NYC NOW - Midday News: Official Warnings Ahead of a Mass Shooting at Brooklyn Club, Yankees Slugger Aaron Judge Reaches Major Milestone, and the Latest Installment of Politics Brief

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

City and state officials say they told the owner of a Brooklyn hookah lounge to address violations and violence at the club months before a mass shooting this summer left three people dead. Plus, Yankees captain Aaron Judge reaches a major milestone, becoming just the fourth player in MLB history to reach 50 home runs four times in a career. And finally, in the latest installment of Politics Brief, we tackle casinos, the mayoral race, and Chuck Schumer's night at the Met Opera.

Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Thursday, September 25th. Here's the midday news from Veronica Del Valle. City and state officials say they told the owner of a Brooklyn Huka Lounge to address violations and violence there for months before a mass shooting at the club this summer. The state liquor authority issued the owner of Taste of the City Lounge in Crown Heights a warning in November 2020. And officials from the NYPD and the Office of Nightlife met with the owner in May after numerous violent incidents near the club, including a separate shooting last year. SLA official Somalia Samuel said at a recent board meeting, the owner ignored the warnings. Based on the evidence that we have in the documents and what happened that night, the licensee kind of disregarded these safety precautions.

Three people were killed and 11 were injured in the shooting. The NYPD is still searching for two. suspects lounge owners couldn't be reached for comment. Yankees' Captain Aaron Judge has put himself in some rare company while lifting New York into a share of the American League East lead. Yesterday, Judge became just the fourth player to reach 50 home runs four times in a career. Judge joins Babe Ruth, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa, as the only hitters with four 50 homer seasons. As for the Mets, they hang on to their playoff position for one day more.

The Mets suffered a punishing loss to the Chicago Cubs last night, 10 to 3. But the good news for the orange and blue is that the Reds and the Arizona Dinemax fell too. This means the Mets are still one game ahead of both teams and third in the wild card slot. Today, showers and thunderstorms are high near 75 with some slight winds. Tonight, more showers and thunderstorms. Stick around. There's more to come. You're listening to NYC now. It's time for politics brief, our weekly segment, where we break down the latest news out of City Hall and Albany.

The third and final Manhattan Casino proposal was voted down. Frontrunner, Zeron Mamdani, was set to withdraw from a WABC town hall in protest of Jimmy Kimmel's suspension. That's until ABC put the talk show back on the air. And a report on Chuck Schumer's Night at the Met Opera. Here to break it all down is WMI reporter's Elizabeth Kim, here in Manhattan, and John Campbell, who is in Albany. All right, let's start with casinos. John, you've been reporting on the process of getting one of those coveted casino licenses.

Like we said, the third and final Manhattan proposal was voted down this week. Was that a surprise? Can you just walk us through the process and explain how we got here? Yeah, I mean, it wasn't a surprise to some of the Manhattan Democrats who pushed for the process, Sean. I mean, these Manhattan casino proposals were voted down by these panels known as the community advisory committees. And these are panels appointed by local elected officials. And the process actually was created through some legislative dealmaking here in Albany three years ago. Governor Hockel wanted to speed the casino siting process up to get money in the state's coffers quicker.

And lawmakers said, yeah, sure, okay, as long as you create these panels that were given this extraordinary power to block casino proposals from going forward if the community didn't want them. State Senator Liz Kruger was really kind of the architect of the whole thing. She's an opponent of legalized gambling. I asked her this morning if these panels were a poison pill meant to tank Manhattan casinos all along. And she said, well, she hoped they would be, though she wasn't sure at the time. I was pretty sure that with the right education opportunities, we could actually swing public opinion momentum to have my colleague elected officials not want to vote yes. You know, it's worth noting that even though a downstate casino would have the potential to reshape a neighborhood and the city's economy, it hasn't been an issue in the mayoral race. You know, for one thing, it's not up to the mayor.

But, you know, they have been asked. Mumdani, the frontrunner in the race, has said he's opposed to casinos generally, but it's not his call. Mayor Adams has been pro casino. He reversed the city council's move that would have doomed a Bally's project in the Bronx. Now, Andrew Cuomo hasn't been very vocal on the issue, but John, what do you remember his history with casinos downstate when he was governor? Yeah, well, I mean, when he was governor, Andrew Cuomo was heavily involved in legalizing casinos up to seven casinos in the first place back in 2013 and 2014 with voters approved it. And he helped set up the process that allowed the first four to go to casino projects more upstate than he, and lawmakers built in this 10-year waiting period before they were allowed in the New York

City area. And that waiting period is what has come to a close. That's why we're seeing this bitty process that's going on now. So it's kind of Cuomo's brainchild. Yeah, interesting. Interesting. Well, we'll keep our eye on that one. We're going to move on to a local angle on a big story that a lot of people have been talking about over the past few days. We're going to move on to the Jimmy Kimmel controversy. ABC had suspended Kimmel's late night talk show. That's after the host cracked a joke about the accused killer of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. A Trump administration official had threatened to punish ABC over the remarks. Zerwan Mamdanin response said he was dropping out of a town hall organized by WABC.

That's our local ABC affiliate here. But that quickly changed, right? That's right. He made this big announcement on Monday at Four Freedom's Park on Roosevelt Island. He framed it as a protest against the Trump administration's assault on free speech. This is what he said. And the message that it sends to each and every American across the country is a message that the First Amendment is no longer a right that can be counted on,

but rather that it is government which will determine what should and should not be discussed, what can and cannot be spoken. And we cannot normalize these kinds of acts nor offenses. But as you mentioned, Sean, hours later, ABC reinstated Kimmel, which left the campaign with the very obvious question, is the town hall back on? The campaign didn't answer immediately, but eventually they did, and they said they were going to try to reschedule the town hall, which would have been tomorrow. Some of Mamdani supporters took credit for pressuring the network, for successfully pressuring the network to bring Kimmel back. Yeah, and this is something that a lot of Democrats want to see from their candidates.

They want to see them stand up to Trump. And you actually heard Governor Hockel talk about that, too, when she decided to formally. endorse Zeran Mamdani last week. I mean, there's a lot of daylight between Kathy Hokel's policy positions and Zeran Mamdani's policy positions, particularly when it comes to, say, taxing the rich. But the governor said the big thing that attracted her to Mamdani's candidacy was that she thinks he'll be willing to stand up to Donald Trump. And she even went as far as to suggest Mayor Adams and former Governor Cuomo would be, quote, tainted, you know, Adams because the Trump GOP dropped the criminal charges against him and Cuomo because Trump advisors have reportedly been working

behind the scenes to try to help Cuomo out. Liz, did anyone criticize Mom Donnie's decision to withdraw from that town hall? They did. Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Slewa both saw this as Mom Donnie ducking an opportunity to go before journalists and also New Yorkers because this was initially designed as a 90-minute televised town hall where there would have been opportunities for for a live audience to ask Mamdani questions. So this, you know, there are two debates scheduled, but this is a rare opportunity for voters to take a really close look at the candidates.

So, you know, the Cuomo campaign essentially raised concerns that Mamdani was he essentially punishing local journalists over a decision that they had no control over again. This is WABC, the local affiliate. This was not their decision, right? Let's talk about a story that I honestly, I can't really wrap my head around this and I really want clarity on this. Liz, you reported on Chuck Schumer's recent appearance at the Metropolitan Opera, just like break down. What exactly happened there? Sure. So Sunday was the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera season.

It's a very big night in New York City for opera, but also just culture in general. You know, it's a black tie event. It's a C&B scene kind of event. So Schumer was invited to go on stage before the performance, and he got booed. Wow. Yeah. Talk about freedom of speech, am I right? Yeah.

Right. And he got booed while he was talking about Jimmy Kimmel, ironically, because someone in the audience yelled, do something about it. But it wasn't just about Kimmel. There were two people I spoke to who sat in the orchestra section, and they told me that they heard a bunch of people loudly chanting endorse and Mamdani at Schumer. So that's a reference to the fact that Schumer hasn't endorsed MomDani, the Democratic mayoral nominee in the mayoral race yet. We have about a minute to go, but I just want to follow up on that because I got to

say, and maybe I'm projecting here, but I feel like Schumer getting booed by Mom Dani supporters. It's not exactly too surprising. But the fact that it's happening at the Met just seems like, I don't know, I feel like that's friendly territory for Schumer. You're spot on, Sean, right? There is this perception that the MET audience, particularly on opening night, it's made up of the city's elite. But I think we also need to acknowledge that it's also made up of music and culture lovers whose politics span the spectrum. And what this episode, I think, also suggests is that even though Mamdani is a Democratic socialist, his ideas do have support among higher income New Yorkers.

If you look at places like Park Slope or the financial district, for example, these were districts that Mamdani won. Yeah. Well, that's W.MIS Elizabeth Kim and John Campbell so much to talk about. And we will talk much more about all of this as we go through election season here. Thanks so much, my friends. Thanks, Sean. Thank you. That's politics brief.

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