Only two votes separated a pair of Democrats running to represent a portion of western Queens in the Assembly this week after a vast majority of ballots had been counted by the Board of Elections in the week since Election Day.

A 1993 murder in Queens has become a gruesome case of déjà vu after a man found guilty of killing his estranged wife by two different juries three decades apart was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on Wednesday, seven years after he completed his 26-year prison term for the same crime.

Capital funding for a new trauma center on the Rockaway peninsula was left out of the city’s $126 billion budget passed by the City Council Tuesday, despite growing calls from the community to finance the project in the isolated area in Queens.

A new lawsuit claims that last July 4, a group of police officers slammed the 46-year-old Queens man to the ground, knocked him unconscious, and beat him so badly that a judge immediately demanded he be taken from the courthouse to a hospital.

Labor contracts for some of the city’s largest public defender organizations expired at midnight on Tuesday, raising the possibility for over 1,000 attorneys to walk off the job if a deal isn’t reached soon.

The end of a prolonged legal battle between the mayor’s office and the City Council over an expensive housing voucher program known as CityFHEPS was baked into the city’s colossal $125 billion budget, which was passed by the Council late Tuesday.

Queens’ courts celebrated Pride Month at Civil Court on Monday, recognizing the mark the LGBTQIA+ community has left on the state’s judicial system – but this month’s celebration comes at a tenuous point as the federal government threatens the freedom and safety of transgender Americans and the wider LGBTQIA+ community, officials said.

After former Mayor Eric Adams stalled on a key element of the plan to close Rikers Island, the Mamdani administration on Monday reversed course, transferring three jail facilities out of Department of Correction control and reviving a jail decommissioning process required by city law.

Cases are moving faster through New York’s courts, reducing the amount of time defendants have to wait on Rikers Island – but a number of entrenched obstacles could make even quicker case processing difficult to achieve, the state’s top administrative judge warned last week.

After a month-long delay, street parking around Queens Criminal Court is scheduled to officially close down Monday as construction of the future borough-based jail progresses.

“Community-based alternatives to incarceration and post-release reentry programs are proving every day that public safety and decarceration are not competing goals.”

“Families are being presented with a false choice: Send your children to a brand-new, $92 million facility, or continue using an aging building that has been allowed to deteriorate.”

“With the mayoral elections coming up, it's important that we seek out representatives who will do right by their constituents and abolish Rikers once and for all. “

The Oklahoma-based Williams Transco company is proposing a pipeline through lower Hudson Harbor again. New York first rejected this pipeline in 2020, and now we must do it again. What’s good for a Tulsa gas company is terrible for Queens’ health and our wallets.

“For a corporate center that hosts more than a thousand employees every day — including staff at the Department of Corrections, Skanska, numerous firms and the headquarters of the Queens Chamber of Commerce — this change is more than an inconvenience. It is a step backward for our borough’s economy.”

“Metropolitan Park is a project that has been shaped by the people who live here. A steadfast partner of the community and Elmcor, Metropolitan Park has been intentional with its support for putting the community first. “