over who should pay for Gotham’s largesse promises more heat than fresh accounting.
A report from the NYU Marron Institute proposes that, rather than blow $1 billion annually on free bus fares—a favourite of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign—the MTA might do better to fund subway expansion, catalysing over 160,000 new housing units. The suggested 41 miles of new track and 64 stations, mostly in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, hint that affordable rents travel faster underground than on gratis buses.
Ninety Democratic lawmakers led by Robert Garcia called on Donald Trump to abandon plans to test a citizenship question in the 2026 Census dry run, worrying it could spook immigrants and skew the numbers that decide congressional seats and billions in federal goodies. Officials promise data confidentiality, but after the legal farce last time, trust seems in even shorter supply than accurate headcounts.
