“Mayor Zohran Mamdani has painted himself as the unfortunate victim of a historic budget crisis, but he really should be counting his lucky stars. New York City has a big spending problem, but not a revenue problem. Yet that could change soon — warning signs are already flashing. Mamdani isn’t confronting an external economic shock like a recession, 9/11, the financial crisis or COVID-19. Wall Street is doing fine; the taxes on its stellar bonuses made $5 billion of the city’s budget gap disappear overnight. As much as the mayor would hate to admit it, he needs Wall Street more than it needs him. According to state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, the securities industry contributes 42.3% of the city’s personal-income tax and 8.4% of its total tax revenue.” (02/22/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by Whitney Curry Wimbish
“A new super PAC is throwing its weight behind progressive Democrats in upcoming midterm election primaries to counter the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobbyist that has recently hidden behind ‘shell PACs’ to fund its preferred candidates, as opposition grows to its unconditional support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, sources told the Prospect. The new PAC, American Priorities, filed a statement of organization with the Federal Election Commission last Thursday. It’s committing to spending multiple millions of dollars across several races, the sources said, beginning with a focus on a pair of Democratic congressional primaries in the South, where progressive candidates are up against establishment opponents. It has so far spent $550,000 on Durham, North Carolina, County Commissioner Nida Allam, who is challenging incumbent Democratic Rep. Valerie Foushee for the state’s Fourth Congressional District seat.” (02/20/26)
“Since the 2019 arrest of Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges and related crimes, Americans have witnessed a steady disclosure of the names of public figures and institutions tainted by past association with the late financier. They have noted little if any justice for survivors of his alleged abuses, along with other troubling aspects of the responses to a scandal at the upper reaches of U.S. society. One probable result: a heightened crisis of trust, especially among those less fortunate toward what is seen as a self‑protective network of elite and wealthy people. A survey conducted last year found the United States now has the world’s largest gap in trust of government, business, and media between low-income and high-income earners. The gap is 29 points compared with a global average of 15. The American underclass now perceives a rigged system more than it did in the past.” (02/20/26)
“With a blizzard bearing down on New York City, socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has offered citizens a chance to make a few extra bucks removing snow, but there is a catch, and it’s a doozy: As racist as the Left tells us this is, workers must bring valid ID. Say it ain’t so, Zo. We know from the voter ID debate that marginalized Brown and Black people just can’t figure out how to get driver’s licenses. According to Kamala Harris, it has something to do with not having a Kinkos. So why is Hizzoner pushing Jim Crow 2.0 here? Oh, and, the ID required includes a Social Security card, so in addition to excluding minorities, Mamdani is barring illegal immigrants. Is the mayor worried that people may not be honest about who they actually are?” (02/22/26)
Source: In These Times
by Rebecca Burns & Sarah Lazare
“First, she started checking for suspicious cars each day before leaving the house for work. Then, she began skipping work whenever she saw Facebook posts about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents nearby. By the end of December, she wasn’t working at all. And since the first week of January, Anain, who declined to use her last name, has barely left the home she shares with her spouse and two young daughters in South Minneapolis, the neighborhood where she’s lived for more than 20 years. To pay their rent, Anain and her spouse have had to dip into their savings. With neither of them working, ’we don’t know how long we’ll be able to keep going,’ she says in Spanish. For immigrant families like Anain’s, the crisis in Minnesota is far from over.” (02/19/26)
“‘I’m not scared, you’re scared!’ is the repeated line in a children’s story we recently read to the kids at the Unitarian Universalist version of Sunday school I attend with my children. In that story, a scared bear and a brave rabbit, who (naturally!) are best friends, go on a hike together. Rabbit has to cajole and encourage Bear through every imaginable obstacle, but in the end (of course!) it’s Rabbit who gets stuck at the crucial moment and has to call on Bear for help. Bear (no surprise) sets aside his fears to rescue his friend and (tada!) finds new depths of bravery and adventurousness in the process. After we read the story, the kids worked together to build paths from blocks and Legos through the imagined obstacles in the story — a bridge over a rushing river, a path through a dark forest, a staircase up a steep mountain.” (02/19/26)
“Attorney General Pam Bondi’s contentious House hearing about the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files offered a clear message to the nation: Sex trafficking of women and minors is perfectly acceptable as long as wealthy white men do it. Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced late sex trafficker, fixer, and political networker, was found to have ties to huge number of the world’s elites on both sides of the political aisle—including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Ehud Barak, Bill Gates, Steve Bannon, Larry Summers, Bill Clinton, and of course, Donald Trump. For years, Trump’s conservative backers have attacked LGBTQ+ people, drag queens, immigrants, and others, claiming a desire to protect women and children from rapists and groomers. Trump even boasted that ‘whether the women liked it or not,’ he would ‘protect’ them from migrants, whom he slandered as ‘monsters’ who ‘kidnap and kill our children’.” (02/19/26)
Source: New York Post
by Ken Girardin & John Ketcham
“Budgets are usually about choices, but Mayor Mamdani’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal presents Gov. Hochul and state lawmakers with just one: They can sign off on the suite of tax hikes he’s demanded, or he’ll ask the City Council for a painful property tax increase of almost 10%. The mayor has complained — not without some merit — that the Adams administration lowballed expenses. If the city’s finances are truly in ‘crisis’ condition, the appropriate response is triage. But the mayor has yet to administer even basic first aid. The ‘chief spending officers’ he tasked with trimming spending haven’t yet made suggestions, and the phrase ‘hiring freeze’ hasn’t been uttered. Instead, he’s sending property owners to the hospital with a 9.5% property tax hike.” (02/18/26)
“After some delays, the United States is dispatching a second aircraft-carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, from the Caribbean to the Middle East to join the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and threaten Iran. This is the third Atlantic crossing for the Ford’s crew since it set sail from Norfolk, Virginia, in June 2025, and the second time its deployment has been extended, first to redeploy from the Middle East to the Caribbean, and now to redeploy back to the Middle East. There is a grave danger that the US government is preparing to exploit the genuine sympathy of people all over the world for the Iranian civilians massacred during protests in December and January as a pretext for an illegal military assault on Iran.” (02/19/26)
“Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico’s campaign is $2.5 million richer this week and a bit closer to victory after Stephen Colbert, host of ‘The Late Show’ on CBS, made up a ridiculous lie about being censored by President Trump. It took a few days for the dust to settle, but now that we have a clear picture of what happened, it is about as bad as it can be. In fact, it would likely be a fireable offense if the ratings challenged Colbert was not already slated to get the ax in May. According to Colbert’s version of events, which is falling apart faster than a house of cards in a wind tunnel, he was told by CBS lawyers on Monday, just minutes before he was set to interview Talarico, that he could not air the conversation. Why? Because of the Trump administration Federal Communication Commission’s new rules on equal time.” (02/19/26)
