A UB student died last year of injuries sustained in a fire in an attic bedroom later deemed "illegal." Landlord Joseph Parlato has a history of violations and failure to pay taxes and fees.
Read Adam Smith-Perez’s report:
https://investigativepost.org/2026/06/08/site-of-fatal-fire-goes-to-housing-court/
Every election cycle, a certain type of argument makes the rounds on what exactly Democrats need to do to win in November. The advice typically includes some variation of: move to the right. Ignore your base, and aim for the center. Triangulate until you have no discernable policy positions or personality of your own.
Much of this advice comes from centrist or Republican pundits — what the podcast Citations Needed called “the Inexplicable Republican Best Friend,” always on hand to offer guidance to their political opponents. (As co-host Adam Johnson put it, it’s like someone saying, “I’m an ice cream man and I think the solution is to buy more ice cream.”) This week, we got a special new case in The Atlantic courtesy of Nathaniel Frum (son of Atlantic editor and former George W. Bush speechwriter David), who argued that Dems just need to learn how to talk about sports. Below, we run through some classics of the genre.
By learning how to talk about sports
Per Frum, Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico could “prove that he’s a regular guy” and get positive attention by dunking on Arch Manning, scion of the uber popular Manning football family.
By going on more bro-y podcasts
There was clearly one simple diagnosis for Kamala Harris’ crushing defeat to Trump in 2024: Democrats had to find a “Joe Rogan of the left” and win back young (white) men.
Like defunding the police
Democrats are often accused of being weak on crime and anti-police — stances that purportedly cost them votes in the 2022 and 2024 elections. But a vanishingly small number of elected Democrats ever argued for defunding the police (it’s worth noting that those who did also made the case for reallocating that money towards public safety initiatives). Famously, Joe Biden earned loud applause at the 2022 State of the Union with his call to “fund the police.”
Like being so dang woke
Self-professed liberal Bill Maher is among the many voices often calling for Democrats to ditch their “woke” obsession with allowing trans women to play women’s sports and “put[ting] race at the front of everything.” In reality, Democrats rarely campaign on promoting trans rights, and prominent figures in the party from Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) to California Gov. Gavin Newsom have adapted GOP talking points when speaking out against trans women and girls being allowed to play women’s sports.
Like anti-abortion candidates
New York Times columnist Ezra Klein thinks being a big tent party means running and supporting anti-abortion candidates, in a post-Roe era when reproductive healthcare is all but inaccessible in large swaths of the country. Klein made this case last fall, even after ballot measures protecting or expanding access to the procedure passed and drove massive voter turnout in states across the country. As Jessica Valenti put it, “To single out abortion, of all things, as the place for compromise is to ignore the political reality of the last three years.”
This week, I finally installed the AI detection software Pangram in my browser. For months, I’d been intrigued by social media users who’d post about analyses they’d done on suspected AI text. Then there were the AI scandals that made headline news: Hatchett’s cancelled publication of the novel Shy Girl after Pangram showed it was likely to have been written with AI, the pope’s X account flagged by Pangram for a suspected AI-generated tweet, a Modern Love column in the New York Times determined to be AI by a researcher using Pangram. At first the narrative appeared relatively positive. With much hand-wringing over the future viability of human-written text in a world of AI, here was finally a tool humans could use to fight back. Previous AI detection software had been spotty enough to apparently determine the Declaration of Independence was AI. Pangram, meanwhile, boasts an accuracy rate of 99.98%. In the hands of responsible administrators, it could potentially offer an effective deterrent to AI writing — not all that different from the anti-plagiarism software of the early 2000s. But in a digital world supposedly awash in AI-generated text, what would happen if everyone had access to this tool? What if we all started using Pangram to do our own analyses of what is AI and what is human? And how does this thing even work?
Pangram is itself an AI, part of a long tradition in Silicon Valley of offering up more technology as a solution to problems their technology created. The simple explanation of how it works is that it is trained on datasets of both human and LLM-produced text to determine the probability of each individual input (e.g. word or punctuation mark) belonging to a human or AI. Based on the probability of each input appearing in particular order over the course of the entire document, Pangram provides a likelihood that the author is human, AI, or somewhere in between. For example, if a human might use an em dash 50% of the time, an LLM might use it 90% of the time. The more inputs you have to compare, the more accurate the detection. And Pangram is, by most accounts, accurate. The company claims a false positive rate of only 1/10,000 and my own efforts to trick it have so far been unsuccessful. It correctly identified all 10 writing samples in the New York Times AI vs human writers quiz, something I could annoyingly not do. Even running AI-generated texts through “humanizers” — AI tools used to replace LLM tropes with more natural language — didn’t help avoid detection (others have apparently had more success). This all seemed promising, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that using Pangram to detect AI text wasn’t all that dissimilar to using an LLM to generate text. In both cases I was dropping text into a black-box and waiting on the results.
With Pangram installed in the browser, the experience of using the tool changes. Instead of copy and pasting text into the app, you simply highlight and right click on what you’re reading for an on-the-spot analysis. When you browse social platforms like X, Substack and Reddit, that analysis is automated so that users and posts are identified as human or AI as you scroll through the feed. This might be as dystopian as Richard Deckard scanning for replicants, but it’s also boring and not the least bit empowering. We already know that our feeds and search results are stuffed with spam and slop, whether AI-generated or not. AI detection is only really interesting when there is a human on the other end, either intending to deceive or being accused of deception. And it’s here where the narrative around Pangram starts to shift.
Last Sunday, the Atlantic ran a headline stating that America Has A Pangram Problem. Considering that the Atlantic was one of the foremost publications to buy into the benefits of Pangram, this caught my intention. The problem, according to writer Matteo Wong, is that Pangram’s accuracy has emboldened users to conduct witch hunts for AI using Pangram and cite the results as evidence. He points to a recent case where journalist Taylor Lorenz was accused of using AI after a Pangram scan, only to be later vindicated when she was able to show her edit history (ironically, Lorenz had recently declared Substack inundated with AI after she had performed a Pangram analysis of the platform). Wong also mentions efforts by Pangram users to highlight passages in Pope Leo’s AI-skeptical encyclical that may have been written with AI, accusations that the Vatican, of course, denies.
In addition to the bad-faith actions empowered by Pangram, there are also technical and conceptual problems with AI detection. LLMs evolve quickly, always toward the aim of appearing more human. It’s unlikely that tools like Pangram can keep pace, a prospect Wong likens to “building a sandcastle at low tide.” Conceptually, AI-detection might be too far downstream of where the biases of the LLM have the most influence on the writer, like during research. Finally, there is the question of how much people even care that something was AI-generated. It might feel rude or icky to encounter AI during what you thought were personal exchanges, but when it comes to art, studies continue to show that people prefer AI to humans — a finding writer Max Read explains by suggesting that people just like bad art, which seems undeniably true.
What Pangram appears to have accomplished is at least temporary proof that AI can be effectively used to identify other AI. But the product marketed to users has a slightly different objective. If Pangram really wanted to rein in AI bot slop, it would sell to the platforms, not the users. The reason that they don’t isn’t just that most platforms have little incentive to filter out AI, it’s that what Pangram is selling isn’t AI detection but agency. The AI companies have convinced us that AI is smarter than we are and thus a convenient tool for deception. Pangram sells us a false security of being able to root out deception.
In F is For Fake, Orson Welles’s excellent documentary essay on fakery, Welles explains that as long as there are fakers, there have to be experts. He then asks: but if there weren’t any experts, would there be any fakers? I doubt we’ll ever find out.
Progressive political commentator and strategist turned Unusual Take Haver Briahna Joy Gray: “I believe myself to be COVID vaccine-injured.”
Congressman Andy Ogles may be an avowed Islamophobe, but don’t you dare accuse him of being homophobic. The Tennessee Republican got into some hot water this week for kicking off Pride Month with a post on X declaring that “homosexuality has no place in America.” After bipartisan criticism, Ogles deleted it, blaming a comms staffer for the message, which he called “stupid, hurtful and a complete distraction from my America First focus,” and claimed he only heard about “while working on [his farm].” The old “scapetern” excuse might have been more effective if Ogles didn’t have such a long record of making inflammatory statements on social media. In March, for example, he posted, “Muslims don’t belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie.”
In the lead-up and aftermath of his appearance at the “Remigration Summit 2026” in Portugal last weekend, former Customs and Border Protection commander Greg Bovino gave interviews to:
So you can imagine the kinds of people who actually organized and attended the conference. Freelance journalist Christopher Mathias broke it all down for TPM in a new piece this week, and joined us on Substack Live to talk more about Bovino’s whole deal.
1) Who is the CBS employee fired this week for speaking out against Bari Weiss’ takeover of the news network?
2) What jobs does Bill Pulte hold in the second Trump administration, including a new one announced just this week?
3) What is the name for the (confusing) style of primary election they use in California?
4) Which former Trump official this week agreed to a plea deal over his retention of classified information?
Answers below
Trivia answers: 1) Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” 2) Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now also Acting Director of National Intelligence. 3) Jungle primary 4) John Bolton
DAYS THE BUDGET IS LATE: 57
BRIDGING THE GAP: The debate over Israel is proving to be a wedge issue in the competitive primary between Rep. Dan Goldman and former city Comptroller Brad Lander. But the incumbent, who’s fighting for his political life, is making the argument that he and his challenger aren’t so different on the issue after all.
“We are both progressive Zionists who believe in Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, and we both support a two-state solution to bring peace to the region,” Goldman said earlier today on a WNYC candidate forum. “It's disappointing to me that he's using this dog whistle attack, when in reality we really do share the same core principles.”
Lander — who, like Goldman, is Jewish and a Democrat — has positioned himself as more critical of Israel than the incumbent, and some in the party’s progressive wing have sided with him because of it. Lander and his supporters have repeatedly criticized Goldman for his ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group that has become a major player in elections on both sides of the aisle — and a subject of intense debate — especially as the public has an increasingly negative view of Israel.
Progressives have targeted AIPAC in their messaging, a strategy Lander has also embraced. Goldman “can't unrig the system because he's part of this system, he takes money from Wall Street, from private equity, from crypto, from AIPAC,” Lander argued at the forum.
Like Goldman, some have raised concerns about the criticism of AIPAC, which has a mixed record in races it gets involved in. In an interview with POLITICO, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, one of a handful of Jewish governors, said he thinks the arguments against AIPAC spending have “been used cynically by some to try and silence certain voices, to try and say that certain people participating in politics shouldn’t count or should be viewed in a toxic way.”
Goldman, who is endorsed by AIPAC, has said he returned the money from the organization. And four weeks out from the primary, there’s no indication that AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC is going to spend in it.
Still, Israel remains a prominent issue in the race — no matter how much Goldman attempts to neutralize it. Last month, the incumbent rolled out an ad denouncing President Donald Trump and Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Iran.
Public polling in the district, which covers parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, has been scarce. But a recent Emerson College survey found Lander leading Goldman by more than 30 points. Lander is endorsed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani — whom Goldman did not support during the mayoral election — the Working Families Party and a slew of progressive officials and organizations. Goldman has the backing of Gov. Kathy Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, along with more than a dozen unions. Goldman also recently received the support of Hasidic leaders from Brooklyn’s Borough Park enclave.
As for Goldman and Lander’s similarities on Israel, the challenger pushed back, pointing to Goldman having “voted for every single U.S. military aid package to Israel.” In a back-and forth during the forum about the boycott, divest and sanctions movement — which both Goldman and Lander said they do not support — Goldman said he agrees with Lander that “Israelis aren't going to be safe until Palestinians are free,” to which the challenger retorted: “You don’t do anything to make it happen.”
“I believe in the vision of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, but it's not acting consistently with Jewish or democratic values right now, and it can't while it keeps occupying the West Bank and Gaza, and imposing apartheid on Palestinians,” Lander said. “The differences here are strong. If people want someone who is really going to fight to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, to make it so that Jewish New Yorkers and Muslim New Yorkers can work together instead of be divided from each other, and try to address the failures of U.S. foreign policy, the choice is clear.”
Much of the forum focused on Israel. When asked if he would vote for the “Block the Bombs Act,” which would prohibit the sale or transfer of military equipment to Israel until the country guarantees compliance with international law, Goldman said it is “not going to come to a vote, because it was written last summer as an effort to support a ceasefire, which was reached in October, and our laws enforce international human rights law already.” When pressed again, he said the legislation has “been overtaken by events, and I think there are other issues with ‘Block the Bombs’” but also that we need to "aggressively enforce international law against Bibi Netanyahu.”
Lander has called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide.” Goldman said today it’s “really important that we move away from labels and terminology, especially for legal terms, and focus on how we can arrive at a two-state peaceful solution.”
The incumbent also expressed regret for voting to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) in 2023 over her criticism of Israel, saying “there are better ways of dealing with that that I wish I had pursued” and “it was a very emotional time and sometimes emotion gets the best of you.”
“This is an incredibly, incredibly emotional issue right now for very, very many people, and what I'm worried about is that it is dividing all of us; it is dividing Muslims and Jews, it is dividing Jews,” Goldman said. “This is part of the reason why I disagree a little bit about what the critical issues are in this race. The critical issues are the ones facing the voters, and those are not necessarily what's going on 6,000 miles away, it's what's going on at their kitchen tables.” — Madison Fernandez
REDISTRICTING REDUX: New York Democrats are expected to introduce bills by Friday to pave the way for new congressional lines in 2028, according to four people familiar with the talks.
Officials are weighing two constitutional amendments — one that would allow some minor tweaks, and another that would permit an aggressive Democratic gerrymander, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door conversations.
New York’s cumbersome process to change the state constitution restricts Democrats from redrawing House boundaries in time for the 2026 midterm elections. But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklyn Democrat, has made his home state’s House lines part of a broader, longer-term strategy to pick up seats in the closely divided chamber.
“This is a potentially existential matter for our democracy in the ‘28 elections,” said Assemblymember Micah Lasher, a Democratic House candidate who previously proposed an amendment to allow for mid-decade redistricting. “There’s a broad understanding that in the redistricting arms race New York can’t be on the sidelines.”
Read more from POLITICO Bill Mahoney and Nick Reisman.
HOCHUL BACKS ALT ROCK BAND: The governor’s press shop sent out a release today that heaped effusive and exuberant praise on a ‘90s rock band.
The missive — uncharacteristic of the staid memos typically dispatched by the gov’s press shop — was sent to promote a state-sponsored watch party on Long Island for the U.S. vs. Paraguay World Cup match on June 12, which will feature a pregame concert from Third Eye Blind, or 3EB.
“Participation in the older, untouchable realm of nervous star-making could color a band's identity,” the governor’s office said. “In the case of 3EB, it often blurred the perception of their brilliant musical creations.”
It’s unclear if the band behind hits like "Semi-Charmed Life" and "Jumper,” which formed in San Francisco, feel the same way about the governor. In 2016, 3EB made headlines when their lead singer said he “repudiates” the Republican party and called Donald Trump’s then-presidential campaign deplorable. But there’s no record of him expressing similar passion — either in support or opposition — for New York’s 57th governor.
“3EB won wide success during a tumultuous group of years when the major-label recording industry was finally losing its grip on an enterprise that for decades it had dominated with steely efficiency,” Hochul’s office also said. “3EB now write, tour, record, and communicate in a fluid new world where their music continues to evolve naturally. Their exchange with their audience is unfiltered and being from the hub of tech, they are using it to develop a closer connection with their audience.”
Perhaps 3EB can release an updated version of its 2000 single “10 Days Late” to inspire lawmakers as they scramble to wrap up the nearly two-month late state budget. — Jason Beeferman
SHARPE SUBMITS: Libertarian Larry Sharpe has filed to run for the “Coalition Party” in this year’s gubernatorial campaign, making him the only candidate seeking to run without major party support.
The odds are long he’ll actually make the ballot — a reality he’s more than willing to concede.
“It doesn’t matter, we’re never going to make it. We’re going to be in lawsuits,” Sharpe said when asked how many signatures he submitted.
One individual familiar with the filing said he believes Sharpe submitted 1,600 of the required 45,000 signatures.
Third parties have become all but extinct in major races in New York since former Gov. Andrew Cuomo hiked the signature threshold from 15,000 in 2019. “Bobby Kennedy Jr. spent a million dollars,” Sharpe said of the now-health secretary’s 2024 presidential campaign. “He’s a fucking Kennedy and he couldn’t get on.”
The only other candidate to file for an additional ballot line in November was Bruce Blakeman, who submitted to add the “Vote Affordable” line to the Republican and Conservative ones he’s already running under. His campaign told the New York Post he submitted 66,345 signatures — not quite the number most experts say is needed to make a candidate immune from challenges. — Bill Mahoney
RAISING HELL: City Council member Shahana Hanif is under fire from critics for declaring on social media last night that two fellow Muslim women critical of Mayor Zohran Mamdani should be “condemned to Jahannam,” the Islamic concept of hell.
But Hanif, the first Muslim woman elected to the Council, says the criticism against her is overblown — and potentially bigoted.
“Let’s be serious: ‘Go to hell’ is a pretty common expression of frustration or disappointment … but the moment Arabic enters the conversation, suddenly people will act like I said something far more sinister,” Hanif told Playbook today.
Hanif delivered the broadside in an X post last night criticizing the two women, Anila Ali and Zeba Zebunnesa, for participating in a protest held outside Gracie Mansion to call on Gov. Kathy Hochul to remove Mamdani from office over the claim that he’s not doing enough to combat antisemitism.
“May Allah condemn you to Jahannam,” Hanif wrote in the post, which was responding to a message from Ali saying she and Zebunnesa were on their way to the Gracie demonstration.
Ali and Zebunnesa are organizers with a group called American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council.
In the Quran, Jahannam is portrayed as a place of divine justice where sinners are sent to face punishment in the afterlife. Broken into seven descending levels reserved for different groups of sinners, Jahannam is considered the Islamic equivalent of hell, with punishments becoming more extreme the deeper one goes.
Elchanan Poupko, a rabbi and social media commentator, said Hanif crossed “a red line” with her tweet.
“Why is @ShahanaFromBK, an elected official, using religion for targeted harassment against a Muslim woman @anilaali, for exercising her constitutional rights protesting @ZohranKMamdani????” Poupko wrote on X. “This is unacceptable.”
A few hundred people participated in the protest outside Gracie Mansion last night, though no elected officials or mainstream Jewish groups were billed as being in attendance.
The event featured people brandishing Israeli flags and demanding that Mamdani, a vocal supporter of Palestinian rights, do more to combat antisemitism in New York. The event also featured more extreme, bigoted elements, including people shouting that Mamdani, an American citizen born in Uganda, should be deported.
Hanif pointed to the fact that rhetoric like that played out at the protest in justifying her Jahannam jab.
“I can and will criticize MAGA influencers joining a MAGA hate rally full of conspiratorial rhetoric and f-bombs,” Hanif said. — Chris Sommerfeldt
— TARGETING GAP: A database of more than 1,200 lawsuits shows more than 93 percent of immigration enforcement arrests in New York and New Jersey targeted Latinos, despite the fact that they make up only 66 percent of immigrants without legal status. (THE CITY)
— NO PLAYING AROUND: New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport and New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a joint investigation into FIFA’s ticket selling practices. (POLITICO)
— ‘I WAS HURT’: New York’s Legislature is considering bills to amend policies for imprisoned pregnant women after one gave birth while handcuffed in a Brooklyn courtroom. (Gothamist)
Missed this morning’s New York Playbook? We forgive you. Read it here.
