White House tells agencies to prep mass layoffs for shutdown

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s budget office plans to advise federal program managers to fire employees whose paychecks are financed by annual appropriations if a partial government shutdown begins Oct. 1, rather than just furloughing them as is the usual practice.

An Office of Management and Budget memo, obtained Wednesday night ahead of it being sent to agency heads, said they should consider reduction-in-force or “RIF” notices in cases where there’s no other funding mechanism and the activity they work on is “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”

Congress has not yet passed a stopgap funding patch to tide agencies over beyond the end of the current fiscal year. The House on Friday passed a “clean” seven-week extension, but Senate Democrats blocked it because it would not, among other things, renew expiring health insurance tax credits and roll back health care cuts enacted in Republicans’ “big, beautiful” budget package this summer.

The memo, which was first reported by Politico, is a clear warning shot to Senate Democrats as that chamber prepares to return to session on Monday, with less than 48 hours before a partial shutdown would begin.

—CQ-Roll Call

Central Park carriage horse battle heats up as accusations of defamation leveled at union

NEW YORK — The fight over the future of Central Park’s carriage horses is heating up, with animal rights activists threatening to sue the carriage drivers union for defamation after its leadership said the group was tied to real estate interests trying to develop the West Side.

In a letter Transport Workers Union head John Samuelsen and Local 100 president John Chiarello this week, an attorney for New Yorkers for Clean Livable and Safe Streets — NYCLASS — told the union to “cease and desist from making, publishing or distributing any further false statements” about the group, its spokeswoman Edita Birnkrant, or its co-founder and President, Steve Nislick.

“Apparently the fact that the Central Park Conservancy and Mayoral candidates Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, Zohran Mamdani and Cirtus Sliwa have all called for an end to the abusive horse carriage trade has you rattled,” attorney Bonnie Klapper wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Daily News.

Following an announcement by Mayor Adams last week that he was coming down on the side of those against the iconic horse-drawn carriages and calling on the city council to enact a long-stalled law that would wind down the industry, Samuelsen took to social media where he likened the mayor to “Judas Iscariot,” and said that NYCLASS was “deeply connected to Manhattan real estate and its all about development of the Westside stables.”

—New York Daily News

More than half of Miamians can barely make ends meet, new report finds

Shirley Phinzee blinked wearily under the fluorescent lights of a Miami Wendy’s. She had slept in her car the night before, as she has nearly every night since January.

Phinzee is 63 and, for the first time in her life, homeless. That’s despite having a full-time job. She works 40 hours a week for $16 an hour — $3 more than Florida’s minimum wage — as a unionized janitor.

Phinzee, like more than half of Miami-Dade residents, is what United Way considers ALICE — asset-limited, income constrained, employed. They’re people who work, often earning too much to qualify for state assistance, but effectively live paycheck to paycheck.

There are 527,469 such households in the county, United Way Miami found in a recent report. That’s 54% of Miami-Dade households — a 40,000-household increase since 2023 — and the highest rate of Florida’s larger metropolitan areas.

—Miami Herald

How angry Gen Z kids sparked Asia's deadliest protest this year

When Nepal’s government abruptly banned more than two dozen social media sites earlier this month, Rakshya Bam and thousands of her “Gen Z” compatriots sprang into action.

Using VPNs to circumvent official bans on Instagram, Reddit and Discord, hordes of young demonstrators — some still in school uniforms took to the streets with a range of grievances, including unemployment and corruption. Special contempt was reserved for “Nepo Kids,” the children of elites who flaunted their wealth online while more than 20% of Nepalis live in poverty.

“We weren’t planning for it. It was such a spontaneous movement,” Bam, a 26-year-old activist who emerged as one of the leaders of the demonstration, said last week. Nearby, burned-out cars and graffiti-covered walls attested to the upheaval. “They were not able to ban corruption, so they banned the digital space instead. It was really a trigger point for all of us.”

The protests escalated dramatically on Sept. 8, when police fired on groups of young demonstrators, killing more than 20 people. A day later, protesters set fire to government buildings and stormed parliament, breaking through police barriers. The homes of top officials, including the prime minister’s residence, were burned down, along with the five-star Kathmandu Hilton, which opened last year. By day’s end, the prime minister had resigned.

—Bloomberg News