Happy Knicks parade day in New York City —  the largest public celebration in the city’s history, packed into a relatively tight stretch of Broadway along Lower Manhattan. If you’re a shorter person, I hope you brought a snorkel.

If only the city could muster a similar level of excitement for early voting.

There are currently four high-profile races for congressional seats taking place in the city: Brad Lander vs. Dan Goldman for NY-10; Adriano Espaillat vs. Darializa Avila Chevalier for NY-13; Antonio Reynoso vs. Claire Valdez vs. Julie Won for NY-7; and Jack Schlossberg vs. Alex Bores vs. Micah Lasher vs. George Conway (vs. Nina Schwalbe) for NY-12.

All are competitive, three feature an endorsement from Mayor Zohran Mamdani and all have seen big money infusions from private donors and super PACs to push campaign ads across the city airwaves.

And yet, early voting, which runs from June 13 to June 21, remains way down compared to last year. According to Gothamist, only 62,000 voters checked into early voting sites by June 17, compared to 131,882 people at the same time last year — a 50% decrease. Manhattan voters are beating Brooklynites to the polls by a rate of 2:1, and voting ages have skewed way older than in 2025.

Of course, part of the equation is that last year featured a mayoral race, and this year features congressional races. But experts say the cooling effect may have more to do with the names on the ballot this year — or rather, the one name not on the ballot.

“It's a good reminder of what last year was like in New York City politics with Zohran Mamdani,” Evan Roth Smith, pollster at Slingshot Strategies, told Gothamist.

The NYC Board of Elections is trying to tap into Knicks fever to attract more people to the polls. The first 300 voters at every poll site will win a Knicks-themed “I Voted” sticker … because at the moment, nothing says New York like waiting in line for a whiff of something orange and blue.

We will be off tomorrow for Juneteenth, but back in your inboxes on Monday!

If you believe your social media feed, sunscreen causes cancer. Beef tallow cures acne. Methylene blue, the stuff used to treat fish tanks, reverses aging. A carnivore diet of raw organs will sculpt you into a Greek god. And right now, somewhere, an influencer is telling you to drink your own urine.

Welcome to American health care, 2026. 

According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, half of all U.S. adults under 50 get health and wellness information from social media influencers or podcasts — not from their doctors or peer-reviewed research.

This is not just a cultural curiosity. It’s a public health crisis in slow motion. People show up in emergency rooms demanding treatments that don’t exist, refusing medications that work, and loading more weight onto doctors and nurses already stretched past breaking. Measles, a disease the United States declared eradicated in 2000, is back because of those who forgo vaccinating their children, believing anti-vaccine influencers. The influencers, meanwhile, harvest clicks and cash sponsorship checks.

This is not progress. It’s a relapse. And we have been here before.

Read on to learn more.

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