The “Law & Order: SVU” star channeled Joan Jett to sing a ditty called, “I Love TV Screens.”
Supreme Court Blocks Trump’s Attack On Mail Voting
McConnell Returns To The Senate For The First Time Since June
Judge Strikes Down Controversial Rule Changes Benefitting Embattled Brooklyn Party Boss
Trump Is Losing His Mind Over Calls To Regulate AI
Trump Administration Potentially Breaking The Law In Non-Citizen Voter Review, Whistleblower Reports
Hochul’s how-to guide to stopping ICE
ICE TO SEE YOU: Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office is advising local governments that zoning and state environmental laws can stymie Immigration and Customs Enforcement from building or expanding detention facilities in their communities.
Those legal barriers — spelled out in a letter sent today by Hochul to local government leaders — represent the latest effort by her administration to halt ICE’s efforts in New York.
“We need localities focused on keeping our communities safe, which depends upon the efforts of local law enforcement, civil servants, and regulators,” Hochul wrote in the letter, which was exclusively obtained by Playbook. “While my administration will continue to demand answers and transparency from federal immigration authorities, should you become aware of these projects, my office is ready to partner with you to determine any appropriate next steps to protect our local communities.”
The missive is a new front in Hochul’s broader push to erect roadblocks against President Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation campaign — which includes a push to build or convert facilities in parts of New York.
New York lawmakers and Hochul agreed in May to a package of sweeping measures meant to limit Trump’s immigration enforcement.
Included in those measures were provisions that required expanded public notice — including holding at least two hearings — for the expansion or construction of an immigration detention facility. The law also prohibits local governments from providing financial benefits meant to offset the cost of a facility.
Hochul’s Republican critics have railed against the measures, which were first proposed during the aggressive deportation crackdown in Minnesota, which left two U.S. citizens dead.
Broome County Sheriff Fred Akshar is set to testify Tuesday to the House Judiciary Committee in Washington on “the continuing tragedy of sanctuary laws.” Akshar’s office did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Local government officials have already sounded an alarm this year over ICE’s apparent efforts to expand the agency’s detention capacity by leasing or expanding sites in Batavia, Newburgh and Rochester.
Hochul wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin earlier this summer requesting more information on ICE’s New York plans.
Last month her administration got a reply.
An ICE official wrote to the governor that the agency has “not directed the establishment of a detention facility” in Rochester. In Batavia, ICE is “in the early stages” of weighing a bedspace and usage expansion at a site. And in the Hudson Valley, the agency confirmed that “an acquisition [is] underway to identify a new facility to lease through the General Services Administration” that would house its investigations, enforcement and removal operations.
Details were scant in the letter, but the response is the first time the federal government has formally laid out any of its plans for ICE expansion in New York to state officials.
On Monday in New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and state Attorney General Letitia James offered some of their own push back: two lawsuits seeking to stop the Trump administration from making it harder for immigrants lawfully in the U.S. to change their status.
The suits target a federal rule change set to take effect Friday. The change would give immigration agents more leeway to deny green cards or visas to lawful immigrants on the basis of being a “public charge” — someone who’s using social safety net programs. The rule change would allow agents to factor in the use of Medicaid or food assistance into their decision making.
The Trump administration has said the rule is necessary to ensure the country is not authorizing immigrants who drain public resources.
Mamdani countered that, rather than saving the U.S. money, the change will force immigrants to forgo routine medical care, increasing the likelihood of medical emergencies.
“None of this is abstract,” Mamdani said. “People could die as a result of these changes.”
James said the administration’s rule change is overly broad and flies in the face of more than 100 years of legal precedent.
“This public charge rule goes back to 1822, where Congress basically said that it only applies to individuals who cannot support themselves, not individuals who apply every now and then for public assistance because they fall on hard times,” she said. — Nick Reisman and Joe Anuta
From the Capitol
REGENTS EXAM PHASE-OUT COMING: The high school class of 2027 will be the final one required to pass the state Regents exams to graduate.
The state Board of Regents authorized the Education Department today to move forward with the next phase of the “New York Inspires” program. As part of that program, the board voted last year to adopt a framework that lets students demonstrate proficiency through other measures like projects or coursework. That framework will replace the Regents exam.
While the Regents will remain as an option, it will no longer be a requirement for high school graduation, beginning with students graduating in 2028, education officials said during the board’s monthly meeting today.
“For years, we looked at what elite private schools provide for their students and they do not worry about the Regents exam,” State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa said. “They don’t even worry when you apply to colleges that it’s on their transcript.”
The department said it plans to advance the regulation changes to the board by February 2027 so it can implement the changes in the 2027-28 school year. The board unanimously passed a resolution to that effect today.
Districts will have to develop strategies for assessment that draw on multiple sources of evidence, including classroom performance, student work and state assessments.
Some Regents board members sought more clarity on resources to support families.
“What I did not hear was what resources, what tools do we have for parents and students who are in this purgatory period?” said Regents member Hasoni Pratts, a New York City public school parent.
The news comes as the state grapples with abysmal performance on this year’s reading exams — despite New York spending more per pupil than any other state in the country. Experts and advocates have been questioning what those results say about student learning, and precisely what led to those fluctuations. — Madina Touré
FROM CITY HALL
DEEPFAKE CRACKDOWN: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced today that his office seized control of a dozen domains used to create, disseminate and sell AI deepfake porn.
The sites in question featured AI-generated images and videos of roughly 1,200 individuals — primarily women and celebrities — engaging in sexually explicit activity.
“These horrific violations of privacy follow victims into their careers and personal lives, and take an immense toll on their emotional and mental well-being,” Bragg said. “We were able to seize these domains because a brave survivor stepped forward. And while victims of these sites are largely celebrities, we know that anyone can be a victim of these crimes, particularly in domestic violence cases.”
New York penal law prohibits the dissemination of pornography without a subject’s consent, and violations are punishable by up to a year in prison. That statute was updated in 2023 to explicitly prohibit AI-generated porn.
Bragg’s announcement comes as lawmakers in Albany and Washington grapple with the looming threat of artificial intelligence. But Bragg declined to comment on the potential role of the Manhattan DA’s office in working towards larger scale AI regulation.
“This is a crime in New York State,” he said, referring to the circulation of deepfake pornography. “We don’t have to talk about regulation, legislation. This is a crime now.” —Molly Reinmann
FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
2028 VISION: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leaning into the speculation swirling around her 2028 aspirations.
“In some ways, I understand the interest. But I wanted to write to you today to be direct about what I’m focused on,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a fundraising email. “Frankly, I could not care less about titles or positions for myself. That’s not why I got into this work. What matters to me is changing this country so that it finally works for all of us, and that’s why my focus is on the decision working people around the country will make in the next 50 days.”
She added that her political operation is “mobilizing resources, not just to get me re-elected or build for a future campaign, but most importantly to win the midterms and take back the majority.”
Ocasio-Cortez, who’s been active on the trail boosting down-ballot candidates, has kept the door open for either a Senate run or a presidential bid in 2028 — though some progressives are urging her to aim for the White House.
Any clarity on her 2028 decision before this coming Election Day seems unlikely, though — especially given how “concerned” she says she is “by how some in our party are talking” about the midterms.
“There is a narrative taking hold in Washington that the Republicans are already cooked,” her email continued. “That kind of complacency is how we grasp defeat from the jaws of victory. … All of this is why I am not spending this fall thinking about myself. I am spending it working my butt off to deliver a majority in the House and the Senate.” — Madison Fernandez
A DIFFERENT LAUDER GIVES: Estee Lauder Chair William Lauder gave $500,000 to the super PAC backing Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman.
Lauder’s contribution comes after his uncle, prolific GOP donor Ronald Lauder, ceased his political giving this year. Ronald Lauder was the principal backer of a super PAC aiding Republican Lee Zeldin’s 2022 bid against Hochul.
William Lauder wasn’t the only deep-pocketed titan to donate to the Blakeman PAC recently. Home Depot founder Ken Langone, a GOP megadonor who once led Republicans for Cuomo, gave $50,000. — Nick Reisman
IN OTHER NEWS
— STALLED SECURITY: More than eight months into his term, Mamdani is still waiting on federal security clearance. (Gothamist)
— LEGIONELLA LOCATIONS: A Yankee Stadium cooling tower tested positive for the bacteria that can cause Legionnaires’ disease, according to the New York City Health Department. (Daily News)
— SIGN LANGUAGE: A PAC funded by Knicks owner James Dolan launched a $250,000 billboard campaign backing Blakeman and blaming Hochul for an exodus from the state. (NY Post)
Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.
Trump’s arcade-style border games borrow a page from history’s propaganda playbook
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This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 12 episode of “Connect with Jacob Soboroff.”
There’s something very sick and twisted about turning someone’s suffering into a game — and I don’t just mean that metaphorically. I mean like an actual game.
Earlier this month, the White House debuted five arcade-style video games on its official website, two of which centered around the administration’s immigration agenda. The first, called “Rio Run,” is basically a messed-up version of “Snake,” where the player is told to “patrol the line” along the Rio Grande and “pick up every crosser in the lot.” The goal is to beat your highest immigrant deportation score.
The second one, called “Build the Wall, Zombie Border Siege,” has since been removed from the White House website after Tetris warned that it takes copyright infringement “very seriously.” Tetris also denied any involvement in the game’s creation. The objective of that game was for players to stack Tetris-like blocks on top of one another to “protect the border from the coming horde.” (The White House did not respond to our request for comment about either of these games.)
But turning cruelty into a game isn’t new. In fact, stuff like this is one of the oldest propaganda tricks in the book. It’s all about desensitizing people and building a reward structure: You’re given a task, told to do it repeatedly until you get better and beat your high score.
Games are also powerful because they create community. A lot of the time, they’re team-based, “us vs. them,” and they make it easy to hate the outsiders. That’s what makes this kind of propaganda so effective: It doesn’t necessarily ask you to hate someone; sometimes it just asks you to play against them.
In 1938 Nazi-controlled Germany, a children’s board game went on the market called “Juden Raus!” which translates to “Jews Out.” At first glance, it looks like a twisted version of Candyland. The board depicted a walled-up town, and the game was simple: roll the dice and move the player around the streets; once the player lands on a square marked as a “Jewish house,” the player rounds up the Jewish person for collection. The winner was the first person to collect, chase out and deposit six Jewish figures on the outskirts of the town.
At the time, it was slammed by the official SS newspaper, but not for gamifying hatred. Rather, Nazi leadership claimed the game trivialized its policy of cleansing Germany of Jews because it “presented the regime’s systematic hard work as a game of chance.” Think about that: Even the guys running the machinery of persecution seemed to understand the power of how a game like this could come across — the cheerful board, the cartoon figures, the rolling of dice, how ordinary it made something so horrifying seem.
That’s what makes this kind of propaganda so effective: It doesn’t necessarily ask you to hate someone; sometimes it just asks you to play against them.
It’s not just something that happened in Nazi Germany. In 2002, a white supremacist group in the U.S. released a video game called “Ethnic Cleansing” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Players started off by choosing an avatar. Among the selections were a KKK member and a neo-Nazi fascist. The main objective of this game was to hunt down and shoot Black, Latino and Jewish people through offensive urban landscapes.
A Wired article described it this way: “When a dark-skinned player is killed [in the game], a monkey sound is played … Jewish characters shout ‘oy vey’ when they are shot … Racist rock music, with hate-filled lyrics, blares on the soundtrack and National Alliance posters with the group’s URL are plastered on the virtual walls.”
These games, whether they’re pushed by racist manufacturers, white nationalists or our own government, don’t just make cruelty entertaining — they make it easier for the people playing them to stop seeing the thing they’re chasing, rounding up or shooting at as a human being.
The technology or the target may change, but the trick is always the same: Take a minority, turn them into an abstraction, a threat, an obstacle, a colorful pawn in a game, and make their humiliation into entertainment.
Allison Detzel contributed.
The post Trump’s arcade-style border games borrow a page from history’s propaganda playbook appeared first on MS NOW.
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Texas GOP candidate stands by xenophobic comments following backlash
Bo French, the GOP nominee for a spot on the Texas Railroad Commission, doubled down on Monday on a xenophobic post that disparaged Asian American students at the University of Texas after receiving blowback from fellow Republicans over the weekend.
On X, French was quick to turn his viral post, which had received more than 35 million views as of Monday afternoon, into a fundraising pledge, calling the criticism he has received an attack from “the radical left and their allies.”
He also stood by his post in an appearance on the conservative radio broadcast “The Mark Davis Show” on Monday.
“The radical left, you know, they want to make everything about race,” he said on the show. “Of course, there are some people in our party who are uncomfortable talking about those things because it scares them.”
The social media firestorm started after French posted a photo on X on Sunday of UT students celebrating in the crowd and wrote: “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
The post drew swift rebukes from Democrats and some Texas Republicans, including outgoing Sen. John Cornyn — who called on other Republican officials to “condemn the intolerance and racism” — as well as several state lawmakers.
During his radio appearance, French said his social media post is a criticism of admissions and hiring policies at UT, the state’s public flagship, that he said discriminated against Texas residents.
“It’s not racist to point out that we should be favoring Texans over foreigners,” French said.
There’s no indication that the students French targeted are foreigners. Most of UT’s student body is made up of Texans.
According to state law, Texas high school students in the top 5% of their class are automatically admitted to UT, and around 80% of the student body is from the state.
He also took a shot at Cornyn and other Republicans who condemned him, saying many were from the establishment wing of the party that opposed him in the GOP primary.
“What is he doing to help elect [Ken] Paxton? So we have to ask those questions,” he said. “I just think we should be prioritizing our Republican platform, which, by the way, is an America First platform, which prioritizes Americans.”
French, who is running for a seat on the influential statewide body that regulates its oil and gas industry, has a history of making controversial statements.
Earlier this year, he suggested Republicans should fear Islam and advocated for deporting 100 million people.
