Happy Thursday! Spring is just around the corner in New York, which brings three certainties: warmer weather, longer days and state budget negotiations. 

This year, the question on everyone’s mind is whether Governor Kathy Hochul will succumb to pressure from progressives to raise taxes on the state’s wealthiest residents. Thousands of New Yorkers gathered outside the New York State Capitol yesterday to demand state tax increases on millionaires and billionaires. 

The Tax the Rich movement earned a major victory last November when they helped install Zohran Mamdani in New York City’s highest office. Mamdani has repeatedly vowed to fund his agenda by raising taxes on wealthy New Yorkers by 2% and upping the corporate tax rate by about 4%. However, since the movement’s zenith on Election Day, a series of setbacks has occurred. 

First, Gov. Hochul publicly refused to consider Mamdani’s proposal, even as the mayor threatened the armageddon option of raising property taxes 9.5%. Yesterday, the much-anticipated Albany demonstration fell far short of attendance predictions. Only about half of the estimated participants showed up, with notable absences from some of the movement’s biggest names, including senior state officials, prominent celebrities and Mamdani himself. 

Still, organizers believe the demonstration and others like it will prove successful in swaying the top brass in Albany. 

“It’s not easy to come up here, but we want to make sure that beyond having elected Zohran as the mayor, they understand that we are here to stay and we expect a systemic change,” Olympia Kazi, a Washington Heights advocate, told Gothamist. 

The governor, meanwhile, remains unconvinced. “[Hochul] does not see raising taxes as a box-checking exercise. She sees it as something that must only be done when absolutely necessary,” a spokesperson for Hochul told City & State. 

Mamdani should just make rally attendance part of the application process to work in his administration. Then, Tax the Rich would have 80,000 new participants before you can say “wealth redistribution.”

This week’s performances by the Trisha Brown Dance Company (TBDC) at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) on Feb. 26–28 are a Brooklyn homecoming.

The company has been touring the country with their new show, “Dancing with Bob: Rauschenberg, Brown and Cunningham Onstage,” since June 2025. The show, which is now in Brooklyn, honors Robert Rauschenberg’s centenary. The artist would have been 100 years old last October.

“Dancing with Bob” is a remarkable union of postmodern powerhouses. Rauschenberg designed the set and costumes for “Set and Reset” and “Travelogue,” the show’s two dances.

Read on to learn more about the performances.

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