Biden administration green lights nation’s first congestion pricing plan for New York

NEW YORK — The Biden administration on Friday cleared New York’s congestion pricing plan to move forward, approving an environmental review that suffered such significant delays many doubted the first-in-the-nation tolling system would ever happen.

The Federal Highway Administration issued a letter approving the New York Metropolitan Transportation’s Authority environmental assessment and issued a draft “Finding of No Significant Impact” that will now be up for public review for 30 days, according to a copy of the letter obtained by POLITICO.

The news means the agency has been given the green light to start charging drivers entering central Manhattan at peak times in an effort to cut down on gridlock.

MTA officials have said they would need almost a year to set up the new tolling infrastructure once it obtains federal approval, putting it on track to meet its current target of launching congestion pricing in the second quarter of 2024.

A spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul said the finding “is a critical step that will allow our Environmental Assessment to be publicly available for anyone to read, and we will continue to work with our partners to move congestion pricing forward.”

“Governor Hochul is committed to implementing congestion pricing to reduce traffic, improve air quality, and support our public transit system,” John Lindsay, a spokesperson for Hochul, said in a statement. “We’ve worked closely with partners across government and with community members over the last four years to develop a plan that will achieve these goals.”

Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy condemned the approval as "unfair and ill-advised," and said it undercuts the Biden administration's own environmental goals. He also said his office is "closely assessing all legal options" because the current plan burdens commuters, state agencies and the environment.

"Everyone in the region deserves access to more reliable mass transit, but placing an unjustified financial burden on the backs of hardworking New Jersey commuters is wrong," Murphy said in a statement. "Simply put, it is a money grab."

However, the Federal Highway Administration said it determined the environmental assessment addresses public input and considers the impacts in the 28-county area in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

"Congestion pricing is a generational opportunity to make it easier for people to get around in, and get to, the Central Business District, by reducing traffic and funding improvements to the public transit system,” said John McCarthy, a spokesperson for the MTA.

The public transit authority hasn’t determined how much to charge drivers, but has considered fares ranging from $9 to $23 for passenger vehicles and between $12 and $82 for trucks. The scenarios contemplate different combinations of potential discounts, credits and exemptions.

A six-member Traffic Mobility Review Board will recommend a final pricing structure for the MTA board to approve. Members include major real estate and business leaders such as Kathy Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City that represents area corporations, and John Banks, the former president of the Real Estate Board of New York.

The state approved congestion pricing in 2019 to raise $1 billion annually for the MTA’s capital plan. But officials waited more than a year for the Trump administration to determine what kind of environmental review they had to conduct before launching the program. Federal approval is required because the plan involves placing tolls on highways that have received federal funding.

Transit officials said the Trump administration held up the process amid political infighting with New York, with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo once stating it was retribution for the state's refusal to hand over driver's license records to federal immigration authorities. In 2021, the Biden administration said New York could conduct an environmental assessment, instead of a more rigorous environmental impact study.

The new tolling system — which will come on top of existing charges for the George Washington Bridge and Lincoln and Holland tunnels — has also drawn opposition from a bipartisan coalition of suburban lawmakers in New York and New Jersey. It’s expected to face legal challenges, as Murphy suggested.

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Eric Adams attacked for subway safety approach after killing of Jordan Neely

NEW YORK — In post-pandemic New York City, the subway has emerged as a politically prominent battleground.

Mayor Eric Adams, a moderate Democrat, spent his first year in office devoting major resources to countering criticism from Republicans and centrists over transit crime. He increased the presence of police underground and instituted a policy of removing homeless people — in some cases involuntarily — from the trains in order to create an atmosphere where commuters felt safe. Earlier this year, as transit crime dipped, the mayor and Gov. Kathy Hochul took a victory lap.

“We want zero felonies a day, but are we trending in the right direction? You’re darn right we are,” Adams said during a January press briefing to tout a safer subway system.

The killing of 30-year-old Jordan Neely on the subway earlier this week, however, put the mayor in a difficult position as progressive lawmakers led a growing chorus of outrage and launched a renewed attack on Adams’ approach to public safety.

The stakes are high. Subway crime was a driving force behind a groundswell of support for GOP candidates last year, which lifted a Republican gubernatorial candidate to within six points of winning the general election and helped the right flip several Congressional seats to take over the House. New York Republicans continue hammering Democrats on crime ahead of the upcoming congressional races that include several competitive seats. How New Yorkers ultimately view Neely’s killing and the government’s response could also alter the city’s strategy toward mental health and public safety.

On Monday, Neely was acting erratically aboard an F train when he was placed into a chokehold by a 24-year-old passenger and later died. On Wednesday, the city’s medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. Several reports have noted Neely, who did impersonations of Michael Jackson in years’ past, struggled with mental health issues.

Adams has said that the incident demonstrates why his policies have been needed all along.

“This is what highlights what I’ve been saying throughout my administration,” Adams said Thursday during an unrelated press conference, echoing comments he made the night before on national television. “People who are dealing with mental health illness should get the help they need and not live on the train. And I’m going to continue to push on that.”

Prominent progressives, however, have laced into the mayor’s response to the incident and re-upped long standing criticisms of Adams’ approach to mental health and safety.

“This is the inevitable outcome of the dangerous rhetoric of stigmatizing mental health issues, stigmatizing poverty and the continued bloated investment in the carceral system at the expense of funding access to housing, food and health,” Tiffany Cabán, a progressive New York City Council member, said in an interview.

So far, the mayor appears outnumbered by a growing cadre of elected officials who have weighed in. While Adams has characterized the incident as tragic, he has also said he will wait until Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg completes his investigation before making any assessment — a view that is not shared even by those politically aligned with the mayor.

“Racism that continues to permeate throughout our society allows for a level of dehumanization that denies Black people from being recognized as victims when subjected to acts of violence,” New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said in a statement, later adding that “the initial response by our legal system to this killing is disturbing and puts on display for the world the double standards that Black people and other people of color continue to face.”

And Maurice Mitchell, head of the national Working Families Party, noted Adams’ policies were in full effect Monday but did not stop Neely from dying.

"Even with hundreds of police in our subways, they failed to prevent this—or even apprehend the killer,” he said in a statement.

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Teachers union slams House GOP over ‘fishing expedition’

Lawyers for the American Federation of Teachers on Friday condemned the Republican-led Covid-19 oversight panel’s request for their president’s phone records as an “improper” expansion of its investigation.

House lawmakers are investigating the deliberations around pandemic-spurred school closures and the CDC's February 2021 school reopening guidance. On Thursday, House Coronavirus Pandemic Select Subcommittee Chair Brad Wenstrup penned a letter pressing AFT President Randi Weingarten to turn over phone and text records for any communication between the CDC, the Biden transition team and the Executive Office of the President.

“In requesting phone records between Ms. Weingarten and any member of the Executive Office of the President for the past 28 months, they underscore that your investigation has morphed into a fishing expedition that vastly exceeds your authority,” AFT Counsel Michael Bromwich wrote to the panel on Friday. “We will simply not accede to these unreasonable requests.”

He added that the teachers union would not comply with all of the panel’s requests.

The oversight panel honed in on Weingarten’s statements at a hearing last week where she said she had a direct phone number for outgoing CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. Weingarten, who leads one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, also told lawmakers that the Biden transition team had reached out to AFT for input on post-pandemic school reopening.

Wenstrup on Thursday night followed up by requesting that the union leader turn over documents and communication about Covid-19 between AFT and the Biden transition team between Nov. 3, 2020 and Jan. 20, 2021. The Ohio Republican is also seeking records of Weingarten's communication with Walensky and the Executive Office of the President, since Inauguration Day 2021.

Bromwich said the panel’s requests “do not even pretend to be limited to the February 12, 2021 Operational Strategy, which was the original focus of your investigation.”

However, the teachers union said it will be responsive to the committee’s request for communications Weingarten and the AFT had with the Biden Transition Team regarding Covid-19, between Election Day 2020 and Inauguration Day, because it “appears to be within the scope of the Subcommittee’s mandate.”

But the union’s counsel said it would take longer than the May 11 due date Republicans have asked for.

In response to the panel’s request for transcribed interviews, Bromwich said the subcommittee did not reach out to schedule them after its initial letter. Instead, Weingarten agreed to testify last week and only heard of the request for a “single transcribed interview” after the hearing. Bromwich said they were working on setting up the interview when they received the letter.

Wenstrup’s letter included a request for interviews with five AFT staff members. While the Thursday letter did not threaten to subpoena the teachers union, Wenstrup reinforced that the panel is authorized to investigate the decision to close schools during the pandemic and its outcome.

“As for subpoenas — The information the Select Subcommittee requests is important for our investigation,” Wenstrup’s spokesperson said in a statement Thursday. “Whether a subpoena is issued or not, is up to Ms. Weingarten and the AFT.”

Republicans have long sparred with teachers unions, but the pandemic exacerbated tension as schools remained closed while school teachers pushed for more safety protocols to return to the classroom. GOP lawmakers have since characterized AFT and other teachers unions as having undue influence over the nation’s school reopening plan.

“The words ‘uncommon influence’ were never spoken by Ms. Weingarten, nor did she testify in any way that would support that characterization,” Bromwich wrote.

House Democrats on the subcommittee also pushed back on the records requests, criticizing the GOP for “abusing the resources of this Subcommittee for their own political gain."

“Instead of working constructively to develop forward-looking policies that address learning loss and better prepare our schools for future pandemics,” a spokesperson for Democrats on the Select Subcommittee told POLITICO, “Select Subcommittee Republicans are sending absurd letters in the dead of night to harass Ms. Weingarten and her staff — pressing forward with their extreme, politically motivated investigations while pushing draconian cuts to programs that protect children’s health and education.”

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New College scores millions in Florida’s budget amid DeSantis revamp

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida GOP lawmakers this week supported the drastic changes Gov. Ron DeSantis is seeking to transform New College of Florida into a conservative-leaning school by agreeing to send more than $34 million to the school and backing a slate of controversial trustees who are now leading it.

The money is meant to provide scholarships for enticing potential students, help with building repairs and bolster school operations. The DeSantis-picked trustees, meanwhile, were confirmed by Republican state senators to run the school and have already made a noticeable impact on the Sarasota campus to the dismay of students, faculty and Democrats.

“We are investing in New College,” state Rep. Jason Shoaf (R-Port St. Joe), the House’s higher education budget chief, said on the floor Thursday. “With the new board, and the new direction, we want to … [invest] in their success so we have another great institution on our list.”

Florida’s annual legislative session proved to be a successful one for New College under the guidance of DeSantis, who in January appointed six new trustees to reshape the school as a “Hillsdale of the South” — a reference to the conservative Christian liberal arts college in Michigan. The moves contributed to the DeSantis administration’s fight against “wokeness” and “indoctrination” in the state’s higher education system, the subject of several high-profile reforms proposed during session.

To help carry out that mission at New College, GOP leaders in the Legislature are poised to send a historic level of cash there — even going above and beyond what DeSantis wanted.

All told, the school landed more than $34 million in the state budget lawmakers are on the cusp of finalizing this week.

The pot includes a specific $25 million carve-out, $10 million more than DeSantis requested, of which $5 million must be put aside for student scholarships. This comes in addition to a $15 million special budget allocation lawmakers approved earlier this year that New College is already using to offer $10,000 scholarships for prospective students.

New College also scored a further $9.3 million in a different funding pocket for remodeling two buildings.

Lawmakers are confident the cash infusion will help turn around a state university that has historically struggled with enrollment and lagged behind other schools in meeting the state’s performance standards. Three years ago, House lawmakers considered merging New College into Florida State University in part because of the cost of producing graduates at the school was higher compared to others.

“We’ve got to make it competitive with the other colleges — it’s been very difficult to do that,” Senate budget chief Doug Broxson (R-Gulf Breeze) told reporters Monday.

Interim school president Richard Corcoran pledged that the state funding will be used to “create a beautiful, unrivaled and preeminent public university.”

“For the first time in nearly 20 years, the state has appropriated a historic amount of funding to New College of Florida,” Corcoran, a former Republican House speaker and state education commissioner, said in a statement. “This is in stark contrast to the last few years when the legislature was considering merging the college because of its lack of performance.”

In addition to dedicating cash to the school, senators on Thursday granted final approval to the six trustees appointed by DeSantis to reshape new college. The trustees include Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who has advised DeSantis on critical race theory, and Matthew Spalding, a constitutional government professor and vice president at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C., campus.

Although the group is only now being officially approved by the Senate, its members have already made a sizable mark on the Sarasota campus in five months, amid objections and protests from students and faculty.

One of their initial moves was ousting the school’s president and replacing her with Corcoran, who is earning a $699,000 annual salary. Since that first board meeting, the DeSantis trustees have dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion programs at New College — a possible sign of what’s to come at other universities under legislation that is currently awaiting the governor’s signature.

The trustees also recently denied tenure to five faculty members, a move that spurred one trustee — the faculty representative — to quit the board on the spot and later resign as a professor. And this week, the school fired its librarian, who said the termination seemed like a “deliberate and targeted attack on our students."

The New College appointees were approved by senators in a broad vote encompassing dozens of candidates from various boards. There were no comments from any lawmakers. Throughout session, though, Democrats have railed against the DeSantis picks, echoing concerns of students and faculty at New College, who suggest the trustees are unqualified and leading a “hostile takeover.”

“The new trustees at New College of Florida are dangerous to free speech and free thought — and the Florida Legislature is only emboldening their efforts to dismantle the future of Florida’s only public liberal arts university,” Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book (D-Plantation) said in a statement. “This rubber-stamp confirmation is yet another attack on higher education and academic freedom.”

But Republicans disagree and are advocating significant changes at New College to reverse years of poor performance.

“The governor is committed to getting New College refocused on academics and truth,” Bryan Griffin, press secretary for DeSantis, said in a statement. “We appreciate the legislature supporting this initiative and will continue to ensure Florida’s institutions of higher learning offer world-class, quality education.”

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In Trump rape trial, both sides rest their cases

NEW YORK — Lawyers for Donald Trump and E. Jean Carroll, the woman who has accused him of raping her, both rested their cases Thursday in the civil trial over Carroll’s battery and defamation lawsuit.

Carroll called 11 witnesses since the trial started last Tuesday. Trump’s lawyers called none, and his lawyer said the former president waived his right to testify. But while playing golf in Ireland on Thursday, Trump told reporters he intended to return to the U.S. to “confront” Carroll at the trial.

Trump’s surprise declaration prompted U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, in the final moments of Thursday’s court proceeding, to grant Trump until Sunday evening to tell the court if he wants to testify in his own defense, a step that would require the judge to permit him to re-open his case.

The trial does not meet on Friday. If Trump does not testify, lawyers will make closing arguments on Monday, and then the case will go to the jury.

Trump has not attended the trial in Manhattan federal court — though jurors did watch parts of a videotaped deposition in which Trump denied knowing Carroll and defended his infamous comments about sexual assault in the “Access Hollywood” tape.

Carroll, a writer and former advice columnist, has accused Trump of raping her in a dressing room at luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s. Trump has denied the accusations, calling her story a “hoax” that “never happened.”

In Ireland on Thursday, Trump attacked both Carroll and Kaplan.

“I have to go back for a woman that made a false accusation about me and I have a judge who’s extremely hostile,” Trump told reporters while golfing in Doonbeg, County Clare, according to The Guardian.

“I’m going to go back, and I’m going to confront this woman. This woman is a disgrace and it shouldn’t be allowed to happen in our country.”

In court on Thursday, Kaplan told Trump's lawyer Joe Tacopina that he would allow him until 5 p.m. on Sunday to make “a motion on behalf of Mr. Trump to reopen his case for the purpose — and the sole purpose — of testifying as a witness in this case.”

“I am not saying I will grant it,” Kaplan added. “If it is made, I will consider it.”

If Trump’s lawyer doesn’t file a motion by the deadline, the judge said, then “that ship has irrevocably sailed.”

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Biden is expected to tap Air Force chief to be nation’s next top military officer

President Joe Biden is expected to nominate Gen. C.Q. Brown, the Air Force’s top officer and the first Black person to lead any branch of the military, to succeed Gen. Mark Milley as the next Joint Chiefs chair, two people familiar with the discussion said on Thursday.

If confirmed, Brown would become the second Black Joint Chiefs chair in the nation’s history, after the late Colin Powell.

Biden hasn't given Brown the official stamp, and it's unclear when he plans to make an announcement, said the people, a Democratic lawmaker and a congressional aide familiar with the White House’s planning, both of whom were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

“When President Biden makes a final decision, he will inform the person selected and then announce it publicly," a spokesperson for the National Security Council said when asked for comment. "That hasn’t happened yet.”

Brown’s reputation and command experience in both the Pacific and the Middle East made him the odds-on favorite to be Milley’s heir apparent dating back to the Trump administration. But his appointment seemed less of a sure thing in recent months, as the White House seriously considered Gen. David Berger, the Marine Corps commandant, for the top job.

He rose through the ranks as the sole Black pilot in classrooms filled with white men, an experience he spoke about in an emotional video after George Floyd’s death in the summer of 2020.

Those who know Brown say he has the right experience to keep the military focused on its top priority: China. Brown’s most recent command experience was in the Pacific, as chief of Pacific Air Forces.

Brown also commanded troops in the Middle East, as head of U.S. Air Forces Central Command, and was serving in Europe when Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, as a director of operations for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration at U.S. Air Forces in Europe. He was confirmed unanimously by the Senate for his current role as Air Force chief of staff in August, 2020.

Brown would be the first Air Force officer to become Joint Chiefs chair since retired Gen. Richard Myers, who held the position until 2005, an almost 20-year drought.

If confirmed to the chairmanship, Brown would become the top military adviser to a commander in chief who’s balancing the China threat with the need to equip the Ukrainian military with munitions, drones, missiles and other high-end equipment. That mission is in a state of flux, as the U.S. and other Western allies pivot from sending their own stocks of weapons to replenishing their armaments back home — all while making sure Kyiv has enough weaponry to fight off Russia in the months ahead.

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Opinion | Trump’s Election Denialism Is Already Winning

Presidents of the United States who have lost elections generally don’t go on to dominate their parties and win the office again.

Donald Trump has found a work-around, by denying he was defeated in 2020. This effort has been overwhelmingly successful among its target audience of Republican voters and has tilted the playing field of the 2024 nomination battle in his favor.

Trump has made himself the incumbent in exile, the sitting president in the hearts and minds of his supporters, the martyr of shadowy forces (so shadowy, in fact, that they can’t be readily identified) and the true heir chiseled out of his rightful throne by an unscrupulous pretender.

This creates a terrible dilemma for Trump’s opponents: How do you run against a defeated president without noting the highly relevant fact that he was, ahem, defeated?

A new CBS Poll underlines the dynamic. The top-line numbers, with Trump ahead of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by 58 to 22 percent nationally, aren’t all that different from the latest Fox News poll of the Democratic race, with President Joe Biden leading Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 62 to 19 percent.

CBS also asked what attributes Republicans would like to see in a nominee. Sixty-one percent want a candidate who says Trump won in 2020. That desire among Republican voters inherently favors Trump, since no one is going to be as adamant and outlandish in maintaining that Trump won than Trump himself.

Among voters supporting Trump, three-quarters say a reason that they are backing him is that he actually won in 2020.

It wasn’t crazy to think that this view would fade over time after the 2020 election, as passions cooled and as Republicans felt less defensive of the former president. Perhaps most Republicans don’t think that there was honest-to-goodness fraud in 2020, and instead merely believe the rules and the press coverage were unfair — in other words, their answers to pollsters should be taken seriously, not literally.

Even if this is so, it will still require finesse on part of Trump’s opponents when addressing 2020. And it may well be that Republicans are simply being literal.

Insisting the election was stolen and convincing his party of this claim has worked for Trump on multiple levels — first and foremost, as a salve to his ego; in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, as the rationale for trying to overturn the result; and ever since, as the necessary condition for his come-back (if that’s the right word, since he never left).

Trump has ruled out of bounds one of the most telling critiques of him for Republican primary voters. Throwing at him that he lost a winnable election in 2020 should be the easiest criticism to make. It doesn’t require departing with him on substance or attacking his character. It needn’t involve condemning him for January 6. It should have, in theory, equal appeal to Trump fans and Trump skeptics, all of whom have a shared interest in defeating Biden. The argument can be swaddled in warm sentiments: “You did so much good and were such a brave fighter as president, Donald, so it’s a real shame you lost. But you did. And we can’t afford to lose again. Sorry.”

Trump’s contention that he actually won, and his intense bond with his supporters, creates the real possibility that making this case against him will boomerang, though.

On Trump’s terms, which are widely accepted in the party, admitting the legitimacy of the 2020 election marks someone as a sell-out to the establishment, a political moderate and a weakling rather than a fighter. It also constitutes an affront to Trump, and therefore a kind of personal attack.

The broad feeling among Republicans is that they don’t want to hear anything disparaging about Trump. In the same poll, CBS News asked what voters would want to see in the 2024 GOP nominee if he or she isn’t Trump. Only 7 percent said they want someone who criticizes Trump. Another 56 percent said they want someone who doesn’t talk about Trump, and 37 percent said they want someone who shows loyalty to him. A crushing total of more than 90 percent of Republicans want silence or acquiescence from a GOP nominee when it comes to his or her predecessor.

This makes trying to get by Trump in the GOP primaries not just a balancing act, but the political equivalent of performing Philippe Pettit’s walk between the Twin Towers while playing Yankee Doodle on a ukulele.

The presidential candidates opposing Trump have to choose whether to accept Trump’s version of 2020, to avoid talking about the matter, to dodge by saying the election was “rigged” without calling it stolen or to tell the truth. The temptation to pull up somewhere short of the last option will be strong, but it’s hard to see how anyone defeats Trump without going there.

If it’s accepted that Trump supposedly beat Biden in 2020, well, then, he’s basically owed another shot at it, and, as a two-time winner of presidential elections, there’s not much of a case that he has an electability problem.

DeSantis has talked lately of the GOP’s “culture of losing,” an oblique, if obvious reference to Trump. If the governor feels he has to pull his punches before he actually gets in the race, that’s understandable. To deal with this issue only indirectly would be a mistake, though. Trump alienated swing voters, lost his last election and has grasped at any conspiracy theory to try to cover his tracks. DeSantis attracted swing voters, won his last election and doesn’t have anything he needs to feel ashamed about. That’s an enormous difference, and it should figure prominently in the governor’s campaign.

Give Trump this: He doesn’t necessarily accept public opinion as it is but tries to shape it. Although there’d be widespread Republican doubts about the 2020 election no matter what he said, the belief that it was stolen wouldn’t be as deep and pervasive without his persistent (and deceptive) advocacy. He’s changed the landscape in his favor, and his opponents simply accept it at their peril.

For Trump to lose the nomination, what should be his chief vulnerability needs to be a vulnerability — and his Republican opponents must try to make it one.

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