New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a press conference at Staten Island University Hospital Community Park on April 27, 2026 in NYC. Mayor Mamdani was joined by Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., government officials and members of the New York New Jersey FIFA World Cup 2026 Host Committee. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
New York Continues to Self-Destruct
After returning from a two-week sojourn in Europe, I waded through a stack of hometown newspapers to learn that New York is sinking even deeper into the fiscal, economic, and social abyss.
Here’s the latest . . .
Two months after the state’s fiscal year ended, a budget was finally approved.
The result: Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., who insists she is a great negotiator, once again, gave away the farm to state legislators.
Her original record-breaking $268 billion budget proposal is now a whopping $277 billion.
And the $9 billion increase will be funded by various one-shots. Fiscal gimmicks will push the projected two-year cumulative deficit to $32 billion.
Being an election year, the budget is full of goodies for the unions.
The cost-cutting pension plan that was championed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., in 2012, was shelved.
The retroactive pension increases for state, municipal and public-school employees will cost taxpayers more than $500 million annually.
To placate the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which represents healthcare workers, Medicaid spending (which is the highest in the nation per capita) will spike 12%.
The budget also earmarks $100 million to subsidize the SEIU’s benefit fund.
How crazy is that?
To silence the whining teacher union leaders, Albany threw even more money to support failing schools.
The unions also scored a big victory over New York City’s schools.
Due to annual declines in student enrollments, the unions, fearing layoffs, arm-twisted Albany in 2022 to approve legislation that limits class sizes to 20 students for kindergarten to third grade, 23 students for grades four through eight, and 25 students for high school classes.
The law forces the city to hire 10,000 to 12,000 new teachers that will cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.
To accommodate the city’s request for a two-year delay in lowering class sizes, Gov. Hochul gave the teachers unions a super deal to placate them.
In return for the delay the City must give every teacher “differential pay” of $8,500 in the school year that begins in September and $9,500 the following year.
With over 80,000 teachers, taxpayers will have to shell out $1.4 billion during the next two school years.
The legislature has also sent to Hochul’s desk a bill that deletes from every state law, the words “mother” and “father.” The new terms will be “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent.”
Wai Wah Chin of the Manhattan Institute noted that the ideologically-driven law, “objectifying language devalues the mothers and fathers who work to build strong families that mold their children’s emotional, educational and economic outcomes.”
She added, “It undermines the foundational roles that for millennia have sustained societies. It erodes the cultural and legal recognition that complementary parenting benefits kids most.”
Another reckless scheme hatched by radical Democrats: A constitutional amendment to repeal the ban on congressional gerrymandering.
If approved by the voters in 2027, the amendment would permit Democrat legislators to redraw congressional lines at any time for any reason.
It is not any better in New York City. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, attempting to tax anything that moves, has proposed a bloated budget that is balanced with one-shot revenues and the deferral of pensions contributions.
Such fiscal gimmicks brought the city to the edge of bankruptcy in the 1970s.
Mamdani may be Mayor John Lindsay redux.
On another front — in May hate crimes against Jews were up 70%, versus a year ago.
What is the mayor doing about it?
Not much.
He has been too busy campaigning with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for antisemitic
candidates running for Congress in this month’s Democratic primaries.
Take the case of congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier (DAC), who is challenging incumbent representative Adriano Espaillat in the 13th Congressional District covering Upper Manhattan and West Bronx.
DAC, who Mamdani calls “a perfect candidate,” is an unabashed member of the looney left. She has even marched in pro-Hamas rallies hailing Oct. 7, 2023, and has saIsrael “does not exist.”
On a Twitter post DAC wrote, “I agree the U.S. wanton violence is categorically incomparable to the worst things Hamas has ever done or ever could do.” The U.S., she proclaimed, “is a f****** disgrace. Joe Biden is “a rapist” and “a war criminal.”
Other crazy statements made by DAC:
“All deportation is wrong.”
“I forgot to get napkins, so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”
DAC has called for the police, prisons and ICE to be abolished. She also supports the suspension of rent and mortgage payments.
All this extremist blather, and not one mainstream Democrat is expressing outrage!
Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Gov. Hochul, and state Democratic chairman Jay Jacobs are nowhere to be found.
Their cowardly behavior is beyond the pale.
The Democratic Party of governors, Hugh Carey, Mario Cuomo, and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is dead.
And the new crowd that’s taking over the party won’t be satisfied until they destroy New York’s cultural and financial foundations.
(A related story may be found here.)
George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of “The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact,” and “Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy.” Read more George J. Marlin Insider articles — Click Here Now.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.