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Stefanik exits NY governor race, will not run for re-election to US House
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Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., on Friday announced that she is ending her bid for New York State governor and will not seek reelection, just over a month after formally launching her campaign.
In a message posted to X, Stefanik cited her family as her reason for stepping out of the 2026 race to unseat Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.
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Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., leaves a House Republican Conference meeting. On Friday, she announced that she is dropping out of the race for governor of New York and will not seek re-election to the House. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“While spending precious time with my family this Christmas season, I have made the decision to suspend my campaign for Governor and will not seek reelection to Congress. I did not come to this decision lightly for our family,” she wrote on X.
“And while many know me as Congresswoman, my most important title is Mom,” she added. “I believe that being a parent is life’s greatest gift and greatest responsibility. I have thought deeply about this and I know that as a mother, I will feel profound regret if I don’t further focus on my young son’s safety, growth, and happiness – particularly at his tender age.”
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Rep. Elise Stefanik, left, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, right. (John Lamparski/Getty Images; Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
Stefanik, a top congressional supporter of President Donald Trump, was praised by the president.
“Elise Stefanik, a fantastic person and Congresswoman from New York State, has just announced she won’t be running for Governor,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Elise is a tremendous talent, regardless of what she does. She will have GREAT success, and I am with her all the way!”
After ramping up for months, Stefanik officially declared her candidacy for governor in November with a platform centered on crime, taxes and affordability across the Empire State.
And Stefanik, who represents a conservative-leaning district in upstate New York, was a vocal critic of Hochul, who is seeking a second four-year term after being sworn in August 2021 as New York’s first female governor, after Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned in disgrace amid multiple scandals.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York who was briefly President Donald Trump’s U.N. ambassador nominee, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2025. (Getty Images)
The now-41-year-old Stefanik, a Harvard graduate who worked as a staffer in then-President George W. Bush’s administration and later as an aide on the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan 2012 GOP presidential ticket, made history in 2014 as the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. House.
A one-time moderate Republican, Stefanik transformed herself into a MAGA champion during Trump’s first term in the White House, rising through the ranks of GOP leadership in the chamber. Her loyalty to Trump, including defending him during the first of his two impeachments, appeared to pay off after he won back the presidency in the 2024 election. Trump nominated Stefanik to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a high-profile cabinet-level position.
Then-House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik stands with then-former President Donald Trump at a 2024 presidential campaign event in New Hampshire. (Getty Images)
But Trump, concerned about the GOP’s razor-thin majority in the chamber, in March rescinded the nomination, worrying that Republicans could lose Stefanik’s seat to the Democrats in a special election.
While Stefanik remained in the House, and GOP leaders created a new leadership position for her, she soon eyed running for New York governor in 2026, with Trump’s encouragement.
Another potential GOP Republican gubernatorial contender, Rep. Mike Lawler, announced during the summer that he would seek reelection in the House rather than bid for governor.
But Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman, another Trump ally, last week jumped into the GOP race after mulling a bid for months.
President Donald Trump is greeted by Bruce Blakeman, County Executive of Nassau County, New York, after arriving at the Republic Airport on Air Force One on Sept. 26, 2025 in Farmingdale, New York. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Trump stayed neutral, telling reporters at the White House after Blakeman announced his candidacy that “Elise is fantastic and Bruce is.”
“Two fantastic people, and I always hate it when two very good friends of mine are running, and I hope there’s not a lot of damage done,” the president added.
Even though Stefanik was the clear polling and fundraising frontrunner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, those in her political orbit told Fox News Digital Stefanik was concerned that a primary battle would make her uphill climb against Hochul in blue-leaning New York ever steeper.
In her message, Stefanik thanked her supporters for their donations but said it wouldn’t be an “effective use of our time or your generous resources to spend the first half of next year in an unnecessary and protracted Republican primary, especially in a challenging state like New York.”
Blakeman, in a statement, applauded Stefanik “for her outstanding service to the people of New York and to all Americans” and called her “a strong voice for common-sense values, national security, and economic opportunity.”
Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York headlines a Staten Island GOP fundraising dinner in New York City on June 2, 2025. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
As she eyed a run for governor, Stefanik argued in a Fox News Digital interview in June that Hochul was “the worst governor in America.” It’s a line she would repeatedly use in the ensuing months.
And Stefanik, aiming to paint the governor as an extremist, regularly tied Hochul to now-Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani of New York City, a socialist and the first Muslim mayor of the nation’s most populous city.
But Trump seemingly undercut Stefanik’s messaging that Mamdani was a “jihadist” after a cordial embrace of the mayor-elect during an Oval Office meeting after his New York City victory.
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Democratic Governors Association spokesperson Kevin Donohoe, reacting to the news, claimed that Stefanik “saw the writing on the wall and knew she would lose — big — to Governor Hochul.”
The governor’s campaign, in a statement, argued that “Stefanik has finally acknowledged reality: If you run against Governor Kathy Hochul, you are going to lose.”
And Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki called Blakeman “100% MAGA.”
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A 76-year-old man died on Friday after being shoved down the stairs at the 18th Street subway station in Manhattan, and the police arrested a suspect who had been arrested multiple times in recent months and had been discharged from Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward just hours before.
The victim, Ross Falzone, landed on his head at the bottom of the stairs and suffered a traumatic brain injury, a fractured spine and a fractured rib after a stranger rushed forward and pushed him, the police said.
Mr. Falzone had been walking north on Seventh Avenue toward the subway station in the Chelsea neighborhood on Thursday evening, said Brad Weekes, assistant commissioner of public information for the Police Department. Walking about 30 yards behind him was the stranger, according to surveillance footage from the scene, Mr. Weekes said. As Mr. Falzone reached the station, the man rushed forward and pushed him down the stairs. He was taken to Bellevue where he died shortly before 3 a.m. on Friday.
The death sparked outrage at City Hall. Mayor Zohran Mamdani quickly called for an investigation into how Bellevue handled the discharge of the suspect and suggested that institutional problems at the hospital might have led to the random attack.
“I am horrified by the killing of Ross Falzone and the circumstances that led to it,” Mr. Mamdani said in a news release on Friday, in which he ordered “an immediate investigation on what steps should have been taken to prevent this tragedy.”
Police identified the suspect as Rhamell Burke, 32.
In the three months preceding the attack, Mr. Burke was arrested four times, Mr. Weekes said, including an arrest on Feb. 2 in connection with an assault on a Port Authority police officer.
Mr. Burke’s most recent interaction with the police began at around 3:30 p.m. Thursday, when he approached a group of N.Y.P.D. officers outside the 17th Precinct station house on East 51st Street, Mr. Weekes said. He grabbed a stick from a pile of garbage on the street and approached the officers, who told him to drop the stick. When he did, officers placed Mr. Burke in a police vehicle and drove him to Bellevue, where he was admitted to the emergency room at around 3:40 p.m., Mr. Weekes said. Mr. Burke was taken to the hospital’s Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program for evaluation and treatment, Mr. Weekes said, and was released from the hospital one hour later.
He was just a mile and a half from the hospital when he encountered Mr. Falzone at around 9:30 p.m. Thursday.
On Friday afternoon, police officers found Mr. Burke in Penn Station, where they arrested him. He was in custody on Friday evening. It was unclear Friday if Mr. Burke had a lawyer.
The mayor said he had requested help from the New York State Department of Health, which will investigate the decision to release Mr. Burke from Bellevue and conduct a review of similar cases at the hospital. The state agency also will investigate psychiatric evaluation and discharge procedures across NYC Health and Hospitals, the city’s public hospital system, according to the news release.
Mr. Falzone was a retired high school teacher who lived alone for many years in an apartment building on the Upper West Side. His friends were in shock on Friday about his death. They shared memories of an affable but private man who rarely spoke about his family or personal life.
Mr. Falzone had been recovering from a recent surgery and seemed more mobile and happy, said Marc Stager, 78, Mr. Falzone’s next-door neighbor on a tree-lined block of West 85th Street. He was known as a cheerful “yapper,” said Briel Waxman, a neighbor. He was the kind of New Yorker who enjoyed chatting with neighbors about historical details of his building and seeing performances at Lincoln Center with friends.
“He was always out and about,” said Ms. Waxman, 35, who often returned to her apartment at midnight or 1 a.m. to find Mr. Falzone arriving home at the same time. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m proud of you or embarrassed of myself,’” she remembered telling him.
Mr. Falzone had wide taste in music — opera, classical, jazz, pop — and neighbors could tell he was home when they heard notes escaping from under his apartment door, Mr. Stager said.
He was “a helpless old guy,” said Mr. Stager, who added that he was “disappointed and shocked, frankly, that somebody could do such a thing” as shove such a defenseless person down the stairs.
When Ms. Waxman moved into the building five years ago, Mr. Falzone was among the first people to welcome her, she said. He once brought a package to her door that had been delivered to the wrong unit and shared that what is now a blank wall in her apartment had once been a fireplace.
Ms. Waxman sat in her living room on Friday and cried as she talked, dabbing her eyes with a tissue. She remembered Mr. Falzone as “just overall, nice, talkative, genuine human.”
Boston, MA
What we know about wrong-way driver killed in head-on collision with state trooper in Lynnfield – The Boston Globe
Court records show that Marrero was the father of three children, the oldest of whom is 17. The youngest two children, twins, are 13 years old; Marrero’s death came days before their 14th birthday.
Records in Middlesex Probate and Family Court also suggest that Marrero faced financial difficulties and personal troubles, stemming in part from a work injury that family members said caused a bout of depression and deteriorating behavior in his personal life.
For nearly a decade, Marrero worked at Dewberry, a Boston engineering consulting firm, court records show, obtaining a job as an architectural design apprentice in 2005. He left the company in 2014, according to a company spokesperson.
Throughout that time, he doubled as a bartender on the side, working at Mexican restaurants in Boston and Waltham, court records show.
A knee injury ended Marrero’s career at Dewberry, court records show, and he left the company shortly thereafter.
That injury, according to court documents, was the catalyst for what his wife described as a “major depressive episode,” which she said contributed to the strain in their marriage. The couple, who had been married for more than 20 years, separated in 2022.
Records also show that Marrero struggled with debts to family members and credit card companies. During his divorce proceedings, it was unclear how much money he was taking home in income.
Marrero briefly owned and operated a contracting business, 109 Construction, but the corporation was administratively dissolved in 2024, according to state filings.
Marrero had lived in US since at least 2001, holding legal status. He became a naturalized citizen in March 2021, court records show.
Social media posts suggest he was active in the tight-knit Venezuelan community in Massachusetts. Photos show him cheering on Venezuela at a World Baseball Classic watch party in Brighton earlier this year.
Court records appear to show Marrero’s interest in art and music, owning a Venezuelan guitar, conga drums, and several Venezuelan paintings, as well as homemade winemaking setup.
Marrero’s family could not be reached for comment. A close friend reached by the Globe declined to comment.
Trainor had just completed his shift at about 2 a.m. on Wednesday and was driving home when he responded to a report for a Jeep traveling south in the northbound lanes of Route 1, near the Lynnfield overpass.
Raised in Salem, Trainor began his public safety career as an Essex County correction officer before graduating from the State Police academy in 2023, State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble said.
Trainor’s fiancée, Jessica D. Ostrowski, of Georgetown, posted an emotional message to social media Thursday, describing the late trooper as “my absolute best friend.”
“I am beyond proud for the amount of love you have been given by those who loved and cared about you,” she wrote.
Travis Andersen and Jeremiah Manion of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Material from previous Globe coverage was used.
Camilo Fonseca can be reached at camilo.fonseca@globe.com. Follow him on X @fonseca_esq and on Instagram @camilo_fonseca.reports.
The Pittsburgh Steelers have largely finished filling their offseason roster, adding 10 draft picks, six undrafted free agents, and a few veteran reinforcements to fill out the 90-man squad. Now Omar Khan’s attention shifts from acquiring talent to sorting through it starting this weekend with rookie minicamp. How many members of the Steelers’ 2026 draft class will survive the final cuts?
This first iteration is the time for bold predictions when we have very little information to work with. You’ll notice a couple surprises in mine. Here’s an early prediction of Pittsburgh’s 53-man roster.
Offense – 25
Quarterbacks (3) – Aaron Rodgers, Will Howard, Drew Allar
Analysis: Rodgers hasn’t signed, but the assumption has been all along that he eventually will. If he does, Mason Rudolph is as good at gone. I suppose they could stash him on the practice squad, if he’s agreeable, to have at least one veteran with starting experience. Allar is a lock, and it would be a shock if the Steelers move on from Howard after they gassed him up all offseason.
Running Backs (4) – Jaylen Warren, Rico Dowdle, Travis Homer, Riley Nowakowski (FB)
Analysis: Kaleb Johnson was drafted for Arthur Smith’s wide-zone scheme, and Smith is gone. Where will his opportunity come with Dowdle and Warren both on the roster through 2027? Johnson also serves no purpose on special teams. It’s hard to move on from a third-round pick so soon, but how do you keep him on the roster while being mindful of special teams? Homer is too important in that area as a four-unit player who can serve as a personal protector on the punt unit.
Wide Receivers (6) – DK Metcalf, Michael Pittman Jr., Germie Bernard, Ben Skowronek, Kaden Wetjen, Eli Heidenreich
Analysis: Going out on a limb here with another surprise cut of former third-round pick Roman Wilson. He was lapped on the depth chart by Marquez Valdes-Scantling late last season and Aaron Rodgers clearly didn’t trust Wilson. If Rodgers is back, Wilson is due for another year of not getting a helmet on game day. He provides nothing on special teams, so it’s hard to justify his spot. Heidenreich makes it as the team’s final seventh-round pick because he can play RB and WR (he’s listed as both on its official roster) and a whole lot of special teams. Wetjen and Heidenreich give them multiple slot options to experiment with.
Tight Ends (3) – Pat Freiermuth, Darnell Washington, Jaheim Bell
Analysis: Freiermuth and Washington are locks, but the third tight end should be one of the more interesting spots on the roster this year. The team lists Nowakowski as a fullback, though he can play both. Jaheim Bell is another versatile option who can play TE, fullback, and H-back. McCarthy’s favorite word seems to be versatility, so Bell makes sense here.
Offensive Tackles (3) – Troy Fautanu, Max Iheanachor, Dylan Cook
Analysis: Broderick Jones may contribute in 2026, but I am predicting him to start the season on the PUP list after reports of a setback with his neck injury. Fautanu, Iheanachor, and Cook are no-brainers, but will the Steelers keep a fourth pure tackle? Spencer Anderson, Gennings Dunker, and maybe even Steven Jones can play the position in a pinch, so I’ll stick with three. This would presumably go back to four if/when Jones is healthy.
Interior Offensive Linemen (6) – Zach Frazier, Mason McCormick, Gennings Dunker, Brock Hoffman, Spencer Anderson, Ryan McCollum
Analysis: Frazier, McCormick, and Dunker are set in stone. Anderson and Hoffman provide experience and familiarity with a chance to win the Week 1 starting LG job. McCollum has been solid as Frazier’s backup when needed.
Defense – 25
Defensive Ends (5) – Cameron Heyward, Derrick Harmon, Yahya Black, Esezi Otomewo, Kevin Jobity Jr.
Analysis: I have Rubio as the only draft pick not to make the 53-man roster. Otomewo was solid in limited action and has experience with the rest of the group. The last spot comes down to Rubio, Jobity, and Logan Lee. Jobity offers a little more pass-rush upside and could flash enough in camp to win a spot at the back of the depth chart.
Nose Tackles (2) – Keeanu Benton, Sebastian Joseph-Day
Analysis: Both are virtual locks and should play a large number of snaps in this defense.
Outside Linebackers (4) – T.J. Watt, Alex Highsmith, Nick Herbig, Jack Sawyer
Analysis: Nothing should change here from last year. It’s one of the deepest and most talented position groups on the entire roster.
Inside Linebackers (5) – Patrick Queen, Payton Wilson, Cole Holcomb, Carson Bruener, Brandon George
Analysis: Let’s include a rookie minicamp tryout player. One or two usually make the 90-man roster, and it’s not unheard of for them to also make the initial 53. George is one of the most athletic linebackers to come out of the draft in a long time. And unlike most athletic linebackers, you don’t have to sacrifice size with him standing 6032 and weighing 246 pounds. He went undrafted and was impressing in Kansas City last year before an injury derailed his rookie season. Malik Harrison was signed to be a force in the run game, but he didn’t do that very well last year. To me, he’s expendable. Bruener is a core special teamer and should be considered darn near a lock for the initial 53-man roster because of it.
Cornerbacks (5) – Joey Porter Jr., Jamel Dean, Brandin Echols, Daylen Everette, Asante Samuel Jr.
Analysis: With the addition of third-round rookie Daylen Everette, fringe guys like Cory Trice Jr. and Donte Kent should have a hard time making the roster given their extensive injury histories.
Safeties (4) – Jalen Ramsey, DeShon Elliott, Jaquan Brisker, Robert Spears-Jennings
Analysis: The top three should be considered locks, which leaves an intriguing battle between Spears-Jennings and Sebastian Castro. The upside on defense is higher for the rookie, and I think he offers enough on special teams to edge out Castro, especially with other special teams guys like Homer, Bruener, Skowronek, and Sawyer already on the roster.
Special Teams – 3
Kicker (1) – Chris Boswell
Analysis: Boswell should soon sign an extension that makes him the league’s most expensive kicker. And it’s well-deserved. This one is obvious.
Punter (1) – Cameron Johnston
Analysis: Pittsburgh’s rookie minicamp roster includes three punters, so this isn’t a shoo-in. But Johnston is the clear favorite if he can stay healthy after back-to-back injury-plagued seasons at 34 years old.
Long Snapper (1) – Christian Kuntz
Analysis: Pittsburgh has always given Kuntz competition, and this year is no different. But he is under contract through 2026 and should keep his job for at least one more season.
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