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NY TAKES BABY STEPS TOWARD FREE CHILD CARE  
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Jessica Gould, Jimmy Vielkind, Andrew Giambrone and Walter Wuthmann
January 9, 2026
Gothamist

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_ The launch of “2-Care” will start in “high-need areas,”
building on the city’s existing pre-K and 3-K programs. NYS
socialist legislators want to 'tax the rich' to raise the billions
that a full implementation will require. _

New York socialist lawmakers are looking to deliver on the promises
made in Zohran Mamdani's winning campaign for NYC mayor, Courtesy of
NYS Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest

 

1 HOCHUL & MAMDANI ANNOUNCE PUSH FOR FREE CHILD CARE FOR NYC
2-YEAR-OLDS

2. NEW YORK SOCIALIST LAWMAKERS, INSPIRED BY MAMDANI’S WIN, AIM TO
SEIZE ON NEW SESSION

HOCHUL & MAMDANI ANNOUNCE PUSH FOR FREE CHILD CARE FOR NYC 2-YEAR-OLDS

_JESSICA GOULD_ [[link removed]]_, __JIMMY
VIELKIND_ [[link removed]]_ AND __ANDREW
GIAMBRONE_ [[link removed]]_ /
__GOTHAMIST_
[[link removed]]_
/ JAN. 8, 2026_
New York City children as young as 2 years old could get access to
free child care under a proposal Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran
Mamdani unveiled Thursday.

The launch of “2-Care” will start in “high-need areas,”
officials said, building on the city’s existing pre-K and 3-K
programs. The expansion is one part of a multipronged plan to increase
state support for child care, which the Democratic governor said is
needed to control rising costs of living and keep people in the
workforce.

“Families have been crying out for help,” Hochul said at the
Flatbush YMCA. “If we can take this stress point off the plate of
all the other struggles they have, my friends, then we are making New
York state and New York City the best places in the nation to live, to
raise a family, to grow a business and to prosper.”

Hochul said Thursday that the state would fully fund the first two
years of the city’s 2-Care program. She also announced funding to
extend pre-kindergarten programs around the state, expand pre-K and
3-K in New York City, and increase the amount of funding for the
state’s existing child care subsidy program.

The plan represents one of the first major moves Hochul and Mamdani
are making together to address the city's affordability crisis. It
comes in the first few days of the Mamdani administration and as
Hochul seeks re-election. Mamdani campaigned for mayor on delivering
free child care for kids between 6 weeks and 5 years old, which he has
estimated would cost about $6 billion a year.

“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,” Mamdani
said.

Mamdani said he expects the first 2-Care programs will launch in the
fall with 2,000 slots and initially cost $75 million. A city official
said the new slots would be through an expansion of the city’s
current practice of contracting with home-based providers and day care
centers. Mamdani promised to make the program universal, serving all
families who want a slot for their 2-year-olds, by the end of his
administration. Advocates have said a truly universal 2-Care program
would have to serve 60,000 children.

Rebecca Bailin, executive director of the organization New Yorkers
United for Child Care, called it “a historic moment for New York
families.”

“By bringing together the governor and mayor around a shared
commitment to child care, tens of thousands of families could finally
get the relief they desperately need,” she said in a statement
Thursday.

Significant questions remain.

The expansion was announced days after the Trump administration froze
about $3.6 billion in federal child care subsidies
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for the state. The state is also grappling with federal cuts to health
care funding.

“The state really needs to be concerned not only about
affordability, and that is a major issue, but also our competitiveness
and our outmigration,” said Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens
Budget Commission, a fiscal watchdog. He warned against raising taxes
and suggested the state should redirect spending from other areas.

Hochul’s office said the total cost of the new child care
pre-kindergarten investments is $1.7 billion, which would be funded
with “pre-existing resources.” Democrats including Mamdani have
called on the state to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for the
program.

Hochul said state receipts were up, and that she would include more
details in a budget presentation scheduled for Jan. 20.

“We have managed our finances quite well,” she said. “We have
been smart about setting aside money to be able to fund some of my
ambitious plans, but within our means.”

NEW YORK SOCIALIST LAWMAKERS, INSPIRED BY MAMDANI’S WIN, AIM TO
SEIZE ON NEW SESSION
_WALTER WUTHMANN_ [[link removed]]_ /
__GOTHAMIST_
[[link removed]]_
/ JAN. 7, 2026_

The democratic socialists in the New York state Legislature are
returning to Albany for the start of the new session with one fewer
member but possibly more clout than ever.

Former state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s rise from socialist
backbencher to mayor of the nation’s largest city shocked political
observers and thrust his affordability agenda into the spotlight.
Mamdani’s former colleagues say they’re now trying to capitalize
on the moment.

“I can feel the whole movement locking in,” said state Sen. Jabari
Brisport of Brooklyn. After years of talking about taxing the rich and
universal child care, he said, “we are in a political moment where
we can actually seize this opportunity and push really far on those
fronts.”

This session will test whether Mamdani and the handful of state
lawmakers aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America can gain
widespread support for their policies. Those include raising taxes on
the state’s highest earners to pay for priorities like universal
child care and free buses, which Mamdani campaigned on delivering in
New York City, even as they will require state-level backing.

The group of eight lawmakers, who are part of the DSA and collectively
known as Albany’s “socialists in office,” makes up just a tiny
portion of the 213-member Legislature. They count their major
legislative victories
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passing clean energy investments and raising the minimum wage.

The coalition is supporting a suite of bills
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to raise billions of dollars in new revenue by taxing affluent New
Yorkers and corporations. For example, the “Fair Share Act,”
sponsored by Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest of Brooklyn, would
add a 2% surcharge on people making over $1 million in income a year.

Souffrant Forrest estimates the proposal could raise $4 billion in new
annual revenue.

“ We have bills, we have tax ideas,” she said in an interview.
“It's really just finding out which one we can really work with,
with the climate that we have currently.”

Previous plans for taxing wealthy New Yorkers have been stymied at the
state level. While both chambers of the Legislature have previously
supported an income-tax hike, Gov. Kathy Hochul has called the issue a
“non-starter
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Business groups say higher taxes will cause high earners to leave the
state.

But in recent weeks Hochul has signaled
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she may be open to increasing the state’s corporate tax rate.
Mamdani and the DSA-aligned lawmakers have proposed
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raising that rate, but Hochul has not specifically backed the bill.

One goal these legislators and the governor share is enacting a
universal child care program. Mamdani made the promise of free child
care a key focus of his mayoral campaign. Hochul pledged to “put our
state on a pathway to universal child care” as part of her State of
the State address last year.

But the socialist lawmakers say they see a tough fight ahead.

“The need for child care is in the billions,” Brisport said. That
deficit grew larger this week when the Trump administration froze $10
billion
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in child care subsidies to Democratic-led states, including New York.

Brisport argues the only way to raise enough revenue is by increasing
taxes on high earners and corporations.

“I know the governor has been hoping for a unicorn to come through
and pay for it, but there is no other way out but to raise revenue,”
he said.

Mamdani’s campaign volunteers have pledged
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to continue organizing to help the new mayor win support for the
policies that have floundered in Albany for years. Brisport said that
will take the form of mobilizing “hundreds if not thousands of New
Yorkers to knock doors of thousands of other New Yorkers and get them
to put pressure on their legislators and the governor to tax the rich
for universal child care.”

All but one of the DSA-aligned state lawmakers represent parts of New
York City. Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, who represents the area
around Kingston, said her mid-Hudson Valley district “is one of the
most fired-up parts of the state” in terms of supporting progressive
policies.

Shrestha, the first New York state legislator of Nepali origin, said
her election in 2022 is proof the DSA’s messaging resonates across
the state. “There was the same sort of scare tactics: socialist,
DSA, not from here, etc.,” she said. “None of that worked.”

Assemblymember Emily Gallagher of Brooklyn, another member of the
coalition, said she hopes Mamdani’s election will encourage people
to join their progressive movement.

“Because it is popular, and it will be effective, and we need all
hands on deck,” she said.

 

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