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    When Taxpayers Fund Shows Like ‘Blue Bloods’ and ‘S.N.L.,’ Does It Pay Off?

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    Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has proposed an increase in the film tax credit to stay competitive with New Jersey and other states.New Yorkers — and residents of many other states — have paid more for entertainment in recent years than just their Netflix or Hulu subscriptions.Each New York household has also contributed about $16 in taxes, on average, toward producing the drama series “Billions” since 2017. Over that period, each household has also paid roughly $14.50 in production incentives for “Saturday Night Live” and $4.60 for “The Irishman,” among many other shows and movies.Add it all up, and New York has spent more than $5.5 billion in incentives since 2017, the earliest year for which data is readily available. Now, as a new state budget agreement nears, Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she wants to add $100 million in credits for independent productions that would bring total film subsidies to $800 million a year, almost double the amount from 2022.Other states also pay out tens or hundreds of millions each year in a bidding war for Hollywood productions, under the theory that these tax credits spur the economy. One question for voters and lawmakers is whether a state recoups more than its investment in these movies and shows — or gets back only pennies on the dollar.New York has one of the largest tax credit programs and makes most of its data public, so we totaled its spending to see which productions benefited the most. More

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      Elise Stefanik, Cabinet Hopes Dashed, Considers Her Next Move

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      Styrofoam packing peanuts littered an empty office in the Rayburn House Office Building across from the Capitol on Monday morning as two moving men unpacked a plush couch, an upholstered armchair, lamps and a lucite side table.Representative Elise Stefanik of New York was back.This had not been the plan.Ms. Stefanik, the self-proclaimed “ultra MAGA” warrior whom President Trump nominated to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, had expected to sail through her Senate confirmation vote, which was to be scheduled in early April.So she boxed up her office. She sent off her longtime chief of staff, Patrick Hester, to start a new job at the State Department, where he ended up working for seven days. She completed a “farewell tour” of her district, checked out schools for her son in New York City and was looking forward to moving into the $15 million Manhattan penthouse that comes with what is considered a fairly cushy job.Instead, Ms. Stefanik was back here on Capitol Hill amid the peanuts, contemplating her next steps and pinning most of the blame for what happened on Speaker Mike Johnson.To detractors, the president’s decision to pull Ms. Stefanik’s nomination was something akin to karmic comeuppance for a Republican lawmaker who was elected as a moderate but tacked unapologetically to the MAGA right, coming to personify the opportunistic shape-shifting that has gripped her party in the age of Mr. Trump.Ms. Stefanik’s plight seemed to crystallize in one succinct cautionary tale the limits of loyalty in the MAGA universe. Even one of the president’s most stalwart defenders, an effective ally since his first impeachment trial, ultimately did not get what she had long been promised.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rough Night for Republican at Town Hall in N.Y. Swing District

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      Representative Mike Lawler faced shouts, groans and mockery at a high school auditorium in Rockland County.No one was expecting a love fest when Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, faced constituents in his suburban swing district on Sunday night. Still, even he seemed surprised by the night’s first clash — over the Pledge of Allegiance.“Please tell me you’re not objecting to the Pledge of Allegiance,” Mr. Lawler asked incredulously after some members of the audience inside a high school auditorium audibly groaned when he suggested reciting it.They acquiesced, and several hundred attendees labored to their feet to say the pledge, but not without indicating why they believed its words had come to ring hollow.“Authoritarian!” one man yelled, an apparent reference to President Trump.“Support the Constitution!” bellowed another.So it went for nearly two hours as Mr. Lawler, one of the House’s most vulnerable Republicans and a potential candidate for governor of New York, faced a torrent of criticism from liberal constituents over almost everything, from Republicans’ multitrillion-dollar tax cut plan to how brightly the room was lit.It was a scene that has repeated itself across the country over the past two weeks for the small group of Republicans who have defied party leaders’ advice and convened feedback sessions with the people they represent, many of them anxious, angry and primed to vent over a president who they believe is acting with unchecked power.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      12 States Sue Trump Over His Tariffs

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      A dozen states, most of them led by Democrats, sued President Trump over his tariffs on Wednesday, arguing that he has no power to “arbitrarily impose tariffs as he has done here.”Contending that only Congress has the power to legislate tariffs, the states are asking the court to block the Trump administration from enforcing what they said were unlawful tariffs.“These edicts reflect a national trade policy that now hinges on the president’s whims rather than the sound exercise of his lawful authority,” said the lawsuit, filed by the states’ attorneys general in the U.S. Court of International Trade.The states, including New York, Illinois and Oregon, are the latest parties to take the Trump administration to court over the tariffs. Their case comes after California filed its own lawsuit last week, in which Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state attorney general accused the administration of escalating a trade war that has caused “immediate and irreparable harm” to that state’s economy.Officials and businesses from Oregon, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed Wednesday, have also expressed concerns about the vulnerability of the state’s trade-dependent economy, as well as its sportswear industry, as a result of the tariffs.“When a president pushes an unlawful policy that drives up prices at the grocery store and spikes utility bills, we don’t have the luxury of standing by,” said Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, in a statement. “These tariffs hit every corner of our lives — from the checkout line to the doctor’s office — and we have a responsibility to push back.”Asked about the latest lawsuit, Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, called it a “witch hunt” by Democrats against Mr. Trump. “The Trump administration remains committed to using its full legal authority to confront the distinct national emergencies our country is currently facing,” he said, “both the scourge of illegal migration and fentanyl flows across our border and the exploding annual U.S. goods trade deficit.”The other states in the suit are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Vermont. All of the states have Democratic attorneys general, though Nevada and Vermont have Republican governors.Mr. Trump’s tariffs have shocked and upended the global trade industry. He set a 145 percent tariff on goods from China, 25 percent on Canada, and 10 percent on almost all imports from most other countries.The moves have drawn legal challenges from other entities as well, including two members of the Blackfeet Nation, who filed a federal lawsuit in Montana over the tariffs on Canada, saying they violated tribal treaty rights. Legal groups like the Liberty Justice Center and the New Civil Liberties Alliance have also sued. “I’m happy that Oregon and the other states are joining us in this fight,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, who is working on the Liberty Justice Center’s lawsuit. More

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      Luigi Mangione Death Penalty Bid May Pit Prosecutors Against Each Other

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      State and federal prosecutors have both accused Mr. Mangione of killing a health insurance executive. Attorney General Pam Bondi is pushing aggressively for capital punishment.Luigi Mangione is being prosecuted for murder by two agencies: the Department of Justice, which answers to President Trump, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which is led by the only prosecutor to convict President Trump.Mr. Trump and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, are far from natural allies. And the high-profile case of Mr. Mangione, who is charged with killing a health care executive, could set their offices on a collision course.When Mr. Mangione was arrested in December, before President Trump took office, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York said the state prosecution would occur first. But last week, Mr. Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, signaled that the Justice Department might move quickly, saying that federal prosecutors would seek the death penalty for Mr. Mangione.“The president’s directive was very clear: We are to seek the death penalty when possible,” Ms. Bondi said in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.”Deliberations over whether to seek the federal death penalty can take a year or more in the Southern District and the Justice Department. Ms. Bondi’s swift announcement was all the more unusual given that Mr. Mangione has yet to be formally indicted in federal court.Mr. Mangione’s case has become an arena for Ms. Bondi to show her commitment to the president. Her decision “is more political theater than anything else,” said Cheryl Bader, a law professor at Fordham University.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Bob McManus, Blunt Editorial Voice of New York Post, Dies at 81

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      As the editor of the tabloid’s editorial page and as a columnist, he skewered those he considered phonies and symbols of failed progressivism.Bob McManus, the trenchant editorial page editor of The New York Post and a columnist for other conservative publications who prided himself on his unambiguous common-sense commentary about public policy and other topics, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 81.The cause of his death, in a hospital, was complications of bile duct cancer, said his wife, Mary McManus.An influential and respected editorialist, Mr. McManus pulled no punches but still managed to be widely liked.He could unleash a fusillade of zingers against public officials and other prominent targets he branded phonies or hypocrites. But he could also leaven his caustic criticism with wit.“His prose style might best be described as a punchy amalgam of Damon Runyon, Raymond Chandler, and — a particular McManus favorite — Red Smith,” Edmund J. McMahon, a friend who is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and the founder of the Empire Center for Public Policy in Albany, N.Y., said in an interview.After a police officer was assaulted in Times Square last year by a group that included some migrants, Mr. McManus contrasted “a time when slugging a cop would get you bumps on your head” with what he described as the current anarchic system of justice.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      Upper West Side Theater Is Sold After Governor Allocates $3.5 Million

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      A nonprofit bought the landmark Metro Theater after receiving financial support from Gov. Kathy Hochul, the State Senate and Steven Spielberg’s foundation.A landmark Art Deco movie theater that closed 20 years ago on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was sold to a nonprofit after it received $3.5 million in discretionary grants from Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York.The nonprofit, the Upper West Side Cinema Center, used those funds and $500,000 in grants from the State Senate to complete its $6.9 million purchase of the Metro Theater on Friday. It plans to revitalize the building, on Broadway near West 99th Street, with a five-screen theater, a lobby lounge and a public cafe.Additional fund-raising of $15 million to $25 million is required to construct a new interior, replace the marquee and clean graffiti from the facade, the nonprofit says.“The Upper West Side community deserves another world-class venue for cinema and art, and that’s why I was proud to step in,” Hochul said in a news release.Assemblyman Micah Lasher, a Democrat who took office in January, grew up going to the Metro Theater and fondly remembers seeing “Ali” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus” there with his family.“Its loss for the last 20 years has been not just an eyesore, but a deeply felt scar for the neighborhood,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosectors on George Santos Case Seek 7-Year Sentence

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      The disgraced former congressman is set to be sentenced on April 25. His lawyers asked for a penalty of two years, the minimum allowed.Federal prosecutors on Friday asked for a prison sentence of more than seven years for George Santos, the former Republican congressman from New York whose career unraveled after he told a series of lies, and who later pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft.Prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York asked in a court filing for a sentence of 87 months to reflect the “seriousness of his unparalleled crimes.”Mr. Santos, 36, is set to be sentenced on April 25, bringing to an end a criminal case that began in 2023. Prosecutors charged him with 23 felony counts while he was still a representative in Congress.A provocateur who insisted on his innocence even as his serial falsehoods came to light, Mr. Santos pleaded guilty last August to two of the counts and admitted to an array of other frauds. Guidelines call for a sentence of roughly six to seven years in prison, though a judge will make the final decision later this month.In his drive to seek higher office, the prosecutors’ filing said, Mr. Santos fabricated his past and engaged in deceitful schemes, including inflating his fund-raising numbers and stealing from donors. “He lied to his campaign staff, his supporters, his putative employer and congressional colleagues, and the American public,” the prosecutors wrote.“Santos’s conduct has made a mockery of our election system,” they added.Lawyers for Mr. Santos, Robert M. Fantone and Joseph W. Murray, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday morning. In a separate filing on Friday, they asked for a sentence of two years, the minimum allowed for the crimes involved, followed by probation. Mr. Santos had acknowledged the gravity of his crimes, the filing said, and agreed to pay nearly $374,000 in restitution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Man Employs A.I. Avatar in Legal Appeal, and Judge Isn’t Amused

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      The use of a video persona created with artificial intelligence software to help make an argument earns a stern rebuke.Jerome Dewald sat with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap in front of an appellate panel of New York State judges, ready to argue for a reversal of a lower court’s decision in his dispute with a former employer.The court had allowed Mr. Dewald, who is not a lawyer and was representing himself, to accompany his argument with a prerecorded video presentation.As the video began to play, it showed a man seemingly younger than Mr. Dewald’s 74 years wearing a blue collared shirt and a beige sweater and standing in front of what appeared to be a blurred virtual background.A few seconds into the video, one of the judges, confused by the image on the screen, asked Mr. Dewald if the man was his lawyer.“I generated that,” Mr. Dewald responded. “That is not a real person.”The judge, Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels of the Appellate Division’s First Judicial Department, paused for a moment. It was clear she was displeased with his answer.“It would have been nice to know that when you made your application,” she snapped at him.“I don’t appreciate being misled,” she added before yelling for someone to turn off the video.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More