New York Politics
Blakeman’s campaign finance messNew!!
MO’ MONEY: Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman has received dozens of contributions surpassing the legal limit in recent months.
Blakeman has yet to refund roughly $360,000 to donors who have given to him above the cap, as POLITICO first...
Hochul eyes changes to state’s rape law amid Cornell crisis
RAPE LAW LOOPHOLE: Gov. Kathy Hochul vowed today to close a loophole embedded in state rape law around voluntary intoxification as she laced into Cornell University police and a local district attorney for their handling of a 2024 gang rape allegation....
New York grapples with kinks in $1B Medicaid system
WORKING OUT THE KINKS: New York’s Department of Health began transitioning more than 147,000 Medicaid and Medicare Savings Program enrollees to an upgraded case management system about a year ago.
Since then, state officials say only a third of them h...
Inside Mamdani’s fraught effort to rein in the NYPD unit he pledged to end
POLICING PROBLEMS: In the early days of his administration, Mayor Zohran Mamdani placed a new requirement on the NYPD: The department would have to secure permission from his office to deploy its Strategic Response Group to make arrests at protests.
T...
Menin’s AI moment
CITY HAL 9000: Amid a mad dash to try to regulate artificial intelligence, City Council Speaker Julie Menin is looking to make her mark.
The Manhattan lawmaker is planning to hold a hearing with all 51 members of the legislative body next week, and to...
The NY governor race pollster scrum
Q THE LANDSLIDE: Quinnipiac University released a poll today that found Gov. Kathy Hochul leading Republican Bruce Blakeman 58-39 — putting her on track for the fourth-largest landslide by a New York gubernatorial candidate in the past 200 years.
It’s...
Mamdani and Trump face frosty reception in Queens over Sunnyside Yard plan
LOCAL INPUT: Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing fresh backlash over sidelining key stakeholders from talks about developing thousands of housing units on top of a Queens rail yard.
The Sunnyside Yard project landed back in the headlines yesterday when Mam...
The art of dealing with Trump
ALL EYES ON GRACIE: Mayor Zohran Mamdani is expected to sit down with President Donald Trump at Gracie Mansion this afternoon, their third in-person meeting in less than a year and the latest wrinkle in one of the strangest relationships in American po...
Let’s beat California on AI, key Democrat says
SESSION LESSON: Assemblymember Alex Bores would really like to take another swing at regulating Big Tech before he leaves office at the end of the year.
The New York lawmaker faced the multimillion-dollar wrath of the tech industry after leading the c...
‘We told you so’: Key New York lawmaker calls for more AI rules
AI BILLS BILLS BILLS: One of the architects of New York’s pioneering legislation to put guardrails around artificial intelligence says ominous warnings from industry leaders prove states need to act aggressively.
“I’m very rarely one to say, ‘I told y...