The previously agreed upon officer increase for the New York Police Department has been scrapped by Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) in the city’s final budget proposal amid pressure from his socialist base.The $125.8 billion budget was originally slated to include $70 million to fund the addition of 580 NYPD officers, as outlined in Mamdani's executive budget proposal released in May.'We are calling on Mayor Mamdani to reverse this proposed expansion of the NYPD.'Mamdani has pivoted in the weeks since. “I've been talking to all agency heads about ways to find savings, and [Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch] and I were able to identify ways to keep the NYPD head count at the originally authorized 35,000 while also meeting all of our crime-fighting needs and implementing the new programs that were announced earlier this year," Mamdani said during a press conference Tuesday.The night before the final budget vote, City Council Speaker Julie Menin (D) said she received a call from the mayor informing her of his agreement with Tisch to cut the officer increase from the budget. “I disagree with that decision. ... I do believe we need those officers,” Menin said, citing concerns over increasing rape, felony assault, and subway crime numbers.“We are going to fight for it now,” she added.Menin did note that the NYPD budget increased by $300 million for the fiscal year.The NYC Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mamdani is a member and with whom he holds close political ties, has been avidly calling on the mayor to follow through on his campaign promise to keep the NYPD head count flat.“We are calling on Mayor Mamdani to reverse this proposed expansion of the NYPD and invest the money in community safety programs instead," NYC-DSA said on June 12.The proposed head count increase "runs counter to the values of the socialist and working-class movement that elected him,” the group continued, adding, “When police serve as default first responders, New Yorkers are placed in harm’s way.”RELATED: Mamdani vows to protect migrants in apparent DEFIANCE of Supreme Court ruling on TPS NYPD graduates salute family and friends at their Recruit Graduation Ceremony at Madison Square Garden on March 9, 2026. Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesIn a statement to Fox News Digital, the NYPD said, “It is no secret that the city is facing serious financial challenges, and the mayor has asked every agency head to find efficiencies. ... For now, the department is able to police effectively with the budgeted head count we have, driving crime down month after month. That head count and our hiring plan gives us the flexibility we need to maintain that balance over the next fiscal year."NYPD funding had been at the forefront throughout last year’s mayoral election as Mamdani’s controversial X posts regarding police funding resurfaced, including one where he called the force “wicked” and “corrupt” and advocated for its defunding and dismantling. In another post, he said, “We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. ... What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD."Council member Tiffany Cabán, a democratic socialist and chair of the council’s Progressive Caucus, backed the mayor’s decision.“I am proud to have worked closely with the mayor and public safety advocates to ensure there was no increase to the NYPD’s headcount in this budget. Every dollar we spend on policing and incarceration means money we can’t spend on housing, mental health care, substance use treatment, and economic stability.”The Fiscal Year 2027 budget was officially adopted by the City Council on Tuesday and signed into law the following day by Mamdani, making it the largest budget in city history.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Nobody asked us. Not me, not my teammates, not the 18-year-olds who had just arrived at the University of Pennsylvania and found themselves sharing a locker room with Lia Thomas. Nobody held a vote, nobody sent an email, nobody knocked on the door and said, "Hey, is this OK with you?" They simply instructed us that a man would be joining the women’s swim team and waited for us to get used to it. We never did.Somewhere along the way, it became the job of a bunch of college kids to fix something the adults in the room had broken.Plenty of lawyers and pundits will spend the next several weeks dissecting the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J. They will argue about precedent and jurisdiction, but here is what most of them are missing: They were not in that locker room. I was.Eighteen times a week for an entire season, I changed and showered alongside a male athlete. Eighteen times a week, my teammates and I were expected to act like this was normal. Voicing concerns was dubbed hateful, and the policy that created this situation in the first place was not. We had earned our spots on the team, but not one person in a position of authority at Penn, the NCAA, or USA Swimming ever pulled us aside and asked how we were handling the situation. The administration and governing bodies were not interested. The message was quiet but very clear: Your discomfort is not the problem we are trying to solve.When we tried to raise our concerns, the athletic department told us Thomas’ place on the team was nonnegotiable. Staff members offered us psychological services in an attempt to re-educate us into being comfortable undressing in front of a man. Their solution was not to protect us but to “fix” us.Somewhere along the way, it became the job of a bunch of college kids to fix something the adults in the room had broken.That is what I want people to understand when they hear about this ruling: It is not abstract to me. It is not a hypothetical or a talking point. I lived inside the policy the court just ruled states have the right to prohibit.I can tell you from experience that the "compassionate" framing the other side always reaches for has never once held up to reality. RELATED: SCOTUS sides with common sense after boys try to play sports with girls Alex WROBLEWSKI/AFP/Getty ImagesCompassion for whom? Not for the female athletes who trained their entire lives and finished one place lower than they should have. Not for the teenager in California who lost a state track title she had earned. Not for my teammates and me who were expected to smile and say nothing while the people making decisions were only concerned about the feelings of one male athlete. This ruling matters, but it does not automatically fix the issue of the governing bodies and professional organizations that spent the last several years dismantling women's protections one policy at a time. The NCAA still allows athletes to compete on an amended birth certificate in some cases, a solution you’d come up with if you were never really trying to solve the problem and never had to share a locker room with a fully grown man. And worse still, 23 states have no law protecting girls at all.The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act has been sitting on Capitol Hill for years. Every member of Congress who let it die in committee now has a Supreme Court majority telling them they had the authority to act and chose not to. It is time to finish the job.I have been waiting for that moment since I was 19.The court got it right. I just wish it had not taken this long for the people in charge to catch up to what I knew firsthand in my locker room.
Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) has sent a direct and forceful letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding swift action to end the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) racket for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian nationals now that the Supreme Court has cleared the path in Mullin v.
The post Sen. Eric Schmitt Calls on DHS Sec. Markwayne Mullin to ‘Move Fast’ and Deport Hundreds of Thousands Under TPS appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
