It’s official: New York is being sued over delays in implementing its climate law.

Four environmental and climate justice groups filed a lawsuit Monday in a state court, claiming that New York is “stonewalling necessary climate action in outright violation” of its legal obligations. By not releasing economy-wide emissions rules, the suit alleges, the state Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, is “defying the Legislature’s clear directive” and “prolonging New Yorkers’ exposure to air pollution … especially in disadvantaged communities.”

It’s the first lawsuit to charge the state with failing to enforce the core mandate of its 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or CLCPA: eliminating nearly all of New York’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The law tasks DEC with crafting rules to get there and to reach an interim target of 40 percent emissions cuts by 2030.

Advocates are urging the governor and legislature to take immediate action during the final weeks of the state’s annual budget negotiations.

Layoffs, program reductions, and closures are on the table for New York’s mental health providers after millions in federal funds were unexpectedly cut last week, jeopardizing an array of services for residents battling addiction and mental illness. The cancellations are part of drastic federal cuts by the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, whose headline-making tactics are being challenged in several pending lawsuits.

“You’re going to start to see organizations making the hard decisions, even today, of laying people off,” said Jihoon Kim, the chief executive officer of InUnity Alliance, which represents over 200 substance use disorder and mental health care providers statewide. “People are going to fall through the cracks.”

A key fund that pays for New York City employees’ health benefits has run dry, opening up a $600 million hole in the city budget and threatening potential cuts to public workers’ health benefits.

For years, a cash pot known as the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund has been used to pay some health insurance premiums for city workers and offer supplemental health benefits like coverage for prescription drugs, dental, and vision plans.

But that fund’s balance has been declining for years and hit zero in October 2024, according to the Feb. 25, 2025, meeting minutes of the executive board of a major city workers’ union, DC37, which were obtained by New York Focus.

Seven years after a massive flood forced the St. Regis Mohawk elementary school to evacuate and sparked a community effort to build a new facility, that initiative may now have to wait.

The aging building, located on the St. Regis Mohawk reservation along the US-Canada border, has fallen into disrepair. The school, where 90 percent of students are Native American, also sits steps away from the St. Regis River, putting it at risk of seasonal flooding.

The school’s community has sought state funding to construct an entirely new building for years, and the New York state Education Department has supported that request — with Commissioner Betty Rosa visiting the school in 2023.

This year, the state Board of Regents’ budget request included increased funding for the three state-owned Indigenous schools: $10.6 million for the Tuscarora Nation School, $46.3 million for the Onondaga Nation School, and $110 million for a new building for the St. Regis Mohawk Nation.

However, in her January budget proposal, Governor Kathy Hochul allocated only $20.1 million for capital projects at all three schools. Both the Assembly and the Senate matched her allocation in their proposals released earlier this month. The final budget is due April 1.

Over the past three months, New York Focus has reported extensively on the New York state prison system’s descent into tumult. An incarcerated man’s caught-on-video killing at the hands of corrections officers in December led to nationwide outrage and calls for reform. Guards responded by launching a three-week wildcat strike, which only ended after 2,000 officers lost their jobs and half a dozen allegedly beat another incarcerated person to death.

Similar turmoil has plagued other areas of New York’s carceral system. At New York City’s Rikers Island jails, four incarcerated people have died over the span of a month. The notorious complex is supposed to close in two years, but that’s unlikely to happen: Stubbornly high jail populations, delayed construction, and a “missing” sense of urgency have likely delayed closure by years, a city-appointed commission reported last week.

People are dying. Who’s supposed to be keeping an eye on these facilities?

Messiah Nantwi’s cellmate had to wipe the blood off the floor of their room.

Officers at Midstate Correctional Facility, the state prison in Central New York where the two men were incarcerated, had stormed in and beat Nantwi until he was unconscious. The cellmate had watched: One of the guards pinned him against the wall as the blood splattered, then ordered him to clean it up, he said. Hours later, the then-sanitized cell became a crime scene; Nantwi was dead. It was a week before his 23rd birthday.

It was the second high-profile case of New York state prison guards allegedly killing an incarcerated person within three months. Since the fatal beating of 43-year-old Robert Brooks in December, caught on video at a facility across the street from Nantwi’s, the state’s prison system has descended into chaos. Last month, amid nationwide calls for reform and the indictment of guards allegedly involved in Brooks’s killing, most of the system’s corrections officers walked off the job, launching a wildcat strike that lasted three weeks.