New York City in brief

In a sweeping rewrite impressive for its audacity if not its timing, the US Department of Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has dropped six more vaccines—including hepatitis A and B, influenza, and meningococcal—from the children’s schedule, following last year’s COVID vaccine removal. One stroke of sense: girls now need only a single HPV jab. Sometimes, progress arrives as an afterthought amid the whittling.

New York suffered its largest blizzard in years, with parts of Staten Island and the Bronx buried under thirteen inches of snow, prompting Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul to declare a state of emergency. Around 657,000 lost power across the East Coast, while over 14,000 flights were canceled. Public transit creaked, yet city life ticked on, demonstrating that not even historic “whiteouts” can keep New Yorkers indoors for long.

Greeted by two feet of snow and paralysis from Brooklyn to the Bronx, New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani brandished lessons from January’s deadly cold snap—this time doubling warming centers and dispatching 800 shovelers, city officials claim, before sunup. Transit stalled, travel banned, and sidewalks cleared surprisingly quickly; as of Monday, no fatalities—though praise and criticism remained mostly snowed in, pending the city’s ever-watchful council.

New York’s affordable housing conundrum remains stubbornly undimmed, with efforts sprawling from new vouchers and streamlined zoning to a White House keen to deter Wall Street’s landlord ambitions. In step with this scattershot approach, City & State’s Who’s Who in Affordable Housing spotlights a formidable array of policymakers, nonprofit leaders, and dealmakers—none quite able yet to conjure that elusive magic wand, but all gamely waving.

After 41 days of picketing in a rather brisk New York City winter, the 4,200 nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian have voted overwhelmingly—93%—to ratify a three-year contract, joining colleagues at Montefiore and Mount Sinai in securing a 12% pay rise, boosted staffing, AI protections and other concessions. Nurses will soon return to work, leaving management to nurse its wounds—at least until the next bargaining round.