OPINION

Even if the MTA gets the new federal bailout it’s hoping for, it’s going to have to seriously retrench, warn the fiscal watchdogs of the Citizens Budget Commission. That means revamping its $55 billion modernization plan as well as hikes to fares and tolls. The agency wants another $4 billion from Congress, but its projected revenue shortfalls are now $8.4 billion to $12.6 billion through the end of 2021. And it also clearly won’t be collecting congestion-pricing fees this year, as once planned. Yet it faces new expenses for amped-up cleaning, as well as retrofitting of buses to protect drivers. So the MTA faces some very tough decisions — as does its workforce. It’s already got a hefty debt load, so fresh borrowing must be a last resort, the CBC warns. Fare and toll hikes will be n

Members of the military, uniformed and civilian, are strictly prohibited from engaging in overt political activities. Those rules exist to keep them focused on their mission — defending the nation. But apparently, someone in the US Army’s Equity and Inclusion Agency has forgotten the rules. With a course titled “Operation Inclusion,” the agency is promoting the line that if you support enforcing immigration law, or say things like “all lives matter,” then you’re a white supremacist. GOP Rep. Mo Brooks blew the lid when he learned the agency had organized two seminars to re-educate all of the uniformed and civilian personnel at Redstone Arsenal, Ala. Brooks demanded an immediate investigation into “Army personnel illegally using federal government resources to distribute racist and p

Vladimir Putin’s hackers are at it again — this time trying to steal Western coronavirus research. Russian group APT29, aka The Dukes and Cozy Bear, has been hacking medical researchers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, five intelligence agencies from the three countries announced Thursday — an ongoing “campaign of malicious activity” aimed at “stealing information and intellectual property relating to the development and testing of Covid-19 vaccines.” Cozy Bear accessed Democratic National Committee systems in the 2016 election, and it’s using some of the same tactics now, with dangerous additions — namely, new malware to infect computers and then upload and download files from them. The hacking hasn’t harmed vaccine research — yet. But it could impose big costs

Every day makes it more obvious that facts just don’t matter to the cop-bashers and the politicians who cater to them. Police Commissioner Dermot Shea gamely told the truth again Thursday, calling out state and city lawmakers for “going too far” to “handcuff” the NYPD. “I think we’ve crossed a tipping point on many levels in terms of taking tools away from the police that maybe these last two months it’s just a completely different situation where it’s a toxic environment,” Shea told CNN. see also Police searching for foursome that torched NYPD vehicle

Education beat: Don’s Bid for Suburban Moms At the Washington Examiner, Bethany Mandel notes how liberal parents who back school reopenings think President Trump’s supportive comments hurt their case, at least among the left — because the left is so anti-Trump. Yet he might have been playing electoral politics: He knows which voters “hold the Holy Grail to his re-election: suburban white women,” who want their kids in school and learning, not “sitting in front of a computer screen pretending to learn.” Nor do these moms want to be forced to choose between their kids’ education and their jobs. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has pledged support to the teachers’ unions, which parents see as “in conflict” with their children’s best interests. Biden’s move may prove “a fateful error come November.

The Goya Foods boycott is an insult to Hispanics, America’s largest minority group. Politicians and pundits — some Hispanic, many others painfully woke-white — are calling for a boycott of the largest Hispanic food manufacturer and distributor in the nation, a company that employs more than 4,000 people. The Bodega and Small Business Association, which represents thousands of New York City bodegas, is not taking this lying down. We are urging our stores and customers to stock up on all of Goya’s great products. We are calling for a Goya buycott. It all began after Bob Unanue, Goya’s CEO, committed the grave sin this month of praising President Trump. As The New York Times reported, the backlash surged following Unanue’s recent visit to the White House, where he dared to suggest that

It isn’t really about Bari Weiss. The mob inside The New York Times didn’t target Weiss, an opinion editor and writer there since 2017, for cancellation to get her specifically — though her smart writing and editing surely didn’t endear her to some of the third-rate digital-media hacks and ­talentless millennials who ­enjoyed the pursuit of this journalistic star on the rise due to their loathsome envy. As Weiss detailed in a widely read public resignation letter on Tuesday, she left her job after constant bullying by more left-wing colleagues (the vast majority) that included underhanded gossip, anti-Semitic innuendo and public attacks against her that would never have been tolerated had she been the one meting them out. She also described an atmosphere of pervasive ideological int

Pandemic desk: Cuomo by Gaslight(ing) Gov. Cuomo’s order forcing New York nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients was “one of the deadliest mistakes of the coronavirus crisis” — yet, grimaces National Review’s David Harsanyi, he has “among the highest approval ratings of any governor.” How? Cuomo-loving establishment-media types fawned over his “allegedly successful pandemic ­response,” despite numbers that are the “worst in the country” and “some of the worst in the world.” Now they are praising Cuomo, because Gotham had zero coronavirus deaths on Sunday — “tantamount to declaring New York victorious on 9/12 because no one died in the city that day.” No amount of “gaslighting” from the governor’s sycophants, however, will “change the fact that Cuomo-led New York was an utte

New York City is in a steep recession, with about 850,000 jobs lost over the past year, most owing to the novel-coronavirus lockdowns. Some of these job losses will be temporary and will return as ­restrictions are lifted and businesses reopen. But the longer that takes, the more businesses will fail — and the more job losses will become permanent. We’ll need to create new jobs for those who can’t simply return to their old ones. Rethinking zoning is central to this task. In good times, the city’s workforce — particularly people without a college education — relied on industries that have taken a direct hit, ­including hotels, restaurants and retail. These job losses also affect the city’s real estate, where vacancies have risen and once-inflated values have plummeted. City tax reve

In yet another sign that idealistic protests have given way to mindless destruction, vandals over the weekend targeted two statues of … the Virgin Mary. It was graffiti in Elmhurst, Queens: “IDOL” spray-painted across her skirt in the early morning outside the Cathedral Preparatory School and Seminary on 92nd Street. And arson in Dorchester, Mass.: a statue outside of Saint Peter’s Parish damaged by burns to the face, hands and arms. Fr. John Currie, the pastor, was “disappointed” by the desecration, noting, “Our image of our lady is so important to us in our faith.” Maybe these are simply anti-Catholic bigots who figure they might as well join in on the attacks against monuments. Maybe the perps pretend they’re somehow forwarding the Black Lives Matter message — after all, BL