What’s in the 2026 State of the State?

Before Gov. Kathy Hochul even took the stage for the State of the State, the state GOP had already released a “prebuttal” denouncing the expected “wishlist of radical left-wing proposals” she would pitch. 

Hochul apparently anticipated the criticism. “The State of the State is not a wish list,” she wrote in the foreword of her accompanying 160-page policy book. “It is a blueprint rooted in lived experience, shaped by hard lessons, and driven by a belief that our best days are still ahead.”

To no one’s surprise, affordability once again emerged as a top issue for Hochul in her election-year agenda. “The 2026 State of the State agenda is grounded in a simple belief: government should make life more affordable, keep people safe, and expand opportunity – not shrink it,” she wrote in the forward, a tacit dig at President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress. Hochul added that meeting today’s many challenges begins by tackling affordability.

The governor already previewed a number of her marquee issues, with her plan for a pathway to universal child care chief among them. Here are some of the biggest proposals from the governor’s address.

Universal child care

This is Hochul’s big-ticket item for the year, which she previewed alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani last week. It’s one of the issues the Buffalo moderate and New York City socialist agree on, and they’re making sure people know it. Statewide, Hochul’s pathway to universal child care begins with fully realizing universal pre-K, which has theoretically been in place for years but has not existed meaningfully in practice. She promised that every 4-year-old in the state would have a pre-K seat if they wanted one by the 2028-2029 school year. 

In the city, the state would support at least the first two years of universal 2-Care, child care for 2-year olds. The city already has universal pre-K and 3-K, although Hochul wants to invest $100 million to fix existing gaps in the 3-K program. The 2-Care program would roll out over four years, starting with $73 million for the first year to cover 2,000 2-Care seats and $425 million for the second year to cover 12,000 2-Care seats. Hochul did not include estimates for the following two years, though she said the program should eventually cover more than 30,000 children. (That might not be enough, as advocates say 2-Care would need at least 55,000 seats to be considered truly universal.)

Hochul hopes to invest an additional $1.7 billion into child care as part of her budget proposal this year alone, most of which will go towards expanded child care subsidies. She also pitched a pilot program for communities to test out novel child care programs as the rest of the state catches up with New York City. 

Immigrant protections

Hochul has faced pressure to increase protections for undocumented immigrants in New York, especially in light of the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. She took a minor step in her State of the State by announcing that she would designate houses of worship, schools and hospitals as “sensitive locations” where ICE cannot enter with a judicial warrant. The move would fill a hole left at the federal level after President Donald Trump rescinded guidance that previously recognized those locations as “protected.” But Hochul still has not thrown her weight behind the New York for All Act, which would codify existing immigrant protections enacted through executive order and ban local law enforcement around the state from working with ICE. The measure has gained increasing support, with state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins offering her support for the first time last week and several congressional representatives calling for the bill to move yesterday. 

Hochul also proposed a new law that would enable people to sue ICE agents in state court for violating their civil rights. That measure would offer protesters, people wrongfully detained and others recourse against the federal agents, but it would do little to protect undocumented immigrants targeted by ICE.

Streamlining building

With an eye towards Abundance, Hochul has proposed streamlining  the state’s environmental review process to get more housing and other infrastructure built faster. It’s part of what she dubbed the “Let them Build Agenda.” The key tenet of that will be reforming the state’s environmental review process, known as the State Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA. The law went into effect 50 years ago and was seen as a landmark achievement at the time to ensure that construction did not have an outsized impact on the environment. But today, the process has become cumbersome, with issues often unrelated to actual environmental protections that can cause years of delays in new construction. The State of the State book said that SEQRA has been “weaponized” to stall projects, a common complaint from pro-development people. But even with the changes, Hochul’s proposal is careful to ensure that the streamlined process will not override local zoning.

Big tech

Continuing with her plans to both expand and regulate AI and tech, Hochul’s agenda for the year includes new proposals to protect kids on social media and to crack down on potentially deceptive uses of generative AI during election campaigns. On the online safety front, Hochul has pitched restricting the use of AI chatbot features and defaulting to the highest privacy levels for kids on social media. On generative AI, Hochul has proposed preventing candidates from utilizing “nonconsensual deepfakes” 90 days before an election. (That means candidates can produce deepfakes of themselves, but not of their opponents, as happened in last year’s New York City mayoral election with a controversial AI-generated ad of Mamdani condemned as racist.) 

Hochul wants to expand the state’s microchip manufacturing capabilities as well, moving downstate from Central New York with a new Semiconductor Chip Design Center. She also proposed building on her Empire AI initiative with the launch of Empire AI Beta. But increased AI research and attracting AI technology development will likely come with an increase of energy intensive data centers. With that in mind, Hochul proposed charging those data centers a higher utility rate for electricity to prevent shifting costs to average consumers. If the companies don’t pay up, then they have to supply their own power from outside the state grid.

Getting around

One bit of tech Hochul does want to expand? Self-driving cars. She plans to introduce legislation to expand the testing of autonomous vehicles beyond New York City, where they’re already driving around. 

And for those who drive themselves, Hochul is zeroing in on New York’s high car insurance rates, proposing a crackdown on fraud that she argues is driving up costs, and tiptoeing into tort reform that’s sure to draw fury from the state’s powerful trial lawyers lobby. 

Beyond cars, Hochul wants the Second Avenue Subway to become the 125th Street Subway. She’s committing design and engineering funding to extend the still-in-progress Q train extension from East Harlem to cut across Upper Manhattan. She’s also proposing a redesign of Jamaica Station in Queens to better connect the Long Island Rail Road, subway system and the AirTrain. 

And the governor who’s made countless subway safety announcements is also coming back to one of her key issues for the city. She wants to add intermittent barriers to subway platform edges in 85 more stations, up from the current 115. Hochul also wants to boost funding for NYPD subway patrols by $77 million and expand the teams of workers doing outreach to homeless New Yorkers in the system – though there was no dollar amount mentioned for the latter.