Trump’s appearance in New York’s Hudson Valley region comes as the White House seeks to bolster its economic message following a decline in the president’s approval ratings on economic management. The event will focus on last year’s tax legislation, including a significant expansion of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, a key issue for voters in high-tax states such as New York.

Lawler, who faces a closely watched reelection race in November, has emerged as one of the most vulnerable House Republicans. His district was carried by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, making it one of only a handful of Republican-held seats in Democratic-leaning territory.

The White House said Trump’s remarks at Rockland Community College in Suffern will highlight measures it says have reduced tax burdens for working families and increased household refunds. Administration officials argue that the expanded SALT deduction, raised to $40,000 from the previous $10,000 cap, has delivered substantial tax relief to residents in suburban New York communities.

The president’s visit comes amid growing economic concerns among voters. According to a recent AP-NORC poll, roughly one-third of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, a decline from levels recorded at the beginning of his second term. Rising gasoline prices linked to the conflict with Iran have added pressure to household budgets and complicated the administration’s pledge to lower living costs.

Lawler has closely aligned himself with Trump despite representing a politically divided district. He argues that his legislative record and efforts to secure tax relief have broad appeal beyond the Republican base. The congressman played a prominent role in negotiations surrounding the SALT provision and has made the issue central to his reelection campaign.

Democrats, however, are seeking to frame Trump’s appearance as evidence of Lawler’s support for policies they say have failed to address economic challenges facing middle-class families. Five Democratic candidates are competing in a June 23 primary for the opportunity to challenge Lawler in the general election.

Republican strategists contend that Trump remains popular among GOP voters in the district and believe the visit will help energize supporters ahead of a campaign expected to draw national attention.

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson said internal polling showed the president performing well in competitive districts, while Democratic support had weakened.

Trump formally endorsed Lawler’s reelection bid last year, reinforcing the congressman’s position within the party as Republicans seek to retain control of the House of Representatives.

More than a decade ago, filmmaker Debra Granik met Coss Marte in a diner on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he described an idea that many investors and employers initially dismissed as unrealistic: a fitness business staffed almost entirely by people returning from prison.

Marte, a former drug dealer who had spent years incarcerated before the age of 27, had developed a personal prison-cell workout routine while serving time and emerged with a plan to turn that discipline into a business model. His proposal was simple but unconventional for New York’s boutique fitness market build a gym where formerly incarcerated people would not only find work, but also become trainers, mentors and examples of successful re-entry into society.

That idea became Conbody, a fitness company that now stands as both a business and a social intervention in one of New York City’s most rapidly changing neighborhoods.

It is also the subject of Conbody vs Everybody, Granik’s five-hour documentary series released on the Criterion Channel in the United States, tracing more than a decade of struggle, expansion and institutional resistance around Marte’s effort to create employment pathways away from the prison system.

Granik, known for films such as Winter’s Bone and Leave No Trace, originally intended to make a drama about life after incarceration. Instead, she found in Marte a long-form documentary subject whose personal story reflected broader structural questions about criminal justice, housing, labor access and urban inequality.

“He was defying all the odds,” Granik said, reflecting on their first meeting. Marte’s ambition was not only to avoid returning to prison, but to build an enterprise that could help others avoid the same cycle. “He was using all his energy to not get re-ensnared in the criminal justice system,” she said.

Marte grew up on the Lower East Side as the son of Dominican immigrants. His mother worked in a clothing factory and his father operated a neighborhood bodega. After returning from prison, he found that the area had changed dramatically. Boutique fitness studios were multiplying, rents were rising and wealthier residents were moving into what had long been a working-class immigrant neighborhood.

He recognized both a challenge and an opportunity. He believed affluent customers would pay for intense bodyweight workouts modeled on prison training routines, particularly if the business was framed around second chances and social impact. Conbody marketed its classes with slogans such as “do the time,” combining hard physical training with the personal narratives of its instructors.

Marte proved adept at navigating two worlds at once. He sold customers on the fitness experience while persuading investors to support a business model many viewed as too risky because of its workforce. Some openly questioned whether formerly incarcerated employees could be trusted in a customer-facing environment.

The skepticism reflected a broader contradiction in the startup culture of the mid-2010s, Granik said: the public celebration of entrepreneurship as universally accessible often collapsed when social stigma and financial gatekeeping entered the picture. Investors praised innovation in theory, but many hesitated when the founders or staff had criminal records.

The barriers extended beyond funding. One early Conbody location was forced to move because it shared a building with a preschool, raising objections over the presence of former prisoners nearby. Some employees also faced parole restrictions that made ordinary employment nearly impossible. In certain cases, associating with other formerly incarcerated people could itself violate parole terms, creating what Granik described as institutional mechanisms that made re-entry harder rather than easier.

One of the documentary’s early episodes follows Marte and trainer Sultan Malik trying to help a coworker jailed at Rikers Island over parole violations tied to commuting from Long Island to teach fitness classes in Manhattan. The case highlighted how employment itself could become a legal risk for people trying to rebuild their lives.As the business stabilized financially, the role of Conbody expanded.

It became not only a workplace but also an informal support system for employees navigating housing insecurity, grief and rejection from mainstream employers.The documentary follows Tommy, who after spending 27 years incarcerated struggles to secure stable housing and temporarily sleeps at the gym.

Another trainer, Jamal, faces the loss of his son to gun violence. Syretta, one of the few female instructors and someone rebuilding life after nearly 23 years in prison, works toward ending years of parole supervision while establishing herself professionally in fitness.

Many employees secured interviews with mainstream gyms only to be turned away once criminal background checks were completed. The pattern reinforced a reality Marte frequently confronted: society often speaks of rehabilitation while maintaining barriers that make reintegration financially and socially fragile.

The physical transformation of the Lower East Side runs parallel to the human stories in the documentary. Luxury apartment towers replaced older tenement buildings, and commercial rents surged. Real estate marketing promoted the area as a place “at the intersection of grit and glamour,” while longtime residents and small businesses faced displacement.Conbody itself was forced to relocate after its lease was not renewed.

In one sequence, Marte and his team walk through vacant storefronts where monthly rents ranged from $20,000 to $30,000, figures that placed long-term survival in constant doubt.The documentary also captures one of the decade’s stranger symbols of urban branding: Conbody running a prison-themed fitness pop-up inside Saks Fifth Avenue, complete with chain-link fence imagery and staged “mug shots” for clients.

The luxury retailer reportedly viewed the concept as a way to increase foot traffic and encourage shopping through experiential fitness.For Granik, these moments illustrated gentrification not as an abstract policy term, but as a daily accumulation of notices, rent increases and quiet removals. She said the neighborhood’s transformation became inseparable from the story of re-entry because economic displacement and criminal stigma often reinforced each other.

Politics also entered the family story. Marte’s younger brother, Christopher Marte, became active in organizing against displacement and privatization, later winning election to the New York City Council in 2022 after years of grassroots activism and involvement in Black Lives Matter protests.

Coss Marte, initially more focused on private entrepreneurship than public protest, gradually expanded his own advocacy beyond business. By the end of the documentary, he is visiting prisons across the country, leading fitness classes and speaking directly with incarcerated people about life after release.

He argues that meaningful justice begins not at sentencing reform but at re-entry through immediate work, housing and income rather than symbolic second chances.“I feel like what we’re doing is real justice,” Marte said. “It’s a different justice when you get out and you have a check in week one, instead of $40 and a bus ticket.”In New York, about 188,000 people are released from prison each year, a figure cited throughout the documentary.

Conbody and Marte’s cannabis business, Conbud, employ only dozens of them, but he sees each job as a direct challenge to a system built around permanent exclusion.The team now works with youth in juvenile facilities, trains people inside Rikers Island and continues hiring formerly incarcerated workers. Marte says the goal is not simply employment, but changing how people view those leaving prison.“If they’re seeing somebody come out of the system,” he said, “look at them different and change perceptions.”

Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, both from the Philadelphia area, entered their pleas during a brief court appearance following their arrest over an alleged March 7 incident targeting an anti-Islam demonstration outside Gracie Mansion, according to court filings and statements from federal prosecutors.

Authorities allege the two men traveled from Pennsylvania to New York with the intent to carry out an attack on the protest, which was organized by activist Jake Lang, a critic of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Prosecutors said the defendants deployed two improvised explosive devices containing triacetone triperoxide (TATP) and shrapnel, but the devices failed to detonate.No injuries were reported, and law enforcement officers detained the suspects shortly after the attempted attack.

The mayor and his wife were not present at the residence at the time, officials said.According to a federal complaint, investigators recovered dashcam footage from the suspects’ vehicle in which they allegedly discussed plans to kill as many as 60 people in an effort to “start terror.”

Prosecutors also said the defendants told police they were motivated by the Daesh group.Balat’s legal counsel declined to comment following the hearing, while attorneys representing Kayumi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case highlights ongoing concerns among U.S. authorities over self-radicalized individuals and the use of easily assembled explosive materials such as TATP, which has been used in several past attacks due to its relative accessibility despite its volatility.

The defendants are scheduled to return to court on June 16.

The incident, involving an Air Canada jet and a fire truck at around 11:37 p.m. local time, killed both pilots and has intensified concerns over staffing shortages and operational pressures within U.S. air traffic control.

According to a LaGuardia Tower standard operating procedures document, local air control and ground control roles should not be combined before midnight or within 90 minutes of a shift starting.

The rule was introduced following a 1997 ground collision at the airport and remained in force as of 2026.

Preliminary information suggests that, on the night of the crash, one controller may have been handling both runway operations and ground traffic, a practice inconsistent with those procedures.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it is examining the duties performed by controllers at the time, though it has not confirmed whether roles were combined.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said two controllers were working in the tower: one overseeing active runways and another acting as controller-in-charge while issuing departure clearances.

However, it remains unclear who was responsible for ground traffic management.Audio recordings reviewed by multiple current and former controllers suggest the runway controller may also have been handling ground movements, though this has not been officially confirmed.

Data showed 70 commercial flights operated at LaGuardia between 10 p.m. and the time of the crash, significantly above the average of 53 for that period in recent years, increasing workload complexity.

Controllers cited by Reuters said such traffic levels would typically require additional staffing rather than consolidation of roles. The Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees air traffic control, did not respond to requests for comment.

Investigators have emphasized that aviation accidents generally result from multiple contributing factors rather than a single cause, with the inquiry into the collision ongoing.

Under the new rules, Adams said, mosques will not need a special permit to publicly broadcast the Islamic call to prayer, or adhan, on Fridays and at sundown during the holy month of Ramadan. Friday is the traditional Islamic holy day, and Muslims break their fast at sunset during Ramadan.

The police department’s community affairs bureau will work with mosques to communicate the new guidelines and ensure that devices used to broadcast the adhan are set to appropriate decibel levels, Adams said. Houses of worship can broadcast up to 10 decibels over the ambient sound level, the mayor’s office said.

“For too long, there has been a feeling that our communities were not allowed to amplify their calls to prayer,” Adams said. “Today, we are cutting red tape and saying clearly that mosques and houses of worship are free to amplify their call to prayer on Fridays and during Ramadan without a permit necessary.”

Flanked by Muslim leaders at a City Hall news conference, Adams said Muslim New Yorkers “will not live in the shadows of the American dream while I am the mayor of the city of New York.”

The adhan is a familiar sound in majority-Muslim countries but is heard less frequently in the United States.

Officials in Minneapolis made news last year when they moved to allow mosques to broadcast the adhan publicly.

The adhan declares that God is great and proclaims the Prophet Muhammad as his messenger. It exhorts men — women are not required — to go to the closest mosque five times a day for prayer, which is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

“The sound of the adhan is not just a call to prayer; it is a call to unity, reflection, and community,” Afaf Nasher, the executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement. “We believe that this action will contribute to greater understanding and appreciation of the Muslim community’s values and traditions.”

Somaia Ferozi, principal of the Ideal Islamic School in Queens, said New York City’s new rules send a positive message to her students.

“Our children are reminded of who they are when they hear the adhan,” said Ferozi, who attended Adams’ news conference. “Having that echo in a New York City neighborhood will make them feel part of a community that acknowledges them.”

Adams, a Democrat, enjoys close relationships with faith leaders from various traditions and has promoted the role of religion in public life.

He has at times alarmed civil libertarians by saying he doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state.

“State is the body. Church is the heart,” Adams said at an interfaith breakfast earlier this year. “You take the heart out of the body, the body dies.”

A spokesperson for the mayor said at the time that Adams merely meant that faith guides his actions.

Qatar allegedly skirted U.S. sanctions on Hamas and PIJ by enlisting several of its charitable organizations in a scheme to funnel funds to the terror groups.

Qatar secretly provided funding for several terror attacks that killed Americans and Israelis, according to allegations leveled in an unprecedented new lawsuit filed in New York City on Wednesday that seeks compensation for the families of those killed.

Multiple Qatari financial institutions, largely controlled by the country’s ruling monarch, provided millions of dollars to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), two U.S.-designated terrorist organizations that waged multiple successful attacks on American citizens, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. As part of this alleged funding scheme, Qatari charities allegedly used the U.S. banking system to illegally funnel these groups the money necessary to orchestrate and conduct the attacks.

As Hamas’s most prolific funder, “Qatar coopted several institutions that it dominates and controls to funnel coveted U.S. dollars (the chosen currency of Middle East terrorist networks) to Hamas and PIJ under the false guise of charitable donations,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act and has been in the works for the last two years.

Revelations of Qatar’s alleged involvement in these terror plots is likely to fuel ongoing congressional investigations into Qatar’s support for terror factions and other anti-U.S. militia groups. Qatar’s involvement with these groups has also been a source of tension with its regional neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt—all of which cut ties with the regime in 2017 due to its support for terrorism.

The lawsuit was filed by American attorney Steven Perles, who has prosecuted several notable terrorism cases filed on behalf of the families and victims of these terror attacks. The current case includes among its plaintiffs the family of Taylor Force, an American military veteran killed by Hamas in 2016.

“In addition to holding those who have financed terrorism accountable, this case should serve as a strong deterrent to others who might consider similar activities,” Perles told the Free Beacon.

American victims of terrorism have won similar cases in the past, including the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks and those killed by Iran. Earlier this year, American victims of the 1983 attack on a U.S. embassy compound in Lebanon were awarded $1.5 billion in damages. Other cases, however, have dragged on for years with no end in sight. In many instances it has been difficult for the legal system to extract funds from malign regimes and their supporters.

Qatar allegedly skirted U.S. sanctions on Hamas and PIJ by enlisting several of its charitable organizations in a scheme to funnel funds to the terror groups. As with many other terror financing cases, it was critical this money be provided in U.S. dollars.

The lawsuit specifically targets Qatar Charity, which was founded in 1992 as Qatar Charitable Society. The organization serves as “a key funding source for international terrorists” and is believed to have been a major source of funding for deceased terror leader Osama bin Laden.

Qatar Charity allegedly worked with Masraf Al Rayan bank and Qatar National Bank to forward Hamas and PIJ millions of dollars, according to the lawsuit. Both banks “were essential to provide access to the U.S. financial system to obtain the U.S. dollars needed to sustain Hamas’s and PIJ’s terrorist activities,” the lawsuit states. The banks and charity group are largely controlled by members of Qatar’s royal family.

Masraf Al Rayan bank is currently under investigation in the United Kingdom for helping Qatar Charity send money to Hamas and PIJ.

After funneling the charitable donations through banks located in New York, the money was allegedly transferred to Qatar Charity’s accounts at the Bank of Palestine and the Islamic Bank in Ramallah, where the funds were then distributed to affiliates of Hamas and PIJ.

Between March and September 2015, at least $28 million dollars was distributed by Qatar Charity to its affiliates in Palestinian-controlled territories, according to the lawsuit. Internal documents from Qatar Charity noted in the lawsuit further indicate that it transferred funds to Hamas and PIJ fronts from at least 2013.

It is alleged that these funds directly aided at least six terror attacks conducted by Hamas and PIJ operatives between 2014 and 2016. This includes multiple car-ramming attacks in Israel, in which terrorists drove vehicles into crowds of people, killing several American citizens. Others were kidnapped and stabbed by Hamas operatives in and around Israel.

The most prominent plaintiff is the family of Taylor Force, whose name is attached to legislation passed by Congress in 2017 that blocks American aid to the Palestinian Authority due to its policy of using this cash to pay convicted terrorists and their families. Nine other families also are included in the lawsuit.

Article first published on FreeBeacon.