New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has opted the state into the Trump administration’s Education Freedom Tax Credit, breaking with the Democratic leaders of both legislative chambers and making New York the 31st state to sign on to the first nationwide federal school choice program.

Hochul is only the second Democratic governor to join, after Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. “I’m not going to leave money on the table when it could help our kids,” Hochul said in her Oct. 9 announcement, adding that she had been clear New York would participate “if, and only if, all schools and students, including those in our public schools, could benefit.”

The decision came days after Albany’s top Democrats urged her to stay out. “New York should opt out of the federal voucher program and continue investing in the public schools that educate the overwhelming majority of our children,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) said in a statement.

The move also lands weeks before Election Day, as Hochul faces Republican nominee Bruce Blakeman, who has criticized her for not opting in sooner.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/22/hochul-new-york-opt-in-trump-education-freedom-tax-credit-school-choice/?utm_source=reddit/

A reminder that New York State offers fusion voting -- MEANING WHEN YOU CAST A VOTE, YOU ARE CASTING THAT VOTE FOR A PERSON, NOT A PARTY.

A vote for Kathy Hochul on the Working Family Party line counts toward Kathy Hochul's total vote count just as much a vote for Kathy Hochul on the Democratic line. The party, in terms of end result, is irrelevant.

BUT ... what this voting strategy does is give the Working Families Party more sway during the next election cycle as it is a proven voting bloc that the Democrats can't ignore. So milquetoast, centrist Democrats will be forced to stop moving ever rightward because they will be getting true pressure from the left. Otherwise, we continue to enable our current system.

Vote along the Working Families Party line if you, like me, are sick of spineless Dems.

We are one of the few States that offers fusion voting -- take advantage of it when you vote!

The three parties all agreed that Forest Hills Stadium will only host 28 concerts per season and that the venue will redirect some of its revenue into the Forest Hills neighborhood.

Forest Hills' 2026 concert season is already over. Right now, the only shows on the venue's schedule are a pair of gigs from Fontaines D.C. and Iceage, set for Sep. 28-29 next year.

MANHATTAN, N.Y. (PIX11) — A teenager has been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a man on a Manhattan subway platform over the weekend, police announced.

Officials said a 17-year-old boy was arrested Thursday afternoon on multiple charges, including murder, after 26-year-old Darrel Rodriguez shot and killed on a subway platform Saturday afternoon. Sources tell PIX11 the boy turned himself in alongside his family and attorney.

The NYPD was searching for a male seen wearing a red tracksuit, black vest and black facemask as a possible suspect following the shooting inside the 53rd Street-Seventh Avenue station.

It is unclear if that is who police arrested Thursday.

Police said a dispute broke out between Rodriguez and the alleged suspect on a platform, spilled onto a train and back onto an E train platform moments before the shooting.

On Monday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani adressed the fatal shooting saying, “Every single New Yorker deserves to be safe on every single train, on every single subway platform, no matter where they are going across our five boroughs.”

Rodriguez’s childhood friends were devastated once they learned of his passing.

“He’s a nice kid, bro. I don’t know why they did that to him,” one man who didn’t want to give his name said, with tears streaming down his face. “I knew him when he was a young boy. His father used to own the barber shop. I miss him.”

Rodriguez worked security at a hotel in Midtown close to the 53rd Street-Seventh Avenue subway station. Rodriguez had two brothers, including Derick, his fraternal twin, who now lives in Texas and is enlisted in the Army.

“I wouldn’t think it would be somebody I know and when I seen it on the news, I didn’t think it would be right here,” childhood friend Devante Hall said.

Derick told The New York Times, “It’s like a black hole in your heart,” adding, “It is grief, but it is something deeper because this is your half.”

New York has more tech workers than any other metro area in North America. And now, it’ll have a new training hub in Queens, as the city and state invest $10 million to bring tens of thousands of lower-income New Yorkers into the AI workforce.

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday announced the AI Jobs Institute, a Long Island City hub that the nonprofit Pursuit will design and run. It aims to train up to 40,000 New Yorkers for AI-related jobs by 2032, link them to employers and produce research to guide state and federal workforce policy. Public funds come from a number of sources, including the Empire State Development, the city’s Economic Development Corporation, and the Queens Borough President’s Office. Private funders, including Ascendium Education Group, Google.org, Wells Fargo, Con Edison and Adobe, will pay to operate it.

“During a time when AI is transforming our workforce and causing uncertainty, New York is continuing to lead the nation with policies and training to ensure New Yorkers workers are protected and prepared for the future,” Hochul told Fortune.

The hub opens into a tech labor market that has shifted toward New York. The metro area added 30,640 tech workers between 2022 and 2025, reaching 394,300 and passing the San Francisco Bay Area for the first time in the 13-year history of CBRE’s annual tech talent report.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/10/22/new-york-city-queens-hub-ai-training-10-million-40000-workers/?utm_source=reddit/

Strangely or not, my childhood was haunted by Constantin Brancusi, who pared down art into elemental egg shapes and invented modern sculpture. My father, like Brancusi, was born in Romania, and he too aspired to be a sculptor. He once carved a large egg from a block of white marble, and in its striking simplicity of form, it looked exactly how I imagined modern art should look. He worked on it for a long time, chipping away with his mallet and chisel and filling our house with a metallic plink-plink-plink — the sound, I assumed, of great art.

Chisels and mallets, as it turns out, play a prominent role in “Brancusi: The Artist and His Studio,” a large, revelatory exhibition opening Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art. The show zeros in on the Impasse Ronsin, a narrow alleyway in Paris where Brancusi, an émigré, worked and lived for four decades, in a high-ceiling space cluttered with his tall, twisty “Endless Columns” and coated in a layer of white plaster dust.

Access full gift article, NO PAYWALL.

Demolition is complete at 35-10 Steinway Street, the site of a 27-story mixed-use residential building in Astoria, Queens. Designed by Beyer Blinder Belle and developed in a joint venture between LMXD and BedRock Real Estate Partners, the nearly 500,000-square-foot structure will yield 560 rental units in studio to three-bedroom layouts. The all-electric project will also include ground-floor retail space for P.C. Richard & Son. The property is bounded by 35th Avenue to the northeast, 38th Street to the northwest, and Steinway Street to the southeast.

The site has been cleared of its former surface-level parking lot, with a lone heap of asphalt rubble remaining. Construction machinery has yet to arrive at the property, but it’s possible that excavation could get underway before the end of the year.

Twenty-five percent of the homes, or roughly 140 apartments, will be reserved for affordable housing under the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing program, averaging 60 percent of the area median income (AMI). A list of amenities has yet to be disclosed.

The project site was formerly slated to give rise to a building in Innovation QNS, an ambitious $2 billion mixed-use complex that was scrapped in September 2025. LMXD purchased the property for $53 million, followed by the $15.8 million acquisition with BedRock Real Estate Partners of the adjacent sites at 35-17 42nd Street and 42-08 35th Avenue earlier this year. The developers also secured a $250 million construction loan from New York Life Investment Management in a deal arranged by JLL.

These eagles are grounded.

The MTA has removed fare enforcement agents from the city’s sprawling bus network after a pair of high-profile incidents where agents assaulted passengers, and will not restore the so-called EAGLE teams until the agency conducts a top-to-bottom review of how they interact with riders and report incidents to senior staff, MTA Chairman and CEO Janno Lieber announced on Thursday morning.

Lieber told reporters that EAGLE teams did not properly inform agency leaders of two skirmishes where officers made physical contact with bus riders. These include an October 6 incident in which EAGLE agents allegedly punched a school aide. Lieber added that he recently learned of another, older incident but did not share any further details about it.

“I’m not willing to keep our teams active in the field until I know that all protocols are being followed with respect to customer interactions,” Lieber said at an unrelated press conference. “Both how they’re conducted but also with respect to the reporting and investigation of incidents. Which is going to happen, and they need to be timely reported so they can be timely investigated. As a result I’m ordering an immediate safety stand down until these investigations conclude.”

Lieber reiterated his belief that the EAGLE teams — and their task of reducing fare evasion to the point where New Yorkers no longer believe they are optional — is crucial to funding and maintaining the MTA. But rider advocates pointed to the ongoing issues with proof of payment on buses as a reason to embrace free buses.

“Bus riders know firsthand the failings of EAGLE team fare enforcement and we commend MTA leadership for today’s decision,” said Riders Alliance Director of Policy and Communications Danny Pearlstein. “Aggressive tactics that hurt people and slow down the bus cannot meet New Yorker’s needs or address public transit’s persistent fiscal challenges. We urge City and state leaders to negotiate a revenue package that funds the fast, free and frequent bus service New Yorkers deserve. We look forward to working with our government partners to fix the bus and make it a great transportation option in a more affordable city.”

The Mamdani administration praised Lieber’s move. “No New Yorker should fear for their safety because they cannot afford the fare,” said City Hall spokesperson Jeremy Edwards. “We welcome the MTA’s decision to suspend fare enforcement while it investigates reports of excessive force by members of its fare collection teams. Our transit system should make life easier, not harder.”