New York
‘Long Live the King’: Trump Likens Himself to Royalty on Truth Social
President Trump is famous for his love of everything gold and other trappings that connote royalty, whether it be large military parades or extravagant inaugural balls.
But in a post on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday, Mr. Trump went a step further, likening himself to a king as he celebrated his administration’s move to kill New York City’s congestion pricing program.
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED,” he wrote. “LONG LIVE THE KING!”
The White House then reinforced the message, recirculating it on Instagram and X with an illustration of Mr. Trump wearing a crown on a magazine cover resembling Time, but called Trump.
Mr. Trump’s expansive views of his power have been evident in his words and deeds. He has liberally dispensed executive orders that have gone beyond what is considered to be legally permissible. He has fired officials, run roughshod over federal agencies in ways that go beyond his authority and frozen funds that Congress had already appropriated.
And just last week, the president made clear that he believed he had broad leeway to reshape the government in any way he saw fit.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, apparently referencing a version of something Napoleon Bonaparte may have said. The origin though is unclear.
By killing congestion pricing, Mr. Trump suggested he was saving New York.
He vowed during the election to halt the program, which charges most drivers $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street, when he entered office. In an interview with The New York Post this month, he characterized the toll as being “destructive” to New York.
“If I decide to do it, I will be able to kill it off in Washington through the Department of Transportation,” Mr. Trump said in the interview.
On Wednesday, the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, made good on the president’s wishes. He laid out Mr. Trump’s objections to the program in a letter sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul and said that federal officials would contact the state to “discuss the orderly cessation of toll operations.”
“I share the president’s concerns about the impacts to working-class Americans who now have an additional financial burden to account for in their daily lives,” Mr. Duffy wrote.
Mr. Trump’s first month back in the White House has been full of moments where he has invoked almost monarchical power. In his Inaugural Address, he said God had saved him when a would-be assassin made an attempt on his life in order “to make America great again.”
Some of his policy moves have rested on a far more expansive legal theory — known as the unitary executive theory — of presidential power.
Part of the theory would interpret some of what Mr. Trump has been doing as lawful under the belief that it is not illegal to disregard an unconstitutional statute. But even if the prevailing laws were valid, the president seems to be suggesting that he is entitled to break them if his motive is to save the country.
An avalanche of lawsuits have been filed to contest many of the executive actions and in some cases delayed them from being implemented.
Ms. Hochul explicitly pushed back on Mr. Trump’s presentation of himself as a monarch in her statement about the revoking of congestion pricing. In recent weeks, she spoke with him multiple times to try to convince him of the program’s benefits, only to see the plug pulled.
“We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king,” Ms. Hochul said. “The M.T.A. has initiated legal proceedings in the Southern District of New York to preserve this critical program. We’ll see you in court.”
New York
Driver Who Killed Mother and Daughters Sentenced to 3 to 9 Years
A driver who crashed into a woman and her two young daughters while they were crossing a street in Brooklyn in March, killing all three, was sentenced to as many as nine years in prison on Wednesday.
The driver, Miriam Yarimi, has admitted striking the woman, Natasha Saada, 34, and her daughters, Diana, 8, and Deborah, 5, after speeding through a red light. She had slammed into another vehicle on the border of the Gravesend and Midwood neighborhoods and careened into a crosswalk where the family was walking.
Ms. Yarimi, 33, accepted a judge’s offer last month to admit to three counts of second-degree manslaughter in Brooklyn Supreme Court in return for a lighter sentence. She was sentenced on Wednesday by the judge, Justice Danny Chun, to three to nine years behind bars.
The case against Ms. Yarimi, a wig maker with a robust social media presence, became a flashpoint among transportation activists. Ms. Yarimi, who drove a blue Audi A3 sedan with the license plate WIGM8KER, had a long history of driving infractions, according to New York City records, with more than $12,000 in traffic violation fines tied to her vehicle at the time of the crash.
The deaths of Ms. Saada and her daughters set off a wave of outrage in the city over unchecked reckless driving and prompted calls from transportation groups for lawmakers to pass penalties on so-called super speeders.
Ms. Yarimi “cared about only herself when she raced in the streets of Brooklyn and wiped away nearly an entire family,” Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, said in a statement after the sentencing. “She should not have been driving a car that day.”
Mr. Gonzalez had recommended the maximum sentence of five to 15 years in prison.
On Wednesday, Ms. Yarimi appeared inside the Brooklyn courtroom wearing a gray shirt and leggings, with her hands handcuffed behind her back. During the brief proceedings, she addressed the court, reading from a piece of paper.
“I’ll have to deal with this for the rest of my life and I think that’s a punishment in itself,” she said, her eyes full of tears. “I think about the victims every day. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think about what I’ve done.”
On the afternoon of March 29, a Saturday, Ms. Yarimi was driving with a suspended license, according to prosecutors. Around 1 p.m., she turned onto Ocean Parkway, where surveillance video shows her using her cellphone and running a red light, before continuing north, they said.
At the intersection with Quentin Road, Ms. Saada was stepping into the crosswalk with her two daughters and 4-year-old son. Nearby, a Toyota Camry was waiting to turn onto the parkway.
Ms. Yarimi sped through a red light and into the intersection. She barreled into the back of the Toyota and then shot forward, plowing into the Saada family. Her car flipped over and came to a rest about 130 feet from the carnage.
Ms. Saada and her daughters were killed, while her son was taken to a hospital where he had a kidney removed and was treated for skull fractures and brain bleeding. The Toyota’s five passengers — an Uber driver, a mother and her three children — also suffered minor injuries.
Ms. Yarimi’s car had been traveling 68 miles per hour in a 25 m.p.h. zone and showed no sign that brakes had been applied, prosecutors said. Ms. Yarimi sustained minor injures from the crash and was later taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
The episode caused immediate fury, drawing reactions from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and Mayor Eric Adams, who attended the Saadas’s funeral.
According to NYCServ, the city’s database for unpaid tickets, Ms. Yarimi’s Audi had $1,345 in unpaid fines at the time of the crash. On another website that tracks traffic violations using city data, the car received 107 parking and camera violations between June 2023 and the end of March 2025. Those violations, which included running red lights and speeding through school zones, amounted to more than $12,000 in fines.
In the months that followed, transportation safety groups and activists decried Ms. Yarimi’s traffic record and urged lawmakers in Albany to pass legislation to address the city’s chronic speeders.
Mr. Gonzalez on Wednesday said that Ms. Yarimi’s sentence showed “that reckless driving will be vigorously prosecuted.”
But outside the courthouse, the Saada family’s civil lawyer, Herschel Kulefsky, complained that the family had not been allowed to speak in court. “ They are quite disappointed, or outraged would probably be a better word,” he said, calling the sentence “the bare minimum.”
“I think this doesn’t send any message at all, other than a lenient message,” Mr. Kulefsky added.
New York
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New York
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