Northeast
NJ Dem slams New York as controversial NYC congestion pricing takes effect
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., called out New York as it prepares to implement a controversial new congestion pricing tax for commuters on Saturday.
The congestion pricing program takes effect on Sunday, but Sherrill argues the tax is little more than an attempt to “fund the [Metro Transportation Authority] on the backs of New Jersey commuters.”
“This new tax will raise costs for New Jerseyans, while also worsening traffic and increasing pollution in New Jersey as commuters go out of their way to seek more affordable routes into New York,” Sherrill wrote.
“I refuse to sit back as New York uses New Jersey’s workforce as a meal ticket for the MTA,” she added. “And I will continue to fight to move businesses to the Garden State, to expand office sharing sites, and to make it easier for New Jerseyans to work remotely.”
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Sherrill is among a long list of Democratic candidates vying in the New Jersey gubernatorial race this year.
The congestion tax took effect Sunday despite efforts by New Jersey officials, who filed a lawsuit seeking to block the implementation on the grounds that New York had not sufficiently investigated environmental impacts.
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Gordon ruled on Friday that there was no basis to delay the toll.
Traffic moves through downtown Manhattan on April 21, 2023. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
MTA Chair Janno Lieber praised the ruling, noting the potential benefits of congestion pricing.
“We’ve been studying this issue for five years, but it only takes about five minutes if you’re in midtown Manhattan to see that New York has a real traffic problem,” Lieber said at a news conference. “I recognize there’s been a lot of controversy about this program and there are a lot of people who are concerned about the impact of congestion pricing. To them, I want to say the point is to make the city better for everybody.”
The Empire State Building and tourist district are seen along the route to New York City on Aug. 17, 2022, in Jersey City, New Jersey. (Eduardo MunozAlvarez/VIEWpress)
Congestion pricing is expected to generate billions in revenue to modernize New York’s transit infrastructure, but it has faced criticism from New Jersey officials and commuters who say it places an unfair burden on people driving in from outside of New York.
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Some commuters could face daily charges of up to $22, which would include existing tolls for Port Authority crossings.
President-elect Trump has repeatedly said he plans to block the plan after he takes office later this month.
Fox News’ Landon Mion contributed to this report.
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Trump NY sentencing set for January 10th
Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett and Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz discuss the latest developments in the New York legal case against President-elect Donald Trump during an appearance on ‘Hannity.’
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New York Judge Juan Merchan’s dogmatic refusal on Friday to dismiss the misbegotten case against President-elect Donald Trump and, instead, proceed to sentencing on Jan. 10 is yet another middle finger extended to the law. And to Trump.
At the same time, Merchan unwittingly concedes the folly of the entire prosecution by notifying the defendant that neither the court nor District Attorney Alvin Bragg will seek any meaningful punishment. Trump, the judge disingenuously advises, would receive an “unconditional discharge” with no incarceration, fine, or probation following the guilty verdicts by a Manhattan jury last May.
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Never mind that state law does not support a jail sentence under these circumstances. Forget that the district attorney deliberately contorted statutes and mangled evidence to pursue a meritless prosecution that was motivated purely by political vengeance. And ignore the fact that there is little chance that the biased jury’s guilty verdict, compounded by Merchan’s chronic reversible errors, will withstand judicial scrutiny on appeal. Eventually.
It seems obvious that Merchan is desperate to stain Trump with the formal stricture of “convicted felon.” To do it, he must sentence the incoming president. A jury’s verdict alone is insufficient under the law. Hence, the offer of what amounts to a non-sentence if only Trump will, at the very least, appear virtually during a hearing 10 days before he is sworn in.
It is another charade meant to bookend —and cover-up— a sham trial. Show up to be verbally tarred and feathered, but no stocks or pillory will be deployed.
In some sense, it may be tempting to accept Merchan’s contingent surrender. Why? Under law, Trump is foreclosed from challenging the myriad of mistakes the judge made at trial, as well as the prosecution’s specious legal theory, until sentencing occurs. Only then is he officially “convicted.” A successful appeal erases the conviction, albeit belatedly.
And there’s the rub.
Your average defendant would accept the Faustian bargain that guarantees no jail time and starts the clock immediately on the appellate process. But Trump is different. He is an inveterate fighter who refuses to capitulate, even when his opponents are facing reproach. It’s one of the many reasons why voters rewarded him with a second term in office. He does not give up or give in. Nor should he.
A competent or objective judge would have long ago tossed the Trump indictment in the garbage where it belonged. On its face, it was patently deficient, if not ludicrous, and a transparently politicized prosecution.
Trump is determined to clear his name. So, you can expect that his legal team will challenge Merchan’s ruling on both the dismissal and sentencing. There are various legal options available, such as filing for an emergency “stay” from the appellate courts that, if granted, may push any further proceedings beyond inauguration on Jan. 20.
Since it is well established that presidents are immune from any criminal process while in office —a principle that even Merchan accepts— a court-ordered pause would effectively delay sentencing until 2029. Of course, that assumes the case still has a pulse four years from now.
Trump has a credible argument that the verdicts against him should be vacated now. As president-elect, his lawyers contend that “immediate dismissal is mandated by the federal Constitution, the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, and the interest of justice.” Sentencing would disrupt the orderly transfer of executive power.
Justice Juan Merchan looks on as Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump attends his criminal trial over charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, at Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. May 30, 2024 in this courtroom sketch. (REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg)
In essence, a state has no right or power to transgress federal laws passed by Congress, including the Transition Act. Interference by a local prosecutor and/or judge constitutes a violation of the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution.
But there are other compelling reasons to end this case sooner, rather than later.
In an earlier ruling, Merchan readily acknowledged his authority to set aside the verdicts if mistakes were made at trial which would merit reversal. Yet, he stubbornly refuses to recognize the plethora of errors that demand dismissal.
Chief among them is that prosecutors relied on tainted evidence prohibited in the presidential immunity standard enunciated by the Supreme Court on July 1. Testimony from White House officials and numerous presidential records should never have been introduced. Merchan disregards all this by insisting that such evidence was trifling, even though prosecutors emphasized it during closing arguments to the jury.
He also turned a blind eye to Bragg’s convoluted and incoherent legal theory that it must somehow be a crime to conceal a perfectly legal non-disclosure agreement. It is not. He then allowed the district attorney to shred the law by resurrecting expired business record misdemeanors and transmuting them into phantom election felonies that were falsely portrayed as unduly influencing the 2016 presidential contest.
It was a pretty neat trick inasmuch as Trump’s transactions were recorded and reimbursed after the election. Moreover, Bragg, as a local prosecutor, had no jurisdiction to enforce federal campaign laws. The payments to former adult film star Stormy Daniels did not even qualify as contributions under any statute or regulation.
As I have noted before, a competent or objective judge would have long ago tossed the Trump indictment in the garbage where it belonged. On its face, it was patently deficient, if not ludicrous, and a transparently politicized prosecution.
But Bragg’s disgraceful legerdemain did not bother Merchan in the least. Just the opposite. His honor merrily went along with the hocus-pocus. At trial, he shed his black robe to join the jurisprudential circus as co-prosecutor.
When the preordained verdicts were announced, no one knew exactly what Trump was convicted of. Theoretically, bookkeeping errors were allegedly committed to further another crime in an unlawful attempt to influence the election.
But what crime? No one can say. Was it federal campaign law violations? Taxation laws? False business records? Select from the aforementioned menu of imaginary possibilities. Trump doesn’t know because prosecutors never said. And neither did the jurors.
In an appalling instruction to the panel, Merchan declared that they did not have to identify which crimes were supposedly perpetrated and need not agree unanimously. He abandoned with impunity the bedrock principle of unanimity in criminal convictions which the Supreme Court has reinforced repeatedly.
Merchan’s courtroom devolved into a cesspool of incomprehensible rulings by a conflicted and hostile judge that deprived Trump of a fair trial. Merchan and prosecutors worked in concert to engineer the guilty verdicts. Political bias smothered the defendant’s due process rights. It was a harebrained case driven by a district attorney who enthusiastically embraced the Democrats’ corrupt lawfare campaign against their Republican opponent.
None of it fooled American voters. Indeed, it appears to have backfired spectacularly. Many deeply resented how Trump’s adversaries disfigured the law to bring a series of criminal indictments designed to destroy his chances of returning to the White House. Outrage was voiced at the ballot box on Nov. 5. Decisively.
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Despite their best efforts to sabotage the outcome of the election, the unscrupulous duo of Merchan and Bragg can do nothing now to stop Trump. Even if his anticipated bid to halt the sentencing next Friday fails, the newly elected president still benefits. He can commence appealing the shameless perversion of the law that was waged against him and the miscarriage of justice that ensued.
It wasn’t a fair trial. It was a farce.
In the meantime, it is incumbent on the incoming Department of Justice to open a comprehensive investigation into the lawfare campaign that Special Counsel Jack Smith, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought almost simultaneously and only after Trump announced his bid for election.
Coincidence? Hardly. There is reason to believe that there was coordination among them with President Joe Biden’s White House or with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s DOJ. Maybe both. If laws were broken, prosecutors should be exposed and held accountable for weaponizing the justice system.
Democrats have spent the last four years lecturing us that no one is above the law. Inconveniently now, that same standard applies to them.
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Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at the perceptions and the realities of crime in the subway. And, because it’s the first day of the state legislative session, we’ll look at the colonial-era lawyer who compiled a book of state laws when state government was brand-new.
Last year ended and 2025 began with a disturbing torrent of incidents in the subway: a woman burned to death on a subway car that was parked at the end of the line in Brooklyn, a man stabbed to death on a train in Queens and at least three other attacks.
Each heightened the perception that the subways are unsafe.
Mayor Eric Adams and Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, used the word “perception” seven times in a briefing on citywide crime statistics on Monday. “The subways will always be a bellwether for the perception of public safety in New York City,” Tisch said. “Declining crime numbers are significant, but we must still do more because people don’t feel safe in our subways.” Later the mayor said: “It is clear perception always overrides reality.”
I asked Andy Newman, who covers homelessness and poverty in New York — and used to cover transportation — to talk about the perception and reality of recent crimes in the subway.
The crime figures that Adams and Tisch released echoed a New York Times analysis of M.T.A. and police statistics from 2022, which showed that the chance of being a victim of violent crime in the subway was remote — roughly the same as the chance of being injured in a car crash during a two-mile drive. Why does the subway seem scarier?
People in cars tend to feel like the car itself is protecting them from external threats — it’s like you’re driving around in a little tank. I know, so is everyone else, but fear is not a rational thing.
In the subway, it’s just you, whoever else is there, and a train that weighs about 600 tons (not counting the passengers) barreling in.
And a subway car is a confined space where there may be no easy way to escape danger. That can make people feel trapped and vulnerable, which is scary.
Statistically, violent crime in the subway has seesawed in the last few years. But hasn’t there been an increase in several important categories, and doesn’t that go back to before the pandemic?
Yes, compared with before the pandemic, the number of murders in the subway has been higher in the last few years, though it has fluctuated a bit. Incidents of people getting pushed to the tracks have also risen, and the rate of felony assaults is more than double what it was before the pandemic. Misdemeanor assaults in the subway have also increased, though not as much. Robberies, for what it’s worth, have not.
So the perception that the city is less safe, or unsafe, is a lingering consequence of the pandemic?
A lot of people think that something changed during the pandemic and that there were suddenly more homeless people with untreated mental illness on the streets or in the subways.
People with serious mental illness are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators. But there is a certain percentage of psychotic people who are capable of lashing out.
Some of this may be due to a drop in the number of psychiatric beds in hospitals, but no one knows for sure.
There was a point at the height of the pandemic when paid ridership on the subway had plummeted and homeless people — who were avoiding shelters because they didn’t want to get sick — made some of the trains seem like rolling encampments. That’s no longer the case, but the perception is that things never quite went back to what they were before.
One transit advocate you talked to said that the M.T.A. has poured so many resources into stopping fare-beating. Would the subways be safer if there were more police officers and M.T.A. personnel on the platforms, instead of at the turnstiles?
It’s hard to say.
People have been pushed to the tracks even when police officers were patrolling on the platform but were not close enough to stop the attack. It takes only a second to push someone off the platform.
The police seem to believe that the people who habitually jump turnstiles are more likely to go on to commit more serious crimes once they’re in the subway system, so keeping them out prevents serious crime. But the police cannot be everywhere. It’s very hard to keep someone out if they want to go in.
Weather
Expect sunshine and wind gusts with temperature in the upper 20s. For tonight, look for partly cloudy skies with temperatures in the low 20s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Jan. 20 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).
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In 2266, will anybody remember what state lawmakers do this year?
Today is the first day of the state legislative session in Albany, the first official workday for the Assembly and the State Senate.
In 2266, 242 years from now, will anyone still be talking about the laws they pass?
That question came to mind when Peter Klarnet, a senior specialist in Americana at Christie’s, picked up “Laws of the State of New York,” published 242 years ago, a compendium of actions taken by “the first session of the Senate and Assembly after the Declaration of Independence.”
It turned out that Klarnet was less excited about the book than about what he had found inside, a handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence, apparently the only manuscript copy in private hands. Christie’s plans to sell it in on Jan. 24. The presale estimate is $2 million to $3 million.
The manuscript was written by Samuel Jones, who had compiled “Laws of the State of New York” with another colonial-era New Yorker, Richard Varick. Their names live on — Jones’s in Jones Beach on Long Island and Great Jones Street in NoHo, and Varick’s on Varick Street in Lower Manhattan.
Klarnet said Jones’s legacy also included proposing compromise wording that broke a deadlock over the Bill of Rights and cleared the way for New York to ratify the federal Constitution. New York’s state Constitution was the only one that originally began with the Declaration of Independence; Jones apparently wrote out the manuscript that Christie’s is selling to take to the state’s ratification convention in 1788.
Looked at from the polarized 2020s, the back story of comity and compromise seems improbable: Jones had been a British loyalist during the Revolutionary War. But after the British surrendered, he became an ally of the state’s first governor, George Clinton, who had been on the side of the colonials as a brigadier general in the state militia.
The copy of “Laws of the State of New York” that Christie’s is selling has notes by Jones in the margin about laws that had been revised or repealed into the 1790s. He had been elected to the Assembly in 1786 and the State Senate in 1790, and in 1797 was appointed the state’s first comptroller.
So what about that question — the one about whether laws passed in this legislative session will be remembered 242 years from now?
I asked the current comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli.
“I hope you’re not thinking about congestion pricing,” he said, laughing.
Dear Diary:
On the train in Brooklyn,
a lady stood facing the doors.
She s-l-ow-l-y extended her front leg
in an elegant line
and pressed her toe into the ground
with purpose.
The toe lightly tapped
and tapped again.
The movement caught my eye — a dancer!
Gemstone-studded ballroom heels
peeked out of her “The Heart of NY” tote.
With front leg extended,
she lightly flicked the leg upward in a tango kick,
silently dancing on the way home.
— Sarah Jung
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
After a tough loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Celtics wrapped up their west coast road trip with a visit to the Mile High City to face off against the Denver Nuggets. With Nikola Jokic ruled out for this game, the Celtics were able to take care of business and defeated the Nuggets 118-106.
Jayson Tatum led the way for the Celtics with 29 points and 11 rebounds on 11-23 shooting while Kristaps Porzingis had one of his best games of the season finishing with 25 points and 11 rebounds on 9-18 shooting. Jrue Holiday had a sneaky great game as well with 19 points and 7 assists as it felt like he was always in the right place at the right time.
While the Celtics’ three ball was lacking, they dominated the paint in this game, winning the points in the paint battle 60-46.
The Celtics offense started with a lot of Kristaps Porzingis touches as he scored the first basket for Boston with a mid-range jumper and 9 of the Celtics first 12 points. The Nuggets looked good on offense as well as Michael Porter Jr., Jamal Murray, and Russell Westbrook carrying the load.
Porzingis finished the first quarter with 15 points on 6-10, including being the recipient of an alley-oop after Jayson Tatum blocked Christian Braun on one end and found Kristaps on the other.
The Celtics led 37-25 lead after the first quarter with their offense was clicking. Boston shot 14-27 (51.9%) in the quarter as the shorthanded Nuggets had no answers for them. Porzingis (15) and Tatum (11) combined for 26 of the Celtics’ 37 points in the quarter. Boston’s paint defense was elite as well, only allowing 2 points in the paint after one.
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The Celtics continued their hot shooting to start the second quarter, as they opened a 15-point lead on the Nuggets two minutes in. Denver responded with a 13-2 run of their own to cut Boston’s lead to single digits.
Neemias Queta started to make his presence known with three straight buckets for the Celtics as he played some solid minutes for Boston in the quarter, finishing with 8 points.
Jamal Murray started to heat up to end the quarter scoring 8 straight points for Denver as Boston started to struggle to hit shots. Payton Watson started to make an impact on this game with 3 blocks in the first half and a corner three that tied the game 57-57 going into the half.
The Nuggets ended the first half on a 12-4 run and finished with four players with double digit points. Boston started the second quarter well but couldn’t maintain it as their three point shooting hurt them. The Celtics only shot 5-16 (31.3%) from beyond the arc in the half while Denver out shot them going 9-18 (50%) from three.
The Jays were cold in the first half as they combined for 15 points on 5-18 shooting. Jaylen Brown especially struggled, with only 2 points on 0-4 shooting. Kristaps Porzingis was the Celtics leading scorer at the half with 16 points while Jamal Murray led the Nuggets with 15 points.
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The second half started with Jaylen Brown facilitating the Celtics offense with three straight baskets and a nice assist to Porzingis to start the third quarter. The Nuggets were able to respond as the lead went back and forth.
A very loud “let’s go, Celtics” chant started to rain down in Ball Arena midway through the quarter just as Jrue Holiday grabbed a tough rebound and found a streaking Tatum on the other end for a dunk.
The Celtics were able to hold off the Nuggets with the lineup of Tatum and the bench to secure an 88-83 lead at the end of the third quarter. Jaylen Brown had a bounce back third quarter scoring 8 points on 4-4 shooting. The Celtics were still getting out shot from three, but they dominated the points in the paint battle.
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The fourth quarter started similarly to the way the third quarter went, both teams trading baskets. The Celtics played some tough defense highlighted by Porzingis meeting DeAndre Jordan at the summit to block a potential poster dunk.
With Denver only having one timeout left midway through the quarter, the Celtics rattled off a 12-0 run to push their lead back up to double digits and force the Nuggets to use their final timeout with under five minutes left in the quarter. That run had everyone involved as it included a Porzingis put back dunk, a Holiday three, a Brown layup, an Al Horford three, and finally a nasty mid-range jumper by Jayson Tatum.
The Nuggets tried to fight back but they just didn’t have enough as Tatum and Holiday buried them down the stretch to give the Celtics the victory.
The Celtics return home for their next game on Friday, January 10th to take on the Sacramento Kings at 7:30 pm.
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