The Supreme Court weighed Donald Trump's Executive Order 14160, which seeks to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to undocumented or temporary residents—contradicting both the Constitution and decades of settled law. While Trum…
Some 450,000 New Yorkers are slated to lose their public health insurance this July after federal cuts—courtesy of last year’s Republican-led Congress and President Trump—forced Governor Hochul to tighten eligibility for the Essential Plan, which covers 1.7 million. State politicians, cheered on by community advocates, are scrambling for a budget fix; if haste doesn’t prevail, alternative insurance may require more than essential funds.
The Supreme Court kicked off oral arguments in Trump v. Barbara, weighing Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants and visitors—a bid opposed by the ACLU and watched keenly as the president himself sat nearby. Both liberal and conservative justices bristled at executive overreach; one suspects changing the Constitution by decree will require more than dramatic courtroom cameos.
New York City’s Council proposes giving free subway and bus rides to nearly a million low-income residents, expanding the “Fair Fares” scheme well beyond its current half-price offer for those earning under 150% of the federal poverty line. The plan pointedly avoids Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s costlier push for universal free buses—or wealthy subsidies—aiming instead at targeted relief, though as ever, the price tag travels incognito.
New York’s City Council unveiled a $6 billion plan to plug a $5.4 billion deficit without raising property taxes, instead leaning on projected savings and optimistic revenue estimates. Mayor Zohran Mamdani dismissed the approach as “unrealistic,” accusing councillors of budgetary wishful thinking. With Albany’s help only a hope, both sides now spar over whose creative accounting will keep the city’s lights—and perhaps, its sense of humour—on.
With Albany’s budget deadline receding in the rear-view mirror, New York’s lawmakers wrangle over whether to squeeze the wealthy with new taxes, tinker with protections for immigrants, and relax some environmental rules—proposals championed by Governor Kathy Hochul encounter resistance from diverse quarters. While the state’s fiscal plan languishes, we watch the legislative sausage-making with the usual mixture of curiosity and low expectations, fashionable in these parts.
Kenny Burgos, fresh from the New York Assembly to helming the New York Apartment Association, now faces his old friend Zohran Mamdani—recent mayoral hopeful—across New York’s rent battleground. Burgos argues that Mayor Adams’s proposed freeze on rent-stabilized apartments would upend the system, though landlords’ pleas rarely inspire song among tenants. As ever in Gotham, friendship and policy go their separate, rent-controlled ways.
A detailed new study from the New York Botanical Garden charts “Blue Zones”—areas comprising over 20% of New York City—once marshes, ponds, or streams and now particularly susceptible to flooding as climate change worsens. Among the 500-plus blue-tinted tracts are JFK and LaGuardia airports and a third of public housing, suggesting a city built for dry feet may need to dust off its water wings.
A coalition of state attorneys general, backed by civil rights groups, argued before the US Supreme Court that President Trump’s 2025 executive order denying birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants flouts 150 years of constitutional precedent and would affect some 250,000 babies annually. Several justices appeared unconvinced by the administration’s reasoning, perhaps sensing that Roman law rarely wins the day in Washington.
