NYC NOW - Morning Headlines: New York City’s Mental Health Hotline Faces Layoffs, Former Congressman Santos Sentencing Set for Friday, Mets Lead MLB, and Federal Misstep In Congestion Pricing Battle

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

The nonprofit that operates New York City’s 988 suicide and crisis hotline says it may have to lay off staff due to a funding shortfall. Meanwhile, former Congressman George Santos is set to be sentenced Friday after pleading guilty to multiple federal charges. Also, the Mets are riding a seven-game winning streak and hold the best record in Major League Baseball. Plus, in this week’s transportation segment, a misstep by federal prosecutors may weaken their legal case against the MTA’s congestion pricing plan.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, April 25th. Here's the morning headlines from Michael Hill. The organization that runs New York City's 988 Mental Health Hotline says it facing potential layoffs because of insufficient funding. WNBC's Caroline Lewis reports. Vibrant emotional health responds to calls

texts and chats from New Yorkers in crisis, and sends out teams for in-person mental health check-ins. The organization says it costs about $34 million a year to run the service, or over 10 million more than it currently receives from the city. Vibrance says, without more funding, layoffs are on the horizon, and that will mean longer wait times for people in crisis. The city health department says Vibrance funding is tailored to the number of calls it receives, But the nonprofit says the city is undercounting, and the number of calls is rising. Convicted former Republican Congress member George Santos were learned as punishment today in federal court. Santos captured headlines for falsifying huge swathes of his biography after he ran for Congress in 2022.

He pleaded guilty to identity theft and wire fraud last August after a grand jury indicted him for 23 crimes. But prosecutors say he also admitted to other crimes in the plea agreement, including schemes to defraud campaign donors and fraudulently get unemployment benefits. Santos faces a seven-year sentence as lawyers are asking for two years. Don't look now, but the New York Mets have the best record in Major League Baseball. WNYC's Julia Hayward has more. The Mets are fresh off sweeping the Philadelphia Phillies, thanks to a wild walk-off win in extra innings.

It was their seventh win in a row and capped off a perfect seven-game homestand. That run included pack stands at Cityfield too. The team has drawn an average of about 36,000 fans over their first 10 games this year. It's the highest seven-game attendance since the ballpark opened in 2009. The Mets will play the Washington Nationals next in D.C. Not to be outdone, the Yankees are holding their own. They're also in first place of their division, with a 15 and 10 record heading into a weekend series at home against Toronto. Here's our forecast now for that Yankees game that starts at 7 o'clock tonight.

59 and partly cloudy right now, partly sunny and 77 for a high today. And then tonight showers by midnight, so they should get that game in. Lower round 60 and gusty. And then tomorrow showers and possibly a thunderstorm store. Stick around. There's more to come. I'm Sean Carlson for WNYC. It is time for On the Way, our weekly segment on all things considered, breaking down the week's transit news. Joining us is WMIC's Transportation Reporter, Stephen Nesslin and Randy Caliphay and editor Clayton Goosa.

Okay, the fight between the federal government and the MCA over our favorite topic, congestion pricing, took an interesting turn. All right, I'm not going to laugh. I'm going to read this straight here. Federal prosecutors accidentally published an internal letter that noted all the flaws in their legal case. Stephen, what? Three lawyers representing the federal government against the MTA uploaded this letter to the court docket of this case by accident. The court docket, for those that don't know,

is where lawyers and judges put updates for the case. And in this instance, the lawyers quickly pulled it after uploading it. But once it's there, a bunch of folks downloaded it. Sure. We have it in our possession as well. And in the letter, it basically laid out why their case, the Department of Transportation, why their argument their reasons for killing congestion pricing are flawed and why they probably won't hold up in court.

It's like you and me saying, like, this is why we're going to lose and here's how we're going to lose. This is not typically how lawsuits play out, and it basically showed their hand, which is that their case isn't strong. This is in their own words. I spoke with Columbia University Law Professor Michael Girard, who called the mistake a, quote, real bonehead move. This letter is further indication that the MTA has a very good chance of surviving its law. also challenging the Department of Transportation's efforts to shut down congestion pricing. Clearly, congestion pricing will continue until and unless a judge says otherwise, this letter, I think, reduces the odds that a judge will say otherwise. We've been talking on the show so much about how

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is trying to kill this program. But for us, and especially Clayton, it's just another example of how the emperor has no clothes. Yeah, it's not just that he has no close. He's got no solid legal footing. I mean, it's really, it's really hard to overestimate how embarrassing this is. I mean, it's like playing poker, except you're showing whoops. Someone in your hand. Here's what I have. And, you know, we've been, we've reported for an argued, for a while that the MTA is arguing that they're on solid legal footing with congestion pricing. They've won several other federal lawsuits defending the program. They did a very extensive and years-long environmental review. But we've kind of wondered what argument and

what standing does the Trump administration have to try and kill it. Well, now this document gives us the clearest version of date. It gives us their playbook. It gives us a very sound legal analysis. And Duffy, I said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's whole argument around shutting down congestion pricing was that it was approved under the Biden administration through a pilot program that allows localities to impose tolls on federal roads. That's a very long way of saying he thinks that he can revoke it. But that agreement never had any terms that would allow the federal government to unilaterally terminate it unless the MTA said so. This memo really lays that out. It does lay out one way, one legal mechanism for the federal government to revoke approval

using some regulations at the office of management and budget, some obscure kind of workaround. But even then it says, hey, that's kind of a long shot. I can't believe I'd ask this, but like, was this an accident? How did this very internal letter from the feds get filed to a very public court docket? It's a little puzzling. This is not like these folks are Pete Hegseth's signal mistake. Signalgate, yeah, right. No, these are lawyers from the Southern District, the Sovereign District, as it's known,

the legendarily independent lawyers and prosecutors. They've recently been in the news, and you've heard them on air because they've been resigning over the Trump administration asking them to drop the case against Mayor Adams. They're refusing to go again. their ethics and their rules. So they sent this letter to their counterparts at the Federal Department of Transportation. But as I said, they removed it quickly. In the morning, a spokesperson for the Southern District tells us that it was an honest error.

It was not intentional in any way. But a spokesperson for the Federal Department of Transportation sees it otherwise. She says, she writes, quote, are SDNY lawyers on this case incompetent? Or was this their attempt to resist? Resist in all caps. She calls it legal malpractice. And the coda to this drama is that at the end of the day, basically, they announced that they're taking the Southern District off the case entirely. They're going to give it to the Civil Division of the Department of Justice.

So they will be defending the federal government in this move to kill congestion pricing. Right. And despite the Southern District's kind of pedigree and also push back against the Trump administration, they're still losing some of the best. legal minds in government. The best legal minds in federal government come to work in the Southern District. They have a record of taking down Bernie Madoff and John Gotti. They could This is who you want. This is who you want if you want to take down congestion pricing. They don't trust them. Now the Trump administration's taking them off. Wow. Fascinating stuff. We should also note that this is all landing the same week that Transportation Secretary Shundafi is threatening to cut highway funding for the city and maybe the state if the MTA

doesn't halt congestion pricing by next month. Ramsey, is that really going to happen? Yeah, I mean, like we know, the federal government has threatened the MTA several times since February when they first pulled their approval for the toll program. But they never specifically said what they'd cut. Now we're kind of learning what that might be. So two arbitrary deadlines came and went, one in March, that won just a few days ago. And now there's a new deadline next month and a lot of letters in between. So the MTA hasn't budged. Like we just said, they said they're going to let a judge decide.

But the highway funding threat is kind of interesting. So at first, the U.S. DOT says they'll pull federal funding for highways in Manhattan, some too big, ones are the West Side Highway and FTR Drive. Then if the tolls are still live, they'll come for funding for highways in all of the five boroughs, so BQE, Long Island Expressway, you know, things like that. And then if the MTA still doesn't budge from there, the federal government says they'll try to pull funding for highways across the entire state. Wow. So, you know, like obviously they're saying that this is all having to do with congestion pricing, but like what is the actual argument the federal government is making for rescinding that funding? Yeah. Well, before I get to that, what I will say is

The MTA argues that the program is legal and working as intended. Their data shows that traffic and bus speeds are up, and they're seeing the MTA meet their revenue goals to eventually issue a bond to fund infrastructure improvements. But in this threatening letter that the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy appears to acknowledge, one is that the program is allowed to toll drivers for transit upgrades and not just for highways, but simply argues that this is, quote, unconscionable

that highway users are being forced to bail out the MTA's transit system. And these cuts to funding could have a major impact if they do follow through. You know, there is a pool of money from the infrastructure bill that could be impacted, which would help the city meet its Clean Air Act goals. That's money that could go towards bike share, micro-mobility, alternative fuel project, things like that. And then the roadways, like Ramsey was saying, the FDR drive, but also any bridge in our region could lose some crucial federal funding. I always like to remind our listeners at this moment that drivers have bailed out the transit system in New York since

1968. The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel money goes to the Long Island Railroad Subways Metro North, which operated a deficit to help bail out their operations. Now, actually, good segue. We're going to segue to talking about East River crossings right now. Every weekend are on the way newsletter. We answer a question from a curious commuter. This one is from Charlotte and Manhattan. Charlotte, I got to say, I love this question. If you're listening right now, I love this question. And we should know we're talking about tunnels here. We're talking about subway tunnels, right? Why are the tunnels under the East River named for Manhattan streets on the north end, but for Brooklyn streets on the south?

What's the deal? This is a great question. We talked to the Transit Museum a little bit. Slightly going to quibble with the premise that not always Manhattan names on the northern end and not always Brooklyn names on the southern end. But either way, we're just going to read off the names of the tunnels and explain to everybody because it's so great and everybody should know that. So very simply, on the northern, we'll go from north to south. You have the 63rd Street tunnel that carries the F line on top. Interestingly, same tunnel below Long Island Railroad.

Oh, interesting. Goes into Grand Central Madison. Just opened a couple years ago. Then you have the 60th Street tunnel that carries the NR&W lines, Manhattan and Queens. 53rd Street tunnel, E&M line. So it kind of fits Charlotte's premise. But here's where it gets a bit wild. Let's get wild to here.

So the tunnel that carries the 7 train from 42nd Street to Manhattan to Long Island City is called the Steinway Tunnel. That's named after William Steinway, who, founded the project and also was the son of the piano maker who founded Steinway and Sons. So the tube that carries the L train is sometimes called the Canarsie Tunnel, a reference to the neighborhood where the line terminates. It also sometimes called the 14th Street Tunnel because that's the line where it runs over in Manhattan. Farther south, there's the Rutgers Street Tunnel, which is used by the F-Train between Manhattan and Brooklyn and named after the street in Lower Manhattan, which also named after Henry Rutgers of New Jersey fame.

And the remaining tunnels are all named after the Brooklyn Heights streets that they kind of run. out of between Manhattan and Brooklyn. You have the Clark Street Tunnel, carries a two and three trains. You have the cranberry tube carries the ANC lines. The Monague tube carries the R line. And of course, we mustn't forget the Jeroloman Street, too. Thank you for that. For that name. Pronouncer as well. And thanks to Charlotte from Manhattan for the question. I hope you got all that, Charlotte. Thanks also to WNYC Transportation reporters Ramsey Caliphay and Stephen Nesson and editor Clayton Guzzie. You can stay in no and all things transit or ask a question of your own by signing up for

our weekly newsletter at gotthmus.com slash on the way. Another wild week. Thanks so much, guys. Thank you. Go, Nick. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WMYC. Catch us every weekday three times a day for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives.

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