The laws New York made (and didn't make)
Plus an attempt to spark discussion on reading and media habits
An air of frustration lingered over immigrant-rights advocates as they gathered outside the New York state Capitol building earlier this month for yet another demonstration.
None of the top Democrats in state government had backed the New York for All Act, which restricts how state and local law enforcement can cooperate with ICE and thus would make New York a sanctuary state. Rumors that an omnibus “big ugly” bill might include some smaller protections for immigrants didn’t pan out.
So with the full Legislature scheduled for just two more days of activity, Assemblymember Marcella Mitaynes sat down in the street, blocked traffic and pointed a finger at her fellow Democrats.
“There seems to be some lack of political courage,” she said.
Albany lawmakers adjourned their annual session this month without adopting any legislation addressing immigration, even as federal authorities ratchet up their deportation tactics. Advocates say it was a tremendous missed opportunity that puts New York behind other Democrat-led states, including Illinois and Colorado, the latter of which tightened its sanctuary protections in May.
As I wrote recently at Gothamist, the stalled legislation highlights divisions within the Democratic Party about immigration. Polls showed President Donald Trump’s tough rhetoric helped win him a second term, and Republicans continue to aggressively pursue immigration enforcement at the Southern Border and beyond.
“Overwhelmingly people want to do something, but what is that something against the backdrop of federal troops being deployed to California?” said State Sen. Andrew Gounardes, a Democrat from Brooklyn.
I’m a bit late in sharing the highlights of this year’s legislative session, in part because New York lawmakers stopped lawmaking just a few days before primary elections. I must say the state Legislature concluded its work this year with a whimper – especially compared to previous years marked by high drama and massive rallies.
I reported on how a pair of consumer bills were watered down before their passage. My colleague Jeongyoon Han wrote about a prison reform package that was adopted after the beating deaths of two incarcerated people in the last six months. She also covered the wins and losses of environmental groups this year.
I expect I’ll share more in coming months as Gov. Kathy Hochul decides whether to sign or veto the mountain of legislation coming to her desk.
ARE YOU STILL READING? I’ve been thinking a lot about this essay in Vox about the decline of reading and the rise of listening. The shift has occurred in response to technological change – most of us know carry supercomputers in our pockets that hold days worth of audio and video content.
And content is spread in small bites through social media feeds (this newsletter included). Author Eric Levitz argues that these changing consumption habits have had massive downstream effects.
First, the shift from reading to listening means messages and arguments must be simpler. I’ve learned from my new job working in radio that sentences spoken on the air need to be more direct. None of the emdash clauses – like this – that frequently pollute my writing. I also avoid complex statistics or exactly legalistic phrases that are clunky and hard to say.
Levitz argues that as a result …
The canonical “truth” for hundreds of millions of people today is whatever gets repeated incessantly on their social feeds. And what goes viral in 2025 bears a resemblance to what got recited in 10,000 BCE — pithy, formulaic lines (such as those that follow meme templates) and memorable epithets.
So we’ve gone from the Swift-footed Achilles to “Little Marco.” Levitz pulls the thread out pretty far for what this means.
Put all of digital media’s effects together and you have a recipe for reversing many of literacy’s impacts on consciousness and culture: Our thinking is becoming less abstract and more narrowly practical; less rational and more emotive; less universalistic and more tribal; less individualistic and more conformist. And this intellectual regression is driving our nation’s democratic decline.
I don’t think I would go that far. But I certainly have felt my attention span wane. Instead of reading news articles, I will sometimes listen to them on the AI reader while I’m exercising in the morning. Doing the dishes or raking leaves aren’t chores anymore because I can listen to a podcast or audiobook. I am a very slow reader, so I appreciate the productivity boost that’s come with the new ability to multitask.
THE QUESTION: What are your reading habits? Do you even make it through this entire newsletter (which I try to keep under 800 words), or just scroll down to the trivia question? What do you notice in yourself or those around you that might stem from media consumption?
Have an answer? Drop me a line at jimmy.vielkind@gmail.com. Or just write with thoughts, feedback or to say hi.
THE LAST ANSWER: Mario Cuomo ran in the 1997 mayoral election as the candidate of the Liberal Party and the Neighborhood Preservation party, which he created.