Gov. Kathy Hochul says she now opposes cutting funding to some schools with declining enrollment — a major reversal from her budget proposal earlier this year that sought the move to rein in spending. A rep for Hochul wrote in a statement to The Post on Tuesday that the governor no longer supports such cuts, departing from what had been a core pillar of her plan earlier this year. The switch comes as the governor faces a potentially contentious re-election bid in 2026 and can little afford to make enemies with the state’s largest public-sector union, the New York State United Teachers. “As we craft the upcoming Executive Budget, the Governor believes we should avoid proposals that would negatively impact school budgets, such as eliminating the hold-harmless provision of the Foundation Aid formula” covering such reductions, the statement from Hochul’s office said. The governor had been rebuffed by the legislature in making the cuts earlier this year. Budget negotiators agreed to punt talks over overhauling the school-funding formula to next year. At the time, Hochul was still adamant about making changes to the formula and reining in wasteful school spending. “In the long term, it just doesn’t make sense to keep paying for empty seats in classrooms,” Hochul wrote in an April statement announcing this years budget agreement. “And we can’t continue to have large sums of money sit in school district reserves when that money could be used in helping students in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color or return to the taxpayers. And we can’t continue to fund our schools based on politics. Our decisions must be guided by where the need is greatest,” she said. State teachers union President Melinda Person said in a statement Tuesday, “Updating the outdated funding formula is a critical step forward. “However, we remain concerned about recommendations that arbitrarily lower the Foundation Aid amount instead of considering the necessary support for our schools’ evolving student populations. Any changes to the formula must prioritize stability and predictability for school districts.” The state had asked the Rockefeller Institute of Government to study potential changes to the complex and largely outdated funding formula as part of its review of the current situation. The institute’s report, released Monday evening, recommends phasing out some funding for wealthy school districts and those seeing population decreases. While several lawmakers told The Post they were still reading through the 314-page-report, early reactions did not bode well for some of its recommendations. “I have substantial concerns about some proposals, including the recommendation to phase out [a portion of funding] which many districts rely upon to continue serving their communities, despite changes in enrollment,” state Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Shelley Mayer (D-Westchester) wrote in a statement. Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay (R-Oswego), posted to X , “Conversation around changes to Foundation Aid formula must carefully consider the impact changes will have on all school districts (rural, suburban & urban).” Hochul may still have some middle ground to work out a deal that addresses other aspects of the wildly complex funding formula, including weighting for special-education programs and moving away from aspects that rely on outdated standardized testing results and demographic information. Some parts of the formula are still based on data from the 2000 census. Mayer and others largely praised Rockefeller’s study as a sober approach to addressing foundation aid. “The Rockefeller people played it straight. They did what the legislature tasked them with. They did not get into the outcome side of things. The issue is input,” said Ken Girardin, director of research at the nonpartisan think tank the Empire Center, to The Post. “They laid out the inconvenient truths the legislature doesn’t want to touch,” Girardin said.

Signing with Dodgers was really easy decision for 2-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell

NoneDolphins coach Mike McDaniel says he was surprised by reports of Shaq Barrett's unretirement planHONEYWELL AND BOMBARDIER SIGN LANDMARK AGREEMENT TO DELIVER THE NEXT GENERATION OF AVIATION TECHNOLOGY; HONEYWELL UPDATES 2024 OUTLOOK

Nerdy Inc. CEO Charles Cohn purchases $59,839 in stockSatirical newspaper The Onion made waves when it moved to buy the assets of Infowars , the far-right conspiracy theory webcast of Alex Jones, from a bankruptcy auction. But there was a sudden, unexpected wrinkle in the sale, reported 404 Media on Tuesday: lawyers for tech billionaire Elon Musk objected to a specific piece of the sale. The complaint, wrote Jason Koebler, is that the sale includes Infowars' accounts on Musk's X social media platform, previously known as Twitter — and Musk's legal team wants it to be clear they actually own those accounts, not The Onion or Infowars, and all people and organizations on the platform have a "license" to use it, not ownership of anything on it. "X Corp. does not object to the proposed sale as a general matter , but objects to any proposed sale or other purported transfer of any account used by Jones or FSS that is maintained on the X platform (“X”)," the company wrote in court documents. This is a "highly unusual" argument, noted data privacy journalist Joseph Cox on Bluesky. "In the objection, Elon Musk’s lawyers argued that X has 'superior ownership' of all accounts on X, that it objects to the inclusion of InfoWars and related Twitter accounts in the bankruptcy auction, and that the court should therefore prevent the transfer of them to The Onion," wrote Koebler. This argument, he added, serves as a stark reminder to internet users that " you do not own your followers or your account or anything at all on corporate social media , and it also highlights the fact that Elon Musk’s X is primarily a political project he is using to boost, or stifle, specific viewpoints and help his friends." ALSO READ: Merrick Garland and his 'Justice' Department should never be forgiven Infowars, a conspiracy-angled show that funds itself largely with Jones' side hustle of selling branded nutritional supplements and survival gear, has been in financial limbo ever since Jones was found liable for $1.5 billion over the harassment campaign he waged against families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims; he has for years baselessly claimed this massacre was staged by the government with child actors. After months of wrangling in which Jones tried to worm his way out of paying the amount, he agreed for his company to be liquidated as part of the judgment — while ranting about the injustice of it to his audience in real time. The Onion recently gained a new CEO in former NBC reporter Ben Collins, under a newly formed company known as Global Tetrahedron — an inside joke reference to a satirical Onion article about a corporation that buys the entire economy and all world governments.

Indiana Gov.-elect Braun ripped by GOP colleagues for missing U.S. Senate votesWASHINGTON: As a former and potentially future president, Donald Trump hailed what would become Project 2025 as a road map for “exactly what our movement will do” with another crack at the White House. As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump pulled an about-face. He denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies. Now, after being elected the 47th president on Nov. 5, Trump is stocking his second administration with key players in the detailed effort he temporarily shunned. Most notably, Trump has tapped Russell Vought for an encore as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief, as “border czar;” and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy. Those moves have accelerated criticisms from Democrats who warn that Trump’s election hands government reins to movement conservatives who spent years envisioning how to concentrate power in the West Wing and impose a starkly rightward shift across the US government and society. Trump and his aides maintain that he won a mandate to overhaul Washington. But they maintain the specifics are his alone. “President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” said Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “All of President Trumps’ Cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.” Here is a look at what some of Trump’s choices portend for his second presidency. The Office of Management and Budget director, a role Vought held under Trump previously and requires Senate confirmation, prepares a president’s proposed budget and is generally responsible for implementing the administration’s agenda across agencies. The job is influential but Vought made clear as author of a Project 2025 chapter on presidential authority that he wants the post to wield more direct power. “The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind,” Vought wrote. The OMB, he wrote, “is a President’s air-traffic control system” and should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.” Trump did not go into such details when naming Vought but implicitly endorsed aggressive action. Vought, the president-elect said, “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State” — Trump’s catch-all for federal bureaucracy — and would help “restore fiscal sanity.” In June, speaking on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Vought relished the potential tension: “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.” Vought could help Musk and Trump remake government’s role and scope The strategy of further concentrating federal authority in the presidency permeates Project 2025’s and Trump’s campaign proposals. Vought’s vision is especially striking when paired with Trump’s proposals to dramatically expand the president’s control over federal workers and government purse strings — ideas intertwined with the president-elect tapping mega-billionaire Elon Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency.” Trump in his first term sought to remake the federal civil service by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers — who have job protection through changes in administration — as political appointees, making them easier to fire and replace with loyalists. Currently, only about 4,000 of the federal government’s roughly 2 million workers are political appointees. President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s changes. Trump can now reinstate them. Meanwhile, Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s sweeping “efficiency” mandates from Trump could turn on an old, defunct constitutional theory that the president — not Congress — is the real gatekeeper of federal spending. In his “Agenda 47,” Trump endorsed so-called “impoundment,” which holds that when lawmakers pass appropriations bills, they simply set a spending ceiling, but not a floor. The president, the theory holds, can simply decide not to spend money on anything he deems unnecessary. Vought did not venture into impoundment in his Project 2025 chapter. But, he wrote, “The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.” Trump’s choice immediately sparked backlash. “Russ Vought is a far-right ideologue who has tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral authority he does not possess to override the spending decisions of Congress (and) who has and will again fight to give Trump the ability to summarily fire tens of thousands of civil servants,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat and outgoing Senate Appropriations chairwoman. Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, leading Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said Vought wants to “dismantle the expert federal workforce” to the detriment of Americans who depend on everything from veterans’ health care to Social Security benefits. “Pain itself is the agenda,” they said. Trump’s protests about Project 2025 always glossed over overlaps in the two agendas. Both want to reimpose Trump-era immigration limits. Project 2025 includes a litany of detailed proposals for various US immigration statutes, executive branch rules and agreements with other countries — reducing the number of refugees, work visa recipients and asylum seekers, for example. Miller is one of Trump’s longest-serving advisers and architect of his immigration ideas, including his promise of the largest deportation force in US history. As deputy policy chief, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, Miller would remain in Trump’s West Wing inner circle. “America is for Americans and Americans only,” Miller said at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27. “America First Legal,” Miller’s organization founded as an ideological counter to the American Civil Liberties Union, was listed as an advisory group to Project 2025 until Miller asked that the name be removed because of negative attention. Homan, a Project 2025 named contributor, was an acting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement director during Trump’s first presidency, playing a key role in what became known as Trump’s “family separation policy.” Previewing Trump 2.0 earlier this year, Homan said: “No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.” Project 2025 contributors slated for CIA and Federal Communications chiefs John Ratcliffe, Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, was previously one of Trump’s directors of national intelligence. He is a Project 2025 contributor. The document’s chapter on US intelligence was written by Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe’s chief of staff in the first Trump administration. Reflecting Ratcliffe’s and Trump’s approach, Carmack declared the intelligence establishment too cautious. Ratcliffe, like the chapter attributed to Carmack, is hawkish toward China. Throughout the Project 2025 document, Beijing is framed as a US adversary that cannot be trusted. Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, wrote Project 2025’s FCC chapter and is now Trump’s pick to chair the panel. Carr wrote that the FCC chairman “is empowered with significant authority that is not shared” with other FCC members. He called for the FCC to address “threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market,” specifically “Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.” He called for more stringent transparency rules for social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube and “empower consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, if any.” Carr and Ratcliffe would require Senate confirmation for their posts.