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Hochul Backs Mamdani Childcare Expansion Plan With Two Years of State Funding
"New York just got a lot more livable for thousands of families."
Jan 08, 2026
Thousands of parents in New York City will have access to free childcare after Gov. Kathy Hochul joined forces with Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday to roll out the first steps of his campaign promise to make childcare universal throughout the city.
The governor announced $1.7 billion in this year's budget that will seek to create childcare access for 100,000 more children, part of a plan to spend $4.5 billion on childcare across the state during this fiscal year.
She said she is committed to “fully fund the first two years of the city’s implementation" of Mamdani's program, which he hopes will one day provide free childcare to kids between 6 weeks and 5 years old.
According to the childcare marketplace website TrustedCare, the average cost of daycare for children in New York City ranges from $2,000 to $4,200 per month, depending on the child's age and schedule.
"This is something every family can agree on," Hochul said at a press conference Thursday at a YMCA in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn. "The cost of childcare is too damn high."
The governor and mayor will begin by increasing funding for the city's existing 3K program, created under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, which extended free pre-K, which was already available to all 4-year-olds, to 3-year-olds when spots are available. Hochul said she and Mamdani will seek to "fix" the program and make it truly universal.
After initially promising to make it available to all 3-year-olds, Mamdani's predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, instead slashed funding for it and other early childhood education programs, which children's advocates said drove kids out of the public school system and left many unable to find seats in nearby areas.
"We stand here today because of the young New Yorkers who were no longer willing to accept that the joy of beginning a family had to be paired with the heartbreak of moving away from a city that they have always loved," Mamdani said.
In addition to making that program universal, Hochul and Mamdani are rolling out a program offering childcare for 2-year-olds, known as "2 Care," which will first be available in "high-need areas" before being rolled out to all parents by 2029.
Mamdani has estimated that the plan to make pre-K fully universal will cost about $6 billion per year, with funding made more challenging by the fact that President Donald Trump recently cut off federal childcare subsidies to states, including $3 billion to New York, amid a manufactured panic about rampant fraud. Hochul has said the state is mulling its legal options to fight the funding freeze.
In the meantime, she plans to spend $73 million in the first year to cover the cost and creation of 2 Care, and $425 million in the second year as more children enroll.
While the source of the funds was not immediately clear, Hochul has said that money for the initial phase of the rollout will come from revenue already allocated by the legislature and not from any tax hikes in the coming year.
"We’re barely six months away from people dismissing Zohran Mamdani for running on universal childcare," said Rebecca Katz, an adviser to the new mayor's campaign. "And now here we are. Incredible. New York just got a lot more livable for thousands of families."
Some New Yorkers who supported Mamdani's campaign expressed excitement on social media about having one of their highest costs lifted.
"Universal 3K is the major reason we could afford to stay in our apartment in NYC," said Jordan Zakarin, a producer at the labor-focused media company More Perfect Union. "Making care free for 2-year-olds will be a game-changer for so many families and keep so many of them in NYC."
Andrei Berman, a father of three children, said that "this will save me 40 grand and eliminate my biggest expense a year early."
The high cost of childcare is an issue that has brought Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, together with the centrist Hochul. The endorsement of New York's "first mom governor," a leading Democratic power-broker in the state and the country, proved a critical stepping stone for Mamdani on his unlikely ascent to the city's highest office last year.
"To the cynics who insist that politics is too broken to deliver meaningful change, to those who think that the promises of a campaign cannot survive once confronted with the realities of government, today is your answer," Mamdani said. "This is a day that so many believed would never come, but it is a day that working people across our city have delivered through the sheer power of their hard work and their unwavering belief that a better future was within their grasp."
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‘A Fresh Start’: Mamdani Revokes Slate of Adams Executive Orders
Among them were orders that attacked critics of Israel, enabled ICE deportations, and promoted cryptocurrency.
Jan 02, 2026
In one of his first acts as New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani has revoked several highly controversial executive orders signed by his predecessor, Eric Adams. Among them were a pair of orders that attacked critics of Israel and others that enabled ICE deportations and promoted cryptocurrencies.
They were part of a slate of nine orders Mamdani revoked on Thursday, all of which were issued by the former mayor after he was hit with corruption charges by the Department of Justice under former President Joe Biden on September 26, 2024—charges that the Trump administration later dropped as part of an apparent deal for Adams to cooperate with its mass deportation efforts.
Mamdani told the New York Daily News that the orders Adams signed after this date went "against the interests of working-class people and what they need from their mayor."
Two of Adams' revoked orders required the city to adopt a stance of unwavering support for Israel as it faced mounting criticism over its genocidal war in Gaza.
One order, signed in June 2025, officially recognized the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been widely criticized, including by Jewish scholars, for conflating many criticisms of Israel with bigotry against Jewish people.
As the New York Times notes, the IHRA "includes 11 examples intended to illustrate antisemitism, seven of which include or relate in some way to criticism of Israel."
Hadas Binyamini, a spokesperson for the New York-based group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, which supported Mamdani, said at the time that the order was "deeply dangerous" and would "inflict punitive measures against New Yorkers speaking out and organizing against Israeli state violence."
The other order, which Adams signed last month after Mamdani was elected, barred city agencies from boycotting or divesting from Israel.
Mamdani has expressed support for the use of economic leverage against what he, and many human rights groups, have said is an "apartheid" system in Israel that subjects Palestinians and other non-Jewish ethnic groups to discriminatory policies and human rights violations.
The revocation of these two orders expectedly drew the ire of conservative Jewish leaders, and even Israel's foreign ministry, who have decried Mamdani, New York's first Muslim mayor, as an antisemite.
However, Mamdani has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to protecting the more than 1 million Jewish New Yorkers.
In a separate executive order, he said the Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism, which Adams also established earlier this year, would remain open and that it "shall identify and develop efforts to eliminate antisemitism and anti-Jewish hate crime using the existing resources of the City of New York."
During a news conference Thursday, Mamdani said combating antisemitism "is an issue that we take very seriously, and as part of the commitment that we've made to Jewish New Yorkers, to not only protect them, but to celebrate and cherish them."
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, described both orders as "last-ditch attempts to suppress viewpoints that the mayor and his benefactors disagreed with." She said it is "no surprise and it is good news that our new mayor has revoked them.”
Mamdani also said he would seek to modify an executive order directing the New York Police Department to restrict protests outside houses of worship, which Adams signed in November after pro-Palestine groups staged a demonstration outside a synagogue that hosted an event that recruited Jewish Americans to settle in the illegally occupied West Bank.
A spokesperson for Mamdani, then the mayor-elect, said he "believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.” He has not yet specified what changes he seeks to make to Adams' order.
Mamdani also revoked an order that allowed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to operate at New York's notorious Rikers Island prison, which he criticized as part of Adams' efforts to kowtow to Trump in exchange for a legal reprieve.
Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said the order, which was blocked by the New York state Supreme Court in September, put "thousands of New Yorkers" at risk of "detention and deportation because they were sent to Rikers after being simply accused—not convicted—of a crime."
Mamdani also revoked an October order by Adams, who described himself as the "Bitcoin Mayor," that established a new cryptocurrency office to bring in industry leaders to advise city officials to help turn New York into "the crypto capital of the world.”
Adams had previously promoted the idea of using crypto to back New York's municipal bonds, which a top Mamdani ally, then-Comptroller Brad Lander, said was "not sufficiently stable to finance our city’s infrastructure, affordable housing, or schools."
Mamdani also halted Adams' plans to ban the city's horse carriage industry pending discussion with the carriage drivers' union, though the new mayor says he also wants to ban the practice.
Mamdani's office said the orders were meant to be a "fresh start for the incoming administration" and that the new mayor means to "reissue executive orders that the administration feels are central to delivering continued service, excellence, and value-driven leadership."
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'Welcome to a New Era for NYC': Zohran Mamdani Sworn In as New York City Mayor
“This is truly the honor and privilege of a lifetime," the new mayor said.
Jan 01, 2026
Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as New York City's mayor early Thursday inside an abandoned subway station, capping off the rise to power of a former state assembly member whose laser focus on affordability, willingness to challenge establishment corruption, and adept use of social media inspired the electorate—including many previous nonvoters.
Mamdani's choice of location for the swearing-in ceremony, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, symbolized his commitment to restoring a city "that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working people’s lives," the mayor said in a statement.
During his campaign, Mamdani pledged to pursue a number of ambitious changes that he and his team will now begin the work of trying to implement, from fast and free buses to a $30 minimum wage to universal childcare—an agenda that would be funded by higher taxes on large corporations and the wealthiest 1% of New Yorkers.
“Happy New Year to New Yorkers both inside this tunnel and above,” Mamdani said in brief remarks at the ceremony. “This is truly the honor and privilege of a lifetime.”
This is now the official account of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Welcome to a new era for NYC. pic.twitter.com/sDyiGWUVeb
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) January 1, 2026
Much of Mamdani's agenda would require action from the city legislature. But in the weeks leading up to his swearing-in, members of Mamdani's team scoured city statutes looking for ways Mamdani could use his mayoral authority to lower prices quickly.
In an interview with Vox earlier this week, Mamdani said that enacting his agenda is "not just critically important because you’re fulfilling what animated so many to engage with the campaign, to support the campaign, but also because of the impact it can have on New Yorkers’ lives."
"There’s a lot of politics where it feels like it’s a contest around narrative, that when you win something, it’s just for the story that you can tell of what you won, but so many working people can’t feel that victory in their lives," he said. "The point of a rent freeze is you feel it every first of the month. The point of a fast and free bus is you feel it every day when you’re waiting for a bus that sometimes never comes. The point of universal child care is so that you don’t have to pay $22,500 a year for a single toddler."
Prior to Thursday's ceremony, former Democratic Mayor Eric Adams spent his final hours on a veto spree, blocking 19 bills including worker-protection legislation.
City & State reported that "among the 19 pieces of legislation that received a last-minute veto was a bill that would expand a cap on street vending licenses, a bill that aims to protect ride-hailing drivers from unjust deactivations from their apps, a bill that would prohibit federal immigration authorities from keeping an office at Rikers Island, and a bill that would grant the Civilian Complaint Review Board direct access to police body-cam footage."
Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said in a statement that "Mayor Adams' last stand to steal protections from workers can’t dampen our hope for a better New York City under the leadership of Zohran Mamdani... and his pro-worker appointees, including Julie Su."
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