This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

Elite universities could learn a thing or two from New York City schools Chancellor David Banks. When a Republican-led congressional committee tried to trip him up like they did several college presidents – two of whom ended up resigning after testifying earlier this year – Banks pushed back against accusations that the school system had let antisemitism fester while emphasizing his commitment to stopping all forms of hate. At one point he even criticized the committee itself . “Ultimately, if we really care about solving for antisemitism, it’s not about gotcha moments,” he said. “It’s about teaching.”

State Sen. Jeremy Cooney has been focused on pot. Now he can focus on potholes. The Rochester Democrat, who had been chair of the Senate’s Cannabis Subcommittee, has been tapped as the new chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, succeeding Rep. Tim Kennedy. He’ll now shift his focus from the state’s troubled legal cannabis industry rollout to issues like the I-81 replacement in Syracuse, introduction of congestion pricing in Manhattan and the future of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

In another win for the former governor, a panel of state appellate justices unanimously agreed with him that the state’s government ethics commission is unconstitutional, upholding a lower court decision. That puts him one step closer to permanently preventing the commission from investigating his $5 million book deal and forcing him to repay his book advance. The state’s previous ethics commission had concluded the book deal didn’t pass muster and tried to get Cuomo to return the cash, but he successfully quashed that attempt.

She may not have implicitly condoned collective punishment by mistake, but Gov. Kathy Hochul’s latest gaffe still drew widespread criticism. This time, she said that young Black Bronxites “don’t even know what the word ‘computer’ is.” The guv was trying to promote the benefits of the state’s new Empire AI consortium, which she pushed for, for low-income New Yorkers. In a later apology, Hochul said she had meant to say that many children lack access to technology, not that they were unfamiliar with basic vocabulary.

His Bell-view just got a lot worse. Disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein was sent back to Rikers Island following intrepid reporting by The City, which revealed that he was hanging out in a private room at Bellevue Hospital with his own phone, bathroom and TV. “Your article was pretty much the reason” for the move, his spokesperson told The City. Weinstein will stay in Rikers, rather than being sent to a California prison, while he waits to be retried in Manhattan after his sexual assault conviction was overturned last month.

Since launching her campaign, Republican congressional candidate Alison Esposito has been dogged by suspicions that she doesn’t live in the Hudson Valley district she’s running to represent, and it didn’t help matters this week when it was revealed that she was paying for parking near her apartment with campaign funds…in Manhattan. Further south, Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s affinity for “out of the box” thinking came back to bite him again after reporters found his personal Youtube account was following channels promoting various conspiracy theories.