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Curtis Sliwa criticizes Cuomo's ties to billionaires

admin - Latest News - November 4, 2025
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Curtis Sliwa criticizes Cuomo’s ties to billionaires



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Nov. 4, 2025, 4:10 PM ESTBy Berkeley Lovelace Jr.The Trump administration is expected to announce, as early as this week, a deal with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to lower the price of their weight loss drugs in exchange for limited Medicare coverage, according to two people familiar with the plan. The deal would reduce the cost of the lowest doses of the blockbuster GLP-1 medications — Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy — to $149 a month, the people said. In return, Medicare would cover the drugs for some Medicare beneficiaries. It’s not yet clear whether the $149 price would apply broadly across private and public insurance, or only for people paying in cash. It wasn’t immediately clear which Medicare patients would qualify for coverage. The details of the plan could still change. The people confirmed the possible deal on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The news was first reported by Endpoint News. The Washington Post reported the deal could be announced as early as Thursday. White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement, “Discussion about deals that have not been officially announced by the Administration should be regarded as speculation.” In emailed statements, spokespeople for Lilly and Novo Nordisk confirmed they are in discussions with the Trump administration, but offered no details on any potential deal.If finalized, it would be the most significant agreement to emerge from President Donald Trump’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices to align more closely with other developed nations — also known as his “most favored nation” drug pricing push. Trump revived the initiative through an executive order in May after unsuccessfully pursuing it during his first term. The administration has also reached agreements with Pfizer and AstraZeneca to lower costs for some prescription drugs under Medicaid.In October, Trump said the administration was close to a deal to lower the cost of weight loss drugs.”Instead of $1,300, you’ll be paying about $150,” he said from the White House. Zepbound and Wegovy currently carry list prices above $1,000 a month — although both companies have rolled out lower cost options for people paying in cash amid intense public scrutiny over the high cost of the drugs. Costco recently announced that it would sell Wegovy and its diabetes drug Ozempic for $499 to people without insurance; Lilly announced a similar deal with Walmart for Zepbound. Medicare currently covers Wegovy for patients at risk of heart disease, as well as Zepbound for sleep apnea — but not for weight loss alone. Ozempic, which has the same active ingredient as Wegovy, is covered for diabetes.The Biden administration proposed expanding coverage of GLP-1 drugs through Medicare and Medicaid but the Trump administration later rejected the plan. Ozempic and Wegovy are also included in the next round of Medicare drug price negotiations under the Inflation Reduction Act, which former President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022. The Trump administration was expected to finalize new prices for 15 drugs — including the GLP-1s — by Nov. 1. Trump officials have signaled less enthusiasm for the negotiations, instead focusing on executive orders and voluntary pricing agreements with drugmakers. The administration is expected to unveil the new prices by Nov. 30. Berkeley Lovelace Jr.Berkeley Lovelace Jr. is a health and medical reporter for NBC News. He covers the Food and Drug Administration, with a special focus on Covid vaccines, prescription drug pricing and health care. He previously covered the biotech and pharmaceutical industry with CNBC.
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Nov. 4, 2025, 3:49 PM ESTBy Brennan LeachAs the government shutdown is set to become the longest in U.S. history, Pennsylvania organizations that rely on government support are experiencing an unusual and devastating double whammy.That’s because the state is in the midst of its own budget impasse. The Republican-controlled Senate and the Democratic House have been in a deadlock over the 2025-26 budget for more than 120 days, freezing billions in state funding.The consequences of the dual shutdowns are becoming dire for organizations like the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence (PCADV), a nonprofit that helps victims of domestic violence find safety, counseling and legal advocacy through a network of 59 community-based domestic violence programs across the state.White House assures it is ‘fully complying’ with court order on SNAP benefits01:37PCADV receives 53% of its budget from federal funds and 43% from the state, and it operates on a reimbursement basis. Since the state budget impasse began, it is owed more than $11 million for services already provided, according to CEO Susan Higginbotham.“It’s a perfect storm,” she said in an interview with NBC News. “This spells disaster for nonprofit programs providing services to people because, first of all, a number of programs are having to lay off staff or furlough staff, or think about how they can reduce the experience. I mean, you know, this is impossible to manage, really.”We’d like to hear from you about how you’re experiencing the government shutdown, whether you’re a federal employee who can’t work right now, a person who relies on federal benefits like SNAP, or someone who is feeling the effects of other shuttered services in your everyday life. Please contact us at tips@nbcuni.com or reach out to us here.Higginbotham warned that if the dual impasses continue, PCADV’s statewide network of programs, which provide services for approximately 90,000 domestic violence survivors and their children, may have to begin laying off staff or permanently close their doors.“If that happens, it’s not going to help to blame ‘Rs’ or ‘Ds’ for it, or for them to blame each other. It’s too late at that point. We just want them to pass a budget. Figure it out,” she said.Daniel Mallinson, a political scientist at Penn State University, said that the Pennsylvania budget impasse could end when enough people apply pressure on their lawmakers to find a solution. However, he added, those most negatively affected by the compounding shutdown consequences are marginalized people who “don’t have as much political sway.”“A lot of the people that have the most political sway are more in that category of ‘it doesn’t really impact me right now,’” Mallinson said, while “it’s a daily reality” for marginalized groups that depend on government-funded services.Among the hardest hit are students, as schools across the commonwealth wait on $5.3 billion in missed state funding, according to Chris Lilienthal, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania State Education Association.Pennsylvania schools have had to suspend afterschool programs, implement spending freezes, and at least three school districts have said that they are on the brink of closing down entirely, Lilienthal said.Lilienthal explained that districts that rely more heavily on government funding are “in a much worse situation” than schools with wealthier tax bases and more local revenue.This coincides with the suspension of federal SNAP nutrition benefits, which serve nearly 2 million Pennsylvanians, including 713,000 children, according to a report released by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration.“The loss of these SNAP benefits, it is just making it that much harder for kids in the classroom,” Lilienthal said. “Of all the impacts of the federal shutdown, this is the one that has driven the most calls to our union, the most concerns from our members. What’s going to happen to the kids if they don’t have access to these SNAP nutrition benefits?”President Donald Trump’s administration said this week that it would use contingency funds to pay out partial SNAP benefits for November following a judge’s order. But that could take “several weeks,” the Agriculture Department said.In Washington, after weeks without any movement, senators predicted Monday that bipartisan talks among rank-and-file members could mean an end to the shutdown as soon as this week. There are the first glimpses of progress in Pennsylvania, too, as Shapiro and leaders from the state House and Senate met in person several times last week, Spotlight PA reported.Brennan LeachBrennan Leach is an associate producer for NBC News covering the Senate.
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November 11, 2025
Senate passes bill to end shutdown, sending it to the House
October 31, 2025
Oct. 31, 2025, 5:00 AM EDT / Updated Oct. 31, 2025, 8:16 AM EDTBy Peter Nicholas and Megan LebowitzWASHINGTON — Over the years, a genteel nonprofit organization called the Trust for the National Mall has raised money to help care for the cherry trees dotting the Tidal Basin. It upgraded the U.S. Park Police stables on the National Mall and hosted pickleball games on the grassy expanse between American monuments.Now it has a new assignment: handling the millions of dollars pouring in for President Donald Trump’s gilded White House ballroom. The nonpartisan group is serving as the steward for what Trump has said is more than $350 million in private donations from individuals, foundations and corporations to remake part of the old East Wing into a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. Donors have been instructed to direct their ballroom contributions to the trust, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization. Individual and corporate donors can typically deduct the amount they contributed from their federal income taxes. A person raising money for the ballroom told NBC News that they have been asking for donations of $2.5 million to $5 million and that the deduction is one reason people choose to give. The fundraiser, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. The White House said donors will be able to remain anonymous if they wish.The trust’s involvement in Trump’s project has plunged it into politically divisive terrain that it has avoided since its founding in 2007. Senators are demanding answers about what the trust knows about the ballroom and its donors and when it found out.“This nonpartisan, independent organization is about to be enmeshed in the very perilous quicksand of Donald Trump’s donation scheme for his ballroom,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in an interview.Devoted to “restoring, preserving and enriching the National Mall,” the trust is now part of a project that is transforming the symbol of American history and power. Construction crews flattened the East Wing of the White House this month to make way for a ballroom that can seat nearly 1,000 people; in July, Trump said the addition wouldn’t touch the White House.In interviews, trust officials stressed that they’re playing only the limited role of managing the donations and have no say over the design or construction of the ballroom itself. The group is an official partner of the National Park Service, the federal agency that maintains the White House grounds. Traditionally, the trust assists the Park Service by raising private money for projects, thus defraying the cost to taxpayers.Over the summer, the Park Service approached the trust and asked whether it would handle the private donations for the ballroom, a trust staff member said.The group’s 14-member board discussed the request and agreed to take part, board member Eric Hoplin, who is CEO of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, said in an interview. Neither he nor the staff member would say whether the group could have declined to participate.Asked whether the trust knew in advance that the East Wing would be torn down, Hoplin said, “Because we weren’t involved in the design or construction, we were learning about the evolution of the project as others have.”He made no apologies for the ballroom, pointing to past White House renovations that also drew public ire back in the day. “If you look to history and you think about Andrew Jackson’s addition of the North Portico and you look at Teddy Roosevelt’s addition of the West Wing, when you look at the Truman restoration, including the Truman Balcony, each of those projects in their time was controversial,” Hoplin said. “Now they’re widely accepted and in fact celebrated parts of the White House. So it’s not for us to judge the project. We’re the partner of the National Park Service, and we are playing this limited role.”Born out of a philanthropic impulse, the trust seems a throwback to an era that predated Trump’s rise. The ballroom project is an arranged marriage of sorts between MAGA and civic magnanimity.Chip Akridge, head of a local commercial real estate firm, would regularly jog through Washington to look at his properties. A friend urged him to inspect the Mall’s condition, and when he did, he saw it was “a disgrace,” he told a House committee in 2008. Akridge said he helped create the trust to restore the Mall’s luster.The East Wing was demolished to make room for Trump’s new ballroom.Andrew Harnik / Getty ImagesOver the years, the trust has led a string of efforts to improve the Mall and surrounding spaces. During Trump’s first term, it managed $4 million in private donations for a pair of White House projects: a tennis pavilion and a renovation of the Rose Garden. Trump paved over the garden grass after he returned to office.The group brought in volunteers to help with White House garden tours, along with experts to “shape” White House educational tours in President Joe Biden’s administration, the staff member said.Donors have been invited to “adopt” a cherry tree as part of the trust’s effort to preserve the 3,700-some cherry trees on the Tidal Basin. A total of $42,000 was raised in 2023 to help protect 40 trees. The group also worked to upgrade horse stables on the Mall that were first built in the 1970s, among other projects. And it marshals volunteers for smaller tasks, such as painting benches and laying mulch.Current board members aren’t Trump’s traditional MAGA allies. Some are past or present executives at corporations like Humana and Wells Fargo, while others are philanthropists who have supported cultural and artistic endeavors. The group’s president and CEO is Catherine Townsend, who was appointed in 2016. That year, she donated $250 to the Democratic presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, campaign finance records show. Townsend also made a pair of $250 donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2010. The trust didn’t make Townsend available for an interview and didn’t respond to questions about the donations.Since he took office, Trump has pushed hard to do away with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The trust hosted “conversations” during Joe Biden’s presidency that amplified minority voices. One such event in 2021 focused on African Americans and the influential role they’ve played on the National Mall. Another one that year, “Herstory on America’s Civic Stage,” dealt with “important moments for America’s women.” A third celebrated Asian American and Pacific Island Heritage Month. This week, the White House fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent government agency that is expected to review Trump’s construction projects, including the ballroom. A White House official said it plans to replace them with people who are “more aligned with President Trump’s America First Policies.”Blumenthal and four other Democratic senators sent a letter to the trust and its governmental partner, the National Park Service, on Oct. 23 with a list of questions and a Nov. 7 deadline for answers. “Is the demolition consistent with the Trust’s mission to ‘preserve the National Mall as a symbol of our nation’s ideals and civic purpose?’” the senators asked.“What procedures are in place to pay for the project if costs exceed the amount raised via the Trust? Will taxpayers be liable for any potential costs of this project?” wrote Blumenthal and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.In a statement to NBC News, Warren said that “billionaires and giant corporations with business in front of the Trump administration are not coughing up millions of dollars to build Trump’s ballroom out of concern for the National Mall.”“The Trust for the National Mall appears to have become a vehicle for favor-seeking and possible corruption,” she said. “I’m pushing to find out if the Trust is facilitating wink-and-nod arrangements — and what these ballroom donors are getting in return.”The trust has not yet responded to the senators’ letter. In the past, the trust has raised comparatively modest amounts of money. In 2022, it received only about $2.2 million in contributions and grants, according to its IRS tax returns. Last year, it raised about $9.5 million.The ballroom project has attracted donations from major companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and beyond. Comcast Corp., the parent company of NBCUniversal, was also on the White House list of donors. The trust staff member said that “financials can vary widely year over year based on projects being built or completed and where we are in a fundraising cycle.”The group has stepped up its fundraising efforts ahead of July 4, 2026, when the nation will celebrate its 250th anniversary. It has set out to raise $250 million, with the money going toward projects that include restoring the fountains of Lafayette Square, across the street from the White House.A former IRS official who reviewed the trust’s most recent tax return expressed doubts that the group is equipped to manage the ballroom donations.“The main thing is that this is not an organization that shows any indication of being able to have an inflow of hundreds of millions of dollars,” the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity.Hoplin voiced confidence the trust can do the job.“We have the capacity and the ability and the track record for a project of this magnitude,” he said.Peter NicholasPeter Nicholas is a senior White House reporter for NBC News.Megan LebowitzMegan Lebowitz is a politics reporter for NBC News.Christina Wilkie contributed.
October 4, 2025
Family fights for coverage of medical needs of toddler with neurological disorder
October 14, 2025
Oct. 14, 2025, 2:00 PM EDTBy Erik Ortiz and Abigail BrooksTexas, which historically drives the number of executions nationwide, is approaching a grim milestone of 600 people put to death by lethal injection since the early 1980s.But for the past 10 years, a shield statute meant to protect the safety of those participating in the execution protocol allows the state to withhold a telling piece of information: where Texas is finding pentobarbital, the hard-to-get drug it exclusively uses to carry out executions.The source of pentobarbital remains a closely guarded secret to the public, but records reviewed by NBC News stitch together the state’s cryptic acquisition process, including how much of the drug Texas has procured over the past year and the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been spent on transactions related to drug costs.According to those records, in September 2024, Texas acquired 20 1-gram vials of pentobarbital, and in February it obtained eight 2.5-gram vials — enough, based on its protocol, for as many as eight executions.The purchases, which are documented on Drug Enforcement Administration forms, redact the supplier’s information; the agency told NBC News it was unable to comment amid the ongoing federal government shutdown.Robert Roberson’s execution halted in Texas shaken baby case01:41Exactly how much Texas paid for the injectable pentobarbital remains unclear. The state Department of Criminal Justice did not respond to requests for comment about its execution drug supply and the amount spent.However, a document produced by the department in response to a request for cost information about drug supplies in lethal injection executions shows multiple transaction amounts dated October 2024 and February and March of this year totaling more than $775,000.The document is partially redacted, and doesn’t reveal the exact breakdown of expenses.But if Texas were to have spent upward of three quarters of a million dollars as part of its quest for pentobarbital, it would be in line with several other states, whose officials have revealed in recent months to shelling out large sums — far exceeding the wholesale value of pentobarbital — for their execution drugs, anti-death penalty groups and legal experts say.Under public pressure, some of those states have confirmed purchasing, at a marked-up rate, manufactured drugs, meaning they were produced from a Food and Drug Administration-approved pharmaceutical company as opposed to a compounding pharmacy, which are loosely regulated and have drawn concerns over quality, safety and efficacy.The pharmaceutical industry widely opposes its drugs being used for capital punishment, which is why it remains a mystery where recent purchases of pentobarbital used for executions in Texas and other states is coming from. The pharmaceutical industry’s opposition has prompted lawsuits and cease-and-desist letters from drug makers and made it increasingly difficult for states to obtain the necessary chemicals.“Executing states are going to great lengths to hide these purchases from taxpayers and defense attorneys and the pharmaceutical companies whose controls they’re violating — and they keep getting caught,” said Matt Wells, the deputy director of Reprieve US, a human rights nonprofit organization.He added that a lack of transparency means states don’t have to publicly reveal the steps taken to ensure their drugs adhere to companies’ protocols and are safe to be used in executions. Lethal injection has the highest rate of “botched” executions among all methods, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. While the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee a painless death during execution, it prohibits the infliction of added pain that creates unnecessary suffering.“When state after state is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the black market to acquire drugs they cannot legitimately source, we’re talking about a system that is broken beyond repair,” Wells said.Cost of drugsOther states with secrecy laws have been able to obtain the drug but at a cost multiple times over what they’re worth on the regular market.In recent years, Idaho spent about $200,000 in total for three separate purchases of manufactured pentobarbital, NBC News previously reported. One six-vial batch at $50,000 was more than three times the price at wholesale.In June, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun confirmed that his state had paid more than $1 million for four doses of pentobarbital, some of which expired before they could be used. It’s not clear what quantity each dose amounts to.Utah spent roughly $200,000 for manufactured pentobarbital used in a 2024 execution, corrections officials said.And since 2017, Tennessee has purchased nearly $600,000 worth of execution drugs from an undisclosed supplier, The Tennessean reported in March.Commercially made injectable pentobarbital can run about $2,500 for a 2.5-gram vial, said Jeffrey Pilz, an assistant director of pharmacy at The Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.In Texas’ case, Pilz said, the eight 2.5-gram vials of pentobarbital it acquired in February should have cost close to $20,000.But when execution drugs are significantly marked up, particularly for federally approved manufactured drugs, it raises questions about who sold them to a state, how that supplier obtained them and whether regulatory channels were subverted, said Maurie Levin, a Texas death penalty defense attorney.“Texas’ secrecy law allows the state to hide the unethical practices of some of the pharmacies from whom they get drugs, and how they purchase drugs for executions, including what appears to be the purchase of drugs on the black market, at an enormous cost,” Levin said.Manufactured vs. compounded drugsTwo pharmaceutical companies manufacturing in the U.S. are known to make injectable pentobarbital, a sedative more commonly used to treat insomnia and seizures.Both Hikma, a U.K.-based company whose U.S. headquarters are in New Jersey, and Sagent, which is based in Illinois, have asked states to ensure they don’t use their drugs in executions.Sagent warned Idaho in a letter last year that when its “products are diverted from legitimate channels, in violation of our distribution controls, they risk being counterfeit, stolen, contaminated, or otherwise harmful.”Whether Hikma or Sagent have sent similar warnings to Texas is unclear. Neither company returned requests for comment, although a Hikma spokesperson told NBC News this year that it has sent such letters to states annually for the past eight years “to firmly remind them of our strong objections to the use of our medicines in capital punishment.”Read more death row coverageFour inmates executed by Alabama had illegal drugs in their system, reports showAn Idaho warden acquired hard-to-get lethal injection drugs from an undisclosed supplier on a rural roadSouth Carolina prepares for first firing squad execution, ushering in return of rare methodIndiana carries out first execution in 15 years in process scrutinized for its secrecyThe Texas Department of Criminal Justice also didn’t respond to requests about whether its most recently purchased batch of pentobarbital was manufactured or from a compounding pharmacy.Texas began solely using pentobarbital, a sedative, for executions in 2012. A potent dose can lead to death from respiratory failure.In 2015, Texas, along with Arizona and Nebraska, attempted to import thousands of vials of sodium thiopental, an anesthetic, from a supplier in India to use in executions, but Texas’ shipments were seized by the FDA because they were not approved in the U.S.After that, Texas reportedly moved to acquire the pentobarbital from compounding pharmacies in the state. Compounded drugs have shorter shelf lives than manufactured ones, and are typically labeled with a “beyond use date,” similar to an expiration date, Pilz said.Texas has been known to relabel its drugs’ beyond-use dates, a practice that has been criticized in recent years by death row inmates who have alleged in court that the drugs are expired and unsafe.’Use it or lose it’Documents indicate that Texas’ pentobarbital stock includes some batches labeled with beyond-use dates, signifying it was compounded, and others with expiration dates, suggesting those were manufactured.A manufacturer sets the expiration date, which is “derived from the sterility, stability, and analytical chemical studies” performed within a controlled environment, according to an American Society of Health-System Pharmacists guide.Pilz said compounding pharmacies may also register as an outsourcing facility to produce larger batches of medication, and therefore, could assign expiration dates to drugs.The documents reviewed by NBC News indicate five vials of pentobarbital purchased by Texas had a “beyond use date” of September 2024, but that shelf life was recently extended to May 2026, and another three vials had a September 2024 “beyond use date.”But the 20 1-gram vials of pentobarbital that were acquired in September 2024 had an April 2025 expiration date, records show. They were used for the executions of Garcia White in October 2024 and Steven Nelson, Richard Tabler and Moises Mendoza in early 2025.The documents also indicate the eight 2.5-gram vials of pentobarbital acquired in February expire at the end of this month.Inventory logs reviewed by NBC News show some of those vials were removed for the execution of Matthew Johnson in May, but they did not reflect whether that same supply was used in the execution of Blaine Milam in September.It’s also unclear whether the expiring drugs would have been used in the Oct. 16 execution of Robert Roberson, who was poised to be the 597th person executed by Texas.Robert Roberson before a scheduled execution in 2024 that was halted.NBC NewsRoberson was convicted in the 2002 death of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, and would be the first prisoner in the nation executed in connection with “shaken baby syndrome.”With just days to spare, an appeals court last week halted the execution based on another case of disputed evidence surrounding the medical diagnosis, meaning Texas would not be able to use that expiring supply of pentobarbital since no other inmate is scheduled to die this month and the next execution isn’t until late January.“With the stay of Mr. Roberson’s execution, the manufactured drugs we believe to currently be in their possession, which expire at the end of October, have to be trashed,” said Levin, the death penalty attorney.She added that Roberson’s case — now the third time his execution has been put on pause — underscores the greater challenge for states as they seek manufactured lethal injection drugs.“It’s a constant game of use it or lose it or extend the ‘beyond use date’ for the umpteenth time, including the hundreds of thousands of dollars they spent to get it,” she said. “The expiration date of illegally purchased drugs should hardly be the engine driving Texas executions.”Erik OrtizErik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.Abigail BrooksAbigail Brooks is a producer for NBC News.
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