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      NY Agrees to Settle Ex-Cuomo Aide’s Harassment Claims for $450,000

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      The former executive aide, Brittany Commisso, accused Andrew M. Cuomo of groping her when he was governor. The state did not admit wrongdoing.New York State has agreed to pay $450,000 to settle claims from a woman who accused Andrew M. Cuomo of groping her in 2020, when he was the governor and she was an executive aide, according to a settlement document reviewed by The New York Times.The settlement, with Brittany Commisso, is the second one the state has made this year in connection with Mr. Cuomo’s treatment of women while in office. Mr. Cuomo resigned in 2021 amid accusations he harassed 11 women, including Ms. Commisso. He is now running for mayor of New York City.Under the terms of the agreement, which will need a judge’s approval, Ms. Commisso would drop all claims against the state, including an accusation that she was retaliated against after coming forward about her experience. She also agreed not to seek employment with the executive chamber through 2030. The deal does not include any admission of wrongdoing on the part of the state or Mr. Cuomo.Mariann Wang, a lawyer for Ms. Commisso, called the settlement “a complete vindication of her claims.”It is a blow to the former governor, who has been trying to reinvent himself as a friendly and trustworthy figure as he struggles to mount a political comeback. A representative for Mr. Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said that the state had agreed to settle the suit over Mr. Cuomo’s objections.This week, Mr. Cuomo announced that he would continue his bid for mayor as an independent after losing the Democratic nomination to Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist from Queens.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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      When Getting Fired Is Only the Beginning for Federal Workers

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      One thing is clear from a reporter’s conversations with laid-off federal workers this year: The cuts have been anything but straightforward and efficient.The week after Martin Basch was fired from his federal job in February, he started applying for state unemployment benefits in Ohio, his home state, determined to find a new path.But he soon found himself facing an unexpected snag: He kept receiving paychecks, beyond his official termination date of March 14.This might not seem like a problem. But for Basch, it was a sign of the chaotic and costly limbo in which he and many other federal workers have found themselves as President Trump seeks to streamline the federal government.I’ve been talking to federal workers for months about the mass firings’ impact on them, and one thing has been clear: The cuts have been anything but straightforward and efficient.For many, the layoff was just the beginning. Workers have found themselves locked in a Kafkaesque cycle of getting fired and rehired, and some have struggled to track down the documentation they need to move on.Basic questions, elusive answersTheir terminations came abruptly, and with little explanation. Legal challenges have added more chaos as judges ordered thousands of fired workers to be temporarily reinstated, and higher courts have reversed some of those decisions.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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      Mamdani Wins Backing of Major Health Care Union That Had Endorsed Cuomo

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      Local 1199, which represents 200,000 health care workers in New York City, rescinded its support of Andrew Cuomo and is now endorsing Zohran Mamdani for mayor.Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the upstart democratic socialist who convincingly won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, was endorsed on Friday by the city’s powerful health care union, Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union.Since his win last month, Mr. Mamdani has quickly coalesced much of the city’s organized labor behind him, receiving endorsements from unions representing millions of teachers, hotel workers and nurses, among other professions.Many of these unions, including Local 1199, had endorsed former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who is now running in the general election as a third-party candidate.The health care union’s initial support of Mr. Cuomo was seen as a sign of the longtime alliance between the former governor and the union’s former leader, George Gresham. The two had a tight relationship going back to Mr. Cuomo’s time in office, when he influenced state policies to aide Mr. Gresham and his members.But with Mr. Gresham voted out of office this spring, the union’s executive board voted on Friday to endorse Mr. Mamdani, with the union’s recently elected president, Yvonne Armstrong, lauding Mr. Mamdani’s “plan to ensure frontline caregivers can continue working and living in our city.”“Working people across New York City are uniting to defend our neighborhoods and our city from unprecedented attacks from extremist politicians and their billionaire donors who are taking away health care, ripping families apart and endangering our democracy,” Ms. Armstrong added in a statement.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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      JD Vance’s Big, Beautiful Task

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      The vice president is selling Trump’s domestic policy bill amid signs Democratic attacks are breaking through.Vice presidents always have hard jobs.They have little practical authority. They are the face of decisions they are not empowered to make. They get assignments that are hard to ace (like Vice President Kamala Harris’s deployment to address the “root causes” of migration).This morning, I headed to a machine shop in West Pittston, Pa., where Vice President JD Vance was stepping up to shoulder what is becoming a delicate task: selling President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”Stumping for your boss’s signature legislation might not ordinarily be an arduous assignment. But at least at this early point, the law, for which Vance cast a tiebreaking vote, is simply not very popular. Some Republicans have warned that it will cost their party seats; one is already trying to roll back the bill’s cuts to Medicaid.Making matters worse for Vance, hints of distrust were in the air, given the furor over the administration’s decision not to release more information about the investigation into the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.The machine shop began filling up with devoted Trump and Vance fans, who arrived in Trump 2028 hats or T-shirts showing the moment the president survived an assassination attempt last summer. But even here, there were questions about the new law, and signs that Democrats’ efforts to highlight it as regressive and call it a giveaway for the wealthy were breaking through.“The Democrats are saying that, I forget the number, but, like, millions of people are going to lose their health care and that kind of thing. And I just want to know if that’s true,” said Jane Mizerak, 68, a Republican from the nearby town of West Wyoming, who said she had voted for Trump each time he had run for president.Republicans Rebound in Support for ImmigrationPercent saying immigration is a good thing for this country today

      Source: Gallup surveys of U.S. adults from 2001 to 2025. By The New York TimesWe 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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      Mamdani for Mayor (if You Want to Help the Republicans)

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      Two groups must be especially thrilled by the prospect of Zohran Mamdani becoming New York’s next mayor.The first: young, progressive-leaning voters who gave the charismatic 33-year-old State Assembly member his come-out-of-nowhere victory in last month’s Democratic primary. They want what he wants: rent freezes, free public buses, city-owned grocery stores, tax hikes for corporations and millionaires, curbs on the police, a near doubling of the minimum wage to $30 an hour and the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu.The second: Republicans who want to make sure that Democrats remain the perfect opposition party — far-left, incompetent, divided, distrusted and, on a national level, unelectable. Remember when Ronald Reagan ran against the “San Francisco Democrats” in 1984 and carried 49 states? Get ready for the G.O.P. to run against “Mamdani Democrats” for several election cycles to come.That’s a thought that ought to give moderate Democrats pause before they accept Mamdani’s mayoralty as a political fait accompli, or even think of getting behind him. Among the reasons the Democratic Party’s brand has become toxic in recent years is progressive misgovernance in places like Los Angeles; San Francisco; Oakland, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; and Chicago. If Mamdani governs on the promises on which he’s campaigned, he’ll bring the same toxicity to America’s biggest city.How so?Some of Mamdani’s proposals, like the city-owned groceries, are almost too foolish to mention: Public grocery stores struggle to stock their shelves, can’t compete with private groceries, lack economies of scale and have a recent record of failure in the United States. Other ideas, like free buses, would merely exacerbate the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s shaky finances, which is one reason Kathy Hochul, New York’s Democratic governor, didn’t renew a free bus ride pilot program last year.Turns out, socialism works no better in Brooklyn than it does in Havana.But those ideas won’t be as destructive as Mamdani’s other brainstorms. “Freeze the rent,” his popular campaign slogan, applies only to rent-stabilized apartments, which account for about half of the city’s rental units. But a rent freeze would have precisely the same effects in New York as it has everywhere else: Particularly in a time of inflation, it would lead landlords to cut costs on maintenance, jack up prices on non-stabilized units, convert rental buildings to condos or co-ops and stop new developments that would require affordable housing.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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      Andrew Cuomo Test Drives a Warmer, Friendlier Version of Himself

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      Mr. Cuomo, the former governor of New York, has vowed to run a more energetic campaign than he did in the mayoral primary, and aimed to demonstrate that on Tuesday.There were stops at a pizzeria in Queens, a coffee shop in Harlem and a few places in the Bronx. The childhood home got a visit. Hands were shaken; smiles were exchanged.Tuesday was Day 1 of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s reimagined and reinvigorated campaign to become mayor of New York City, a corrective bid to what even his allies conceded had been a lackluster effort to win over voters.The appearances reflected the first faint signs of a different sort of Cuomo campaign taking shape — one that seemed inspired in part by the go-anywhere, talk-to-anyone strategy successfully deployed by Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist and state assemblyman who captured the Democratic primary.But in Mr. Cuomo’s hands, the shift in approach served a very particular mission: portray Mr. Mamdani as a socialist enemy of New York City, and convey Mr. Cuomo’s regret for neither effectively nor energetically delivering that message during the campaign.Sitting across from his daughter Mariah at Gaby’s Pizza in Queens, Mr. Cuomo took responsibility for his lackluster primary campaign, saying, “I did not communicate my vision effectively.”“There was this ‘play it safe, make no mistakes’ attitude,” he added, as a fleet of campaign videographers recorded his every move. “That was not who I am. It’s not what New Yorkers expected from a campaign.”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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      Are the Courts Checking Trump — or Enabling Him?

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      A former federal judge weighs in.In this episode of “The Opinions,” the editorial director David Leonhardt talks to a conservative former federal judge, Michael McConnell, about the role of the courts in President Trump’s second term.Are the Courts Checking Trump — or Enabling Him?A former federal judge weighs in.Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.David Leonhardt: I’m David Leonhardt, the director of the New York Times editorial board. Every week I’m having conversations to help shape the board’s opinions.One thing that I find useful right now is talking with President Trump’s conservative critics. They tend to be alarmed by the president’s behavior, but they also tend to be more optimistic than many progressives about whether American democracy is surviving the Trump presidency. And that combination helps me and my colleagues think about where the biggest risks to our country really are.One area I’ve been wrestling with is the federal court system. I want to understand the extent to which the courts are acting as a check on President Trump as he tries to amass more power, or whether the courts are actually helping him amass that 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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      How Does Trump Silence the Epstein Conspiracy Theories?

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      President Trump is finding it hard to put the Epstein files behind him.As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump loved a conspiracy theory.He started his political career by stoking the lie that President Obama was not born in the United States. By 2024, he complained, falsely, that noncitizens would vote in the November election and throw the result to Democrats. He declared on a debate stage that immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets. He promised to release government files on Sept. 11 and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and told Fox News that “I guess I would” release the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein, too.As president, though, he’s finding that it’s a whole lot easier to start a conspiracy theory than it is to put one to rest.That is the challenge facing Trump now, as his political supporters stage an open revolt over his administration’s decision not to release further materials about Epstein, the convicted sex offender who hobnobbed with the global elite before he died by suicide in prison in 2019.Putting the genie back in the bottleThey could be forgiven for expecting more details. Trump installed two vocal Epstein conspiracy theorists and right-wing media personalities, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, to run the F.B.I. after both men spent years telling their audiences there really was a there there. This spring, Attorney General Pam Bondi promised big revelations about the case that have come to nothing.It turns out, though, it is a whole lot easier to be a conspiracy theorist when you’re not president, you don’t control both houses of Congress, and you haven’t handpicked the leaders of the nation’s premier investigative agencies.Trump has tried to put the genie back in the bottle. He admonished a reporter for asking about the matter at a cabinet meeting last week — “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” — and then, over the weekend, told off his followers, in a lengthy social media post.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