Today, In a historic move, earlier than usual, a coalition of Jewish leaders and local groups representing the Jewish community in Borough Park, including Bobov, Belz, and Satmar united to announced their endorsement of Andrew Yang for mayor of NYC. In a statement the mayoral candidate Andrew Yang said “I am so deeply proud to have earned the endorsement of this incredible group of community leaders, many of whom I’ve met and gotten to know on a personal level in recent weeks. New York’s Jewish community is not only core to who we are as a City, it is also going to be critical to New York’s comeback. I have had such an amazing time visiting Borough Park, bumping into people on 13th Avenue, visiting local shops — where everyone I met was so optimistic about New York’s future.

A man charged with threatening to kill members of Congress testified on Tuesday that his disturbing social media rants were the work of a stoned and wasted provocateur — not someone actually out for blood. Brendan Hunt did not deny creating the posts. But he told jurors at his trial in federal court in Brooklyn he believed what he called “rhetoric” — often put together while “smoking weed” by bong and drinking beer — would never be taken seriously. “I was really just letting off steam,” said Hunt, 37, of Queens. “It was really more online blather than anything else.” His decision to testify on his own behalf came in a case where prosecutors have portrayed scenes of the siege at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as emblematic of his brand of extremism.

A man was arrested Tuesday in an assault on a Chinese immigrant who was kicked repeatedly in the head in East Harlem, police said. Jarrod Powell was charged with two counts of felony assault in Friday’s attack on 61-year-old Yao Pan Ma, police said. It wasn’t clear if Powell, 49, had an attorney who could comment on the charges. Ma was collecting cans when he was attacked from behind, knocked to the ground and kicked in the head. He was taken to Harlem Hospital, where he remained in a coma on Tuesday, officials said. The police department’s hate crimes task force is investigating the attack, which appeared to be among the latest in a troubling rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in New York and around the country.

New Jersey Attorney General Grubir S. Grewal announced today that his department has filed a lawsuit against Jackson Township, New Jersey, alleging Jackson Township has engaged in a litany of illegal, discriminatory practices against Orthodox Jews. Among them are: enacting zoning laws that restricted yeshivos and outlawed dormitories, discriminatory targeting for surveillance homes of Orthodox Jews suspected of hosting minyanim, discriminatorily interpreting land use laws to inhibit the building of sukkahs, and enacting zoning ordinances that ban the creation of eruvim.

Three of the Lakewood Roshei Yeshiva have banned a separate seating concert in Lakewood scheduled for Friday, Lag Baomer. The event was to have singer Benny Friedman perform as well as a storyteller. Interestingly, an event to be held on Lag Baomer night — scheduled to be held in the same exact location — was not banned. That event was being hosted by “Minyan Shelanu” of Lakewood. The letter reads in part: “our community has a longstanding policy that disallows concerts in the city of Lakewood, since it is a form of entertainment that runs contrary to the spirit of Torah scholars and greatly undermines the Torah atmosphere of our community…. “Running any event in the First Energy / Blue Claws Stadium is itself a serious breach of our community’s policies.

In his first face-to-face encounter with journalists in months, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday flatly denied he had done anything inappropriate with any of the women who have accused him of misconduct and harassment. Speaking to reporters at the New York State Fairgrounds in Syracuse, the Democrat abandoned his past approach of expressing contrition for some past behavior while declining to address whether specific allegations were true. “You were in those rooms. You know the truth. So can you tell the people of the state of New York yes or no? Did you do the things you were accused of?” asked New York Times reporter Jesse McKinley. “To put it very simply, no.” Cuomo said. “All the harassment, you deny all of that?” McKinley said. “That’s right. Yes,” Cuomo said.

Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal announced today that the State has filed a civil rights lawsuit against Jackson Township alleging that Township authorities violated the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination by using their zoning powers to make it harder for Orthodox Jews to practice their religion and to deter them from moving there. The State’s complaint alleges the Jackson’s adoption of discriminatory zoning ordinances and enforcement practices was motivated in part by officials’ desire to appease Township residents who reacted to the Township’s growing Orthodox Jewish population by expressing hate and fear on social media, in complaints to Township officials, and in public meetings.

An NYPD officer has died after being struck by a passing vehicle while investigating a crash in Queens, and one person is in police custody. The officer is identified as Anastasios Tsakos, assigned to Highway 3. He was a 14-year veteran of the NYPD, father of two children, a 6-year-old daughter and a 3-year-old son. Officer Tsakos was struck on the eastbound lanes of the Long Island Expressway near Francis Lewis Boulevard just before 2 a.m. this morning. He was directing traffic following a prior crash that happened on the eastbound Long Island Expressway ramp to the Clearview Expressway, just after 12:30 a.m. Tuesday. As Tsakos was directing traffic near the scene, he was struck by a passing vehicle.

New York will lose one seat in Congress as a result of national population shifts, according to census data released Monday — a loss that might have been avoided if just a few dozen more people in the state had been counted. The state’s population grew by more than 4% over the past decade, according to the 2020 census, but that increase didn’t keep pace with larger gains in other parts of the country. The final calculation of winners and losers in the race for representation was incredibly close. If just 89 more people had been counted in New York, it would have held on to all 27 of its current seats in congress, according to Kristin Koslap, senior technical expert for 2020 Census Apportionment. “There were 435 seats.

A 61-year-old Chinese American man was attacked by a man who kicked him repeatedly in the head in East Harlem, police said. The man was collecting cans when he was attacked from behind, knocked to the ground and kicked in the head shortly after 8 p.m. Friday. He was taken to Harlem Hospital in critical but stable condition, police said. Surveillance video released by the police appears to show the attacker stomping on the victim’s head. Police have not specified a motive. The department’s hate crimes task force is investigating the attack, the latest in a troubling rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in New York and around the country. Mayor Bill de Blasio called the attack “outrageous” on Twitter.