New York City Government

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Sunday that all city public school buildings will be closed Monday, with roughly 500,000 students expected to attend classes remotely as a winter storm threatens up to a foot of snow. The move marks Mamdani’s first big weather test as mayor and reverses his earlier statement Friday that there would be no traditional snow day, with the administration citing both student safety and the need to meet the state’s 180‑day instructional requirement. City officials say they spent the past week distributing devices, notifying families and preparing teachers to teach online, while high school students and some middle schoolers whose teachers had a scheduled professional learning day will have the day off entirely. With snow already accumulating Sunday, the mayor urged New Yorkers to stay off the roads and avoid unnecessary travel as forecasts show the storm bearing down on the region alongside a broader Arctic blast affecting much of the country.

New York City has sued producer Jordan McGraw and his company McGraw Media for breach of contract over an unfinished NYPD reality series, "Behind the Badge," and secured a temporary court order barring them from selling or releasing any of the footage. The three‑year production deal, signed in April 2025 under then‑Mayor Eric Adams, gave Dr. Phil McGraw’s team unusual behind‑the‑scenes access to crime scenes and police operations, but the city alleges that rough cuts were largely unedited footage dumps that improperly revealed sensitive tactics and the identities of undercover officers, crime victims, and witnesses, and at times portrayed the department negatively in ways the contract forbade. The Adams administration pulled the plug on the project hours before handing City Hall to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and the new suit says McGraw has since disavowed his obligations and tried to seize editorial control, creating a risk of "immediate and irreparable harm" if the material is aired. McGraw’s lawyer calls the order an unconstitutional prior restraint, says no broadcast was imminent, and insists the company had been working with the city on requested edits and remains willing to do so; on Thursday the defense moved to shift the case from New York state court to federal court. The fight underscores a broader tension over how much editorial control governments can claim when they invite TV producers inside police agencies, and whether city concerns about reputation and operational security can justify gagging a finished or near‑finished program.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed longtime housing activist Cea Weaver to lead the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants despite resurfaced social‑media posts in which she described homeownership as a “weapon of white supremacy” and advocated treating property as a collective good, drawing criticism from federal officials and editorial boards. Mamdani defended Weaver as a principled tenant advocate and said the administration knew of the posts, while Assemblyman Kalman Yeger and other City Council members say the council signaled in 2021 it would not have confirmed her earlier nomination to the City Planning Commission, which was withdrawn.