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But for months, Mr. Santos has denied any criminal wrongdoing, even as he has admitted to lying about going to college and working for prestigious Wall Street firms. When he appears before a judge on Wednesday, Mr. Santos will hear the government’s case against him. Shortly thereafter, prosecutors will argue for the terms of release they believe to be appropriate to ensure that Mr. Santos returns to court. It is not yet clear whether Mr. Santos will lodge a plea or if he will be asked to do so in a subsequent hearing. Court records show that Mr. Santos spent nearly $700 using a stolen checkbook and a false name at a store near Rio de Janeiro.

Details of the case against Mr. Santos remain under seal, and the charges against him will not be revealed until later on Wednesday. A spokeswoman in Washington referred all questions to Mr. Santos’s lawyer, who did not respond to requests for comment. But for months, Mr. Santos has denied any criminal wrongdoing, even as he has admitted to lying about going to college and working for prestigious Wall Street firms. It is not yet clear whether Mr. Santos will lodge a plea or if he will be asked to do so in a subsequent hearing. Court records show that Mr. Santos spent nearly $700 using a stolen checkbook and a false name at a store near Rio de Janeiro.

Representative George Santos, the New York Republican who fell under numerous investigations over his personal and campaign finances after his biography was found to be a web of lies and exaggerations, has been charged by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, two people familiar with the investigation said. Mr. Santos, his lawyer and a spokeswoman in his Washington office did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn could not be reached for comment; an F.B.I. The specific charges against Mr. Santos, who last month announced he would run for re-election in his district in Long Island and part of Queens, are not yet clear. CNN reported that Mr. Santos could appear as soon as Wednesday in federal court.

☆ How New Yorkers’ Lives Will Be Altered by the $229 Billion State Budget
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Luis Ferré-Sadurní | Grace Ashford | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

ALBANY, N.Y. — Minimum wage workers in New York City will get a pay bump for the first time in five years. Out-of-state students at city and state universities will face a tuition hike. And cigarette smokers will need to pay an extra dollar in taxes per pack. New York State lawmakers approved a $229 billion state budget on Tuesday night that will touch on New Yorkers’ everyday life, after completing protracted negotiations with Gov. This being Albany, of course, the closed-door negotiations centered much less on the state’s finances than they did on contentious policy changes that were stuffed into the final budget legislation.

ALBANY, N.Y. — It was just four years ago that New York’s Democratic lawmakers celebrated a new law that eliminated bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies and, at the time, seemingly added a measure of new justice to a system long faulted for pre-emptively punishing the poor. On Thursday night, however, after months of grueling negotiations, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that the state would scale back those changes — for the third time — after a sharp rebuke from New York’s voters and residents over a rise in crime. “It was very clear that changes need to be made,” the governor said. While judges will remain unable to set bail for a vast majority of misdemeanor and nonviolent charges, such a change could nonetheless have a dramatic impact, giving judges greater discretion to hold defendants — particularly repeat or serious offenders — before their trials.

☆ Gov. Hochul Gets a Budget Deal, but No Signature Win
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Grace Ashford | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

ALBANY, N.Y. — It was around dinner time on Thursday, with many New York State lawmakers already heading home to their districts, when Gov. Kathy Hochul dropped a budget bombshell: Roughly four weeks past the deadline, she and legislative leaders had reached a tentative deal. She hastily convened a news conference in the Capitol’s ornate Red Room to announce the handshake agreement, but there were no hands to shake. Neither the leader of the Assembly nor the Senate was present, leaving Ms. Hochul to make a solitary victory lap around a $229 billion budget that, if passed by the Legislature next week, will be one month overdue. She backed off from her pledge to construct 800,000 new homes, a potential centerpiece of her first term.

☆ M.T.A. Averts Fiscal Crisis as New York Strikes Budget Deal
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Ana Ley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

During each budget cycle, the authority has had to jockey for money against an array of other interests. “This was the most consistent and dependable funding proposal on the table,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, a grass-roots organization of transit riders. The Covid-19 emergency plunged the system into crisis as riders abandoned it, depleting fare revenue it had critically depended on. The state deal will provide $65 million to reduce the first potential fare hike, which could bring the fare closer to $2.86 instead of $2.90. There has not been a fare hike since the start of the pandemic.

☆ New York State Budget Deal Would Raise Minimum Wage and Change Bail Laws
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Luis Ferré-Sadurní | Grace Ashford | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday announced that she and state lawmakers had reached an agreement on a roughly $229 billion state budget that would change the state’s bail laws, increase the minimum wage and provide urgently needed funding for New York City’s transit system. The deal capped weeks of contentious negotiations that divided the governor and the Democrat-led State Legislature, delaying its expected passage by almost a month — the latest budget in over a decade. The broad strokes of the “conceptual agreement” were revealed by the governor at an impromptu news conference at the State Capitol on Thursday evening; some of the details, Ms. Hochul said, were still being “fine tuned.”Representatives for Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the majority leader in the State Senate, and Carl E. Heastie, the Assembly speaker, confirmed the deal. Lawmakers, who had already left Albany for the week because they had not anticipated an agreement, are expected to vote to approve the budget as early as next week.

☆ The Obscure G.O.P. Bookkeeper at the Center of the George Santos Mess
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Grace Ashford | Nicholas Fandos | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The degree to which Ms. Marks was aware of Mr. Santos’s numerous biographical deceptions is not clear. In May 2021, Red Strategies USA was born. The placements cost $3,800, though Mr. Hafizi paid Red Strategies $12,000, according to a person with direct knowledge of the arrangement. Red Strategies was not the only company Mr. Hafizi patronized that was tied to Ms. Marks, who was also his treasurer. By then, Ms. Marks and Mr. Santos were just a few weeks from an unlikely upset victory that would alter the course of their careers.

☆ New York’s Budget Is Really Late. What’s Taking So Long?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Grace Ashford | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

But lawmakers have seemingly agreed to leave intact most of the 2019 changes to the state bail law that made the vast majority of misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies ineligible for bail. Why It MattersMs. Hochul has repeatedly said that a good budget is better than an on-time budget. On April 26, New York City’s executive budget plan is due — which will be a challenge, given the uncertainty in Albany. And the budget clock is not the only one that is ticking: The 2023 legislative session runs only until June 8. The longer lawmakers spend on the budget, the less time they will have to address anything else.

☆ Who Is Rep.-Elect George Santos? His Résumé May Be Largely Fiction.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Grace Ashford | Michael Gold | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

George Santos, whose election to Congress on Long Island last month helped Republicans clinch a narrow majority in the House of Representatives, built his candidacy on the notion that he was the “full embodiment of the American dream” and was running to safeguard it for others. His campaign biography amplified his storybook journey: He is the son of Brazilian immigrants, and the first openly gay Republican to win a House seat as a non-incumbent. But a New York Times review of public documents and court filings from the United States and Brazil, as well as various attempts to verify claims that Mr. Santos, 34, made on the campaign trail, calls into question key parts of the résumé that he sold to voters. Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, the marquee Wall Street firms on Mr. Santos’s campaign biography, told The Times they had no record of his ever working there. Officials at Baruch College, which Mr. Santos has said he graduated from in 2010, could find no record of anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating that year.

☆ New York Will Allow Adult Victims to Revive Decades-Old Sex Abuse Claims
▼ + stars: | 2022-05-23 | by ( Grace Ashford | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

But in 2017, she joined a chorus of women giving voice for the first time to some of the worst experiences of their lives. For Ms. Dixon, that meant going public to The New York Times with a long-suppressed claim that the media mogul Russell Simmons had raped her. But Ms. Dixon will soon have an opportunity to revisit pursuing her case. The State Assembly on Monday overwhelmingly passed the Adult Survivors Act, which enables adult victims, those 18 or older at the time of the alleged abuse, like Ms. Dixon, a one-time opportunity to file civil lawsuits in New York, even if any statutes of limitations have run out. Kathy Hochul, mirrors New York’s Child Victims Act, and gives adult survivors a one-year window to file suit.

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