This week's biggest Winners & Losers

New York has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, but when he had to defend them, Richard Dearing came out with metaphorical guns blazing.  The New York City assistant corporation counsel squared off against the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association in front of an increasingly conservative and Second Amendment-reverent U.S. Supreme Court. But this week, in its first Second Amendment case in nearly a decade, SCOTUS ended up siding with Dearing and New York City, dismissing the case because the city regulation in question has now been repealed.

New York City is tightening the belt in anticipation of a coronavirus budget crunch. Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced over $1 billion in cuts, including millions in education and a major summer jobs program. And he reduced his preliminary budget by $6 billion. Not on the chopping block, however, is the planned expansion of de Blasio’s beloved NYC Ferry, which New York City Economic Development Corporation Executive Vice President Seth Myers oversees. Even though ridership is down, the expansion of the highly subsidized transportation service is still sailing ahead. After all, rich, white yuppies are going to need a public transit option where they can sip wine after this crisis ends.

Good rule of thumb: Don’t blindly trust anybody who responds directly to President Donald Trump’s tweets. When Yaron Oren-Pines responded to Trump on Twitter by promising he could provide ventilators, one thing led to another – a White House task force recommended him to New York’s Office of General Services, which promptly gave him the state’s single largest payment during the coronavirus crisis. A month later, the Silicon Valley electrical engineer hasn’t produced a single ventilator, but he’s $69 million richer. Nice.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio just couldn’t catch a break this week. Hizzoner finally got serious about enforcing social distancing, only to garble the messaging and face accusations of anti-Semitism from the left and right. Appointing future Brooklyn Borough President – umm, we mean, first lady – Chirlane McCray to chair a coronavirus task force didn’t earn him any good press, either. Meanwhile, he continues to struggle to deal with the homelessness crisis, while nobody seems happy about his school chancellor’s new new grading policy.

The governor fancies himself an artist, but the reviews of the “Self Portrait of America” he made with donated masks were not so hot. His handling of nursing homes and that data breach at the state Department of Labor are not exactly inspiring awe either. The buck stops with “Luv Guv,” and these are the types of things that are going to get many people to go back to hating Cuomo sooner or later – although he did enjoy sky-high approval ratings at the beginning of the week.

New York’s Bernie Bros and Yang Gang have been enraged over the state’s decision to cancel its Democratic presidential primary since the news broke on Monday. They’ve called the move “voter suppression” and “Machiavellian.” Yang filed a lawsuit against the state’s Board of Elections for removing him from the ballot and Sanders’ flack suggested the state should lose all of its delegates for cancelling the election. Sure, it’s not an ideal situation for the former candidates who were hoping to win some of the state’s delegates, but it sure beats increasing the number of coronavirus infections caused by overcrowded polling sites. Right?