Happy Thursday in New York City, where a royal drama is playing out in a Manhattan federal courthouse over the future of congestion pricing.
Lawyers for the MTA and the Trump administration sparred yesterday before U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman over the U.S. Department of Transportation’s decision to revoke a congestion pricing contract approved under the Biden administration. Federal lawyers defended the move, while MTA lawyers argued that President Trump was claiming the rights of a monarch.
“Only kings like Henry VIII could cancel a contract whenever they see fit,” said one MTA lawyer. “President Trump is President Trump, not King Donald,” said another, a reference to a social media post from the president declaring “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. [...] LONG LIVE THE KING,” alongside a photoshopped image of Trump wearing a crown.
The hearing came on the same day that the MTA released new data on the 2025 performance of congestion pricing, showing that the agency generated $562 million from the tolls, a higher sum than originally predicted.
“I’m optimistic in part because we have a perfect track record in the court so far,” said MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber at a press conference. Judge Liman is expected to give his decision quickly.
Teen girls sued St. Ann’s School for failing to safeguard kids after a teacher shared “a revenge porn blast with dozens of explicit pictures” of the girls to his students.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said New York City faces a projected $12 billion budget shortfall across fiscal years 2026 and 2027 and blames the deficit on “staggering” fiscal mismanagement by former Mayor Eric Adams.
Tenants at a Brownsville apartment building say they’ve gone weeks without heat and hot water amid frigid temperatures, forcing residents to rely on space heaters, stoves and improvised methods to bathe.
Police are investigating why a man repeatedly slammed his car into the Chabad World Headquarters on Eastern Parkway on Wednesday night, in what the NYPD is calling a possible hate crime.
State prosecutors requested a July trial date for Luigi Mangione, accused of the high-profile shooting of health insurance executive Brian Thompson in December of 2024.
An attempted assassin was sentenced to 15 years in prison in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday for his role in one of several schemes to murder dissident Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad.
A salt-spreader truck equipped with a snow plow ran into an Amazon cargo e-bike and its rider in Brooklyn Heights on Wednesday afternoon, sending the bike operator to the hospital.
Hilary Duff sold out the Brooklyn Paramount as part of her comeback mini-tour.
Our World In Photos
Photo: Adam Gray/AP
MINNEAPOLIS — Raids, protests, deadly clashes and vigils: People attend a vigil where Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal immigration enforcement in Minneapolis, on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.
For more pictures like this, see Our World in Photos.
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🔍 Today’s AI report
Boom, bust and beyond: Why the AI bubble is necessary
You’ve probably seen the headlines. We’re in the middle of an artificial intelligence bubble, with hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into the sector in just a few short years.
AI startups now capture roughly half of all venture capital investment, an extraordinary concentration of speculative capital by any historical measure.
Economists estimate that AI-related spending on chips, data centers, software and research has contributed as much as 1.3 percentage points to recent U.S. GDP growth, a meaningful share of an economy that typically grows only 2 to 3% a year.
To many people, that’s cause for alarm. Bubbles are supposed to be bad — symbols of excess, “irrational exuberance” (thank you, Alan Greenspan) and capital misallocation. They conjure memories of Dutch tulips in the 17th century and the dot-com crash of 2000, with lost fortunes and painful recessions left in their wake.
However, history suggests something more complicated. For more than two centuries, technological bubbles haven’t been economic mistakes so much as a necessary phase of progress. They’re how societies absorb radical new technologies, even if the process is messy, downright wasteful and occasionally painful.
From canals and railroads to electricity, automobiles, aviation, the microprocessor, the personal computer and the internet, every transformational technology has followed the same arc — boom, bust and quiet integration. Artificial intelligence is simply the latest entry in a very long list.
Cartoon Sketchbook
By Jonathan Brown
For the Road
Fastelvan: Fastelvan, the Danish version of Mardi Gras, comes to Bay Ridge on Saturday, Feb. 7. The Scandinavian East Coast Museum sponsors this annual event, held in advance of the penitential season of Lent, which is observed in many Lutheran countries, including Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Get more info on our website.
Happy Birthday to talk show host and actress Oprah Winfrey!
On This Day: The Seeing Eye, North America’s first guide dog school, was incorporated on this day in 1929. The first seeing eye dog was Buddy, a German Shepherd. The Seeing Eye was the first program in the U.S. that enabled people with disabilities to be full participants in society.
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