NYC NOW - Midday News: NYPD Clears Officer in 2019 Shooting, Plainfield NJ Cancels July 4 Festivities, Mets and Yankees Face Off, and How Trump's Tax Bill Impacts New York

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

The NYPD commissioner has cleared an officer who fatally shot an unarmed man during a 2019 traffic stop, going against a judge’s recommendation to fire him. Meanwhile, Fourth of July celebrations in Plainfield, New Jersey, are canceled after severe thunderstorms swept through the area. Plus, the Mets and Yankees square off this weekend in their second Subway Series of the season. And Congress narrowly passed a sweeping tax and spending package this week, handing President Trump a major legislative victory. WNYC’s Jimmy Vielkind breaks down what it means for New York State.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. I'm Junae Pierre. Happy Independence Day. This is our one and only episode. Most of the team is out to observe the holiday. And you may be off too. But before you hit the barbecue or head to see the fireworks, take a listen to your news headlines from Michael Hill. New York City's police commissioner is clearing an officer who shot and killed an unarmed man in a traffic.

stop, despite a judge's recommendation to fire the officer, W.D.M.C., Charles Lane reports. Alan Felice was pulled over in the Bronx in 2019. When officers found open warrants tied to the ID he gave them, they tried to arrest him. Body cam footage shows Felice climbing back into the car to drive off. Lieutenant Jonathan Rivera fired a shot, killing him. He later testified that he feared a fellow officer might be run over during the struggle. A departmental judge said that expert, wasn't enough to justify deadly force, but Commissioner Jessica Tisch disagreed, and she has the final say. Police's family called the decision outrageous and accused Tish of putting police over public accountability. Fourth of July festivities in Plainfield, New Jersey, canceled after

fierce thunderstorms whacked the area. The town's mayor, Adrian Mapp, declared a state of emergency in light of severe storms. He said in an announcement last night that thousands of residents of residents had lost their power and the first responders had been tied up responding to emergency calls of damage. The energy company PSC&G says from 21,000 customers lost power in the Garden State. Many of those atages concentrated in the greater playing field area. Whether you want to attend or avoid the festivities in New York City today, WNIC's Sean Carlson, has details on 4th of July transit changes. Subways and buses are running on a Saturday schedule, though some train lines will have increased service to accommodate people going to the fireworks show tonight.

The MTA says you should expect delays on all bus routes in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights, where people will be watching the fireworks. The L.I.D.R. is running on a Saturday schedule. Metro North is on a Sunday schedule with some additional trains to handle crowds tonight. State and local police are stepping up sobriety checkpoints through the end of the weekend. And speaking of fireworks, we got a subway series this weekend between the Yankees and Mets. the MTA says they'll run extra seven trains to and from City Field. And more about that now.

If you're still looking at 4th of July weekend plans, the Yankees and Mets, as you heard Sean say there, face off at City Field. It's their second subway series of the season. The Yankees won the first series back in May, three games out of four. Both teams have been struggling up late, and both are looking to climb from second place back into first place in their divisions.

First pitch for today's game at City Field is 310. We're at 78 with sunshine. Sunny in 83 today, what a night for fireworks, mostly clear in 67. Increasing clouds tomorrow, mid-80s, Sunday, Monday, a little bit warmer, under mostly sunned skies. Stick around. There's more after the break. Congress has passed a major tax and spending package, handing President Trump his biggest legislative victory yet after narrowly approving the bill on Thursday. Supporters say it delivers tax relief and reigns in government spending.

But New York officials, including Governor Kathy Hokel, warned the legislation could leave 1.5 million residents uninsured and strip $8 billion from hospitals. WMYC's Jimmy Vilkine has been following the bill closely and joins us now to break down what's at stake for New Yorkers. Hey, Jimmy, so what are the broad outlines of this bill? Well, this starts with a bill that passed in 2017, the TCJA. That was a big tax-cutting bill that President Donald Trump enacted during his first term. But this legislation actually goes further than that bill. It extends many of those provisions from 2017, but it also fulfills some of Trump's campaign promises. That includes cutting taxes on tips, reducing taxes on Social Security payments. But as it's doing that, it tries to make up for some of the money the government is losing by also cutting government spending. So two of the places where that bite is the biggest are the Medicaid

program, which is a program that provides health insurance for low income and disabled people, and also food assistance programs like SNAP. Some of it is offset by those spending cuts, but when you take it all together, the committee for a responsible federal budget estimates that this bill is going to add more than $4 trillion to the deficit. Now, Republicans in the Senate tried to downplay that number, but this increase has really made some fiscal conservatives balk, and it's led to some bumps in the road as the legislation has moved its way through Congress. Yeah, certainly. So, all right, let's hone in on the health care aspects of all of this. What does the bill do and how does it hit New York? It actually does a bunch of different things.

Let me go through some of them. So first, first, it places work requirements on non-disabled people to receive Medicaid. Some states already do that. New York does not. New Jersey also does not. It just makes it harder for people to get Medicaid, and also supporters say ensures that people are trying to contribute to the workforce and not just sitting at home. Second, it ends support for non-citizens who get government subsidized health insurance. Right now, people who are legally present in the United States get some support in tax credits to buy health insurance on the marketplace, those Obamacare marketplaces. So this bill would take away those supports. And those two provisions together, New York officials say, it's going to knock

one and a half million people off of their health insurance. So yeah, that's a lot. And when you think about it, Chen, when you have fewer people with health insurance, you have fewer people, payments going into the system, you just got less money going into the health care system. So that's one of the big ways that this bill is, according to leaders of New York's health care system, how it's going to have a major impact. There are some other provisions that kind of directly impact Medicaid, which is jointly funded by both the state government and the federal government. So the Senate bill cracks down on something that's called provider taxes. And this is used by New York in most of the states across the country. Basically, the state taxes, hospitals, or nursing homes,

and it takes that money that it gets, and then it spends it through the Medicaid program back on the hospitals and the nursing homes. So it's a little weird. One person described it to me as like a three-card money game, but when it takes the money out and puts it back through Medicaid, it's able to get a federal match. So essentially, instead of you take one dollar, you get another dollar, and then you can give both of those dollars back to the person you took the $1 from. Or sometimes you take like half a dollar for yourself and you give one and a half dollars back to the person you took the money from. Anyway, healthcare is complicated.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So the Senate bill would restrict those provider taxes, which is going to bite New York by eventually $3 billion a year, according to a state official. There's also restrictions on other pools of money. money that New York uses to steer funding to high needs hospitals and rural hospitals that the Senate bill contracts. So all these different things really start to add up. Yeah. And speaking of adding, how much money are we talking about here, Jimmy? You know, it's pretty complicated and I've heard different estimates from different people. But two associations that represent hospitals in New York

say the total hit just to hospitals, mind you, is going to be $8 billion. So B. Grouse, who's the president of the Healthcare Association of New York State, she says that if you take that money out, it's going to lead to layoffs. If you don't have enough health care workers to care for the population who's coming in the door, everything stops in the emergency room. So that's an impact. It's an impact for people on Medicaid, she said, but also for anybody who uses the hospital, anybody who finds themselves in that emergency room. Grouse's group estimates that a total of 65,000 people in the health care sector are going to lose their jobs if this bill passes. Oh, wow. That is a very, very high number. What about tax cuts? Any sense of how those break down? Well, a majority of New Yorkers did see their taxes fall in 2018 after the passage of that 2017 law, which is called TCJA. So lots of that relief is going to continue. And in fact, Republicans who are supporting this bill, That's what they talk about.

They talk about passage avoiding a tax hike. A group called the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy did a whole analysis of the bill. It's a nonpartisan group. I've looked at their stuff before. And it says the total aggregate tax cut for New Yorkers is going to be $30 billion. The average person is going to see almost $3,000 in tax relief, according to ITEP. But again, that includes provisions that were all. in place, but are now just being extended.

So I don't think anyone should expect to see your taxes really plummet. The other thing, though, about this is that the way this bill is structured, the majority of that money is going to flow to people who have higher income and who actually pay the most taxes. IETP ran the numbers. They found that the top 20% of highest income tax filers are going to actually see 70-ish percent of the benefits. So it's definitely skewed in its relief toward the upper end of the income spectrum. You know, Jimmy, we hear a lot about the fight over salt. Talk about that a bit.

Well, salt is great. I put it on my food all the time. No, no, no, wrong one. Okay. So salt stands for state and local taxes, S-A-L-T. And this is a big deal in New York and New Jersey because we have state and local taxes. in many places they can be quite high. So let me break this down. Let's think about Olden Times, which for purposes of this discussion is going to be 2016. In Olden Times, someone in New York or New Jersey would file their federal tax return and all the taxes they paid to New York State, to New York City, that they paid in property taxes if they own a house, all of that could get deducted off of their federal income.

So basically, you're not getting tax. twice, and because you can deduct all those taxes you already paid, you have to pay a lower amount in taxes to the federal government. So New York was really a big winner with this provision, as well as other places, including California, basically blue states. So that 2017 bill that they passed under Trump's first term, it capped those deductions at $10,000. So all of a sudden, people who were writing off like $100,000, they could only write off $10,000. And that means that their federal taxes went up. This was a really, really big deal in places like Long Island or in the lower Hudson Valley, Westchester and Rockland counties. And representatives in those areas,

members of Congress, they have been screaming about this for the last eight years. So in this bill, they had their chance, they used this as leverage, and they push to raise that $10,000 cap up to $40,000. So they say that will provide relief to most of the taxpayers in their district. But on the other hand, there are lots of people who have Medicaid, who are perhaps going to see their health care lost as a result of this bill. So it's really resulted in a lot of immediate pressure. many marginal Republicans are already in the crosshairs of Democrats, and we're hearing from Democrats is that they plan to use this bill and its provisions as a major point of attack going

forward. That's WNYC's Jimmyville kind. Thanks, Jimmy. Thanks, Janay. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. I'm Jenae Pierre. Enjoy the holiday weekend. Thank you.