Tuesday’s Headlines: Badge Idea Edition
President Trump took over policing in one of America's most important cities yesterday. Plus other news.
12:01 AM EDT on August 12, 2025
President Trump took over policing in one of America’s most important cities yesterday on the false pretense that crime is up — and if you don’t think the same thing isn’t going to happen here, you haven’t been paying attention. (I mean, it’s already happening in some ways, The City reported.)
We’ll let others cover what happened in D.C. yesterday, but we’ll be on the front lines when the autocracy moves north. (NY Times, Guardian, The Atlantic)
In other news:
- Everyone (well one person that the Post quoted) complains about traffic, but if you’re really going to do the stupidest thing in New York history and build a casino in the five boroughs is there a better place than on the end of four subway lines? (Brooklyn Paper also covered.)
- The Times cast some shade on Mayor Adams’s “quality of life” police teams. Good for the Times. Great to see the Gray Lady in the mix! (Unlike amNY’s take.)
- Speaking of cops, what’s going to happen to presumptive mayor Zohran Mamdani’s NYPD reform effort? (Gothamist)
- We’ve been supremely disappointed by amNY’s transit coverage of late, but this hot take about the Interborough Express is a model of reverse double secret NIMBYism. In my day, there was a rule in newspapering: People who complain about living in a transit desert can’t then be quoted complaining when the city and state want to irrigate the same desert!
- Our friends at Tribeca Citizen reheated our nachos — but nicely! — on the federal plan to seize public space in Lower Manhattan.
- New York Focus had a great story about the pernicious way in which the Adams administration spies on public housing tenants.
- Kids aren’t even safe from car drivers in parks! (NYDN)
- And no one is safe from a drunk driver on the Bronx River Parkway. (NY Post, amNY)
- Mayor Adams touted his efforts to get the homeless into housing, but more independent coverage is needed beyond his house organ. (NY Post)
- It’s official: Revel is now just an EV car charger company. Sad. (amNY, NYDN, NY Times)
- Meadows of shame. (NY Post)
- Brooklyn Democratic powerhouse Frank Seddio — corrupt then, corrupt now. (NY Post)
- NY1 covered the 31st Street bike lane project in Queens, but Miser’s take was my favorite video of his ever, timed to the court forbidding DOT to work on the bike lane until it makes a full ruling on the “merits”:
Correction: An earlier version of this story identified the wrong corrupt Brooklyn politician. This version is correct.
Tabloid legend Gersh Kuntzman has been with New York newspapers since 1989, including stints at the New York Daily News, the Post, the Brooklyn Paper and even a cup of coffee with the Times. He's also the writer and producer of "Murder at the Food Coop," which was a hit at the NYC Fringe Festival in 2016, and “SUV: The Musical” in 2007. He also writes the Cycle of Rage column, which is archived here.
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