An FBI agent dragged a pedestrian across a snowy sidewalk, left him on a bench and sped away in his government-issued car after hitting and severely injuring him while driving the wrong way down a busy New York City street, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Andrew Reyes, 30, blew through a red light and struck the man as he was crossing the street on Feb. 3 in Brooklyn, prosecutors said. He later lied to investigators about it, denying that he’d ever hit a person with his FBI vehicle and not reported it.

If convicted, Reyes faces up to 10 years in prison.

Happy Friday in NYC, where the city’s many flood mitigation projects weren’t enough to stop Tuesday’s blue wave.

If you remember this time two years ago, there was a lot of discussion that — amid a nationwide shift to the right — even reliably democratic New York City was starting to blush red. Here’s what we wrote in the Daily Brief on Nov. 6, 2024.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 79% of the votes in New York City. In 2020, Biden won 76%. Yesterday, Kamala Harris won only 68%, a sharp decline in popularity that points to a dramatic red shift among the NYC electorate. [...] Trump gained a lot of support in the Bronx, Manhattan and his home borough of Queens. In the Bronx, ballots cast for Trump rose by 35%, from 67,740 in 2020 to 91,542 in 2024. In Manhattan, Trump earned 20% more votes than he did 4 years ago. In Queens, Trump earned 247,891 votes, a 16.5% surge from 2020. Brooklyn saw an 8% jump in voter turnout for Trump, particularly in Southern Brooklyn, and Staten Island a 0.7% jump. 

What a difference a couple of years, a deeply unpopular war, an affordability crisis, and a mass-deportation campaign makes. In the midterms on Tuesday, NYC saw a dramatic rebound in favor of Democratic candidates, in particular the gubernatorial race.

According to an analysis from The City, Kathy Hochul gained votes in 92% of NYC neighborhoods on course to a 76-24 trouncing in the city of her MAGA opponent Bruce Blakeman. In all, 22 neighborhoods switched from red to blue. The neighborhood that swung most heavily in Hochul’s favor? South Williamsburg.

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Applicants should be happily challenged to tell the news of a major event in 200 words or less and post updates on a rolling basis.

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Blue Cross says AI hospital coding appears to have added nearly a billion dollars to its inpatient bills over two years, even though patients didn’t receive more medical treatment.

Much of it came from secondary diagnoses: extra conditions listed next to the problem that put you in the hospital. That is not necessarily a scam. If you go in for bowel surgery and pick up an infection, the hospital should treat and document it. Hospitals have always done that.

But Blue Cross is not merely complaining. The association, working with its data analytics partner Blue Health Intelligence, is using claims data to identify unusual coding patterns, while its plans are establishing expectations for hospitals using AI coding tools.

Read on to learn more.

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