Happy Tuesday in NYC, where Councilmember Vickie Paladino and the City Council finally reached a truce.
Since March 2, the longtime Queens Republican has been facing disciplinary charges over multiple social media posts, which were denounced by colleagues as Islamophobic and in violation of the Council’s anti-harassment and discrimination policy. Paladino fired back with a First Amendment lawsuit of her own, arguing that the Council was trying to punish her for protected political speech.
The posts in question included a February post on X, in which Paladino responded to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s appointment of Muslim-American and Brooklyn-born woman Faiza Ali as chief immigration officer with the message: “New York is under foreign occupation. There’s really no other way to put it. Does this administration have one single actual American in it?”
On Feb. 23, Paladino commented on reports that Mamdani had prayed with sanitation workers before a blizzard. “This is part of Islamic conquest […] It’s all about revolution and dismantling the country as it was founded.”
In Dec. 2025, Paladino responded to an ISIS-motivated Hanukkah mass shooting in Australia by calling for the “expulsion of Muslims from western nations, or at the very least severe sanction of them within western borders [...] before we end up with another 9/11 or worse.” The post was deleted soon after publishing.
Yesterday, the City Council announced it had reached a settlement with Paladino. City Council will drop all disciplinary charges, and in return, Paladino has agreed to erase three of her posts, drop all mention of her role as councilwoman from her X account and clarify that her “personal social media posts were not directed at any council member or staff” in a prepared statement.
“I believe the resolution strikes the right balance between protection of Council staff and the First Amendment liberties of Council Members,” Sandra Ung, chair of the Council’s ethics committee, wrote on X.
Just another First Amendment dispute settled in the most 2026 way possible: a settlement, a statement and a cleaned-up X profile.
New York Police Department officers rescued a despondent woman from a narrow ledge of a luxury high-rise building in Downtown Brooklyn on Thursday, and released gripping body-cam footage of the save.
Mayor Mamdani officially launched the city’s new “Soccer Streets” program on Monday, a traveling series of field days visiting 50 public schools across the city ahead of the World Cup in June.
A New York Disaster Interfaith Services program offers free, confidential climate-ready audits and retrofit grants to houses of worship that are within the city’s Environmental Justice Neighborhoods.
With All-Star guard Sabrina Ionescu down with an ankle injury, the New York Liberty needed someone to fill in during the early season. Marine Johannes stepped up.
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Our World In Photos
Photo: Ivan Valencia/AP
COLOMBIA — A different kind of invader in the neighborhood of homes on stilts: A boat navigates between homes surrounded by an invasive plant called a water hyacinth, also known as Eichhornia crassipes, in Nueva Venecia, Colombia, Thursday, April 30, 2026.
For more pictures like this, see Our World in Photos.
Co-creator of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ signs books and discusses parenting a son with a rare disease
Staff and friends of the AGF Fund and Craig Thomas come out to support his new book. Photo: Moira Weinstein/Brooklyn Eagle
Craig Thomas, co-creator of the Emmy-winning television series “How I Met Your Mother,” took to The BookMarke Shoppe in Bay Ridge on Thursday, May 7, to sign copies of his book, “That’s Not How it Happened.”
Thomas’s debut novel brings together his notorious sense of humor while commenting on real-world issues from the perspective of having a child with a disability. The book chronicles the experience of living with a disability through the voices of four family members impacted by Down Syndrome: Paige and Rob, their son, Emmett, and their neurotypical daughter, Darcy, who was born with Down Syndrome in the midst of his father’s Hollywood career. Through a creative journey, the four family members grapple with their experiences individually and collectively.
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By Dave Whamond
For the Road
Mom-a-thon: Brooklyn Public Library’s Macon Branch celebrated mothers and mom figures at the 10th annual Mom-a-thon at Macon Library on Friday evening. The event honored moms and grandmoms, stepmoms, foster moms, single moms, mom figures and moms-to-be. Learn more about the event.
Happy Birthday to Oscar-winning actor Rami Malek!
On This Day in 1952, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “This town of ours must be full of dyed-in-the-wool Dodger fans who wish they were in Gladys Gooding’s shoes. For Gladys, by her own admission, not only has the best seat in Ebbets Field every day, but she also gets good pay for watching the Dodgers play. The smiling, cheerful lady of the keyboards who operates the organ in the Dodgers’ backyard completed 10 years as organist in Ebbets Field Saturday with only one A for absent against her record.”
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