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Blakeman to attend Game 3 of NBA Finals with Trump

Kate Lisa — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 14:13:38 -0400

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman will be at game three of the NBA Finals Monday night to cheer on the Knicks with President Donald Trump.

The Nassau County executive is expected to enjoy the game with the president from a Madison Square Garden suite, but first, the pair plan to sit down and have dinner to discuss a range of issues.

“We might have a hamburger together,” Blakeman told City & State on Saturday from his box seat at the Belmont Stakes at the Saratoga Race Course.

A spokesperson for Blakeman’s campaign did not immediately explain how Blakeman was paying for his ticket, but said it was not a gift from MSG CEO James Dolan. Trump has said that Dolan invited him to the game. Even the cheapest tickets to the game have been listed for more than $10,000.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he’s also planning to attend the Monday night game, and paying his own way – though questions about the specifics of his ticket purchase were not immediately answered by City Hall.

Blakeman often speaks with and meets with Trump – most recently at a May 22 rally in Rockland County to stump for Rep. Mike Lawler. Blakeman said he expects Trump will be visiting the state more frequently to help congressional candidates like Lawler, and himself, campaign this election year. “I think we’ll see a lot of him,” Blakeman said while enjoying races at the Belmont for the second day in a row.

The 158th running of the Belmont was held in Saratoga Springs again this year, but will return to Nassau County next year with reopening of the new, $455 million redevelopment of Belmont Park. Blakeman said that project, championed by his Democratic opponent, Gov. Kathy Hochul, was a smart investment – one he’d emulate statewide if he becomes governor to expand the horse racing industry. “We’ve got big plans for Saratoga and big plans for the racing industry,” Blakeman said. “We want to take on Kentucky and become the premier racing state in the United States.”

The industry has seen a decline in recent years with greater reporting and attention on the public subsidies and the number of horses dying each season. But Blakeman said he’s an animal lover, and it’s about a balance.

“I think there comes a point in time where you also have to use common sense, and you also have to understand that there are things that are traditional for years and years and years that benefit the whole community,” he said, “and horse racing is one of those.”

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What did and didn't get done in Albany’s last week of session

Rebecca C. Lewis and Kate Lisa — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 12:00:00 -0400

And just like that, Albany is quiet once again (and likely will be for much of the remainder of the year) with focus shifted to the midterm elections.

The legislative session ended with the same calm but plodding, and heavy, air that hung over the exceedingly late state budget process that wrapped last week. Still, lawmakers managed to clear 485 bills in both houses in the final week, for a total of 759 bills for the whole year. Not bad, but fewer than the 563 they passed in the last year’s (slightly extended) final week and 856 bills total for the year.

“This is not a normal place, and I think we can all agree on that,” state Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt said just before 1 a.m. Friday. Amen to that.

The state Senate wrapped up its legislative work for the year in the wee hours of Friday morning after a day of marathon debating and voting. The Assembly followed suit just after 8 p.m. Friday – just in time to catch the Knicks win game two of the NBA Finals, but not without heartfelt sentiments from longtime departing members, including Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes.

A few surprises punctuated session’s end as some legislation cleared one house and not the other, either because it fell apart in negotiations, or lawmakers simply ran out of time. Any measure that didn’t wind up passing both houses is now officially dead for the year. And for the bills that did pass, Gov. Kathy Hochul has until the end of the year (or in some cases, until the start of February) to sign them into law, or veto them.

A prolonged state budget process left state lawmakers with just one post-budget legislative week to pass any number of members’ legislative priorities. But they still did an admirable job of getting hundreds of bills moved through both chambers, including some controversial measures which saw their political futures fluctuating wildly as everyone and their mother attempted to move the needle in their favor.

Legislators weren’t exactly pleased with the amount of time the budget negotiations dragged on this year, truncating the typical two-plus month period for legislating without Hochul in the driver’s seat. But the mad dash in the last week of session is hardly new, even if the circumstances this year are different. State lawmakers regularly pass hundreds of bills through both chambers in the waning days of the scheduled session, including some of the most controversial measures of the year. And this time turned out no different.

Now that lawmakers have finished debating, New Yorkers have a much clearer picture on what their lawmakers did – and did not – manage to get done before heading home.. Here’s how things have landed. This story was last updated on June 7.

PASSED

Redistricting amendments

New York leaders have been frank for weeks: They won’t leave Albany for the year without passing a constitutional amendment to tweak the state’s redistricting process. True to their word, legislators approved the measure after six hours of – at times very tense – debate combined between the two chambers. The next step for lawmakers is to pass it again next year, allowing it to go before voters as early as November 2027.

As first reported by Politico, legislative leaders introduced a proposal late Monday to give the Legislature the power to redraw its election districts in the middle of a decade while removing language that prohibits gerrymandering – something the state Constitution specifically prohibits. And it removes the requirement for a two-thirds majority vote to override the Independent Redistricting Commission if one party controls the Legislature. Like any constitutional amendment, it will have to pass in a consecutive legislative session before going before voters in a statewide ballot proposal in 2027.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that weakened the Civil Rights-era Voting Rights Act has kicked off a national race in both parties to draw partisan districts and give them an edge in House control.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters Tuesday New York Democrats want to change the state law that prohibits districts from favoring a certain political party because of that ruling.

“We want to be able to have as much flexibility in our districts as other states around the nation,” he said, adding he’s concerned about Republicans trying to wipe out Black members of Congress. “This thing about asking New York to play fair while everybody else is playing ruthless, I think, is not right to ask us this.”

Rep. Mike Lawler, who’s facing one of the most competitive midterm elections in the country in NY-17, traveled to Albany on Monday to blast Democrats’ latest efforts to alter redistricting in the state. “The only way they think they can beat me is if they gerrymander,” he said. New York Republicans and Democrats are pointing the finger at each other for starting the redistricting battle. Lawler said he’s confident both parties will spend millions to defeat, or pass, any statewide ballot proposal that goes to voters, including legal challenges. “Obviously, this is a national fight, I think everybody realizes that,” Lawler said, later adding: “That’s just a reality of where we are today.”

More even-year elections

Redistricting wasn’t the only constitutional amendment to move at the end of the legislative session. The state Senate gave first passage to another one that would move local elections in cities throughout New York – with the exception of New York City – from odd to even years. It would also shift judicial races to even years as well. The amendment builds on a contentious law from 2023 that moved most town and county elections from odd to even years in order to consolidate them with state and federal races. The amendment would largely complete the odd-to-even-year shift throughout the state, exempting only New York City. Big Apple residents last year voted down a ballot referendum on whether state lawmakers should institute the change in the five boroughs. The Assembly was debating the amendment Friday afternoon, so its passage was imminent.

AI data center moratorium

In another environmental priority, legislators had hoped to approve a three-year moratorium on building new data centers, which today are largely used for artificial intelligence data processing. They reached a compromise on a one-year moratorium as part of a larger data center omnibus bill. It passed the Assembly first on Thursday, with the state Senate following a few hours later, in spite of some staunch opposition.

Data centers are hugely energy intensive, and require massive amounts of water, resulting in significant negative environmental effects and strain on the state’s electrical grid at a time when it’s already in a state of crisis. During the moratorium, the bill would require the state Department of Environmental Conservation to issue an environmental impact report on data centers.

News of the deal to pass the moratorium drew swift backlash from powerful building trades unions. Newsday reported the groups have begun circulating a memo of opposition among legislators that argued delays to new projects would have harmful economic impacts.

The state previously passed a similar multiyear pause on cryptocurrency mining projects, which also make use of data centers, for similar environmental and grid concerns.

In addition to the moratorium, the new omnibus includes parts of other bills relating to data centers, including a measure to set energy efficiency and environmental standards for the centers, requiring the Public Service Commission to account for high-energy usage data centers when considering utility rate increases and enacting new regulations to ensure that those data centers pay more equitable energy prices for their outsized grid impacts. Yet another data center measure included in the package would require large centers to provide direct benefit to the communities they’re located in, whether through utility relief measures or funding home electrification projects.

The omnibus bill also includes a decades-old bill that would require the state PSC to consider the economic impact of significant rate increase on New Yorkers before approving such increases, a measure not directly related to data centers.

Moratorium on AI chatbots in toys

It’s a big year for moratoriums, it seems, as both chambers of the Legislature approved legislation to place a five-year pause on the sale of toys for young kids that include AI chatbots. During that time, the bill would empower a task force with representatives from the state Department of State, Office of Mental Health, attorney general’s office and Office of Digital Innovation, Governance, Integrity and Trust with studying the risks that those chatbot toys may pose to children.

It’s the latest in a series of laws that have gone into effect in recent years to enact protections for young people against potentially harmful new technologies. Hochul has been at the forefront supporting or helping to champion some of the measures, including a recent ban on addictive algorithmic feeds for children and a cellphone ban in schools.

Both the state Senate and Assembly passed the measure on Tuesday, meaning its next stop is Hochul’s desk.

Cannabis inversion

Lawmakers tackled the pervasive issue of cannabis inversion, or the illegal trafficking of cannabis products – typically from other states – and presenting them on the licensed market as legal products. The Cannabis Supply Chain Integrity and Anti-Inversion Act explicitly prohibits cannabis inversion and gives the state Office of Cannabis Management and Cannabis Control Board clearer statutory authority to investigate and impose penalties for trafficked products, including license suspension and revocation, product seizure and civil penalties.

State Senate confirmations

Not to be forgotten, the upper chamber of the state Legislature typically has a series of gubernatorial nominations to various positions to confirm (or in rare cases, reject) before the end of the legislative year. City & State first reported that Hochul nominated a formerly incarcerated man to fill out the five-person state Commission of Correction. A new law approved last year requires that at least one commissioner on the body have previously served time in a jail or prison. Hochul decided to select Alexander Dockery, whose sentence she commuted about three years ago. The full state Senate confirmed him on Thursday.

The state Senate confirmed John Kagia on Wednesday as the Office of Cannabis Management’s permanent new executive director after Hochul appointed him in an acting capacity in February. Senators also gave approval to two other Hochul administration picks: Terry O’Leary as the commissioner of the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services and Kathy Moser as the commissioner of the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Members also confirmed Audrey Zibelman as the new board chair of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, a move applauded by environmental advocates.

Additionally, the chamber gave approval to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s picks to join the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board on Thursday. Members also approved Kathryn Wylde, the former president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, to serve on the New York City Financial Control Board.

Health Information Privacy Act

Hochul vetoed a version of a bill meant to protect New Yorkers’ digital healthcare information last year, but legislators are trying again this year. Both chambers approved a reintroduced and slightly tweaked version of the bill on Thursday. It will head to Hochul next, who rejected it previously due to overly broad provisions she argued could have unintended consequences.

Although the bill was pitched as a reproductive health justice measure – meant to protect reproductive health data that could be weaponized against people in areas where access to abortion care is illegal or restricted – it faced staunch opposition from both business interests and the tech industry. Regulations within the legislation would have far-reaching implications around data privacy, as well as how companies can access that data, potentially well beyond the type of HIPAA-protected health information it is intended to target. The bill was one of the top lobbied bills last year, one of only two non-budget bills in the top 10 list.

Delaying New York City class size mandates

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani asked the state to delay the full implementation of a law to reduce class sizes as a cost-saving measure as he attempts to balance his first budget. The measure fell out of budget negotiations, but a new bill from state Sen. John Liu has prepped the issue to get resolved before lawmakers go home for the year. The legislation would give the city an extra two years to adhere to the class size law, extending the deadline from 2028 to 2030, giving Mamdani some breathing room and savings.

Regulating surveillance pricing (one passed, one dead)

New York business leaders aren’t pleased with state Attorney General Letitia James’ campaign to aggressively regulate surveillance pricing. A source familiar with the office’s strategy said Wednesday that James’ staff was calling lawmakers in both chambers this week in effort to whip votes and ensure two bills addressing the issue get to Hochul’s desk. And her efforts seemed to work. At least, mostly.

Both chambers late Thursday and very early Friday approved one of the bills James pushed called the One Fair Price Act. It would ban surveillance pricing, or the act of companies using a consumer’s personal data to set individualized prices in real time. This follows a 2025 law that required businesses to disclose when they use algorithmic pricing.

James’ office enforces that policy, and slaps a $1,000 penalty on businesses that fail to comply. But business leaders are vehemently against additional regulation, arguing shoppers will miss out on special deals and discounts.

James also urged the Legislature to pass a bill to prohibit the use of electronic shelf labels in grocery stores, pharmacies and other brick-and-mortar businesses that can change prices throughout the day, but the Assembly failed to bring it to the floor. The state Senate approved that bill on Thursday.

Business groups lobbying against the proposals, and lobbyists with organizations like AARP that are in favor of the regulations, were out in force in the Capitol on Wednesday, increasing their pressure on lawmakers as both proposals remain in limbo.

Casino payments to racetracks

Resorts World recently began a stealth campaign to change state law governing payments its new downstate commercial casino will need to make to the horse racing industry. Under current law, the three full New York City casinos recently granted licenses are meant to pay the $150 million in “racing support” annually to the state’s Racing Association – but until the other two open up, Resorts World will be on the hook for the full sum every year. With just days left, legislative leaders quietly introduced a bill that included a fix to help Resorts World by allowing that money to come out of the casino’s tax revenue – a pot of money currently earmarked for transportation improvements and education – rather than through separate payments directly out of the casino’s own pocket (at least until the other gambling halls open up up). Both chambers have passed it and Hochul has signaled her support as well, so it’s likely to get signed.

Industrial octopus farming ban

It’s not unusual for animal rights activists to get state lawmakers to hear their plea. And their passion worked again this year as a measure cleared both chambers to ban industrial octopus farming and prohibit the sale of farmed octopus products throughout the state. If signed into law, "aquaculture" or the farming and breeding of any species of octopus under controlled conditions for human consumption, would be prohibited in the state. Any business would also not be permitted to sell, possess or transport any farmed octopus within the state. It does not apply to wild-caught octopi, those that are raised, cultivated or harvested for research or educational purposes.

Two-person train crews

After Hochul vetoed a bill last year to require the current, two-person crews on New York City subway trains, lawmakers are giving it another go in an effort to protect existing jobs. The state Senate passed a new version of the legislation on Thursday night, and the Assembly did the same on Friday afternoon. The measure is strongly supported by Transport Workers United Local 100 – frequent and harsh critics of the governor – while transit advocacy and good government groups oppose it.

Child sex trafficking loophole

Both chambers approved legislation to fix a loophole that allows adults who bought sex from 15- to 17-year-olds to only face minimal consequences. Under current law, not all minors are treated the same when it comes to sexual exploitation, trafficking and prostitution. The bill would update the state law to conform with federal statute to ensure that someone who purchases sex from anyone who is under 18 can face the same penalties.

Kyra’s Law

Judges across the state will have to prioritize the life and safety of the child in a custody case if Hochul signs a bill that unanimously passed the Legislature. The legislation, known as Kyra’s Law, is named for 2-year-old Kyra Franchetti, whose father shot her in the back while she slept during a court-ordered unsupervised visit in 2016. He then doused his home with gasoline in a murder-suicide during an ongoing custody battle. If the bill becomes law, justices will have to undergo specific child abuse training intended to reduce the instances of children being hurt, or murdered, by an abusive caretaker.

DEAD

Essential Plan

Lawmakers are heading home without taking any targeted action to help more than 450,000 New Yorkers who are set to lose their low- to-no cost, state-subsidized health insurance come July 1. Thanks to federal changes, hundreds of thousands of low-income New Yorkers will lose access to the Essential Plan. Though back in March, the state managed to avoid an even more dire outcome that would have seen over a million losing their coverage, the action meant that New Yorkers making between 200% and 250% of the federal poverty line would lose coverage.

Legislators had introduced a measure for the state to continue insuring that population on New York’s dime. Cost estimates varied greatly, as did the number of people expected to use the coverage – as they might purchase a private plan on the marketplace or return to their employer’s insurance instead. Lawmakers and state leaders also discussed methods to keep the state price tag down while keeping the low-cost insurance option. But it never made it into the budget and was not moved on during the last week of session.

In a shift in tone Thursday, Stewart-Cousins seemed to lay the blame for the inaction squarely at the feet of Hochul. “We did try – we suggested different ways,” she told reporters. “The governor was frankly not a supporter. So we are looking at, yes, that situation in July.”

Packaging reduction

Another year, another attempt to pass the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act. After two straight years of near-misses in the Assembly, lawmakers are once again trying to combat extensive and deep-pocketed opposition efforts that have successfully kept the bill off the floor of the lower chamber. According to Heastie, those efforts from lawmakers are set to fail again, as he told reporters Tuesday the legislation doesn’t have the votes, even if he personally supports the bill.

Among other things, the legislation would require a 30% reduction in single-use packaging and require the creation of what’s called an extended producer responsibility program that would put the recycling onus on plastic companies and other major corporations that create the most single-use packaging.

Unlike past years, when the state Senate approved the bill earlier in the year, the upper chamber hasn’t yet acted on it this year. A recently amended version of the bill still has to make it through both houses, but the fight still boils down to the Assembly, where it may have the support – if it actually ever makes it to an actual vote. Legislators ran out of time last year after expecting it to come to the Assembly floor, and they appeared willing to at least try again after Democrats privately conferenced the legislation.

Closing the sexual exploitation loophole

Survivors of abuse by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are calling on state lawmakers to create new felony crimes for profiting from trafficking and to expand legal protections for survivors. The Trafficking Survivor Recovery and Accountability Act targets traffickers and makes it a crime for someone to finance a trafficking operation or advertise for it, maintain a premises that traffickers use, provide transportation or security for or otherwise support a trafficking operation while receiving something of value in return. It applies to any person who “knew or reasonably should have known” they were participating in trafficking. The bill advanced in the state Senate, but didn’t move in the Assembly.

The measure would significantly expand a trafficking survivor’s ability to bring civil lawsuits against their abusers, as well as businesses, property owners, estates or other entities that participated in profiting from the operation. But critics are concerned the standard is too broad and will open businesses and property owners to litigation. It would open a one-year lookback window for survivors of trafficking crimes that have already expired beyond its statute of limitations to file lawsuits – similar to temporary lookback windows the state has opened for survivors of child sexual abuse or sexual abuse that occurred as an adult.

Anti-“anti-weaponization” legislation

Unlike the redistricting amendments, lawmakers have in fact introduced legislation meant to take aim at President Donald Trump’s nearly $2 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that would benefit those who claim the federal government unfairly investigated or persecuted them. Participants of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the White House are expected to receive most of the payouts. The bill from lawmakers would tax any payout from the fund to New Yorkers at a rate of 100%. But the new legislation takes attention and resources away from existing measures lawmakers have pushed for with limited time left in the session. The bill appears moot now though, as Trump’s Justice Department decided to pull the plug on the fund following backlash.

340B

Legislative leaders were close, but failed, to reach a compromise on a measure that intends to preserve the integrity of savings within the federal 340B program, which allows hospitals and clinics that serve low-income and underserved populations to purchase outpatient drugs at a discount. The bill, which passed the state Senate in the 11th hour, would bar pharmaceutical manufacturers, pharmacy benefit managers and other third-party providers from creating obstacles to access the discounted drugs for safety-net healthcare providers that participate in the program. It would also give the state health commissioner the authority to impose civil penalties on entities that violate the rules. But it died in the Assembly, meaning negotiations will go back to the drawing board next year.

Upstate rent control

This might be the year Democrats in Albany decide to expand rent stabilization outside New York City amid an ongoing housing crisis. Legislative leaders have indicated they’re exploring passing a measure to update the Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974. Current law requires local governments to conduct a vacancy study to prove it has a housing vacancy rate of 5% or less to adopt rent stabilization. The proposed Rent Emergency Stabilization for Tenants, or REST Act, would let localities outside the five boroughs use more public data like rates of homelessness or eviction rates in place of a costly vacancy study to declare a housing emergency and impose local rent control. Heastie told reporters on Tuesday that Democrats in his chamber had privately conferenced the measure, but ultimately the measure didn’t make it to the floor in either chamber.

Voluntary intoxication loophole

All eyes are on the Assembly to pass a bill to change the state’s rape law and make it easier to prosecute sex crimes. Current law can shield a person who’s been charged with rape or other sex crimes if the survivor chose to become intoxicated at the time it occured. The measure, which has passed the state Senate unanimously multiple times, would ban the legal defense citing intoxication of the accuser and also clarifies the limitations of consent. It would make it a crime to have sex with a semi-conscious person who is unable to consent, or so heavily under the influence of drugs or alcohol that they cannot control their conduct or express a clear lack of consent where a reasonable person would know they were incapacitated.

With the session clock ticking, 20 Epstein survivors signed and sent a letter to Heastie on May 28, urging him to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. The Assembly reverted to the original version of the bill May 5, and the state Senate reintroduced one that matches this week. It remains in the Assembly Codes Committee, where it died for the year.

Beauty Justice Act

The end of the legislative session brought with it pretty intense campaigns both for and against legislation to restrict the ingredients used in makeup and cosmetics. It targets toxic and potentially harmful chemicals that could have negative impacts on both people and the environment, including PFAS “forever chemicals” and some heavy metals. Companies and businesses would no longer be allowed to sell products containing any banned ingredients. The bill has staunch opposition from cosmetic industry groups, some salon owners and some business groups.

The state Senate passed the bill earlier this year, and passed it last year as well. It failed to advance in the Assembly on the last day of session, even though it was close, getting held up in the Ways and Means Committee.

Child Victims Act/Adult Survivors Act loophole

Roughly 1,800 pending cases – about 300 filed under the Child Victims Act and close to 1,500 under the Adult Survivors Act – will have a higher chance of getting dismissed on minor factual technicalities because the Assembly failed to take up a bill that would have fixed the issue. The 2019 Child Victims Act, and similar Adult Survivors Act from 2022, opened temporary lookback windows for survivors of sexual crimes to file civil cases against their abusers for a limited time, regardless of how much time had passed.

A state Court of Appeals decision last year dismissed a case filed under the Child Victims Act for lacking sufficient information to bring a claim against the state. Survivor advocates argue it’s unrealistic for survivors to know the exact time, date and location when their abuse occurred, including for many cases from people who were in prison at the time.

Last month, Heastie said he wasn’t sure if the measure was a priority for the lower house. Clearly, it wasn’t, as it died in the Judiciary Committee and didn’t advance since early April. This session likely marked one of the last chances to move the bill and make the fix, as most of the pending cases get resolved, or dismissed, over the next year.

Mobile horse race gambling

Five years ago, the state legalized mobile sports betting to much fanfare and following a tough fight with strong support and opposition. Left behind in that law was betting on horse races, which did not benefit from the update. The New York Racing Association is now pushing for legislation that would update the law to treat horse racing the same as other forms of sports wagering, and to permit the users of mobile and online sports betting operators to place bets on races – so long as the operators of the app or website have entered into an agreement with the race track in question. The bill sponsors predict the change could generate up to $250 million in tax revenue for the state.

Additional immigration reforms

Legislators may have won significant new immigrant protections in the state budget this year, but that won’t stop them from still trying to get the full New York for All Act that would cover what was left out of the final deal with Hochul. The sponsors and other supportive lawmakers and advocates have criticized the budget deal for failing to ban all forms of informal cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials. To accomplish that and more, they committed to continue pushing for the New York for All Act. The limited time left in the session, the fact the state has already approved a large immigrant protection package and how tense negotiations were to get to that point, proved too much to overcome, and lawmakers unsurprisingly did not pass the measure.

Legislators also introduced a new bill for the end of the session that would prohibit armed government officials and military from interfering at poll sites. The sponsor’s memo cites concerns about federal immigration enforcement being deployed at polling places, and the bill is meant to strengthen a measure approved as part of the budget immigration package that designates poll sites as sensitive locations that immigration agents cannot enter without judicial warrants. The measure was introduced explicitly after the budget passed in the hopes it would get approved before lawmakers go home, but legislators are splitting town without voting on it.

Criminal justice reforms (at least the big ones)

In what has almost become a perennial issue, criminal justice reform advocates are once again hoping to get sentencing, parole and other prison reform measures through the state Legislature before lawmakers go home. Advocates have recently begun highlighting the fact that over 200 people have died in state prisons since the beating death of Robert Brooks in December 2024. Though legislators approved omnibus prison reform legislation last year, it didn’t include most of the high-profile measures activists have for years fought to pass, including the Second Look Act, the Fair & Timely Parole Act, the Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act and other bills to increase rights for people behind bars.

Those higher-profile measures didn’t wind up moving in the Legislature this year, but some smaller items did advance. That included a measure that would enable judges to accept plea deals that are below a required mandatory minimum sentence for an offense in certain cases “in the interest of justice.” Another bill that got done would make it illegal to restrain an incarcerated person actively giving birth, as well as to restrain pregnant and postpartum people in law enforcement custody, including at police stations and in courthouses.

Fair Pricing Act

Legislation that would cap prices for routine outpatient healthcare procedures somewhat unexpectedly gained traction in the past month – just not enough to make it over the finish line. Democrats unanimously voted to advance the bill out of the Assembly Health Committee on May 27, and state Senate Democrats did the same in their chamber’s Health Committee on May 12. It’s meant to ensure New Yorkers don’t get charged more for the same procedure at a hospital outpatient facility as at a doctor's office, by capping prices in both settings at 150% Medicare rates. The measure has strong union support, with 32BJ SEIU leading the charge alongside other labor groups like the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and the District Council 37. But it has faced opposition from hospital and healthcare industry groups that stand to lose money from a cap.

Champerty law reform

The issue of sovereign debt purchasing is a perennial end-of-session item, as is the case this year. New York-based hedge funds often purchase foreign debt from developing nations and economically struggling territories like Puerto Rico. It’s particularly salient in New York’s immigrant communities.

The purchase of that debt by venture capital funds can serve to make those groups millions – or even billions – by suing those territories over their debt, leaving them in an even deeper fiscal hole and greatly hindering attempts at economic revitalization. According to a memo from the sponsors of a bill to amend the Champerty Doctrine in New York to close a 2004 loophole, more than half of sovereign debt contracts are governed by state statute.

The state Senate approved the bill on Wednesday, as it has done in past years, but so far it has failed to move through the Assembly even once, as it failed again to do this year.

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What Mamdani got – and didn’t get – from Albany this year

Annie McDonough, Holly Pretsky, and Sahalie Donaldson — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 17:37:46 -0400

Former Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani didn’t vote on the state budget this year, but the $268 billion spending plan impacts him now more than ever. As state lawmakers conclude their 2026 legislative session, Mamdani has extracted some major wins from his former colleagues – including a mechanism to kill his predecessor’s Charter Revision Commission and an infusion of cash for childcare and reducing the city budget gap. Mamdani was also granted a limited levy on the wealthy in the form of a pied-à-terre tax on second homes worth more than $1 million – a bone to throw to his billionaire-chomping base.

Mamdani’s first legislative session as New York City mayor has been challenging, to say the least. Soon after he came into office, he raised the alarm about a massive two-year city budget gap he estimated at $12 billion. That number shrunk significantly with tax revenue updates and an influx of cash from the governor, but Mamdani still caused panic and outrage when he floated the idea of raising property taxes in the city to close the remaining gap.

Mamdani dropped that idea in his executive budget, released May 12. Despite Hochul’s earlier contention that the state had already delivered plenty of assistance to New York City, she promised $4 billion in additional last-minute state actions to close a remaining budget gap over this fiscal year and next. The lion’s share of that comes from state-authorized restructuring of the city’s pension payments – a measure public employee unions aren’t thrilled about.

Mamdani is now newly empowered by an influx of state aid as his budget team and the City Council negotiate the city budget due June 30.

“The Mamdani administration is incredibly proud of the work we did to address the structural imbalance between the city and the state and balance a historic deficit without cutting essential services,” City Hall spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement. “The Mayor is grateful to Governor Hochul, Leader Stewart-Cousins, and Speaker Heastie for their partnership.”

Here are the mayor’s big wins and losses from the 2026 state legislative session.

WINS

Charter Revision Commission killer

For weeks, Mamdani said little about where he stood as the Charter Revision Commission convened by former Mayor Eric Adams on his last day in office barreled forward. While it was generally understood that Mamdani didn’t want the zombie-like panel to advance any questions onto the November ballot, there was only so much he could do beyond cutting off funding. That is until state lawmakers, at Mamdani’s request, granted him a new power to accept or reject the commission. Mamdani wasted no time killing his predecessor’s creation and forming his own Charter Revision Commission.

Pension restructuring

As far as methods to close a budget gap go, pension restructuring certainly isn’t the sexiest. But it’s expected to free up a good chunk of the money in the short run: an estimated $2.3 billion over two years. To do so, Hochul and state lawmakers agreed to grant the city permission to stretch out its annual public pension contributions so that it meets its long-term obligation by 2037 rather than 2032, the current deadline. Mamdani has insisted that the proposal won’t have any impact on retirees and their benefits – nor will it impact current employees and their future benefits, though that hasn’t stopped critics from raising concerns about shifting costs into future years. State approval was only step one. Next, the proposal will need to earn the approval of the boards that oversee the city’s five municipal pension funds. Unions, which hold considerable influence over said boards, have yet to sign off on the idea.

Child care funding

One of the earliest wins Mamdani secured from Albany this session was also one of the most politically significant. After campaigning on a three-prong promise of fast and free buses, rent freeze and universal childcare, Mamdani was able to say just a week into his term that he was making serious headway on the third. Hochul agreed to provide funding for a new, free childcare program for 2-year-olds, starting with 2,000 seats this fall and growing from there. While Hochul committed state funding for the first two years, the commitments are less clear in the following years. But it’s a mutually beneficial partnership for Mamdani and Hochul, who is running for reelection, and the two have appeared together often to celebrate it in the months since.

Pied-à-terre tax

Many of us learned who Ken Griffin was this spring, thanks to a megaviral video Mamdani recorded outside the hedge fund CEO’s $238 million penthouse to tout a new pied-à-terre tax, which Mamdani said will raise $500 million annually. (Skeptics, including city Comptroller Mark Levine, have questioned whether the new tax will actually pull in that much given how difficult it can be to implement.) The video caused a dust-up with the corporate honchos, but the tax is a testament to the power of Mamdani’s populist campaign. This tax will apply to second homes worth more than $1 million.

Class size relief

New York City schools will now have an additional two years to comply with a state law aimed at shrinking class sizes, giving the city some relief from the costly state measure first enacted in 2022. Those requirements have been gradually phased in over the past couple of years to the delight of educators who’ve long argued that smaller classes lead to better learning outcomes. Under the initial timeline, all classrooms were supposed to be in compliance with the cap of 20 to 25 students by the 2027-28 school year. Now with compliance pushed back another two years, the Mamdani administration is expected to save around $500 million next school year followed by an additional $730 million in the next year.

Mayoral control

Mamdani will get at least two more years of control over the New York City public school system. While that’s less than the four-year extension he and Hochul pushed for, two years isn’t far from the ordinary – especially given the mayor’s prior position on the policy. As a candidate, he’d openly campaigned on overhauling mayoral control, only to backtrack shortly before taking office.

SEQRA reform

While Mamdani himself has made a few high profile trips to Albany since he took office, his intergovernmental team and even some commissioners have been doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Newly installed Department and Housing Preservation and Development Commissioner Dina Levy trekked to Albany to lobby for reforms to the State Environmental Quality Review Act to ease some strict environmental review restrictions and speed new housing construction. Those reforms were included in the state budget.

LOSSES

The original “tax the rich” pitch

One area where Hochul and Mamdani did not see eye to eye this year – arguably the most consequential – was over his proposal to tax the rich. Sure, the state budget does include a new tax on the rich via the pied-à-terre tax, but while Mamdani’s team has claimed that as a “tax the rich” win, it’s far from the more substantial tax hikes on high earners and large corporations that Mamdani campaigned on and subsequently lobbied for. While the state Legislature backed those proposals, Hochul has been adamantly opposed, and stuck to that opposition throughout the budget process and session. She also quickly shot down a joint proposal from Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin to reduce a tax credit targeted at the rich. Luckily for Mamdani, Hochul stepped in in other ways to help the city close its budget gap.

No free buses this year

Not so fast – or free. One of Mamdani’s key campaign planks will go unfulfilled in his first year in office. His pitch for fast and free buses hardly made it to the negotiating table in Albany. That’s likely a reflection of the need to balance priorities as well as the reality that the proposal faces more opposition from Hochul, Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Janno Lieber, and even some local elected officials who want to see more attention to low-income riders first. It’s not necessarily dead in future years, however. In appointing his nominees to the MTA board at the end of session (who have now been confirmed) Mamdani made sure to highlight that they would “help ensure” that fast and free buses happen.

Buffer zones

Just when it looked like Mamdani had managed to successfully diminish a politically dicey proposal to enact protest buffer zones outside of houses of worship, lawmakers and Hochul swooped in with the passage of their own, more intensive version. Unlike the City Council’s measure requiring the New York City Police Department to develop and publicize a plan to deploy security perimeters around places of worship, the new state law actually establishes a 50-foot buffer around these facilities. Protesters who “knowingly or intentionally” in behavior that causes an individual “reasonable fear for their safety” could be slapped with a class B misdemeanor. So far, Mamdani has said little about the state measure, but it’ll likely draw legal challenges from critics who’ve raised concerns about restricting protest activity.

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Council members want answers about last month’s courtroom birth

Sahalie Donaldson — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0400

More than half of the members in the New York City Council sent a letter to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the city’s district attorneys and administrative judges Thursday urging the city to investigate why a handcuffed woman was forced to give birth in a Brooklyn courtroom last month.

The letter, organized by the council’s progressive and women’s caucuses, comes several weeks after a 33-year-old woman named Samantha Randazzo went into labor during her May 15 arraignment at Brooklyn Criminal Court. At nine months pregnant, she was handcuffed behind her back as she waited to be arraigned for low-level drug and trespassing charges. While NYPD officials say the handcuffs were removed while Randazzo was in active labor, her baby was delivered by a court officer without any medical equipment, and she was reportedly in full view of multiple court staff. . Mere hours earlier, she was discharged from Coney Island Hospital despite being in police custody and heavily pregnant. Randazzo ultimately delivered a healthy baby a little before midnight.

“This horrific and degrading incident is the result of a series of systemic failures that reinforced conditions which put the people of New York needlessly in harm's way,” the letter, which was shared exclusively with City & State, reads. “We’re calling for an internal investigation into the circumstances that kept a nine-month pregnant mother in police custody for over 30 hours for an offense in which police and the district attorney have discretion to issue an appearance ticket.”

The incident stirred a wave of outrage last month as public defenders and legal advocates blamed city and state agencies for what they charged were a multitude of systemic failures. At least three people have died from medical issues in custody while waiting to be arraigned over the past year. Two died in Brooklyn holding cells over the past two months alone.

Sam Raskin, a spokesperson for the mayor, said that the Mamdani administration is reviewing the factors that led to the courtroom birth incident and discussing how to potentially respond, including “reviewing the policies and protocols practiced by the NYPD, NYC Health + Hospitals, the courts, and other relevant entities.”

"What Samantha Randazzo went through was horrifying and completely unacceptable. No one should be forced to give birth in a courtroom, and the fact that this happened demands serious scrutiny,” Raskin said. “We must understand how these failures occurred and what potential changes are necessary to prevent something like this from occurring again."

Twenty nine council members signed onto the letter. Speaker Julie Menin is not one of them, but several members of her leadership team are: Majority Leader Shaun Abreu, Majority Whip Kamillah Hanks and Deputy Majority Whip Elsie Encarnacion.

In addition to calling for an investigation, the letter urged the city to station EMS workers in courthouses, to ensure the Civilian Complaint Review Board automatically begins investigating any deaths that occur in custody and more broadly, to “stop the surge of quality-of-life policing and the practice of custodial arrests and detainment for low-level charges.” It also calls on the city’s district attorneys to more infrequently prosecute low-level violations or to issue desk appearance tickets.

While the state currently has a series of laws that ban the shackling of incarcerated pregnant people while they are in labor, they don’t apply to local police authorities. An incident in 2018 in which a handcuffed woman went into labor in a Bronx holding cell spurred the NYPD to update its rules on restraining pregnant people, though they have continued to generate backlash. A package of legislation up for consideration in the state Legislature is aimed at further improving the treatment of pregnant people while they are incarcerated. One such measure would ban handcuffing people in labor who are detained by police.

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Adam Bojak wants to give DSA a foothold in western NY

Fariha Rahman — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0400

Adam Bojak, a member of Buffalo DSA, has learned a lot in the six years since he previously ran for Assembly. Now a father of two, the attorney has taken his experience in Erie County family court, where he works as an assigned council, and his pro-bono work as a tenants rights advocate, to see if he can make a change in the state Legislature.

“I see the effects of poverty on these working families all day, every day. I also represent children, and it's brutal to see how children are affected just because their family doesn't have the resources it needs to succeed and thrive,” Bojak told City & State.

The topic of affordability connects candidates across the state who are trying to capitalize on the victory of Zohran Mamdani last fall. Bojak, part of the Democratic Socialists of America slate, is running in an open primary in Assembly District 149 against Navy veteran Kevin Deese and Deputy Commissioner of Highways for the Erie County Department of Public Works Karen Hoak. This area of Erie County is a Democratic stronghold, but if Bojak wins he would be the first democratic socialist representative of Western New York.

City & State caught up with Bojak to discuss how his affordability platform differs from those of his fellow candidates and whether Buffalo is ready for their turn at a democratic socialist politician. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You ran unsuccessfully in 2020 – why did you decide to give it another shot now six years later?

It was definitely just the timing. I always knew back in 2020 that I wasn't going to run against an incumbent. So we announced that because it was an open seat and a bunch of people said, "Hey, this is good timing. Why don't you try this?” And so we all got together and gave it a shot. In 2020 COVID kind of ruined everything, obviously. But after that it was never going to be something where we try again every single time. I was going to pick one more spot, and this was that spot, and all the dominoes kind of fell perfectly where Sean Ryan became the mayor of Buffalo, and it left open his Senate seat, and Jon Rivera tried to run for that and left this assembly seat open. So we're throwing our hat in the ring and doing it now.

How have recent political changes in the country has influenced your policymaking and the platform that you're running on?

It's funny, in 2020 our motto was like homes and people first, and I wouldn't say that we've changed a whole lot. We got over 30% of the vote in a three-way race back then, even though we didn't knock a single door, and that was in a Democratic primary. People were interested in that message, and now that we can actually get out there and talk to people, we're getting really, really good responses. And our motto this time is healthy, housed and affordable, so it's not terribly different, because the issues have not been solved in any meaningful way, so we're still fighting the same fights, and in many ways they've gotten worse.

If elected, what legislation would you be interested in pursuing for the people of Buffalo?

I'm really, really excited about Assembly Member Emily Gallagher's social housing bill. I would be really pushing for the REST Act from Sarahana Shrestha that would give Buffalo a much easier path to get into rent control. There's a lot of great tenant protections downstate that we don't have here in Buffalo. Rent control is one of those, as well as good cause eviction protection, and so those are things I would be looking at right away.

My own personal cornerstone piece of legislation that I would write and introduce is to redefine corporations at the state level, so that they cannot spend money in our elections. Our race is seeing support from a dark money PAC that's funded by Draft Kings and Fanduel, dumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race to try to boost our opponent and take us out. We know they're not doing that out of the goodness of their heart. They think they're going to get something back for that and that's just offensive to me that they're allowed to do that. As long as the Citizens United Supreme Court decision is ruling in our elections, we have to act at the state level and get ahead of that and prevent it from happening.

Do you think Buffalo is ready for a democratic socialist in office?

Absolutely. Like I said, even without knocking a door, in 2020 we got 30% in a three way race, and that included Hamburg, which is a suburb of the city. But the west side of Buffalo, which is about 50% of this district, is the hotbed for people that are interested in this kind of politics. Back in 2021 when India Walton ran for mayor, she cleaned up here in the primary on the west side, and she did extremely well again in the general, even when she lost citywide. So people are ready for these politics. The politics were certainly not the main reason why that general election was lost in 2021. There's myriad reasons for that, but the politics were not one of them.

The socialism was not scaring people away from that. We've knocked well over probably 20,000 doors at this point and very few people are against the policy proposals that we're talking about. We're talking about a platform that makes sense to the average working person in New York and they realize that this is the campaign that's speaking to their issues in a way that no one else is, and so I'm not too worried about that. I think Buffalo has always been a union town, one of really, really strong labor movements in history here, and I have the most union endorsements in this race as well. They're ready for what we're talking about too. So we're building a really, really exciting and lasting coalition here that I'm looking forward to working with moving forward.

You volunteered for India Walton's Campaign in 2021. What did you learn on the campaign trail with her that you're applying for your current race?

I always say that I love India as a person. I was one of the inner team on that campaign, and so I saw a lot of things up close and personal. I'm certainly not talking out of school here, I think mistakes were made about trying to build a coalition. I think at some point there was an idea that we were much more powerful and we had more support than we did. I'm not taking anything for granted. If and when we win this primary, I'm going to be building bridges and not giving ultimatums.

Buffalo is a border town with a large ICE presence and a nearby detention center. What do you think can/should be done on the state level to address this?

It has to be the New York for All Act. We have been talking about that since day one of our campaign, and I personally have been talking about abolishing ICE for years. I'm glad the other candidates have jumped on that train, but I've been on there for a long time.

When we saw Kathy Hochul come out and put out a watered-down version of the New York for All Act that prevents some cooperation with federal agents, but not all of it. It's just not good enough. They did pass that in the state budget, which is good. If it is objectively good, it will protect people in many instances, but in all of them, we had a refugee, Nurul Amin Shah Alam, basically murdered by CBP here this past winter, and the provisions that were put in place would not have changed that. That's so we have to go further. We have to pass a New York for All Act and prevent law enforcement at all levels from any cooperation with federal agents. We are seeing the rise of fascism, and there is no way to compromise with it. There is no way to work with it and reason with it. So we have to just say, until ICE is either abolished or entirely overhauled, we cannot allow any sort of cooperation.

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This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

City & State — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0400

It’s been a jam-packed week in Albany as lawmakers try to cram a ton of legislating into the last week of session before they head home for the summer. They keep blaming it on the late budget, but here’s a radical idea: What if Albany was in session for more than half the year? Any takers? The nays have it – summer is here. Meanwhile, we here at City & State are enjoying a few things we didn’t know we needed until we saw them: Dua Lipa and Callum Turner’s wedding photos and Nina Schwalbe’s “what’s in my bag” video. Oh, and how could we forget? GO KNICKS!!

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AI and crypto take center stage at NY-12 debate

Annie McDonough — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 22:38:19 -0400

The race to replace retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler in a powerful Manhattan congressional district got “feisty” in a PIX 11 debate Thursday night.

Assembly Member Alex Bores, one of the leading candidates in the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th congressional district, faced the brunt of his opponents’ attacks. Assembly Member Micah Lasher, who is narrowly leading Bores in a recent PIX 11/Emerson College poll, and Jack Schlossberg, social media commentator and grandson of President John F. Kennedy and polling in third place, went after Bores on similar ground, alleging that he is beholden to not just the artificial intelligence industry but the cryptocurrency industry.

“There’s one candidate on this stage that’s been standing up to Big Tech for more than a decade, one candidate on the stage who has voted consistently for regulation of artificial intelligence, one candidate on this stage who is not backed by any of the big AI companies,” Lasher said in the first 30 seconds of his first answer of the evening. “That candidate is not Alex, that candidate is me.”

The first question, which was about how candidates would protect jobs in the age of AI, left an obvious opening for Lasher, and then Schlossberg, to go after Bores. While an Open AI-funded super PAC has spent millions in opposition to Bores – who successfully fought for a major AI regulation in New York state – another super PAC linked to Anthropic has spent in support of him. “The most important question is whether the regulators are disinterested, and whether or not they are in the pocket of the AI industry,” Schlossberg said.

Lasher also pointed to a super PAC backing Bores and funded by crypto billionaire Chris Larsen – and Bores receiving an “A” rating from a pro-crypto group – as proof he’s beholden to that industry too.

Bores brushed off the claims as MAGA talking points. “They’re so feisty today,” Bores later said of his opponents after multiple digs at his financial backers. Former Republican and Trump antagonist George Conway, polling in fourth in the recent poll, referred to it later as a “triangular firing squad.”

If the strategy risked leaving viewers with the impression that Bores is the candidate the others are most concerned about, it also sought to shake up one of Bores’ dominant narratives in the race: That he is a candidate who will stand up to Big Tech. Schlossberg and Lasher argued that the spending in support of him by Anthropic executives and Larsen would make him beholden to the industry. Bores countered that Open AI would be thrilled if any of his opponents won.

Lasher didn’t lay off in the post-debate spin room, telling reporters, “I commend Alex for doing a very good job perpetrating a fraud on the voters.”

The middle-of-Manhattan Democratic primary is one of this spring’s most competitive, and far and away the most expensive. In addition to the candidates’ own hefty campaign chests, outside spending totals more than $7.5 million in support of Lasher and $129,000 against him, and more than $6.3 million in support of Bores and more than $4.1 million against him.

The Democratic primary candidates in the June 23rd race – at least the four who were on the debate stage Thursday – agreed on a lot in the race. They all support banning congressional stock tradings, banning private immigration prison contracts, taking former Mayor Ed Koch’s name off the Queensboro Bridge,bridge, even “Knicks in four.”

Schlossberg sought to distinguish himself as the only candidate committing outright to supporting legislation blocking offensive military aid to Israel.

Conway largely stuck to his unwavering campaign theme during the debate. None of the other candidates’ proposed policies – which he incidentally called “great” – matter unless President Donald Trump is out of office. “A lot of the debate was weird and beside the point,” he told reporters afterwards.

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Avila Chevalier attended the Oct. 8 pro-Palestinian rally Lander condemned

Jeff Coltin — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 17:15:42 -0400

One of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsed congressional candidates cut ties with the Democratic Socialists of America for promoting a controversial pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas attacked Israel. The other candidate attended that rally.

Brad Lander said at a NY1 debate Monday he canceled his decades-old DSA membership after the socialist organization “advertised a rally that I thought was heinous, that spoke about Hamas in ways that I just thought were vile.” He was referring to the gathering in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023 organized by leftist groups like The People's Forum and Al-Awda New York, where rallygoers held signs such as “Resistance is Justified when People are Occupied.”

The rally was widely criticized by political leaders who saw it as condoning the violence by Hamas fighters, who killed nearly 1,200 Israelis the day before. Gov. Kathy Hochul called it “abhorrent and morally repugnant” when it was announced. NYC-DSA even distanced itself from the rally, and apologized for the “confusion” caused by its social media post advertising the event. All of the democratic socialist legislators, including then-Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, avoided the rally.

But Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is now running for Congress against Rep. Adriano Espaillat, was there in Times Square.

“I can only say I have been advocating for the human rights of Palestinians for my adult life. And as someone who has seen a pattern, whenever anything happens on the ground (in Israel), there's always a really outsized reaction that costs thousands of people their lives,” Avila Chevalier told City & State on Thursday. “And that is what I was worried about.”

By the time people were rallying on Oct. 8 2023, Israeli forces had immediately responded to the Hamas attack with airstrikes on Gaza, killing hundreds of people.

“At the core of it all for me is human dignity. And I think so often we get lost in the ‘well on this date, and on that date’ when it's all cyclical, if we don't get to the core of how we disregard the human rights and dignity of some people over others,” she said.

Photographs and video from the rally, including one published by The New York Times, show Avila Chevalier at the rally. Her presence there was previously reported by Canary Mission, a controversial website that serves to blacklist pro-Palestinian activists. The site doxes even civilian activists who are not prominent leaders or public figures. In fact, Avila Chevalier was relatively unknown in 2023. But the Columbia University alumna, who’d organized with Students for Justice in Palestine as an undergraduate, soon took a leading role in pro-Palestinian activism on campus.

Avila Chevalier launched her campaign against Espaillat in November, soon after Mamdani won the mayoral race. She earned NYC-DSA’s endorsement in January, and she exploded onto the national political scene when Mamdani endorsed her last week in a joint television interview on MS NOW.

NYC-DSA and Lander’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

But Avila Chevalier and Lander are now working together, appearing in a campaign TV ad, along with Mamdani and congressional candidate Claire Valdez. In the ad, which aired after the Knicks finals game, Lander passes a basketball to Avila Chevalier, before the group stands together in front of a basketball hoop.

The 32-year-old Avila Chevalier’s politics and past statements have earned more attention as she appears to gain ground on Espaillat. Her social media posts calling to abolish the police and open borders reflect someone willing to take more radical stances than even most socialist elected officials. A 2022 X post, first reported by Politico, shows her criticizing DSA’s racial justice organizing and “anti Palestinian racism” after the national organization sanctioned its Palestinian Solidarity Working Group.

Asked about those social media posts on WNYC Thursday, Avila Chevalier said she’s “grown considerably” in the years since, adding, “I'm not interested in relitigating the politics of my tweets, which are politics of the past.”

Lander’s shock at the October 8 rally Avila Chevalier attended is not the first time the progressive pair have disagreed on pro-Palestinian activism. Avila Chevalier said she ranked Lander fifth in the mayoral race – at the bottom of her ballot – as a subtle protest of his politics, City & State first reported. She criticized Lander in a candidate questionnaire for not being sufficiently supportive of Mahmoud Khalil, a fellow pro-Palestinian activist who the Trump administration attempted to deport for his role helping to organize Columbia campus protests.

The difference highlights the nuances between two candidates who are both challenging Democratic incumbents who they accuse of being too soft on Israel.

Lander, who is running against Rep. Dan Goldman, identifies as a liberal Zionist who has harshly criticized the Israeli government for its violence against Palestinians while defending its existence as a Jewish state.

Avila Chevalier, meanwhile, has been unequivocal in condemning Israel as an apartheid state committing genocide.

At a March forum with the Broadway Democrats political club, she declined to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, when asked directly.

“The premise of that question, to me, ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that folks were were living under before this genocide began,” she responded in part. “Palestinians have been living under a state of dispossession, of exile, of apartheid for 75 years.”

But Avila Chevalier may be changing her rhetoric as she gets closer to election day. Asked on WNYC Thursday she said “yes, I do condemn Hamas,” but noted that “As far as I know, the U.S. does not send a single dime to Hamas. What we fund is the Israeli military.”

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Menin wants to boost funding for food pantries – but quiet on city-owned grocery stores

Fariha Rahman and Chantal Mann — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:09:53 -0400

As New Yorkers face an ever-increasing affordability crisis, compounded by the Trump administration’s reduced SNAP and EBT funding, the New York City Council and mayor’s office may be at odds over the best way for the city to improve food access.

Council Speaker Julie Menin announced in her keynote address at City & State’s legislative breakfast and panel focusing on food access and affordability Thursday morning that the council is pushing to increase funding for Community Foods Connection, or CFC,by $25 million, up to a total of $100 million for fiscal year 2027. Menin did not mention Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to create city-owned grocery stores during her address.

“We are striving to eradicate food insecurity and make sure that every New Yorker can afford a meal. And if we are a city where every New Yorker can afford a meal and not have to worry about their next one, then we can begin to believe that we are a city where every New Yorker can afford to thrive,” Menin said. “The challenges are very clear, even if the solutions at first are not, and that's why we are drawing on every ounce of creativity and drop of innovation to ensure that we are addressing this urgent crisis.”

The CFC program provides funding to over 700 community kitchens and food pantries citywide. Menin said the boost in funding would allow the CFC to increase food distribution across its network and expand access to healthy and culturally competent food.

Mamdani’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Menin also mentioned bills recently introduced by the council that would ban so-called dynamic pricing and surveillance pricing. Dynamic pricing allows stores to change prices based on item demand in real time, while surveillance pricing uses consumer data to create profiles of customers and adjust prices accordingly to their individual shopping habits.

She also mentioned a bill to establish the nation’s first Office of Insurance Accountability, which she pitched as a way to assist bodega and small grocery store owners with rising insurance costs that carry over into consumer shopping carts. Menin said that bodega and deli owners pay between four to five times the national average for liability insurance.

Menin’s proposed Office of Insurance Accountability comes as bodega and small grocery store owners raise growing concerns about the negative impacts of Mamdani's plan for city-owned grocery stores. The Mamdani administration pledged $70 million in capital funding to build out one city-owned grocery store in each borough, but the funding has yet to be approved by the City Council in the final budget, which is due by July 1.

Emily Marcus, a senior vice president at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, spoke at the event to represent the Mamdani administration’s city owned grocery store initiative.

“Mayor Mamdani has been clear: the working people of this city should be able to afford the basic needs and services the city has to offer, and that includes healthy food and groceries,” Marcus said. “That is why public grocery stores are a key part of this administration’s affordability agenda.”

At the May 29 executive budget hearing for the EDC, Menin questioned interim president and CEO Jeanny Pak about the operating structure for the grocery stores and how the stores will be able to afford to offer consistent discounts over time.

The grocery stores will be run by third party operators, with a core basket of goods – including bread, milk, meat, chicken and eggs – that are discounted, according to Pak. The city will pay the tenant fit-out fee, give landlords free rent and not charge property tax for the sites to reduce overhead costs in order to fund the discounts. Pak also assured council members at the hearing that site selection criteria means that only areas that do not have enough grocery stores per capita will be considered, and the administration was communicating with bodega associations and the National Supermarket Association.

Council Member Eric Dinowitz told City & State that he is in full support of increasing the CFC budget for the fiscal year, but worries about the potential cost to city budget and unfair market competition that city-owned grocery stores might pose.

“The question is, is the cost to the city budget actually an investment?,” Dinowitz said. “Will it result in more people who don't have food access being able to access that food in a way that doesn't impact the small businesses, but does what we want it to do, which is to get more food in people's refrigerators?”

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Opinion: You can’t solve a mental health crisis without a workforce

Harry Bronson and Maritza Davila — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0400

New York is facing a growing mental health and human services crisis. And at the exact moment we need social workers, Washington. is choosing to put the profession further out of reach. In New York City, schools fall short of the recommended ratio of one social worker per 250 students. In some districts, ratios are as high as 1:1,000.

Across the state, the gaps widen. Rural counties average one mental health provider for every 590 residents, compared to 1:384 in urban areas as of 2021.

The need is clear. The pipeline is not.

Social workers stand on the front lines of nearly every crisis our communities face. Yet a dangerous disconnect is emerging between the demands we place on this workforce and the policies shaping how they are trained.

Recent federal changes to student loan policy are fundamentally altering access to graduate education. The elimination of Grad PLUS loans and new borrowing limits will leave thousands of students without a viable path to finance advanced degrees. At the same time, federal policymakers have even proposed excluding social work from being defined as a professional degree.

For a field that requires a Master of Social Work degree to practice, this is not a technical change. It is a direct barrier to entry.

We are already seeing signs of strain. Social service organizations report persistent vacancies. Caseloads remain high. Demand for mental health services continues to grow, particularly among young people and underserved communities. This is not just a higher education issue – it is a workforce and public health issue.

New York has made clear its commitment to expanding mental health services, strengthening child welfare systems and supporting communities in need. But those priorities depend on a strong and stable pipeline of trained professionals. That pipeline begins with access to education.

Social work has never been a profession driven by the lure of high salaries. It has always relied on people willing to serve, people who step into difficult, under-resourced environments because they believe in the work. But when policymakers strip away fair and flexible student loan financing, they send a clear message: this profession is only for those who can afford it.

This is not just inequitable; it is unsustainable.

Social workers support children in foster care, counsel families in crisis, guide individuals in navigating substance use recovery and provide essential mental health services in schools, hospitals and community-based organizations. Their work is not optional. It’s what holds our communities together.

New York will see the impact quickly. Fewer students will enroll in MSW programs, leading to more workforce shortages in mental health, child welfare and community services. Nonprofits and public agencies, already struggling to hire, will fall further behind.

And New Yorkers will pay the price.

Waitlists for care will grow. Fewer providers will be available. Families in crisis will struggle to find support. Communities already facing barriers to care will see those barriers harden.

Federal policy is shutting that door to education, and the state must respond and open another.

Federal policymakers should revisit loan caps and restore essential pathways to graduate education that represent the on ramp to essential fields like social work. At the state level, New York has an opportunity – and a responsibility – to act by developing solutions that ensure students can continue to pursue these careers.

That includes exploring state-supported financing options, expanding grant aid and investing in targeted programs that support students entering high-need professions. It also means aligning workforce goals with the policies that make those goals achievable.

We cannot say we value mental health, community well-being and support for vulnerable populations while simultaneously making it harder for the very professionals who provide that care to enter the field.

Social workers show up every day for New Yorkers – often under challenging conditions, with limited resources and driven by a commitment to serve others. They are essential to our communities, our economy, and our future.

New York has an opportunity to spearhead policy to show up for them. It must do so now.

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Opinion: Require all New York employers to offer paid family leave

Anne Marie Brady, Rusty Bartels, and Ruth-McAdams — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:28:41 -0400

Paid family leave is a right that millions of New Yorkers take for granted since the state launched the benefit in 2018, enabling them to take vital paid time off from their jobs to care for sick family members and bond with their new children. But the law carved out upwards of 100,000 teachers at charitable, religious and educational institutions, leading to disastrous consequences for educators, their students and the institutions where they teach.

Albany lawmakers can close this glaring loophole this week, by passing S.9560A/A.9071A, a concise bill introduced by state Sen. Christopher J. Ryan and Assembly Member Claire Valdez. The bill would close the loophole that has excluded certain academic workers from this important benefit for far too long.

As contingent (i.e., adjunct, part-time and full-time non-tenure-track) faculty who teach at universities across the state, we have experienced and seen firsthand the economic and emotional hardships many faculty have had to endure without the right to paid family leave.

Rather than face dire financial consequences, and even loss of employment, many of our colleagues have been forced to carry on teaching instead of caring for their gravely ill spouses and parents. Others have had to miss out on essential bonding with their new children. Many of us face the twin demands of starting families while also caring for our aging parents.

We also know teachers who have won PFL through their unions, or who work for universities that voluntarily offer PFL. These colleagues are able to carry out their work and care for their families, demonstrating that PFL is good for their schools, good for students, and good for families.

Advancing the bill aligns with New York’s strong interest in supporting families – a meaningful accompaniment to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s initiatives to improve early childcare for working New Yorkers. The research literature shows that PFL dramatically improves infant attachment, child development and overall health for women giving birth, with lower rates of hospitalization for both babies and mothers who took paid leave from work. Many teachers now cut off from PFL are women and caregivers – groups disproportionately affected by unpaid leave and caregiving burdens, and overrepresented among contingent faculty. Research indicates that expanding PFL will help to close the gender pay gap by increasing women’s ability to return to work at the same wage and preserve their earning trajectory.

Contingent faculty make up the majority of the teaching faculty at universities across New York and yet many of us lack job-protected paid leave that is currently extended to millions of New York state workers. Not having state-mandated paid family leave is nonsensical, unjust and runs counter to the aim of establishing an agenda centered on affordability. It has no basis in public policy.

Ending the carveout costs the state nothing, with only minimal costs to employers as workers typically fund PFL through a small payroll deduction. We have enough to worry about with the Trump administration’s assaults on research funding and academic freedom.

In the face of the war on higher education, this bill should be a no-brainer.

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Nobody’s happy about Mamdani’s scaled down Puerto Rican event

Jeff Coltin, Fariha Rahman, and Chantal Mann — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:30:38 -0400

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is reworking an annual Puerto Rican cultural reception at Gracie Mansion ahead of the Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan on June 14, opting for a smaller breakfast instead of a full-scale fiesta, according to two people familiar with the plans. And Puerto Rican leaders are up in arms over the break with tradition.

“We are excited to welcome community members and leaders to Gracie Mansion for a reception celebrating Puerto Rican Day and the generations of Puerto Ricans whose organizing, culture, and contributions continue to strengthen New York City. The gathering will recognize the vital role Puerto Ricans and Nuyoricans play in the civic, cultural, and economic life of our city,” City Hall spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement, promising “more details to come soon.”

Mamdani’s now planning a daytime event over the weekend, Pekec told City & State. The tension was first reported by the New York Post.

But that scheduling causes its own political problems. Rep. Adriano Espaillat has already had a Saturday morning breakfast reception scheduled, where he’s honoring retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez. Six months ago, Mamdani might have been welcomed at the event, but the mayor has since picked political fights with both senior Latino members. He has endorsed Espaillat’s challenger in the Democratic primary, and broke with Velázquez to endorse against her preferred successor, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

While Mamdani is endorsing Latino candidates in each race, throwing his support behind Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, the Congress members and their supporters have taken it personally. And holding a competing breakfast at Gracie Mansion – about a mile away from Espaillat’s at El Museo del Barrio – would be seen as adding insult to injury.

Velázquez declined to comment. “Congressman Espaillat has participated in the Puerto Rican Day Parade since before his tenure in Congress and has hosted his annual Puerto Rican Day Parade breakfast each year,” Espaillat spokesperson Candace Person said in a statement.

Pekec said the mayor would find a different time. “There is not a possibility with it interfering with Espaillat’s,” she said after this story was initially published.

After all, the reception has traditionally been held at Gracie Mansion on the Thursday before the parade, with former mayors Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio hosting large celebrations in the back garden of the mansion. City government officials, nonprofit workers and high ranking Puerto Rican leaders are typically in attendance.

Mamdani has avoided doing the near-constant flag-raisings and cultural celebrations of his predecessor Adams, and is even declining to erect a large tent in the backyard of Gracie Mansion, where previous mayors have held parties, The City Reporter first reported. That choice is now causing tension, and other identity groups may feel similarly aggrieved as the summer goes on.

But he’s still hosted several receptions at the mayor’s residence in his five month tenure, including a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast ahead of the Manhattan parade, a Greek Independence Day celebration and a Jewish American Heritage Month night time reception (although he skipped marching in the city’s Israel Day parade.)

Now City Hall’s having to clean up after an email from a Mamdani administration official spread around Puerto Rican leaders.

“We will not be hosting a reception at Gracie Mansion,” Álvaro López, Brooklyn Borough Director for the Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement wrote in an email sent Monday afternoon to a community leader, obtained by City & State. “In an effort to celebrate the National Puerto Rican Day in the company of as many working-class New Yorkers as possible, Mayor Mamdani and our administration are prioritizing his attendance at the 5th Ave Parade (in Manhattan) and the Knickerbocker Parade (in Brooklyn) on June 14th instead of hosting an invitation-only reception.”

Pekec disavowed the email and referred to her statement saying a reception was on. López did not respond to a request for comment.

Puerto Rican leaders across the city are rebuking the mayor’s decision to go against tradition.

Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez, a former commissioner for the New York City Department for the Aging and current board member of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, said that the reception has happened for decades and that City Hall has clear protocols on how to host these events.

Cortés-Vázquez also told City & State that the board had not received any communication from the mayor’s office regarding the change of plans, even after the initial email – which has since been disavowed by the administration – spread around social media, and she took particular issue with that insinuation that event attendees don’t classify as working-class New Yorkers.

“I would just suggest that the mayor have some facts behind making some of those decisions as to knowing what the data is in terms of the income levels of Puerto Ricans,” Cortés-Vázquez said. “Suggesting that Puerto Ricans are not part of the working class is totally a misnomer and a misstep on their part to put that out publicly.”

Political analyst Eli Valentin called the decision “highly disappointing” and “hard to defend,” and told City & State that he has received messages from Puerto Rican leaders that echo his sentiments, describing the move as “‘yet another example of how Mamdani is not considering the concerns and traditions of the Latino community in New York.”

The disorganization, in addition to the split with Velázquez and Espaillat, had Puerto Rican leaders questioning the commitment of the mayor’s office to the community.

“My hope is that they’re working through this because the Puerto Rican community is extremely important in the City of New York and I think having it at Gracie Mansion shows that respect for the Puerto Rican community,”: said Camille Rivera, a Puerto Rican Democratic consultant, who worked on Mamdani’s campaign. ““It is of the people, not necessarily the elite … I’ve been there when it’s been celebrated before, and it’s a beautiful occasion.”

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Hochul to select man she granted clemency to help oversee state prisons

Rebecca C. Lewis — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:44:06 -0400

Gov. Kathy Hochul is set to nominate Alexander Dockery, a formerly incarcerated person whom she previously granted clemency, to a newly-expanded, five-person state board tasked with overseeing conditions at correctional facilities in the state, according to sources. His nomination to the state Commission of Correction is one of a number the state Senate will need to confirm before the end of the legislative session that lawmakers and the public are finally beginning to get information on.

A prison reform omnibus bill signed by the governor last year newly requires the commission to have at least one formerly incarcerated person to serve on it. It also expands the commission from three to five members, a change that went into effect last month – though Dockery will still only be the third commissioner. The changes came amid intense scrutiny of prison conditions following the beating death of Robert Brooks at Marcy Correctional Facility in December 2024.

Criminal justice advocates applauded the move. “It would signal a major shift in how New York understands leadership, redemption, public safety, and the lived expertise of formerly incarcerated people,” Anthony Dixon, the deputy director of the Parole Preparation Project who himself was previously incarcerated, said in a statement. “This is the kind of appointment that can widen imagination, challenge old assumptions and open doors to a more humane, accountable, and forward thinking corrections system.”

Hochul commuted Dockery’s sentence in 2023, one of her periodic clemency actions. Dockery had served about 23 years of a 25-to-life sentence on a series of nonviolent burglary and trespassing charges. While incarcerated, he earned his GED, as well as his associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Hochul’s office said at the time that Dockery intended to pursue his Ph.D. upon his release.

Dockery’s nomination will likely be the most notable of the state Senate confirmations this year, but it’s hardly the only one. Democrats are also expected to approve John Kagia, currently the acting executive director of the state Office of Cannabis Management, to serve in the position permanently. City & State first reported Hochul had tapped Kagia for the role in February.

The role has undergone turbulence practically since its creation. The governor ousted the first executive director, Chris Alexander, as part of her overhaul of the agency following a sluggish roll out of the legal adult-use market and other mismanagement causing lawsuits and delays. Hochul then fired Kagia’s immediate predecessor Felicia A.B. Reid last year over a significant snafu around policing illicit cannabis sales; Reid never underwent state Senate confirmation.

State senators are also set to confirm two dozen appointees to the state Court of Claims, as well as a handful of interim Supreme Court justices.

Following their confirmation hearings, each of Hochul’s nominees are expected to receive approval from the full state Senate. It’s rare for lawmakers to reject her picks, and even rarer to do so without some kind of prior public indication.

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Mamdani’s Charter Revision Commission schedules a flurry of meetings

Sahalie Donaldson — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0400

The Charter Revision Commission recently launched by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will convene for its first three public hearings on consecutive days next week.

While the 15-member panel technically meets for the first time on Thursday, June 4, that’ll be a logistical meeting, not a hearing, with commission chair Patrick Gaspard expected to address listeners and share the group’s goals for the weeks ahead. Public testimony, which will form the basis of whatever ballot questions the commission ultimately moves to put before voters in November, will officially kick off on Tuesday, June 9 at 5 p.m. at New York Law School. The following two hearings will take place on June 10 at Fordham University in the Bronx and June 11 Brooklyn Law School.

Each of the upcoming hearings will be based around their own theme, according to a notice shared by the mayor’s office with City & State. True to the title Mamdani gave the group, the Commission on Government Efficiency’s meetings will focus on proposals to smooth longstanding bureaucratic frictions. The first hearing will center on “streamlining government for infrastructure projects and public realm improvements,” the second on “streamlining government for small business and community organizations” and the third on “modernizing government and streamlining government technology.”

News of the first set of hearings comes less than a week after Mamdani announced he’d be forming the group, which he’d staffed with a bevy of people from across the city’s political ecosystem. There’s been a lot of questions about what the panel will ultimately focus on, spurred in large part by the ongoing battle between the Mamdani administration and the Charter Revision Commission convened by former Mayor Eric Adams on his final day in office.

Using a new provision passed by state lawmakers in the state budget deal, Mamdani disbanded the zombie-like commission the night before calling his own. The move has so far had little effect on the group, at least not in the eyes of its remaining members, many of whom are allies to the former mayor.

With former first deputy mayor Randy Mastro at the helm providing pro bono legal representation, the group has continued to insist that it has a legal right to exist. Whether it does or doesn’t remains to be seen – Mastro hasn’t sued yet.The group is lumbering forward in the meantime, meeting for its second public hearing Tuesday night. Only one person from the public showed up to testify. With only seven members in attendance, less than a quorum, the commission was unable to take any official actions.

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State leaders stand ready for a redistricting rumble

Rebecca C. Lewis and Kate Lisa — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:27:04 -0400

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie struck up a defiant tone when questioned about an aggressive new constitutional amendment that would enable state lawmakers to engage in mid-decade and partisan redistricting. He wasn’t alone.

Legislators introduced a fresh amendment overnight Monday after weeks of anticipation that would change the state constitution and enable New York to engage in the redistricting fights roiling the nation ahead of the next census – or at least in a year-and-a-half, as the amendment can’t go before voters until next November at the earliest.

The aggressive proposal would keep the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission in place, but streamlines the process that would enable the Democratic legislative majority to act should the bipartisan commission fail to agree on single versions of state legislative and congressional maps. The amendment would also reduce the legislative vote total necessary to approve new lines from a supermajority to a simple majority. And most notably, it would remove prohibitions on gerrymandering to favor one party or candidate over another.

Heastie told reporters on Tuesday that if New Yorkers do approve the amendment, he’s ready to go toe-to-toe with Republicans in the gerrymandering game. “I think this thing about asking New York to play fair while everybody else is playing ruthless – I think it's not right to ask us this,” he said.

Does that mean he’s willing not to play fair? “I’m going to play fair based on how other people play,” Heastie said, referring to recent Supreme Court decisions to weaken the Civil Rights-era Voting Rights Act. The landmark decision enabled Republicans in other states to engage in extreme partisan redistricting to bulk up GOP numbers in the House at the expense of diluting Black voting power.

Heastie’s partner in the upper chamber, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, expressed her readiness for a fight as well. “We cannot ignore the reality that Republicans have repeatedly sought to undermine democracy through various attempts to gain political advantage,” she said in a statement. “At a time when democracy is under attack across the country, we have a responsibility to protect all voters including the minority communities and ensure that every New Yorker continues to have a voice.”

State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris told City & State on Tuesday that lawmakers could debate and vote on the measure as soon as Wednesday. Unlike bills, resolutions such as a constitutional amendment do not need to age for three days before they can be voted on, so lawmakers can act on that slightly sooner than on other items introduced Monday evening.

U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has been at the forefront of the push for Democrats to retaliate against Republicans who’ve attempted to redraw their maps in other states, like North Carolina and Texas – sparking a partisan race to gerrymander and secure a critical edge in the fight for House control. Jeffries defended the proposed amendment that state lawmakers expect to pass.

“Democrats promised a forceful, ongoing and multi-state response to Republican efforts to gerrymander the national congressional map and rig House elections,” Jeffries said in a statement. “New York state just delivered a powerful one.” He thanked the legislative leaders and Rep. Joe Morelle for pushing the issue in Albany.

Jeffries also promised this amendment is “just the beginning” of Democrats’ plans to combat Republicans in the redistricting battle. “The Empire State will strike back,” he said.

Republicans in the state held a joint press conference in the Capitol on Monday with Rep. Mike Lawler, excoriating Democrats for the party’s blatant efforts to gerrymander future maps. The GOP blames Democrats for first reopening the redistricting process with a constitutional amendment that voters rejected in 2021.

“This fight was started here,” Assembly Minority Leader Ra said. He added later, “Whatever they bring out is about making New York less competitive in our congressional elections so they can squeeze (out) as many Democratic representatives as they possibly can, and that’s wrong for New Yorkers, and it should be rejected by New Yorkers. And we’re going to be calling that out all the way through next year where we’re going to defeat it at the ballot box.”

Constitutional amendments require passage in two consecutive legislative sessions, so an approval this year would just be the first step. A new class of lawmakers next year will need to pass it again, before it heads to voters for final approval next November at the earliest.

The amendment process excludes the governor, who has no formal part in changing the state constitution. But Gov. Kathy Hochul still signaled her strong support for the measure in a post on X Tuesday morning. “This amendment will give New Yorkers the power to fight back against attempts by Donald Trump and his allies to rig our elections,” she wrote. “I’m proud to stand with the Legislature in this fight.”

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Opinion: Don’t let the late budget block priorities like banning ‘excited delirium’

Jessica González-Rojas and David Siffert — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:19:26 -0400

The New York state’s budget was very late, again. But what often gets lost in the budget whirlwind are the legislature’s policy priorities that the governor’s budget squeezes out of the legislative calendar – like banning the “excited delirium” diagnosis.

By law, New York’s annual budget is due on March 31st. After that, legislators stop getting paid. There is some history of the budget being a bit late. Between 2020 and 2022, the budget was consistently about a week late.

That timeline has gotten longer and longer: In 2023, the budget was not signed until May 2. In 2024, it was April 20. In 2025, it was May 8. This year, it was May 27.

The state legislative calendar traditionally runs through the second week of June, and most state legislative policy is passed between the budget and that date. Most legislation cannot move forward until the budget passes, so the longer it takes to pass the budget, the less time there is for other legislation. This means less time for the legislature to solve New Yorkers’ problems.

Take, for example, the problem of the false medical diagnosis known as “excited delirium.” Last year, we wrote about how the term “excited delirium,” while not a diagnosis accepted by any major medical association, has served both as a justification for excessive force and as an alternative cause of death exculpating law enforcement when they kill. Based on racist pseudoscience from the 1980s, individuals killed by law enforcement and first responders – like Daniel Prude and Elijah McClain – are often diagnosed with “excited delirium,” a made-up state in which an individual gains superhuman strength, loses the ability to feel pain, and may spontaneously drop dead.

When they are faced with an individual they believe is experiencing “excited delirium,” law enforcement officers are trained that they must rely on more force than usual (in order to overcome the individual’s supposed superhuman strength and immunity to pain) and are not held liable if the individual dies (the cause of death, after all, is attributed to the “excited delirium” – not the police brutality).

There is widespread consensus that this term should be abolished – both from major medical associations and within the state legislature. Last year, we worked together to advance a bill banning the diagnosis, but the bill died on the Assembly floor because there was not enough time post-budget to pass all the important legislation New Yorkers needed.

We are at risk of that happening again this year. As of today, there are only a few days until the state’s legislative session concludes for the year, leaving little time for priorities like banning the “excited delirium” diagnosis – which would leave another six months for Black and brown New Yorkers to be brutalized without consequence before the bill could be reintroduced in 2027. With broad support from the state Legislature and the medical community, this commonsense reform must be a priority of the 2025-2026 legislature.

The Assembly has important policy work to do, and budget games have become a distraction from our ability to do our job. Now that we’ve finally passed the budget, we can move on to other meaningful legislation – and eliminating “excited delirium” should be at the top of the list.

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The family members of NYC congressional candidates are getting oppo’d

Holly Pretsky — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0400

There’s a major expensive election three weeks away, and you can tell because the opposition research is flying. We noticed a kind of gross trend in this year’s batch – a lot of it targets close family members of candidates, not the candidates themselves.

Some oppo is aimed at shifting voters’ attitudes about a candidate, and some oppo is purely meant to get in the opposing candidate’s head. Blowing up a family conflict is a great way to do that. “I think that its biggest value is that it distracts a campaign internally for two days,” said one Democratic strategist who generally frowns upon the New York City campaign tradition.

Alex Bores’ anti-Israel dad?

Congressional candidate Alex Bores’ dad, William Bores, is a former Communication Workers of America local union leader and longtime employee of ABC. He’s also repeatedly expressed the belief that “Zionists are Nazis!” as Jewish Insider reported this month. Responding to news about the death of a security guard in a bombing in Tel Aviv, he wrote on Threads: “What a shame, the world lost another supporter of genocide.” His son the Assembly member has staked out a decidedly pro-Israel position as he seeks to represent the district representing tens of thousands of Jews – so it’s a reversal of the more common dynamic of parents shocked by their kids’ pro-Palestinian views. “I love my dad, value what I’ve learned from him, and disagree with many of the things he’s said,” Alex Bores told the outlet.

Dan Goldman’s anti-Palestine wife?

The New York Times picked up a story about several divisive social media posts liked by Rep. Dan Goldman’s wife – and campaign treasurer – Corinne. She gave a thumbs up to posts from conservative accounts that compared Jewish advocates for Palestine to “Chickens for KFC,” and posts that suggested supporters of Gaza should be deported there. Goldman is also pro–Israel, but not quite as crass. “Like most married couples, my wife and I do not always share the same views, and any tweets she has liked as a private citizen do not speak for me,” Goldman told the Times.

Micah Lasher’s ICE contractor-adjacent wife?

We got the yarn and tacks out for this one. Congressional candidate Micah Lasher’s wife Elizabeth Mann is on the board of Motorola Solutions, which the New York Post reported has done millions of dollars worth of contracts with ICE, an agency Lasher says he wants to abolish. The Post reported Mann is also CFO of Verisk Analytics, which owns an insurance database that ICE apparently uses to surveil people. Lasher told the Post that Mann “has built an extraordinary career, leads with integrity, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. I’ll keep on fighting ICE in Albany and to abolish it in Washington, while my opponents shovel dirt and falsehoods about my wife to the Post.”

Claire Valdez’s border security-adjacent engineer dad?

Another big stretch: Socialist congressional candidate Claire Valdez’s dad Larry Valdez’s Texas-based employer helped build a border facility in Marfa in 2009 that ICE is now using, the New York Post reported. Valdez said her dad didn’t work on the border or Department of Homeland Security projects the Post mentioned. “For 45 years, my father worked as a civil engineer in the Lubbock office of Parkill, a firm with hundreds of employees across more than a dozen offices,” she told the tabloid. “I’m proud of him and my record of opposing Trump’s inhuman immigration policies.”

Darializa Avila Chevalier’s wage withholding relative?

One of congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier’s earliest and biggest donors, Pedro Chevalier, was sued for withholding wages from his employees at a hospitality staffing agency, Politico reported. His specific relationship to the candidate wasn’t reported, but he still lives in her home state of Florida. The candidate declined to comment.

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Editor’s note: Goodbye to Al Sharpton’s House of Justice

Jeff Coltin — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0400

The wrecking ball is coming for the Rev. Al Sharpton’s House of Justice. And since the reverend is often called upon to preach at funerals, I thought I’d ask him to eulogize his storefront church on West 145th Street in Harlem.

“We wanted to be accessible to the people. We wanted to have a headquarters where people could come whether they were homeless, or whether they were the governor of New York,” Sharpton told me. “You ain’t got to dress up. Just roll off the streets.”

And that was the beauty of it. The most prominent preacher in New York didn’t bring politicians to a Midtown highrise, or a glamorous megachurch. Instead, he got Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Mike Bloomberg, Chuck Schumer and every single other ambitious Democrat in America to come to his ramshackle one-story hall, next to the Kennedy Chicken & Biscuit.

“I don’t know what was coming out of that rug,” New York City Council Member Gale Brewer quipped about the dingy digs, where she spent countless hours. “If you dropped something, you’d just leave it there,” added Ny Whitaker, a Harlem Democratic consultant.

“I have good memories from the 145th Street site,” Whitaker said. “But it looked like if you blew a sweet breath at it, it would blow down.”

And that’s what’s coming now. The block is getting demolished over the next couple weeks to make way for One45, a development that should bring 1,100 units of housing, one-third of them affordable, on top of street-level retail.

That’s a lot bigger than the humble 250 chairs that filled the House of Justice. But it wasn’t just the seats there, Sharpton said. “We broadcast live from there on WBLS, the only Black FM station. So we’re talking 50,000-60,000 people. People that listen to a rally vote. So if you’re a politician, you’re not doing me a favor coming by. You’re talking to prime voters. There’s no more prime voters than the gathering at our Saturday morning.”

But rising stars like our City & State cover model, Chi Ossé and his fellow LGBTQ+ City Council colleagues don’t need to worry. Sharpton will give them the mic at his new National Action Network headquarters in a converted firehouse on West 124th Street.

“It’ll be a slightly different feeling, but it’s still on the ground, right? It’s in the neighborhood, and you can roll into the rally,” Sharpton said. Critics used to call him an ambulance chaser. “Now I got a firehouse, so my fire engine can take this ambulance chaser where I need to go.”

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Opinion: New York City is drowning in packaging. A bill in Albany can help.

Gregory Anderson — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 17:31:00 -0400

Every single day, the men and women of the Department of Sanitation pick up 24 million pounds of trash and recycling. That’s the equivalent of 50 Statues of Liberty, 1,000 school buses or 2,000 full-grown African elephants.

The vast majority of this material is shipped to landfills, where it is left to decompose over centuries – at a significant financial cost. Transporting New York City waste out of the region costs taxpayers $550 million per year.

The Department of Sanitation has for years encouraged New Yorkers to reduce what they use, reuse what they can and to recycle or compost what’s left so we can give products new life.

But we are at the end of a gargantuan economy built around the premise of consuming more and more. When New Yorkers buy products they need, no matter how conscientious they are, they have no say in how those products will be packaged. Corporations have no incentive to make things that are reusable, longer-lasting or less wasteful.

We see it every day – plastic packaging inside plastic packaging and boxes inside boxes, and sometimes all of the above. You can see it, too, in your own online orders or on a city block on the night before recycling collection, with stacks of cardboard and plastic waste set out for pickup.

So much of what we throw away in New York City is packaging, and it all needs to go somewhere, either to a landfill, a waste-to-energy facility or a recycling facility. Yes, recycling is a better option, but it, too, is labor- and energy-intensive. It is an imperfect solution, at best.

Producers have us drowning in packaging. And it is producers who must be held responsible for what they create.

An Extended Producer Responsibility bill that would give large producers a financial incentive to reduce packaging is currently before our legislators in Albany.

The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S1464A/A1749A) would reduce single-use packaging by 30% and make companies, not taxpayers, cover the cost of managing packaging. New York City taxpayers could save as much as $818 million in the next decade, according to a report from Beyond Plastics, which supports the bill.

Big businesses have campaigned against this legislation, threatening higher costs for consumers. But this legislation does not add new costs to products. Rather, it shifts the cost of packaging disposal from taxpayers to corporations.

These corporations are known for their innovations. If this legislation is passed, I have no doubt they can figure out a way to ship an “eco-friendly” wooden highlighter without two plastic sleeves, a paper envelope and a bubble mailer, to give just one example cited by Beyond Plastics President Judith Enck at a press conference earlier this month.

Extended Producer Responsibility is a proven approach – implemented already in California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon and Washington – that leads to less unnecessary packaging, higher resource recovery, lower greenhouse gas emissions and cost savings for municipalities.

We have successfully implemented similar laws for paint, batteries and other electronics. This year, we have an opportunity to enact this for packaging.

I am grateful for the coalition that has come together to advocate for this bill. Together, we call on our lawmakers in Albany to take action before this session ends and pass a bill that will slash pollution by significantly reducing the 24 million pounds of material New York City’s sanitation workers collect daily.

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Opinion: New York is leaving its most vulnerable youth in limbo

Andrew Hevesi, Samra Brouk, and Kayleigh Zaloga — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:35:33 -0400

As we look back on Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re thinking about a group of young people whose suffering gets scant attention: children with complex mental health needs.

These children, nearly 80,000 of whom across our state are on Medicaid, have severe behavioral health diagnoses along with complicating factors like medical challenges, foster care involvement or intellectual/developmental disabilities. Their families should be spending their time with them – instead, many of them are lost in a bureaucratic maze, creating painful delays in care and costing taxpayers hundreds of millions.

But momentum is building behind complex needs legislation that would streamline these young people’s access to care. The bill has advanced out of the Assembly Children and Families Committee and was reported to the Ways and Means Committee. It’s gratifying to see lawmakers mobilize around this smart policy, which empowers a little-known state entity to cut through red tape.

Statutorily, the Council on Children and Families, or CCF, is already tasked with assigning care for young people with complex needs, convening officials across agencies to determine who should provide services.

What does that look like in practice? Consider: A child is hospitalized following an acute behavioral health episode. They are in foster care, and also have a chronic medical condition. CCF’s job is to coordinate with the Office of Mental Health, the Office of Children and Family Services, and Department of Health to determine who should lead and pay for service provision upon the child’s discharge.

But merely convening the proper agencies doesn’t get a child the care they need. Too often, complex cases are in holding patterns as state agencies figure out who’s responsible. More than 200 children each year experience unnecessary extended hospital stays (called “boarding”), racking up over 20,000 inpatient days annually. Often, they are also placed with residential care that is not appropriate to meet their needs.

And when agencies determine children don’t fit rigid criteria for certain programs, children are sometimes sent far from home to out-of-state residential placements. In 2024 alone, 321 New York children were placed out of state because the appropriate services were unavailable.

These outcomes are financially disastrous. Hospital boarding is exorbitantly expensive – one survey found these prolonged stays cost New Yorkers $167 million in a single three-month period. Out-of-state placements are no better, resulting in a statewide price tag of roughly $113 million annually. And those are the costs for just a few hundred youth; if we don’t coordinate care more effectively, even more young people may wind up languishing in hospital beds, with taxpayers on the hook.

It goes without saying, but hospital boarding is not treatment. These children have been cleared for reentry into community, but are stuck in purgatory waiting for services. During that time, they miss school and therapy, lose contact with peers and family routines and often experience worsening psychiatric symptoms.

To connect our siloed systems and ensure children actually get care, we must strengthen the CCF’s ability to make and implement decisions. That means empowering the CCF’s Interagency Resolution Unit, which, as the name implies, resolves disagreements between agencies. Currently, the unit lacks the necessary authority, staffing, infrastructure, and accountability mechanisms necessary to function effectively. Too often, agencies can delay decisions indefinitely while children wait.

This legislation would give the CCF the mandate and the means to act with urgency. It would create a centralized confidential portal of available beds to coordinate services across agencies and providers, establish timelines for evaluations and placements, and strengthen statewide data collection. Crucially, it enhances the CCF’s statutory responsibility, requiring it to intervene directly when disputes or delays threaten a child’s wellbeing.

If enacted, it would create a system where all children are accounted for, where families have clarity about their children’s care.

To be clear, better coordination will not solve these problems overnight. The CCF itself will need more resources in the long term to hire additional staff and cover services during transitional periods. What’s more, New York must still invest in community-based services, expand provider capacity and strengthen the behavioral health workforce. Those preventive services keep children out of the hospital in the first place. Similarly, community-based options must be expanded to ensure resources are available post-discharge.

But coordination matters: when agencies operate in silos, children suffer. Every unnecessary hospital stay, every delayed placement, and every out-of-state transfer represents both a moral failure and an avoidable cost. The state owes children and their families a system that is coordinated, accountable and capable of meeting urgent needs close to home. It’s the least we can do for children who need it the most.

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Every borough is represented in the City Council’s queer caucus

Annie McDonough — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0400

When Christine Quinn joined the New York City Council as a staffer in 1992, the city’s elected officials were not well acquainted with New York’s queer communities.

“When I first started out – back in the Dark Ages – other elected officials, they all thought every gay person lived in the 3rd Council District,” she said. “That’s what they thought.”

Quinn was working for Tom Duane, one of the first out gay men in the council, who represented that Manhattan seat comprising Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea and the West Village. She was later elected to the same seat and then became the first out gay speaker of the City Council.

Carl Wilson
Manhattan
Elected 2026
Queer icon: John Waters (and his whole ensemble, especially Divine). “They were highlighting queer tastes and sensibilities way before it was popular or mainstream.” (Photo by Ben Berkes)

District 3, home of The Stonewall Inn, is in fact a seat with a legacy of gay representation. Its current member, recently elected Council Member Carl Wilson, is an out gay man. But today, the City Council’s out LGBTQ+ contingent – formally organized into the LGBTQIA+ Caucus – is far more vast and diverse, through virtually every lens one might consider that term.

The seven current members of the council’s LGBTQIA+ Caucus include a self-described socialist abolitionist and a Trump-supporting Republican. Its members endorsed Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa in last year’s mayoral election. All five boroughs are represented. It has Black, Asian, Latino and white members, a co-chair of the Progressive Caucus and a co-chair of the Jewish Caucus. Members are in their late 20s and late 60s – and the several decades in between. Its new co-chairs, Chi Ossé and Justin Sanchez, are two of the council’s youngest members.

That diversity brings together unlikely allies like Lynn Schulman, a moderate Democrat from Forest Hills, Queens, and Tiffany Cabán, a socialist representing the north end of the Commie Corridor on the western side of the borough, who are both queer women trying to convince local hospitals not to cave to pressure from the Trump administration to end healthcare programs for transgender youth.

Tiffany Cabán
Queens
Elected 2021
Queer icon: Playwright and activist Lorraine Hansberry. ”She doesn’t get the queer revolutionary icon love that she deserves!” (Photo by Ben Berkes)

“I think it speaks to our experiences as being queer people in community – always incredibly respectful, always super thoughtful,” said Cabán, who was a co-chair of the caucus for the past four years, of the members coming together despite their differences.

But the caucus’s diversity can also make for some awkwardness. Carr, the first and only Republican in the caucus, is from the same party whose leadership most other caucus members deride as the source of the most urgent threats to LGBTQ+ people in New York, particularly to transgender people.

Members speak respectfully of each other but acknowledge that the body’s decision-making comes down to a simple provision: Majority rules. Disagreements often end with Carr simply being outvoted on whether the caucus will put out a statement or support a given policy. The caucus meets regularly – somewhere between quarterly and monthly, according to the co-chairs – but in budget season, its leaders talk more informally almost daily.

Schulman said there are issues that the seven members can broadly agree on – supporting treatments for HIV/AIDS, health clinics and addressing youth homelessness. “I think where the diversity becomes an issue is some of the political stuff,” she said, pointing to when caucus members called out former Mayor Eric Adams or when they call out the Trump administration. The latter happens a lot.

Lynn Schulman
Queens
Elected 2021
Queer icon: Tennis champion Billie Jean King. “In 1981, she was outed as a lesbian during a political climate much less supportive than now. She responded by holding a press conference to embrace her sexual identity instead of lying about it as many celebrities did during that era. That took great courage and inspired me as I was contemplating my own identity.” (Photo by Ben Berkes)

But Carr, who also serves as minority leader of the massively outnumbered Republican conference of the council, is not exactly new to being outvoted. Still, Carr, who lives with his husband on Staten Island, said he feels he has a voice in the caucus and has been able to advocate for funding for the borough’s Pride Center – which provides a wide array of programming and health services for LGBTQ+ New Yorkers, and which credited Carr with helping grow its resources.

“My general approach is just to sort of send a message to LGBT New Yorkers that we come in all kinds of different political stripes, and that there’s no one political party that has a monopoly on us,” he said. “And I’m always just trying to bring my unique perspective as a Staten Islander to the table. We’ve never had a direct voice in that way before.”

“I think the makeup of the caucus we see today is in a lot of ways a real reflection of the diversity of the LGBTQ community within the city,” said Democratic strategist Amit Singh Bagga. “One could, I think accurately, presume that, by and large, you are talking about a group of people that are relatively liberal. But that is not exclusively the case.”

This year’s caucus is only just starting up, but it’s newly empowered. For the first time, it has been allocated funding to hire an executive director and a couple of paid interns – a move caucus leaders credit to Speaker Julie Menin. Rather than having the co-chairs’ own staffers moonlight as caucus staffers, the new resources will help the caucus organize and advocate for funding for LGBTQ+ organizations around the city – a major part of its work over the past few years, alongside laying out a policy agenda.

In an April video announcing the news – in Ossé’s signature social media style – the new Executive Director Yanery Cruz laid out the caucus’s mission plainly: “(It) will ensure our city remains a queer and liberated one.” Cruz, former director of advocacy and programs at the New York Transgender Advocacy Group, is a trans woman herself.

Yanery Cruz
Executive director
Appointed 2026
Queer icon: Trans rights activist Kiara St. James. “I look up to Kiara St. James because she was a mentor who led with humility, compassion, and a deep understanding of the roots of our movement.” (Photo by Ben Berkes)

As the Trump administration has focused on rolling back rights for transgender people – from a military service ban to threatening funding for hospitals providing gender-affirming care – Ossé said fighting for funding for organizations serving trans people is a top priority. “We want to make sure that in the same way that this is a sanctuary city for immigrants, that this is a sanctuary city and a safe place for trans people to live and to receive the health care that they deserve and need in order to survive,” he said.

Unlike council committees, which have a formal role in the legislative process, caucuses in the New York City Council can be what their leadership makes of them.

When former Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer was a member – a tenure that overlapped with the council’s second out gay speaker, Corey Johnson – there was a focus on advocating for funding for LGBTQ+ nonprofits that he had long been underfunded but which were providing crucial services like youth shelters or HIV and sexually transmitted infection testing.

In those years, the caucus ranged from four to seven members. The more prominent the caucus was, the greater impression it could make on the Budget Negotiating Team and council leadership. “We had a lot of great allies who are not queer, obviously, but it is different when queer people are at the table and when we bring numbers and when we’re unified,” Van Bramer said. “That produces wins.”

In the past few years, the LGBTQIA+ Caucus (renamed in 2022) has continued to fight for funding for those and many more organizations in the city budget. Last year, the caucus celebrated the inclusion of more than $13 million to LGBTQ+ organizations in the city budget, including what caucus leaders called historic funding for organizations serving trans people in particular.

As this year’s budget deadline approaches, advocacy groups want to see that funding grow. As of the time of writing, Ossé and Sanchez said conversations with the caucus and council leadership are still ongoing over funding priorities, but that they’re pushing to at least maintain last year’s investments.

The caucus held a roundtable in April with nearly 30 organizations to hear about their needs. Taylor Brown, the executive director of the new Mayor’s Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs and a trans woman, was there, and caucus leaders are hoping she and the broader Mamdani administration will be a partner in the budget negotiations.

Justin Sanchez
Bronx
Elected 2025
LGBTQIA+ Caucus Co-Chair
Queer icon: Paul J. Del Duca, chief of staff to former Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. “(He) helped open the doors for so many of the Bronx and the city’s queer leaders of today and recent yesteryear.” (Photo by Ben Berkes)

“It has been such a breath of fresh air to really see an administration that really, truly centers some of our most vulnerable and really understands the crisis that our community is in,” Sanchez said. While Sanchez is new to the council, several returning members said Mayor Eric Adams’ administration was not always a helpful partner, and criticized comments he made last year about wanting to revisit school policy allowing students to use bathrooms based on their gender identity.

Post-budget, the caucus also aims to build on a policy framework released in 2023 under co-chairs Cabán and Council Member Crystal Hudson – updated the next year under Cabán and then-Council Member Erik Bottcher – which laid out a wide range of legislative and other priorities for queer New Yorkers, in particular Black and brown people. Policy objectives ranged from supporting the decriminalization of sex work to opening more shelters tailored to young adults. The framework also pushed for a Mayor’s Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs – which Mamdani created this year.

While the caucus’s new leaders may put their own spin on what was first called the Marsha and Sylvia Plan, lots of the work still remains. Cruz said she’s hoping to revive at least one issue that was included in the initial plan: ensuring trans people going into city jails aren’t discriminated against, starting with where they’re placed.

Though caucus members raised a wide range of issues they hope to work on in the next year – addressing an uptick in HIV cases, securing funding for cultural and arts initiatives, building on a union hiring program – multiple members continually returned to trans health care and services as a particularly urgent need under the Trump administration.

That is an issue Carr hasn’t been vocal about. When asked about Trump’s various trans-related orders, Carr said he thinks everyone should be able to serve in the military, but declined to say outright if he agreed or disagreed with threats to NYU Langone Health for offering gender-affirming care to people under 18 or efforts to bar trans women from playing on women’s sports teams.

David Carr
Staten Island and Brooklyn
Elected 2021
Queer icon: Civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. “He did so much to advance the cause of equality in America, and he did it with humility and skill. In his later years, he was a vocal anti-Communist and championed the cause of liberty on the international stage.” (Photo by Gerardo Romo / NYC Council Media Unit)

“I think that every person deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. That’s always how I come at everything, and the trans community is no different,” he said. “I have trans members of my own family. I love them dearly, and always want to support them. I think that’s generally what’s informed my approach. I think that where we come into difficulty with everything is that one person’s rights end where another begins.”

If it’s an area of disagreement with the broader LGBTQIA+ Caucus, it may not be one with many operational consequences, but an area where Carr is simply outvoted. “The Republican Party and Donald Trump have been targeting a group of people that make up less than 1% of the population, and I see it as this caucus’s priority to support those people, and you know, really want to work with all members of this caucus on being loud about that,” Ossé said. “Many folks within this caucus have been loud champions, and, you know, some could be a bit louder.”

There’s an undeniable urgency to the issues that caucus members and the organizations they work with raise as priorities. “Some would like to say we’re at kind of a post-gay era. We’re not,” Quinn said. “The community faces terrible challenges right now, in the city, state and country.” In addition to Trump’s trans actions, she cited hate crimes and bullying in schools, as well as higher unemployment and lagging salaries.

Crystal Hudson
Brooklyn
Elected 2021
Queer icon: Civil rights leader Bayard Rustin. “His life is a reminder that some of the most important people in history are not always the ones at the podium but instead the ones making change possible behind the scenes.” (Photo by Ben Berkes)

“We’ve gained a lot,” Hudson said, referring to same-sex marriage, “and yet we still have very far to go. We have Black trans women that are being killed. We have the trans community under a constant attack.”

Even with that urgency, the new caucus is eager to celebrate at this month’s annual Pride event: what Sanchez and Cruz said will be the first “City Hall Ball,” a celebration of Ballroom culture in the chamber. “The idea behind it is five boroughs, three categories, one crown,” Sanchez said, keeping those categories close to the vest.

“Ballroom is about self-expression. Ballroom is about truly tapping into whatever fantasy that you want to be for that day, that night, that hour,” Sanchez said. “And it is about achieving dreams that usually were unachievable.”

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The 2026 Pride Trailblazers

City & State — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0400

As Harvey Milk once said, “Rights are won only by those who make their voices heard.”

While the gay rights leader uttered those words decades ago, they remain true today. Milk became one of the country’s first out gay elected officials when he joined the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Then, within a year of taking office, he was assassinated.

The LGBTQ+ movement has made great strides since, but it is also facing great challenges. The federal government has been antagonistic toward transgender individuals, slashing funding, restricting access to care and barring them from military service. Earlier this year, the Trump administration took down the Pride flag at the Stonewall National Monument, though it was put back up in April. Meanwhile, corporations are dropping support for Pride celebrations.

City & State’s Pride Trailblazers features dozens of LGBTQ+ leaders in New York who are standing up for their rights and making their voices heard. This list, written and researched in partnership with journalist Cris Seda Chabrier, includes the first director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs, a newly elected queer Assembly member from Queens and many other activists, advocates and executives on the front lines of the movement.

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Mamdani and AOC endorse DSA legislative candidates – but not the same ones

Peter Sterne — Sun, 31 May 2026 13:37:55 -0400

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed a slate of five state legislative candidates on Saturday, just two days after he endorsed an insurgent challenger to Rep. Adriano Espaillat on the same night Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released her own slate of four state legislative endorsements.

Between the two of them, Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez have now endorsed almost all of the candidates backed by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America – but they have mostly not endorsed the same candidates. Instead, their slates appear to be complementary. Mamdani is backing DSA’s state legislative candidates running for open seats and congressional candidates whom it would be politically difficult for AOC to endorse, while AOC is backing DSA’s challengers to Assembly incumbents whom Mamdani isn’t willing to endorse.

Ocasio-Cortez’s team didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Mamdani’s declined to comment.

NYC-DSA has endorsed 10 candidates in New York City: congressional candidates Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, state Senate candidate Aber Kawas, Assembly Member Diana Moreno and Assembly candidates Samantha Kattan, David Orkin, Christian Celeste Tate, Eon Huntley, Illapa Sairitupac and Conrad Blackburn.

Four of those candidates are challenging incumbent Assembly members: Orkin (who’s going after Assembly Member Jenifer Rajkumar in Queens), Celeste Tate (challenging Assembly Member Erik Dilan in north Brooklyn), Huntley (challenging Assembly Member Stefani Zinerman in Bedford-Stuyvesant) and Conrad Blackburn (challenging Assembly Member Jordan Wright in Harlem).

Four others are running for open state legislative seats: Moreno (who won a February special election for Mamdani’s old Assembly seat), Kawas (running for the seat held by state Senate Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, who’s retiring), Kattan (running for the seat held by Valdez, who’s leaving to run for Congress) and Sairitupac (running for the seat held by Assembly Member Grace Lee, who’s leaving to run for state Senate).

Both Mamdani and AOC endorsed Moreno earlier this year before her special election, and on Saturday, Mamdani endorsed the other three NYC-DSA candidates running for open seats – but he didn’t endorse any of the four Assembly challengers. City & State previously predicted that the mayor was most likely to endorse candidates running for open seats.

A person familiar with his thinking told Hell Gate, which first reported his latest state legislative endorsements, that the mayor refrained from endorsing any Assembly challengers in order to avoid antagonizing Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who fought for some of Mamdani’s priorities during budget negotiations and doesn’t like it when his members face primary challenges.

Of course, AOC doesn’t have to worry about pissing off Heastie, and she endorsed three of NYC-DSA’s Assembly challengers: Orkin, Celeste Tate and Huntley.

On the flip side, AOC has not endorsed either of NYC-DSA’s congressional candidates Valdez or Avila Chevalier, while Mamdani backed both of them. Valdez is running to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez – against Velázquez’s preferred successor, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. And Avila Chevalier is trying to unseat Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the powerful chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

AOC may be reluctant to cross Velázquez, who has acted as a political mentor to her, or to back a primary challenge against a fellow member of New York’s Democratic congressional delegation, but Mamdani has no such qualms.

Collectively, Mamdani and AOC have backed nine out of the 10 New York City members of NYC-DSA’s slate. Only one slate member doesn’t have an endorsement from either of the socialist stars: Blackburn, who’s trying to unseat Wright, the president of the Manhattan Young Democrats and the son of Manhattan Democratic Party head Keith Wright.

Mamdani and AOC splitting up the NYC-DSA slate ensures that all the DSA candidates can put a famous face on their flyers (well, except for Blackburn) while minimizing the potential political backlash for Mamdani and AOC. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who doesn’t have to worry about upsetting state legislative leaders or the New York congressional delegation, has endorsed all of the NYC-DSA slate except for Avila Chevalier, plus several other progressive candidates across the city and state.

Still, Mamdani’s decision not to endorse the entire slate has upset many of his socialist comrades.

More than 500 NYC-DSA members – including the co-chair of national DSA and leaders of the socialist group’s electoral strategy – signed an open letter calling on Mamdani to endorse the full NYC-DSA slate. “If you endorse only a few DSA candidates, you will tell thousands of your supporters to sit on the sidelines as oligarchs organize to sabotage your mayoralty and block all attempts to tax the rich,” reads the letter, which was published before Mamdani made his endorsements. “You will tell New Yorkers that there is no mass organization capable of taking on the oligarchy, only individual politicians fighting lonely fights.”

Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez have also endorsed a number of non-DSA candidates this cycle. AOC has endorsed Assembly Member Jessica González-Rojas, who’s challenging state Sen. Jessica Ramos in Queens. (While Mamdani has again avoided endorsing against a legislative incumbent). And Mamdani has endorsed Brad Lander, who’s challenging Rep. Dan Goldman in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. (While AOC has again avoided endorsing against a congressional incumbent). Mamdani also backed Lindsey Boylan’s unsuccessful bid for an open City Council seat in Manhattan earlier this year. And both Mamdani and AOC are supporting Brian Romero, who’s running to succeed González-Rojas in western Queens, and Eli Northrup, who’s running for an open Assembly seat on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

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