Dear New York Focus readers,

Over the last few months, our newsroom has been paying attention to how the Trump administration is impacting New Yorkers. ICE ramping up its operations upstate has been a clear example. This week, reporter Julia Rock traveled to Sackets Harbor, a small town on Lake Ontario in New York dairy country. Rock reported that more than half of the workers on New York’s dairy farms are foreign-born, and many are undocumented.

Sackets Harbor garnered a lot of media attention after an ICE raided a dairy farm there and detained three students at the local school and their mother at the end of March. The four were swept up in “collateral arrests” when federal immigration authorities showed up with a warrant to arrest a different worker for distributing child pornography. The family was released after spending over a week at a Texas detention center.

Rock delves into the dairy industry’s presence in the region and the political dynamics of the town, where President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan owns property. Jefferson County, where Sackets Harbor is located, is almost entirely represented by Republicans across all levels of government and voted for Trump by large margins in 2024.

Also this week, Chris Bragg characteristically raised questions about government ethics in the state’s court system. In his latest article, Bragg reported that Judge Peter Kelly had failed to disclose that his law clerk, Zachary Zayas, was in a romantic relationship with an attorney who was arguing cases in his court. The secret came to light only after a woman caught in an inheritance dispute in Kelly’s courtroom decided to hire a private investigator.

On top of that, Zayas is the son of the state’s chief administrative judge, who recently gave appointments to both Kelly and his son’s girlfriend.

Jie Jenny Zou reported on the uncertain future New York residents reliant on heating and cooling assistance face after the Trump administration laid off the entire federal staff behind the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.

Zou reported that New York receives more funding from LIHEAP than any other state. Last winter, the state doled out over $397 million to help households cover heating costs, make emergency repairs, and replace equipment.

Climate reporter Colin Kinniburgh covered Trump’s executive order seeking to block states from enforcing any of their laws that restrict or penalize fossil fuel pollution. This puts a target on New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, which allows the state to charge fossil fuel companies $3 billion annually to pay for climate damages. This could also further threaten the future of New York’s cap and invest program, which Governor Kathy Hochul has long promised and delayed.

Focus contributor Ryan Kost reported on a major sticking point in negotiations: Hochul’s proposed rollbacks to New York’s discovery law, which governs the process by which prosecutors and defense attorneys share evidence ahead of criminal trials. In her budget proposal, the governor proposed watering down some aspects of the 2019 reforms to the law, which requires prosecutors to hand over a prescribed list of evidence before the trial.

Kost reported that Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark gave faulty testimony in favor of the governor’s rollbacks, inaccurately recalling key details of the case, including the severity of the charges and actions by the defense attorney.

Education reporter Bianca Fortis tried to find who was behind a proposed bill circulating the state legislature that would weaken oversight of nonpublic schools — including yeshivas. Fortis reached out to 24 Assembly and Senate members, including 19 on education committees, yet no one could answer questions about who drafted the bill or its progress. New York law currently requires that nonpublic schools provide a “substantially equivalent” education to that of public schools. The bill would weaken those regulations and delay an upcoming deadline to meet the standard.

Senior reporter Sam Mellins has doggedly reported on the New York Department of Health’s continued failure to implement a law requiring the state to reimburse kidney donors.

This week, Mellins reported that the program is set to start within a few months. New York will be the first state to implement this kind of program, which will allow kidney donors to be reimbursed up to $14,000 for medical expenses, lost wages during recovery, and other associated costs. This is the first time the department is committing to a timeline, with the program set to begin operating by the end of 2025.