This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

Unindicted co-conspirator, schmunindicted schmo-conspirator. Eric Adams’ administration is the City Hall of second chances and that’s clear with Phil Banks, the former NYPD honcho who was named – but never charged with any crime – in a federal bribery case. Now he’s deputy mayor for public safety, firing the guy who once investigated him. And he even got to announce his own hiring. Take it to the Banks.

After months of serving as chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority on an interim basis, Janno Lieber is finally on his way to locking down the job. Gov. Kathy Hochul nominated Lieber as MTA chair and CEO on Saturday. Later in the week, the MTA received $6 billion in aid from the federal government to help close budget gaps as ridership lags. Congratulations Janno, here’s $6 billion, don’t waste it.

Justice Shirley Troutman became the second Black woman to sit on the state’s highest court when the state Senate on Tuesday confirmed her appointment to the Court of Appeals. Troutman, who hails from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s hometown of Buffalo, was the governor’s first nomination to the court and is now the only judge on the seven-member body who was not appointed by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. A judge for almost three decades, Troutman most recently served in the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court’s Fourth Judicial Department. 

Does anyone like Rep. Tom Suozzi? His primary opponent Gov. Kathy Hochul rolled out several endorsements in the past week that might have been a little bit of gut punch to the congressman. First came Long Island’s Democratic state Senate delegation, his home turf. Then came Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown. While it would make sense Brown would back Hochul on one hand, she never offered support for his write-in campaign like Suozzi very vocally did. To top it all off, Suozzi’s pants are apparently on fire for dubbing Hochul the “interim governor.

“Vickie Paladino uses her head, her mind and her voice,” the City Council Member told NY1 in an interview defending her decision to not disclose her COVID-19 vaccination status earlier this week. In that same interview, she used her voice but apparently not her head when she compared New York’s vaccine mandates to “Nazi Germany.” Paladino soon after walked back the remarks, apologizing “to anyone who was genuinely offended” by the remark. But she has hardly walked back her stance on vaccine requirements, despite already getting locked out of the Council chambers. It’s unclear what this means for the future, but the Council’s loudest vaccine-mandate-opponent has insisted that if future colleagues have a problem, they’ll have to remove her.

Republicans and their political allies are already pushing for the newly-inaugurated Manhattan district attorney to be removed from office because they don’t like his approach to the job. Gov. Kathy Hochul appears unlikely to indulge them by invoking an obscure state law to fire Bragg, but negative headlines and the combined ire of criminal justice reactionaires are undoubtedly not the type of honeymoon Bragg was hoping for after winning a competitive primary last year.