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A 'Dirty Deal With Trump': Hochul Draws Fury Over Fracked Gas Pipeline Approval
"Under Gov. Hochul’s leadership, New Yorkers’ voices were silenced to appease President Trump’s fossil fuel priorities," said one critic.
Nov 07, 2025
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul came under fire Friday after her administration approved a previously rejected fracked gas pipeline over the objection of climate and conservation campaigners.
The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) announced approval of permits including a Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certification for the proposed Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline. Commonly known as the Williams Pipeline, the expansion project involves the construction of a 23.5-mile fracked gas conduit beneath the Raritan Bay and Lower New York Bay. The pipeline would carry hydraulically fractured gas from Pennsylvania across New Jersey and into New York.
“As governor, a top priority is making sure the lights and heat stay on for all New Yorkers as we face potential energy shortages downstate as soon as next summer,” Hochul said in a statement. “We need to govern in reality.”
DEC assured that it is "committed to closely monitoring the project’s construction and adherence to all permit conditions to ensure the full protection of New York’s waterways."
This, after the agency twice denied water quality certification for the same pipeline for failing to demonstrate compliance with state quality standards.
In 2020, the DEC under then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is also a Democrat, denied certification for the project after finding that the proposed pipeline was likely to harm water quality by stirring up sediment and other contaminants that “would disturb sensitive habitats, including shellfish beds.”
The advocacy group New York Communities for Change noted in a fact sheet that the project "would jack up already-high utility bills" and be a "super-polluter" that would "generate about 8 million tons of additional climate-heating and asthma-inducing air pollution each year."
"The pollution would also foul our water, including stirring up toxic waste during the construction process," the group added. "The project would especially hurt people on the Rockaways, a majority African American community, where it would terminate."
BREAKING: Hochul just did Trump’s bidding by approving the massive Williams fracked gas pipeline.Hochul’s dirty deal with Trump will jack up our utility bills, pollute our air & water, and cook the climate.Join us at 3:30 outside her office 919 3rd Avenue to protest TODAY.
— New York Communities for Change (@nychange.bsky.social) November 7, 2025 at 9:22 AM
However, Williams Companies, the group behind the project, filed a new application this year amid pressure from President Donald Trump for Hochul to green-light construction.
“Today’s decision by New York is a complete reversal of their two previous determinations to reject this pipeline project over threats to the state’s water resources," Mark Izeman, senior attorney for environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Counsel, said in a statement Friday.
"The pipeline proposal is exactly the same, and state and federal law is the same, so there is no legal or scientific basis for taking a 180 degree turn from the state’s past denials," Izeman continued. "If built, the pipeline would tear up 23 miles of the New York-New Jersey Harbor floor; destroy marine habitats; and dredge up mercury, copper, PCBs, and other toxins."
The project "would also harm sensitive shellfish beds and fishing areas, and undercut billions of dollars New York has invested to improve water quality in the harbor," he added.
Earthjustice New York policy advocate Liz Moran said that “it is shameful that Gov. Hochul and her Department of Environmental Conservation made a decision that fails to protect New Yorkers and our precious waterways."
"We are reviewing the certificate and evaluating our options," Moran added. "The certificate application hasn’t changed since being previously rejected by the DEC, water quality standards haven’t changed—only the political context has changed, and that’s not a basis to completely reverse course.”
Sane Energy Project director Kim Fraczek also condemned the approval, asserting that "under Gov. Hochul’s leadership, New Yorkers’ voices were silenced to appease President Trump’s fossil fuel priorities."
"Hochul has made it abundantly clear that she will abdicate her responsibility as governor, violate New York’s signature climate law, dismiss the environmental and affordability struggles facing New Yorkers, and bend the knee to Trump for political expediency," Fraczek added.
Roger Downs, conservation director at the Sierra Club’s Atlantic chapter, said, "It is truly a sad day when New York leaders cave to the Trump administration and agree to build pipelines that New Yorkers do not need and cannot afford."
“This decision is an affront to clean water, energy affordability, and a stable climate," Downs added.
Food & Water Watch New York state director Laura Shindell called Hochul's approval "a betrayal of New Yorkers."
“In granting the certification for this pipeline, Gov. Hochul has not only sided with Trump, she’s fast-tracked his agenda," she continued. "Hochul has shown New Yorkers she’d prefer to do Trump’s dirty work rather than protect our waterways from pollution."
"She hasn’t kept her promises to fight against skyrocketing energy bills or the climate crisis," Shindell added. "But New Yorkers will fight Hochul’s dirty pipeline every step of the way—alongside our communities—until it is stopped for good.”
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Mamdani Won New York City, But the Battle for Winning a Working-Class Agenda Has Just Begun
The battle for a more affordable and egalitarian society is just beginning. Leaders like Zohran Mamdani need to gain even deeper traction with working-class voters, no matter how working class is defined and no matter their racial identity—if they want to win.
Nov 07, 2025
It truly is amazing that a Democratic Socialist has become mayor of the largest city in the United States, and that in the first line of his acceptance speech he quoted Eugene V. Debs, the brave socialist labor leader who was imprisoned in 1985 during the Pullman Strike and again in 1918 for his opposition to WWI:
“The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, ‘I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.’”
Mamdani’s youth, charisma, humor, and incredible organizational skills led to this remarkable achievement. He worked hard and he earned it, and so did the many progressive groups that supported him.
Mamdani may have the abilities and the working-class agenda to become a major transformational political leader. Free buses, free childcare, and a rent freeze are concrete and achievable, but the opposition will be fierce, especially as he intends to increase taxes on the rich and corporations to pay for these programs. And powerful landlords will be up in arms. This is the definition of class struggle.
There will be major battles ahead that won’t be settled by Mamdani’s charisma and negotiating skills alone.
Mamdani is operating in the belly of the beast called runaway inequality. It’s nearly impossible to wrap our minds around the wealth that’s concentrated in New York. There are 123 billionaires living in NYC with a combined net worth more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars. And those numbers are surely an underestimate, given the many who have hidden their purchases of luxurious Manhattan apartments using shell companies.
To succeed against the rich and powerful, Mamdani will need a mass movement behind him, and that movement has to include enthusiastic support and the active participation of New York’s working class and labor unions.
Does he already have it? Is his victory the result of overwhelming support from highly educated liberals? Or has his working-class agenda also excited the working class more broadly, the way Eugene Debs did when he received nearly a million votes in his run for president in 1912?
All we have to go by, right now, are the exit polls, which aren’t really designed to include a clear demographic definition of the working class. But there is some suggestive information.
Let’s start with the standard media definition of working class based on education: You are often counted as being in the working class if you don’t have a four-year college degree. By this definition, Mamdani received most of his support from college-educated voters and ran behind Cuomo among working-class voters.
- New Yorkers are well educated: 58 percent of all the voters in this election had a four-year college degree or higher.
- This highly educated group overwhelmingly supported Mamdani over Cuomo, 57 percent to 37 percent.
- But Mamdani ran behind Cuomo among those who never attended college, 41 percent to 48 percent. One out of five voters are in this group.
The picture becomes blurrier if working-class is defined as having a lower income. New York voters are fairly evenly split between those whose family income is less than $100,000 year (58%), and those with $100,000 or more in family income (42%). And Mamdani’s support was identical between the two groups (51%), an almost exact match with his final vote of 51.5 percent.
But a closer look at the income brackets shows that Mamdani didn’t do as well with those with family incomes under $30,000. That group accounts for 16 percent of all voters. They favored Cuomo 50 percent to Mamdani’s 41 percent. But Mamdani won every other income bracket except those with family incomes of $300,000 or more, which he lost to Cuomo 61 percent to 34 percent. No way was a Democratic Socialist going to do well with the group he promised to tax more heavily to pay for his agenda.
Cutting it up into two income slices, Mamdani did slightly better with upper-income voters than lower-income voters. Those with family incomes of less than $50,000 gave 47 percent of their votes to Mamdani, and those with more than $50,000 supported him with 52 percent of their votes.
Revenge of the White Working Class?
Unlike Debs, Mamdani did not come out of the labor movement. He’s well-educated, an Asian immigrant born in Africa, and Muslim. Was that all too much for the allegedly racist white working-class? The exit polls don’t provide the crosstabs to give us definitive answers, but we can get some clues.
Here’s Mamdani’s support by ethnicity (of all educational and income groups):
- White 46 %
- Black 55 %
- Hispanic 49 %
- Asian 61 %
- Other 51 %
It’s hard to point the finger at white racism when support for Mamdani is almost identical between white voters and Hispanic voters. The big outlier is Asian, Mamdani’s own ethnic group.
The breakdown by gender shows less support among white men, but again the gaps are not gigantic:
- White men 43%
- White women 48%
- Black men 60%
- Black women 52%
- Hispanic men 52%
- Hispanic women 48%
Since we don’t know the income or education levels of these white men it’s not possible to see if working-class white men were less supportive, but that’s probably the case given the overall lower Mamdani numbers among those without four-year college degrees. However, while it’s not possible to tease apart racial identity and class when it comes to working-class voters of all shades, nothing big jumps out to suggest that this contest was about racial identity.
Mamdani needs those working-class voters, no matter how working class is defined and no matter what their ethnicity. He’s developed enormous support among liberal, well-educated New Yorkers, and that’s all to the good. But to take on the world’s richest, most powerful elites, that enthusiasm must spread deeply into the working class, where—even in New York—MAGA festers.
There will be major battles ahead that won’t be settled by Mamdani’s charisma and negotiating skills alone. That will require a mass movement in support of the progressive ideas the city’s new mayor campaigned on, the kind of movement New York hasn’t seen since the 1930s. Let’s hope Mamdani can reach even more deeply into the working class to strengthen his support. He’s going to need them.
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Climate Week Showed What’s Possible; Now New York Has to Deliver
The conversations I had suggested very few participants left New York Climate Week with a clear sense of New York State’s potential to lead on climate—and the extent to which we’re failing to meet the moment.
Oct 28, 2025
During the last week of September, as Climate Week turned New York City into a hub of panel discussions, protests, and policy announcements, I felt both inspired and unsettled. It is always energizing to watch tens of thousands of people come together from around the world to discuss solutions, progress, and roadblocks at every level of climate action—from households to national governments—alongside the global leaders convening at the United Nations at the same time.
But as I review what we’re doing here at home, in New York State, to respond to climate change, I’m impatient that we haven’t made more progress—and I’m determined to press our state to step up faster.
While the name “New York Climate Week” suggests a focus on climate action in, around, and by New York State, the topic of what exactly New York is doing to respond to the federal government’s assault on climate programs didn’t come up nearly enough. “States are the frontlines for climate action” was repeated over and over by speakers throughout the week, but the conversations I had suggested very few participants left New York Climate Week with a clear sense of New York State’s potential to lead on climate—and the extent to which we’re failing to meet the moment.
Once upon a time, our state was an early climate leader. In 2019, the organization I now lead, Environmental Advocates NY, worked with a coalition of legislators, partner organizations, labor unions, businesses, and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to enact the nation-leading Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), laying the groundwork for slashing greenhouse gas emissions, building renewable energy, and centering equity in the process. Even as climate denier Donald Trump sat in the White House during his first term, they made history.
Leadership is not measured by the speeches we give or even the laws we pass, but by how we follow through and the impact of our legislation.
A single state might feel small, but what New York does is important. New Yorkers power the world’s eighth-largest economy, if we were a nation. Our government purchases, priorities, and preferences move markets and change corporate behavior. Our energy policy sets an example for the nation, and under the CLCPA we’ve seen real clean energy progress. The Empire Wind project, if it goes forward, will generate 800 megawatts of renewable energy in the current phase and another 1.2 gigawatts in later phases. By last year, solar capacity had reached 6 GW, on the way to our 2030 10 GW solar target. Funding is flowing to climate-resilient infrastructure, green jobs, and innovation.
But we can, and must, do even better.
Overall, we’re only about a quarter of the way to our legally mandated 2030 emissions reduction goals, and our current path won’t get us over the line. We’re approaching 30% renewable energy, which is progress, but we won’t reach our 70% 2030 target. We failed to pass corporate reporting mandates this year, and the state’s top politicians have ground progress to a halt on Cap-and-Invest, the law’s primary revenue generation program.
Every day we delay sets us back. And what’s worse, fossil fuel projects we’ve already rejected are coming back from the dead: Just last month, the environmentally dangerous NESE underwater pipeline moved closer to approval.
New pipelines lock us into a future we can’t afford, and will mean decades more dependence on oil and gas, at the very moment we should be accelerating our clean energy transition. Every dollar we spend expanding fossil fuel infrastructure is one we’re not spending to advance clean power, climate resilience, and real energy independence.
Leadership is not measured by the speeches we give or even the laws we pass, but by how we follow through and the impact of our legislation, by what we choose to build or not build, by what we invest in and what we avoid, by how we make sure everyone benefits from our resilient future.
The good news: We know what we must do.
During Climate Week, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced further details about the historic $1 billion commitment she’s made to the newly created Sustainable Future Fund, which will fund energy efficiency upgrades for homes and schools, clean transportation, new renewable generation, and more.
But the state still hasn’t implemented the much larger (and legally required) Cap-and-Invest program to generate revenue for climate investment. That needs to happen now. We need to redouble our commitment to the clean energy transition, modernize our electrical grid, help the communities carrying the heaviest climate impact burden, and—most importantly—draw a clear line against fossil fuel expansion.
The thousands of climate leaders who filled New York’s streets and stages last month all know that transformation is possible. Our state’s lawmakers and governors have backed them up with rhetoric. The outstanding question: Will New York ramp up our commitment to follow through, and lead?
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