Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today, Gov. Kathy Hochul is to deliver her State of the State address. We’ll find out what to expect. We’ll also get details on the strike by 15,000 nurses against three hospital systems in the city.
Gov. Kathy Hochul will use her State of the State address today to set the agenda for this year’s legislative session in Albany. The speech is an annual ritual, but there’s more to it this year: She is running for re-election, and she’ll want her message to play in purplish parts of the state that Democrats hope to win over in November. I discussed the policy and the politics with Grace Ashford, who covers state government for the Metro desk.
Last week Governor Hochul spotlighted the major policy proposals she plans to cover in the speech. What else will you be listening for?
In the aftermath of the shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota, I’ll be watching the degree to which the governor takes a stand against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Trump administration.
There’s a bill called the New York for All Act that was introduced several years ago and would prohibit state and local officials from cooperating with ICE across the state.
It will be interesting to see if she throws her support behind that, and what other actions she takes to express “New York values,” which she likes to contrast with those of the federal government. The State Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, has already said that the New York for All Act was among her top priorities.
Only the state has the power to make the buses free, although Mayor Zohran Mamdani made that one of his campaign promises. Is she going to say she’ll do away with bus fares?
Albany’s chattering class has always suspected that would not be part of this address, and she confirmed it last week. She said, in essence, never say never but don’t hold your breath.
She’s made it clear she wants to collaborate with Mamdani. She wants to reach out to his voters and the people he energized, but she has her own priorities. And that’s really what the State of the State speech is going to be about.
What about taxes? New York is facing a big shortfall because of the Trump administration’s cuts in federal funding, especially for health care. What is she going to say about how she plans to make up the difference?
She has been historically resistant to raising taxes. She’s drawn a personal line in the sand on it and will be even more resistant in an election year.
That said, this may be the year she has to back down a bit, whether to fill gaps caused by the Trump cuts or to fund new programs, chief among them a large and very expensive expansion of child care that would bring the state’s total spending on that to $4.5 billion.
How will she come up with new revenue?
I’d be surprised if she mentioned any revenue-raisers in the State of the State, but a lot of people will be reading between the lines, looking for an answer to that question. Typically the budget proposal, which is released about a week later, explains how the governor wants to pay for the policies called for in the State of the State.
She wants to keep children safe online and keep predators, scammers and A.I. chatbots away from them. How would that work?
She is proposing an expansion of the child online safety system that she passed into law a few years ago. This age verification process would expand from social media to online gaming programs, and there would be more protections specifically targeted at keeping children from being exploited by adults.
My understanding is she is working with the legislative sponsors who had already introduced similar bills, but she’s put her own stamp on it, including a mechanism to ensure kids don’t run up crazy-high credit card bills for their parents.
She also wants to crack down on 3-D-printed guns with criminal penalties for manufacturing them. Isn’t she coming late to this? Federal rules took effect in 2022 requiring ghost gun kits to have serial numbers, and the nation’s biggest ghost gun manufacturer shut down in 2024.
At the intersection of crime and technology, things are constantly evolving. What the governor is proposing are restrictions on 3-D printers themselves. They would have to have software so that if they were given the command to print guns, they would know they cannot.
Weather
Expect a mostly sunny day with temperatures near 45. Tonight will be mostly cloudy, with a low around 43.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Monday (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“My lease ends at the end of this month. The security deposit is being put to work as the final month.” — Mayor Zohran Mamdani, on leaving his rent-stabilized apartment in Queens for Gracie Mansion.
The latest Metro news
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Shaping public schools: In an indication that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration could address school integration head-on, the new schools chancellor, Kamar Samuels, is outlining a vision that emphasizes equity and academic rigor.
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Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey push to expand migrant rights: The New Jersey State Legislature will vote on measures that would reinforce existing protections and make it more difficult for federal agents to target undocumented immigrants for deportation.
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Who represents Maduro: Last week a second lawyer came forward claiming to represent Nicolás Maduro, the deposed president of Venezuela. On Monday, Judge Alvin Hellerstein removed that lawyer, Bruce Fein, saying he had not been hired by Maduro, whereas the other lawyer had been.
A nurses’ strike and the test it poses for Mamdani
Nearly 15,000 nurses went on strike at some of New York City’s top hospitals on Monday. The walkout set the stage for an early test for Mayor Zohran Mamdani — and possibly one of the biggest labor showdowns in the city’s health care industry in years.
Mamdani, showing support for the strikers, spoke at a nurses’ rally hours after they had walked off their jobs. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, said almost a year ago that the city “needs to reconsider its relationship to private wealthy hospital systems” and questioned whether such hospitals deserved to keep their tax exemptions.
The union representing the nurses said the strike was necessary to force hospitals to ensure minimum staffing ratios so that nurses aren’t overloaded with patients. They are also demanding higher wages and more workplace security. The strike targets NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, Montefiore Medical Center and the main campus of Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, along with two other hospitals in the Mount Sinai system.
For weeks, hospital executives had been preparing to keep the facilities running and medical care accessible during a strike. They lined up staffing agencies to provide nurses from out of town, even reserving hotel rooms for them, according to officials at the Greater New York Hospital Association, a trade group. A spokesman for the association said the emergency departments at the struck hospitals were open and staffed.
METROPOLITAN diary
Coconut cream pie
Dear Diary:
I was at a bar in the financial district. I had coconut cream pie and an Arnold Palmer. A man wandered in through the employees-only door like he owned the place. He was dragging a little brown-and-black Chihuahua mix behind him on a pink collar and leash.
He ordered something to go and chatted with the bartender while the little dog wedged herself between his feet and the bar.
Her beady eyes locked onto me. Naturally, I stared back. She sniffed the air as I took a bite of pie.
“Can I pet your dog?” I asked, anticipating that rejection was possible, if not likely.
“You can try,” the man said. “She’s not really a people person. Got her from a rescue a couple weeks ago.”
The dog put one paw forward as she sniffed my hand and then, in the most hesitant, begrudging way, licked it. Twice.
The man and I both immediately lost our composure.
“She never licks people,” he said with a grin, holding out his fist for me to bump.
I think perhaps it was that coconut cream pie.
— Teresa Wilson
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post Hochul’s Election Year Agenda May Include ‘New York Values’ appeared first on New York Times.
