NYC NOW - AG James Pleads Not Guilty, Ballot Measure Could Shift NYC Elections, and a New Museum in LES

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Attorney General Letitia James pleaded not guilty in Virginia today to federal charges brought by the Trump administration, setting up a high stakes political and legal fight between two longtime adversaries. Meanwhile, New York City voters will decide whether to move local elections to even-numbered years to coincide with presidential races and boost turnout. Also, WNYC’s Ryan Kailath reports on a new museum on the Lower East Side celebrating a century old technology first unveiled in New York City.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, October 24th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. As you've been hearing, New York Attorney General Tish James has pleaded not guilty to federal charges accusing her of lying on mortgage papers to secure favorable loan terms. The Trump administration is pursuing the case. James' first court appearance in Virginia today, sets the stage for a high-stakes legal battle between the Republican administration and a Democratic,

long-time Trump adversary who angered him with a major civil fraud case she brought against him. This election day, New York City voters will be asked to cast a vote on when to cast a vote. A ballot initiative proposes to move local elections from odd years to even years, so they align with the presidential elections. Proponents say that could dramatically increase voter turnout, But opponents say local races risk becoming drowned out by the federal contest. The city routinely clocks around 60% turnout in the presidential election compared to the low 20s in general election for mayor. Even if voters say yes, the state constitution would need to change for it to become long.

Election day is November 4th. Early voting starts tomorrow. Leave peepers are in luck. Metro North says it's adding service so riders can go see fall foliage north of New York City. The additional trains will run round trip this and next weekend. A morning train will depart Grand Central at 11.30 and arrive at Beacon shortly after one in the afternoon and with a return departure that's at 7 p.m. And that evening train will leave Beacon shortly before 7 and arrive at Grand Central at 8.30. 56 with sunshine right now, sunny today and 59 for a high with light wind.

Mostly clear and chilly tonight. down to in the mid-40s. Stick around. There's more to come. When Dominique Manning gets her photo taken, she likes to review the results immediately. Last week, she had to wait three and a half minutes. It's hot. Oh, it looks great.

Sometimes it's hard. Like, as a person of color, like with film, you never know, like what you're going to look like. But I like it. You can see my face. I look cute. I love it. The 26-year-old was in town from Philly for a concert,

but she made a point of coming by auto photo. A new museum dedicated to the history of the photo booth, which she found via Altogether Now. Um, TikTok. I think the younger generations, they didn't grow up with tactile photos and scrapbooking and having to run down to the photo lab to get a picture developed. Ali Clark handles marketing for the museum.

Having that tactile, beautiful photo print is just so special. They have seven working photo booths from across the ages, including the camera mechanism from inventor Anatole Josepho's very first booth, which was installed in Times Square and became an immediate hit. Clark says it was the first time people could sit in front of a camera and be themselves. When you step into a photo booth, you can close the curtain, you can be silly, you can kiss your sweetheart. It's just a magical moment.

Which is kind of like the selfie in itself, you know, the original selfies, is the photo booth. Bree Conley-Saxon created auto photo, which is named after an early photo booth manufacturer that went under in the digital age. She's a former wedding photographer who found an old booth in a thrift store in Alabama and became obsessed.

Track down some old technicians to restore it and sat around the warehouse, watching them chain smoke cigarettes and tinker with old machines. Now she has a network of booths from Seattle to Atlanta. But the New York Museum is the flagship. As soon as you enter the space, you basically walk into a room of photo booths from every era.

My favorite photo booth, I call her my unicorn, because she's so rare, is the M11 under the auto photo logo. There's a color booth, like the one from MTV's Total Request Live. They have the only working Polaroid booth in the world. And the Model 12, a wide format booth. You just never see that. There's, like, less than five in the world. They have blueprints and handwritten manuals and pictures. of the families that ran these booths in their original locations.

They can open up the cabinets to show people how the insides work. Technicians like to leave an Easter egg, a strip of themselves, in every machine they work on. So the museum has an exhibit dedicated to all the ones they've found. When the inventor's granddaughter saw the space, she gifted them a photo strip of Josepho with his dog. It's a 100-year-old strip, and we all bawled our eyes. We cried so hard. when we saw it. It was so beautiful.

Conley Saxon said the medium almost died in recent years because of, believe it or not, the war in Ukraine. So the paper used in the analog photo boost is a direct positive paper. So there's no negative, and there's not a lot of that type of paper that exists out there. And for decades, we were getting it from Russia. Well, when the Russian war started and we were cut off from the paper, A lot of us thought that was it for analog. Technicians began lobbying Kodak and Ilford and other companies

to make new paper that fit their needs. With photo booths trending on social media, one company finally obliged. Incidentally, a booth one block away from Auto Photo, called Old Friend, has even longer lines. It went viral last year. Ethan Eben and Issa Nassery actually thought they were visiting Old Friend. But they're happy with their pictures here. I love these.

I love them. Yeah. I always thought I looked weird in photo booth pictures, but this one I'm happy with. You look beautiful, though. Oh, I love you. Yeah. I love you too. The founders say they've had a broad range of visitors, though the median age on my visit was definitely early 20s. Kids who didn't grow up with photo boots, but wished that they had and want to grow old with them too.

Ryan Kyloth, WNYC News. for listening. This is NYC Now from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a day for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.