Andrew Cuomo's new plan to punish New Yorkers: He's staying in the race
On Monday, the disgraced ex-gov announced he'll continue his quest for City Hall by running as an independent.
Apparently, it isn't enough that he was forced to step down as governor just a few years back by members of his own party.
Or that the was then he was soundly defeated in the mayoral primary — again, by members of his party.
You'd think maybe he'd get the message: Voters are just not that into you, Andrew.
Instead, Cuomo is insisting on making Gothamites put up with his preening and dissembling and waffling for the next four months, even as that forces them to recall all the pain he caused them as governor:
Skyrocketing crime rates, thanks to his disastrous criminal-justice reforms.
Soaring utility bills, thanks to an insane climate law he OK'd.
Congestion pricing, which socks folks who drive into mid-Manhattan, like those from the outer boroughs.
The COVID lockdowns and crazy rules (Cuomo chips, anyone?) and prolonged school closures that worsened learning loss among kids.
And, of course, his fatal order forcing nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients that almost certainly led to hundreds of preventable deaths.
No wonder New York's share of the US population plunged during his years as governor, costing the state a congressional seat.
Now, Cuomo's insistence on staying in the race, along with Mayor Eric Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa, seems sure to deliver the election to socialist antisemite Zohran Mamdani. Thanks, again, Andrew.
Meanwhile, recent polls have found fully 70% of voters cite candidates other than Cuomo as their top choice.
Nor is he likely to recapture lefties by parroting the guy who beat him, Zohran Mamdani: In a new New York magazine column, Cuomo described himself as 'anti-billionaire.' (An aide denied that, arguing the ex-gov's words were taken out of context.)
Back in 1989, after Mayor Ed Koch lost his bid for reelection, he was asked if he'd ever run for office again. 'No,' he replied. 'The people have spoken … and they must be punished.'
Cuomo, by contrast, aims to punish the city by continuing to run.
New Yorkers should pray that at some point, he takes the hint.
Do us all a favor, Andrew: Just Cuo away.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
12 minutes ago
- The Hill
Live updates: Hill Nation Summit explores Trump's term 6-month mark
Nearly six months into President Trump's second term, The Hill and NewsNation team up to host the inaugural Hill Nation Summit, a full-day bipartisan gathering in Washington, featuring leaders in government, business and policy. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, White House senior counselor Peter Navarro, Leaders We Deserve founder David Hogg and more will be interviewed by Hill and NewsNation journalists. The event is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. EDT. Watch it live here and follow along all day for updates from the summit. More than a week after the Justice Department issued a report on Jeffrey Epstein, the fallout persists. On Tuesday, Johnson broke with Trump and said Attorney General Pam Bondi needs to explain her statements regarding Epstein. Senate Republican leadership believes a vote on the White House's rescissions package is near, though with an agreement to strip PEPFAR cuts, the package will need to return to the House for a vote by Friday, the deadline for passage.
Time Magazine
41 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
We Need a Constitutional Amendment to Protect U.S. Education
In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court gave the Trump Administration a green light to do what it has long promised: gut the Department of Education from the inside out. The ruling upheld the administration's authority to fire department staff en masse, paving the way for a de facto dismantling of an agency responsible for enforcing civil rights law, allocating billions in federal education funding, and ensuring that when states fail poor children, someone still shows up. This isn't a bureaucratic reshuffling. It's a deliberate unraveling of the federal government's role in public education—an already weakened, often reluctant, commitment to the idea that education is a national responsibility, not just a local budget line. If we are to protect this idea, we urgently need a constitutional amendment which enshrines the right to education for all Americans. It won't be easy. But it is required if we are going to recover from these legal, economic, and political assaults coming from the Trump Administration. This became clear in the weeks leading up to the Supreme Court's decision when the Trump Administration made its intentions clear. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon threatened to withhold Title I funding—designed for schools serving the highest concentrations of poverty—from districts that refused to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. Then came the quiet refusal to release $7 billion in education funding already approved by Congress. None of this is happening in a vacuum. These moves are part of broader efforts which have been building for years: a project not to fix public education, but to abandon it. To convert justified public frustration into a license for withdrawal. And yes, that frustration is real. According to Pew, over half of Americans believe public K–12 education is on the wrong track. Classrooms are overcrowded, teachers underpaid, schools under-resourced. A resounding 82% of teachers say things have gotten worse over the past five years. College doesn't fare much better. Gallup reports that trust in higher education has cratered—particularly among working-class families and communities of color burdened by debt and priced out of opportunity. But these are not critiques of the public good itself—they are evidence of abandonment. And the response from lawmakers, Democratic and Republican alike, hasn't been to repair the system. It has been to shrink it, politicize it, starve it, and now, through the Court, dismantle the very infrastructure needed to enforce our nation's own laws. This moment is not just about saving a department. It's about reclaiming the idea that democracy requires a literate, critical, cared-for citizenry—and that the right to education is not something the states can choose to ignore. The long history of efforts to end the Department of Education The Department of Education, created as a Cabinet-level agency in 1979, was never perfect. But it existed for a reason: to intervene when states, left to their own devices, would not or could not educate all children fairly. It enforced desegregation orders. It monitored civil rights compliance under Title IX and IDEA. It held districts accountable when racial discrimination was systemic and unapologetic. This isn't the first time we've been here. In 1867, the federal government created the first Department of Education—not to regulate curriculum, but to gather data on how best to educate the newly freed Black population and poor whites in the post–Civil War South. It was a fragile, symbolic effort to build a national vision for learning and citizenship in a country struggling to imagine either across racial lines. Arguing that the federal government had no role to play in education, states organized and protested the new agency, and shut it down in less than a year. A century later, when Brown v. Board made segregation illegal, many states closed schools rather than integrate them. Others used zoning, funding, and private academies to maintain racial separation under different names. It took federal enforcement to protect U.S. citizens from the unequal citizenship their states desired for them. Now, we're watching that enforcement dissolve and once again, the reasoning is wrapped in the language of 'local control.' But let's be clear: local control has always been a polite term for resisting federal authority to protect its most vulnerable citizens. It means those with the most power get to shape curriculum, hoard resources, and decide who belongs—and who doesn't. The legacy of Bob Moses In this moment, we would benefit to remember the legacy of civil rights organizer and founder of the Algebra Project, Bob Moses. Moses understood better than most that education is not just about access to classrooms. It is about access to power. He believed that algebra was a 'gatekeeper' to full citizenship. Without it—and without the trained teachers, safe schools, and rigorous curriculum needed to teach it—students living in poverty were being systematically locked out of economic and civic life. For Moses, the fight for educational justice required more than reform. It required a new constitutional right. He spent the final decades of his life calling for an amendment that would guarantee every child in the United States—not just access to school buildings, but access to quality public education as a civil right. He knew what we are now learning the hard way: that unless quality is guaranteed by law, inequality will be guaranteed by design. 'We have been running an education system that is driving a caste system. We agree to have failing schools with the caveat that we also have a plethora of programs to rescue different categories of students from them,' Moses argued in 2012. 'Almost every program you can think of—charter schools, vouchers, affirmative action—all rescue different categories of students. We can't announce that as an education policy, but that's what we do.' Notably, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023 and Congress passed a national school voucher program earlier this month. Indeed, rather than fix our educational system for all, as Moses had supported, the conservative movement has cherry-picked which students get to be 'rescued.' And in this moment—when the federal government is retreating, when civil rights enforcement is in free fall, when schools are being turned into ideological piggybanks—Moses's call for a constitutional amendment is no longer aspirational. It is necessary. This would not be easy. It would take litigation, legislation, and mass mobilization. But so did desegregation. So did voting rights. So did anything this country has ever done that was worth doing. What this Court has made official, many states were already doing in practice: walking away from the idea that education is a public good. But the people haven't walked away. In poll after poll, Americans continue to believe in public education. A 2024 Pew study found that 77% think the federal government should play a role in ensuring educational equity. Public school remains one of the last remaining entitlements that enjoys broad support across race, class, and even party lines. The question is no longer whether the people believe. It's whether the government is willing to act. Bob Moses saw this moment coming. And he left us a blueprint. If we don't follow that blueprint, we stand to witness not just the dismantling of the Department of Education, but the dismantling of public education itself.
The Hill
42 minutes ago
- The Hill
Virginia Foxx not done making waves as the ‘Iron Lady' of the House GOP
From elevator-bound staffers to the top leaders in the House, no one is underestimating 82-year-old Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). After Foxx chaired a nearly 22-hour House Rules Committee hearing ahead of House passage of Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill' in May, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called her the 'Iron Lady of the House.' House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) called Foxx a 'tough cookie' and a 'straight shooter' in a press conference a few weeks later. Now in her 11th term in Congress, Foxx is undeniably one of the most iconic figures in the House Republican Conference — a stature achieved not by making waves through social media or bombastic stances, but through being a workhorse and a team player. 'I am really, really focused on not wasting time,' Foxx said in an interview with The Hill in June. 'If you see me when I'm waiting for the train, you'll see I go to the end of the platform so that I am on the first car, so when I get out, I'm as close as I can be to where I'm going.' But while she is known for her toughness, Foxx also has a soft side — tearing up when talking about the American Revolution's 'barefoot soldiers who were willing to risk their lives for freedom.' She's poured her energy through her decades-long career into helping people through education, just as it helped her rise up from poverty. Fox in this Congress is the only Republican woman chairing a committee in the House, selected by the Speaker to lead the powerful Rules panel after she led Republicans on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce for four terms. Foxx, though, doesn't see that statistic as evidence of bias against women in the GOP. 'I think a lot of the press tries to make it look like women are not respected in the Republican Party, but it's really a matter of tenure,' she said, adding: 'The fact that I'm the only woman just means that we haven't had women stay as long as men stay or start earlier to be able to gain the seniority to become a chair. So it's just a matter of timing, more than anything.' Foxx's personal life story centers on the transformative power of education. Born in New York City (Manhattan, to be exact — 'Wikipedia has it wrong'), Foxx moved to North Carolina when she was six years old, living in houses without electricity or running water. She had no plans to go to college until a teacher her senior year encouraged her to do so. She attended Lees-McRae College in North Carolina for a semester; then went to live with her grandparents in the Bronx while she worked as a typist near Wall Street and saved her money; and then went back to enroll at Appalachian State University. Foxx transferred and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and went on to earn an education doctorate from UNC-Greensboro. But Foxx stresses that benefiting from education is not about collecting college degrees, but about skill development. She recalled her younger brother worrying that his family would be ashamed of him for not wanting to go to college. Foxx helped set up a carpentry apprenticeship program for him to enter, and he eventually got a license. 'We've set a standard for many people that says if you don't have a college degree, you're no good. And that bothers me a lot,' Foxx said. Foxx is as much of a team player on the political side of the House GOP as she is within the official side. One of the booths in the National Republican Congressional Committee from which members make fundraising calls has Foxx's name on it, sources have told The Hill over the years. Those workhorse sensibilities have long been apparent: A profile of Foxx in The Hill 20 years ago described Foxx's personality as 'half-grandmother, half-drill sergeant.' Around the Capitol campus, Foxx is widely known for her reputation for scolding staff and others for hopping on a members-only elevator, or telling staff and reporters to get out of the way. 'I am a rule follower. Ninety-five percent of the time, I'm in a hurry, and most members are,' Foxx said. 'And so there's a members' elevator for a reason, and it really is for time management more than anything else.' Her elevator reputation is so strong that other members have thanked her for the installation of new members-only elevators updates in House office buildings over the last year — but Foxx said the credit for those new key-card activated elevators to House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), insisting she did not ask for the additions. It's not just elevators. Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), one of Foxx's friends in Congress, recalled one of his first impressions of her while waiting on a bus to go to an event. 'This white-haired lady stood up and told the bus driver, 'close the door and go,'' Westerman said. 'And the bus driver closed the door and left. And my wife and I were there, and my wife said, 'You better watch out for her.'' 'There's only one Virginia Foxx,' he added. 'I think a lot of people see sometimes a rough exterior, but she's got a huge heart inside.' Foxx also made waves when she scolded a reporter in a press conference after Republicans nominated Johnson to be Speaker after a three-month saga following former Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) removal in 2023. One of the first questions to Johnson concerned his efforts supporting Trump's 'Stop the Steal' effort after the 2020 election. Republicans booed — and Foxx, standing prominently next to Johnson, shouted back: 'Shut up! Shut up!' Foxx told The Hill she thought the questions should have centered on how the new Speaker nominee felt. 'We were in such a wonderful mood. We'd gone through a lot to get speaker Johnson elected, and the mood in the room was so happy, so happy. And for somebody to bring up something totally opposite of where we were at the moment was very frustrating,' Foxx said. 'The woman was clueless about the tone at the time.' Foxx, who just celebrated her 82nd birthday, is the 15th oldest lawmaker in all of Congress — and the 10th oldest representative. Age has become a major political liability in recent years, particularly with former President Biden being forced to drop out of the 2024 race due to concerns about his mental acuity and a number of other aging lawmakers being scrutinized more regularly. Foxx is 'quite aware' of the scrutiny placed on older members, but sees herself as being at the peak of her career and has no plans to step back. In May, she announced she is seeking reelection in 2026. 'I get letters from people saying you need to quit,' Foxx said. 'My response to that is the Speaker appointed me Chair of the Rules Committee. That's sort of the peak of a career around here. And so I feel like I'm really in a good place. I don't think anybody will say I have any cognitive decline.' 'I'm physically in good shape. I had a fall in January, but that was because of a slick step,' Foxx said, referring to slipping on the marble steps outside the House chamber. 'I don't have any problems with getting around and I feel great. I work out every day, I stretch and I do those kinds of things to keep in good shape.' 'I don't see a reason to quit, as long as I can be the kind of representative my constituents deserve and want,' Foxx said. Last year, Foxx went through the same personal hardships as many of her constituents when Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina — trapping her husband in their mountain home. Foxx told her husband she planned to stay the night in Winston-Salem due to the coming hurricane and meetings in the area the next day, but he didn't expect the storm to be that bad. But Foxx, not wanting to take chances, filled up jugs of water for him – preparedness that paid off after flooding washed away some driveway to her house, trapping him for several days. 'I'm glad in many ways that it happened to us, because we were experiencing the same things that my constituents were experiencing. So when people would call me, I knew exactly what they were dealing with,' Foxx said.
