New articles on The Monroe Gazette are on hiatus until BJ finishes his book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” It will be released in late May or early June of this year. If you would like a free .pdf or .mp3 copy of the book when they become available, subscribe to the Stupid Sexy Privacy newsletter here.

Articles will resume on The Monroe Gazette in early May. Until then we’ll be running brand new episodes of the podcast.

The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.

Subscribe now

The following is the full transcript from this week’s podcast. The transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity where neded.

BJ Mendelson, Editor of The Monroe Gazette: Rory, thank you so much for joining us on The Monroe Gazette. we’ve had a couple of representatives from the Electronic Frontier Foundation on our sister podcast, Stupid Sexy Privacy. But because this is The Monroe Gazette podcast, I was hoping you could take a moment just to introduce yourself and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Rory Mir, Director of Open Access and Tech Community Engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation: Yeah, I’m happy to and thank you so much for having me on. I’m Rory Mir. I’m the Director of Open Access and Tech Community Engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The EFF has been fighting for over 30 years now. I wasn’t there the whole time, but over 30 years defending our civil liberties online. Basically bringing digital rights into a digital world. So a nonprofit law firm constantly defending innovation, privacy, and I’m particularly interested in defending consumers from bad tech practices from tech companies.

BJ Mendelson: The reason why we’re having this discussion on the Monroe Gazette as opposed to Stupid Sexy Privacy is because right now there is a provision in the New York state budget that the Electronic Frontier Foundation caught concerning 3D printers. Could you walk us through that?

Rory Mir: Folks that are familiar with the New York budget process know a lot of things get wrapped up into the budget And as usual it gets delayed quite a bit. So we’re still pushing back on it right now. There’s a couple of provision impacting 3d printers which folks are familiar with 2d printers, but 3d printers for folks that aren’t familiar are kind of like hot glue guns that you tell a computer to control and that slowly builds up a shape in three dimensions. Often you see this being used by artists, making cool statues or cosplay costumes. It’s also really common in more commercial settings where people are making prototypes or researchers testing a new shape for things. So it’s really this cool technology that lets you fabricate things without going through big manufacturers and kind of iterate quickly and build up new creative ideas. So we’re fans of this open innovation that it brings to folks on the grassroots level.

And what this provision and the budget does is threatens that basically. It curtails a lot of that expressive freedom by mandating a software that we think is dangerous, a print blocking mandate that is yeah so out of fear of ghost guns and people making firearms and firearm components with these machines basically New York State in this proposed budget would have a database of forbidden files and mandate — without any details I need to emphasize — a way for all of these 3D printers to not be able to print shapes that could be used in that context, which I think there’s a lot of good intention coming into this.

People are concerned about gun violence and unlicensed firearms. However, when you speak to people who actually understand how these machines work and just the nature of making a 3D shape, it is not something that is possible. There are many ways that any algorithm trying to detect shapes can be undermined quite easily.

So we’re concerned that while the people that are being targeted, the people who are trying to make firearms and similar components with these machines will be able to follow a quick tutorial to get around those blocks, the many, many other creators, researchers, innovators, that use and rely on these machines are going to be stuck with this technology that the only real way to do it is to have it be surveilling users and there’s no safeguards in those in the provisions for that.

So we’re really worried about the impact that it’ll have on the lawful use of these machines and really just don’t want it to be rushed through this budget process without any safeguards or oversight for those regular lawful users.

BJ: So let me break that down a little bit. Because I think the concern from the ghost guns came from the murder of the United Health Care CEO and the claims that Luigi Mangione may have used a 3D printed gun.

But my understanding is it’s actually really difficult to make a functioning gun from a 3D printer. Is that right?

Rory: Yeah, it requires a level of understanding the craft of it. Technically, you don’t even need a 3D printer. Homemade DIY guns have existed long before 3D printers because it is ultimately a simple machine that once you know how to machine it, you can do it. So 3D printers... You can make a cheap error prone one that might blow up in your hand if you don’t already have that existing knowledge of how firearms work and how to properly put one together. So while it is possible for someone to make one with a 3D printer, there is a level of know-how that has to go into it as well.

BJ: Right, and I have to imagine, and this is all getting into hypothetical territory, but I have to imagine that if someone is particularly motivated to print a 3D weapon, that nothing is really going to stop them from doing it.

Rory: Yeah, I mean, that gets into this mandated software on these machines. One of the things is that it is easy enough to alter it because it’s unlike something tightly regulated and standard like currency. People will point to you’re not able to print a dollar bill, but that is a very specific reference with very specific design standards. So being able to detect whether it looks like that is quite simple.

With a firearm, you’re talking about a function. So any shape that can or can potentially serve that same function falls into that definition. And that gets even further complicated by the fact that with 3D printing, the machine only sees what you’re printing in the moment. So if you print something that has a lot of extra adornments, you can maybe shave it down to a core component. And likewise, if you... kind of print a bunch of pieces of a firearm and then later fuse them together, you can also make one that way.

So the machine isn’t gonna see your intention, right? It’s only gonna be able to look at the file and that’s what makes it so easy to game if you are determined to make these firearms.

BJ: Right, and so my concern here is the way that this software is described, sounds like, and just how you’ve explained it, it looks like it’s not specifically targeted at guns, it’s targeted at gun-like shapes, is that right?

Rory: Yeah, so we’re seeing a few of these in different states that have slightly different language. The New York one is really less detailed than ones we’ve seen in Washington and California. It’ll be decided by a working group without peer review, which is concerning to us. So it could be loaded with people with financial interests on how this works.

The thing that is shared across these bills is often the receiver of the firearm, which is the part that needs a serial number when you buy or alterations, which is even more abstract of simple shapes that can turn a handgun into a machine gun, you can make with literally a clothes hanger, or you can 3D print a shape that looks like that. And that is the same sort of abstract shape that is being implicated in these bills.

BJ: You were kind enough to send me a bunch of material, which I read through. And I found that I was kind of lost as to what exactly the software does, who exactly would enforce the penalties and then the penalties themselves seemed kind of outrageous. Could you explain those to us?

Rory: So in New York, a lot of it is really focused on the sellers. So a lot of the penalties will come to a seller who sells one of these machines that doesn’t have this mandated software on it. So that one of the things that really strikes me about that is that that extends to the second hand market that someone who has a printer today, if this passes in a few years might want to sell it to recoup some of those costs, or maybe get a new one. And then they would be implicated in these same penalties, which really range, but include potentially financial penalties or liability for anything that is done with the machine that is sold.

BJ: I was kind of shocked at this suggestion that people would have to buy, [the 3D printers face to face.]

So if you lived in our region and you wanted a 3D printer because you saw what was being done at SUNY New Paltz, or you are interested in resistance work where you want to print out whistles for detecting ice, that you would have to go and meet someone in person to purchase a 3D printer. Is that right?

Rory: Yeah. It’s absurd. I feel that not only for the purchase, but for the delivery of the device. And there’s no exception to commercial folks. So this bill includes 3D printers as well as something called CNC machines, which are similar to 3D printers, but kind of do the opposite. They carve a shape out of metal or wood instead of adding plastic together. And those are very expensive. For machines that are typically used by huge industries, aerospace, automotive, medical, manufacturing, these huge commercial industries would also have this silly face-to-face requirement. But then the other thing I think of … I lived all over New York state in my life, including quite a bit of time in the Finger Lake region. And frankly, you having to drive to one of the few stores that has this, which, you know, I don’t know that I can only name a handful off the top of my head that even sell 3D printers.

You have to drive there to buy it instead of ordering it online. And that has all the inherent limitations of having to be buying in person of whatever’s in stock. Whatever brands has a deal with that reatalor So there’s a lot of practical headaches for the people who want to get into and would benefit most, I think, from these printers, people who want to repair things without having to take it to the nearest shop or have things sent over from the other side of the world.

BJ: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the finger legs. I was just thinking of like a student at Alfred State having to drive a few hours to go and meet some random person to buy a 3D printer. It sounds like you’re buying drugs. That’s the thing that struck me was, you know, I feel like the marijuana dispensaries right now, I could just walk into one as long as I show my driver’s license. And I don’t like I don’t have this weird requirement that I can only buy it in person, face to face.

So, who benefits from all this? This really seems to me like it’s more the tech companies are pushing this than people who are actually concerned about gun violence.

Rory: Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear that the winners from this aren’t the gun safety advocates, but are the major makers of these printers and retailers that sell these printers that it would become far more difficult and burdensome for someone to break into the market once you have this sort of regime set up where you have to not only build this technology upfront in order to, again, this like magic bean technology of being able to prevent a firearm from being printed, but then the ongoing costs of keeping that updated, meeting the requirements and it creates this huge headache that would only really benefit from a handful of the biggest makers of these devices.

BJ: And did you see that in the … I saw the California legislation that had been proposed and the Colorado legislation that had been proposed. Do you find that it’s the same group of people that sort of pushing this?

Rory: I think there’s a lot of similarities on the gun safety side of it, which again, I think is well intentioned and I value gun safety there. But then I think a lot of the discussion on the industry side of it, of, it has been pretty secretive. We’ve met with one or two major manufacturers between these 3D printers, but they never seem to mention who they’re meeting with. So, you know, one can draw their own conclusions from that. But I think it is remarkable that the big printers have been so quiet on this, something that would impact their customers so negatively. [Emphasis added.]

BJ: Right. You had a great term. I know what it means because we’ve interviewed Cory Doctorow So we’ve talked about enshitification quite a bit. But you used, I saw the term used by the EFF of an “enshitification lock,” which is essentially what this legislation is trying to do. And I was hoping you could explain that to people who might not be familiar.

Rory: So I’ll actually back it up a little bit to talk about digital rights management software, which folks might not be familiar with. And there’s a pretty good analogy for this print blocking technology where … Basically, it is now a federal crime and has been since the DMCA passed to alter any code that exists to prevent copyright infringement. And this is what makes it difficult to move an e-book from one device to another. And people are, famously people know about it, restricting people’s ability to repair tractors like John Deere tractors.

And a lot of that comes from having this code that has this special permission that makes it difficult for users to navigate around. So DRM gives manufacturers the special leverage over customers so that we can see it manifest in 2D printers with HP. Making it difficult to get ink for your printer. There is a DRM protection that you can only use the appropriate ink and that makes it more expensive to use the ink. And a lot of that is because of this special code that you’re not able to circumnavigate and just get the cheap ink that would be otherwise available.

So by building this in and making it a mandate and tying it to the legal system, you’re creating not only a huge incentive but a legal protection for these anti-competitive practices on the part of the tech company making it.

BJ: Yeah, and I think it’s I find it troubling that we’re not talking about doing away with that DRM in the budget, but we are talking about adding like additional DRM to these.

Rory: Exactly. And yeah, again, with this one, it really creates this incentive of surveillance, right, because they are asking for this big abstract type of blocking that you can’t really do with the type of firmware that’s on these machines.

And it would be difficult to do with the slicing software, which is the software you use to use the printer on your own laptop. So it’s really encouraging it all going to an AI analysis in a cloud somewhere, which means everything someone prints being sent and observable to these folks. Privacy violation. Chills speech.

And it has a lot of practical considerations, particularly with commercial buyers with intellectual property theft. Those other extra risks that are being introduced by this.

BJ: Was the Colorado law thrown out over free speech. Was that a successful lawsuit?

Rory: So the Colorado law, right as it was reaching the finish line, removed a few provisions that were making it criminal to share the files for these gun components. And it was removed at the last minute by the governor due to First Amendment concerns. And I haven’t given as much attention to it, but that is also one of the provisions in this New York budget of making it a crime to, in certain circumstances, to share or to possess these files. So we have similar First Amendment concerns about what’s in the New York provision. That as nice as it’s, again, it comes from this sort of well-intentioned place, what if we can just mandate that things were nice, without the real practical considerations that criminalizing information doesn’t work.

Someone who’s intent on getting these files or sharing these files are gonna find ways to do so, which we see with things like copyright infringement and piracy, that it’s not really a barrier, it’s just an extra charge to throw at someone when they’re already doing something that’s illegal. And that’s something I haven’t emphasized yet, but it is already illegal in New York to produce or sell one of these 3D printed firearms. So we’re just adding additional laws that hurt consumers for something that’s already illegal. [Emphasis added.]

BJ: You beat me to it. was gonna say, isn’t it already illegal to like, make and possess these weapons?

Rory: Yeah, as of I believe 2022, yeah, to, I believe it was passed in 2019. But yeah, to produce these firearms, these unlicensed firearms is already a major crime to produce or sell.

BJ: It reminds me a lot of like the digital ID, digital driver’s license push, where I understand where some of it comes from, where you, okay, you don’t want kids to access horrible content. I completely get that. But in the process of, you know, quote unquote, protecting the children, you’re actually creating this huge digital database of everyone’s driver’s license and everyone’s face and all of the data that comes with it.

And do you really want to be doing that right now when you have an authoritarian regime running the federal government? And so this to me, seems like sort of the same deal, right? There is a good idea. I’m adamantly against gun violence. The problem with guns is guns. I would get rid of all of them if I could. But to me, it seems like we’re not really solving the problem here. We’re just using the problem as an excuse to enrich certain companies and at the same time create yet another database, right, of stuff that you don’t necessarily, you might not, you might be listening to this thinking I have nothing to hide, but you might be, you live in a very fluid situation.

For example, if you were to move to a red state and abortion is illegal, right, then if you print out material about abortion, you are committing a crime according to that state. So even if you, quote, have nothing to hide at the moment, laws like this have a tendency of coming back and biting you in the ass later.

Rory: Yeah, yeah, it’s ultimately about defending grassroots innovation and user rights. And yeah, today it is something that feels very sympathetic and can only grow from there once this infrastructure is in place, right? Right now it’s about the safety of building something that is more inherently dangerous, but one could make a similar argument about the safety of printing your own repair parts, that do you really want people repairing their bicycles with a 3D printed component if, you know, maybe it would break and not be printed correctly? And then I think the natural next step is, of course, copyright. I’m sure many companies would like a way to prevent people from printing their own cheap alternatives to either commercial sold repair parts or even if you think about toys and things that a lot of people make 3D printers with, know, your toy Pokemon figurines might be blocked just because Nintendo doesn’t want people buying or building their own instead of buying from them. So I think there’s a core kind of creativity we’re defending here, even if it starts with something that is harder to defend, right.

BJ: It’s one of those things where it’s, again, it’s all presented under, all of this stuff is always presented under the best of intentions. But once you start to look underneath, you start to realize, oh, OK, this is a little bit more than what you’re saying it is. Let me ask you in the time that we have left, what, well, I guess it’s a two-parter, which is what can or what is the EFF considering on this front? And what can people do that are listening to us, what can they do to get this out of the budget?

Rory: Yeah, I think right now it’s such an important time to reach out to representatives since we’re in this prolonged budget. Going to Eff.org/3dprintNY is our action page that lets you easily message your assembly member and state senator with a customizable message so you can include your own thoughts and we’d encourage you to.

And I think really it’s we’re in a state of it’ll pass any day now so taking that action now is really urgent. I think beyond that it’s not going to be the last 3D printing legislation we see other bills introduced that would require a criminal background check in order to buy a 3D printer.

You know, and again, this is a fringe use of 3D printers. Right. And it’s also a fringe way to make a ghost gun, like overwhelming ghost guns are made from DIY kits that are mass manufactured. [Emphasis added.]

BJ: Right, it’s not common at all. I think that’s something we should stress is that like the…

Rory: So it’s a fringe from both angles. This is, we’re talking about a very small subset of people and to subject everyone to already face-to-face sales, but potentially as well, these background checks is pretty ridiculous and will just disempower local communities and local makers.

So I think keeping an eye out for these other bills as they come up. But right now, we’re in a big mobilization push for this budget. Since, again, we’re on borrowed time.

BJ: Rory, thank you so much. Where can we find you? I mean, you mentioned the Action page. How else can we get involved and support the EFF?

Rory: Yeah, so if folks want to support EFF’s work, they can go to EFF.org/join and become a supporting member. If you want to follow me, I’m on a little site called Mastodon, false mirror at Masto.nyc. But yeah, I think following our work on the main site at EFF.org is probably the best way to keep in the loop.

Share

Below is a transcript from today’s episode of the podcast. It has been edited for brevity and clarity. Above is a flyer for tomorrow’s event. We hope you can be there.

The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free; and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.

Subscribe now

BJ Mendelson, The Monroe Gazette: Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of The Monroe Gazette podcast. I want to let you know that on Saturday, April 25th, which will be tomorrow for most of you that listen to this, there’s going a national day of action stop other ICE warehouse detention centers. As some of you know, we for now have blocked 29 Elizabeth Drive here in the village of Chester from becoming a ICE detention facility. But you know, the fight goes on across the country.

Tomorrow (Saturday) From 12 to 1.30 p.m. at the Orange County Government Center at 255 Main Street in Goshen, New York. There’s going to be a National Day of Action that’s organized by Indivisible Goshen, Rural Migrant Ministries, and Gateway House among numerous others. So we really hope to see you.

As a lot of you know, even though we did block the ICE Detention Center from opening up in Chester; over in Orange County Jail in Goshen, they still have an entire wing that is dedicated to housing ICE detainees.

So. ICE is not completely out of our community. All that said, I’m joined today by a representative of Public Citizen, which is one of the organizations that put this coalition together.

Omar, I’m hoping you might take a moment just to introduce yourself and tell us what you do at Public Citizen.

Omar Angel Perez, Rule of Law Coordinator at Public Citizen: Hi everyone, my name is Omar Angel Perez and I am the rule of law coordinator for Public Citizen and in this role I work with different grassroots and community organizations across the country.

We’re focused on protecting democracy and the rule of law. And in this case, working with different partners, and primarily the Detention Watch Network organizing this day of action across the country.

BJ: And can you tell us real quick, I know some of our older listeners might be familiar with Public Citizen from the days of Ralph Nader, but could you just tell us some of the other things that Public Citizen does that they might not be aware of?

Omar: Yeah, so Public Citizen is an organization that has been around for 50 years now and its primary focus is the protection of democracy regardless who is in power and the White House and the Congress.

In the last two, three administrations, we’re just keeping an eye on how the administrations have been conducting themselves in this case since the first Trump administration, Public Citizen joined other organizations on different occasions, beginning with a focus on preserving democracy in the country and protecting communities who have been under attack.

BJ: And just full disclosure for people listening, I am a paid member of Public Citizen. I get the newspaper. I recommend that everyone join. Omar, can you tell us a little bit about what is happening this weekend?

Omar: Yeah, so as we all know, because it’s been in the media a lot, the Trump administration has been expanding their capacity to target immigrant communities, regardless of their status.

And we witnessed the deployment of national guard and ICE agents in different parts of the country, different cities taken over. I’m based in Washington, D.C. I live in Washington, D.C. I have two kids who go to elementary school here in the district. And We witnessed how ICE agents were literally taking over our streets, targeting our neighbors, arresting people. Arresting teachers, caregivers outside our schools. And that’s one way how this administration has been targeting our communities and neighborhoods.

The other way they’ve been doing is expending their capacity by Republicans in Congress allocating more money to fund DHS and ICE. And expanding also the detention centers by buying warehouses across the country. We know because there’s a lot of reports out there about the horrible conditions.

People are being in this detention center, some people calling them actually concentration camps because the conditions they are on there.

BJ: Yes.

Omar: Right like there are in Daly, Texas outside of San Antonio, there are incarcerated minors, minors who’ve been in, you know, with no way to be in contact with the loved ones, with their attorneys, like nobody knows what’s happening to them.

We know stories of pregnant women with no access to medical care in these detention centers. There is a report that’s coming out about forced labor. People in detention, migrants have been forced to work through this program that ICE has in place and all that they get paid is like one dollar per day. And so there is these horrible conditions that this administration are …

BJ: Wow.

Omar: Keeping our people under. And now they want to increase their capacity to continue detaining people, churning people, and they want to expand their capacity by buying these warehouses, and with a capacity of detaining between 1,500 to 10,000 people. And these warehouses have no conditions to, like … They are warehouses.

They’re not to, you know, house people. They’re there to store stuff, but not people. So we’re missing what’s happening right now. We just cannot imagine what will be the conditions these people are going to be held if they are allowed to, if they are able to expand their capacity by buying these warehouses and expanding these detention centers.

So Public Citizen, the Disappear America campaign, Detention Watch Network and Indivisible, Move On are the core partners of this day of action that is started by a group of folks coming together and thinking, okay, what we can do in this moment to bring attention what is happening and also responding to the outcry of the community in different parts of the country? Pushing back this intention of expanding ICE capacity of detaining people. So we started basically with the idea of saying, okay, let’s organize the day of action. And then it went from that idea to like massively have a response from the communities across the country.

And what we started, we’re thinking about, we’re going to have like one action, probably in DC, expanding out to almost 200 actions across the country.

If you go to the mobilize page, you will see the map. And it’s, we’re talking about, you know, from Texas to Alaska, from Washington state to New Mexico, like it’s all over because people are tired of this situation and people are, speaking out after the horrible condition we witnessed people are in these detention centers.

BJ: Absolutely. And I think it’s important to stress to people that even when the media moves away, they being ICE and DHS and the other federal agencies are still snatching people. They’re still snatching people in Chicago. What they did was they moved more towards like the outer rim of the city. I have a lot of friends in Los Angeles and we still are hearing reports every day of strong ICE activity.

So even if the cameras are gone, it’s important that these events happen because I think people need to realize that it hasn’t stopped. ICE hasn’t gone anywhere. Even if you don’t hear about it in the news so much, they are still very active out there.

Omar: Yeah, they are very, very, very active. As you say, just yesterday I was with a driver, happened to be this woman from El Salvador. And she was telling me how she has to like work multiple jobs now because her husband was detained just like a few days ago while he was on his way to work. And even when he was, he has a case, a legal case, and he was going through the process of the case, he was a team with another group of coworkers, and now he is being deported to Guatemala, a country that he left when he was a minor. He’s been in the country for more than 20 years, and what we’re seeing is precisely that, right? Like, they don’t care who you are.

If you look at it as an immigrant, you are a target. Regardless what your status, regardless you have a criminal history or background, whatever it is.

And I just want to say here, right, a parenthesis, people have this narrative about like the good and bad immigrant, who is deserving, who has a criminal record and all that. We need to remind ourselves since the Trump administration, they criminalize being an immigrant. They criminalize being in this country. Like, regardless the way how you came in, regardless how one was brought in when you were a kid. This dehumanization of immigrants by criminalizing everybody, right? And, and it’s very punitive. By doing that, they are violating basically all laws or processes or proceedings. They themselves don’t respect the laws that they have in place by the way they are acting.

BJ: A number of studies have come out since the first Trump administration that demonstrates if you are here as an immigrant, you’re more likely to contribute to your community. You’re more likely to pay your taxes. You’re less likely to commit crime than an American citizen. It’s sort of like the we’ve allowed the the corporate media and the Trump administration to kind of tell people the opposite is true.

Omar: Absolutely, yeah. we see also, I there are polls coming out almost every day that shows where the American people stand on this, right? Like, they are not only against the incarceration of immigrants, they are not only not happy about how this administration is handling the immigration, the immigrant issue, but they actually now are pushing against ICE. Like the polls are showing that more than half of the population are for the dismantling of ICE as an agency because the way, the violent way they are targeting our communities. And we witness, It’s not now, it’s not only, they are not only targeting immigrants, right? What we witness in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, they are targeting non-immigrants as well. So they’re targeting all Americans who are speaking out and pushing back against this administration.

BJ: Yeah, and I think people need to know that the Supreme Court said, they call it the Kavanaugh stop, where if you’re not white, then you can be pulled over by law enforcement for suspicion of being here, quote unquote, illegally. So it’s something that poses a real risk. I think about Marimar Martinez, who was pulled over. They shot at her. They didn’t kill her, but they then tried to detain her after she was shot. They like absolutely were harassing this poor woman. And she’s here as a citizen and that did not stop them from hounding her.

So yeah, you’re absolutely right to point out that it’s very easy to think, well, you know, they’re just going after quote unquote the bad ones, right, or the criminals, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Omar: Absolutely, you’re right. you know, just earlier today, I was in communication with some partners a lot of the work that Public Citizen does is through the Not Above the Law Coalition, we work with also veterans groups, organizations, veterans …

Something that I come across to recently is the story, a couple of stories of spouses of military members who’s being detained at the moment where the military members were reporting to be deployed to Iran.

And there is this story of this guy who reported to his base with his wife and his wife. She in the country legally, but she is a resident and she’s like, you know, she’s waiting for her case. Well, guess what? While he was waiting, they were waiting, the ICE agent show up and detain her and now she’s in a detention and she’s going to be deported.

So you think like, what’s the logic here? Right? Like they are, we’re talking about people who are serving their country, but this government is not even respecting their basic human rights and they’re targeting their spouses and relatives. So that’s immoral. I don’t even have words of how to describe this.

BJ: Absolutely. Yeah, it’s criminal. It’s absolutely criminal.

I think people need to understand that, you know, because the thing, we’re kind of a purplish area, right? So when we do events like the one on Saturday at 12 p.m. at the Orange County Government Center at 255 Main Street, sometimes we’ll hear people say, well, you’ve got to do it the right way.

But what they don’t understand is the right way is broken. Like it was intentionally broken. The apps don’t work. We’ve completely understaffed our federal court that handles immigration cases. So people could be waiting forever just to get a hearing. And in that time ICE comes and grabs them.

Let me just switch gears just a little bit. So here in Chester, we were able to, for now, stop ICE from acquiring a warehouse. They were dead set on it. There was a bipartisan, pretty ferocious backlash to it and ICE kind of backed away. But we still have this specter of, ICE could come back at any time because ICE lies.

Pictured Above: Readers asked us for an update on the Chester Concentration camp. Above you’ll see ICE’s response to The Monroe Gazette on April 21st, 2026.

Share

BJ: And I was hoping you might be able to just touch on that a little bit, that this agency that is supposed to be the one handling it and allegedly protecting us is consistently lying to the point where you have a community like ours where we think ICE is gone, you we think that they’re not going to grab that warehouse, but it’s just constantly hanging over us that they can come back at any time.

Omar: Yeah, that is true. If you pay attention, we pay attention, ICE became basically Trump’s private army. And they are just doing whatever he’s doing. If he’s saying that they need to, well, actually, it was [Stephen] Miller who said a quota of the things for today.

BJ: Yes.

Omar: So they need to fill that quota. They’re gonna go and do whatever they gotta do in order to meet that quota, but also they need a space where to send those people. And when you think about the polling, the number of deportations that are aiming towards, which I think the latest was like a million per year, they need to work with the countries they are sending, they’re reporting those people to.

And that takes a lot of work and a lot of time. So it’s not something like easy that they were going to put people on the next plane, next flight, and then they get rid of them. That’s why they need spaces to incarcerate them. And not only that, right? They are a handful of private companies like GEO Group and others who are making profits out of the suffering of people on those detention centers.

And they are signing like this huge multi-billion contracts with the government to run those spaces, those detention centers. And they’re doing it to us. So because all these reasons, they are gonna come back over and over because that is what they are told to do and that’s what they want to do, right?

So for our communities, we need to continue being paying attention. We need to continue being in relationship with local elected officials. We need to continue being on those meetings and those spaces, continue speaking out, lifting our voices because they are going to try to find ways to go around us in order to buy those warehouses, open those detention centers, and those goes in detriment of our own local communities, right? Like the resources that we have, they’re gonna use it to ruin [the environment], and to run those detention centers. So we need to be paying attention to that constantly.

BJ: What more can we do as people listening to us? Aside from becoming a paid member like I am, of Public Citizen, what are things that people can do to help kind of bang the drum on this?

Omar: Yeah, so I think there are a lot of things that we can do, right? Locally, one is talk to your neighbors. You have an immigrant neighbor, check in on them. Just go say hello, ask how they are doing, what they need. If it is like any local mutual aid group, get connected. Go to talk to them, ask how you can help.

There is a lot of need for now. There is a lot of people who are suffering in this country in this moment and they need your help. If you are a member of a church, even if you are not a member of a church, you can go to the local church and ask them if they are doing anything. If they don’t, you should talk to your pastor and say, hey, pastor, we need to do this. This is the moral call. And continue organizing, continue participating in these kind of actions and bring your friends. Bringing your own networks, build your networks. Right now the immigrants are the scapegoat. The next we know are citizens and it’s already happening. Something that I wanna put on people’s minds, people who are listening to us in this moment is if you are a citizen, don’t be sure that you are protected.

Look around, just look around and what’s happening in this country. Because the next thing that I’m gonna wanna get rid of is your citizenship.

BJ: Yeah, and you know, we already have three citizens that were killed. You know, like, factually we can, two of which was on camera. One was not, and then there’s also the Marimar Martinez shooting. So you have three that we know for sure that were killed and one that was shot. [Editor’s Note: Rene Good, Alex Pretti, and Ruben Ray Martinez were killed by ICE.]

And that’s just what we know about. And that’s not even talking about, you know, I know that one of the deaths recently in these concentration camps, which is what I prefer to call them, was recently ruled a homicide.

And the number of deaths reported by ICE since their founding. It hasn’t been higher than it is right now. And I always try to tell people, you know, what do you think they’re going to do with these warehouses after they’ve deported everybody? You know, like they’re going to, they’re not going to turn around and say mission accomplished. They’re probably going to go and start rounding up other people, myself included, as a journalist.

Omar: Yeah, totally. that’s something that we have witnessed in other parts of the country, You look at history, history tells us a lot. And you’re right. They will continue profiting out of those spaces, out of those detention centers. So who are the next one after the immigrants? Just imagine a day without immigrants in this country. Who are going to be those ones who they’re going to put in those detention centers?

BJ: Yes. Is there anything on this topic that I should have asked you or could have asked you and didn’t that you’d like to touch on?

Omar: No, I just appreciate you. I appreciate the work that you do. And I appreciate everybody who’s taken to the streets this Saturday. We need you. Your community needs you. Your country needs you. this is the way how we are supposed to, to act and react in this moment. So thank you.

BJ: Absolutely, and thank you for all you’re doing. And just a reminder for people listening, April 25th, that’s Saturday, 12 to 1.30 at the Orange County Government Center, 255 Main Street is going to be our location for the National Day of Action. Omar, thank you so much.

Omar: Thank you.

Share

Below is the transcript from today’s podcast episode. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

***

BJ Mendelson: Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Monroe Gazette podcast with your host, BJ Mendelson.

We interviewed State Senator Andrew Gounardes today about the New York for All Act. There’s a lot of discussion going on about this bill, particularly in the town of Monroe, as you might have seen if you watch the two recent town board meetings.

(Below, at 48:49 from this week’s meeting, you can see the bill being discussed by residents, and then at 1:03:18 you can hear the Town Board’s response as to why they are not moving forward with it.)

BJ: We’ve been trying to get them [The Town of Monroe] to pass a ceremonial — it’s purely ceremonial, it’s not binding in any way, shape, or form — resolution that would encourage State Senator Skoufis and assembly members Eachus and Brabenec who represent Monroe, to endorse and support the New York for All Act. This is one of the things that Skoufis says he supports, but Skoufis says he supports lots of stuff.

(Skoufis is not a co-sponsor of the bill in the Senate. Eachus, Kay, and Brabenec are not co-sponsors in the Assembly.)

Like with any any of these politicians these days, you have to look at what they do and not what they say. So the jury is still out on that one. However, we did speak with Senator Gournardis. I do want to bring the interview to you. I think we had a great discussion. It’s a little brief.

But it will bring you up to speed on the New York for All Act. Before we get to it, I want to let you know that this Saturday, April 25th is not only my birthday, but it is also another hands-off Hudson Valley stand-up event.

So we hope to see you on Saturday at 1 p.m. at the corner of Lake Street and 17M in the town of Monroe.

If you’re concerned about the corporate Democrats dragging their feet on passing New York for All, be there.

If you’re concerned about why Congressman Pat Ryan does not support Medicare for All, be there.

And if you have concerns about the village of Monroe, and there’s a lot to be concerned about with the new Melchiorrie-Mancuso axis, because clearly it looks like former mayor Mancuso is in charge and Alex Melchiorre is just there as a plant for the real estate developers …

If you’re concerned about that, we also would like to see you Saturday, 1 p.m. at the corner of 17M and Lake Street in the village of Monroe.

All that being said, let’s get to today’s interview.

The Monroe Gazette is brought to you commercial free and with no pay-wall to access over two years of our coverage of issues both in Southern Orange County and beyond. If you would like to help us keep the lights on, we’re looking to recruit 500 new, paid annual subscribers between now and December 31st. All you have to do is hit the button below. Paid subscribers get access to occasional bonus content, podcast audio, our behind the scenes Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts just like this one.

Subscribe now

Our Interview With State Senator Andrew Gounardes

BJ Mendelson, The Monroe Gazette : Would you like to take a moment just to introduce yourself to people who might not be familiar?

State Senator Gounardes: I’m State Senator Andrew Gounardes from Brooklyn, New York.

BJ: And I know that you, we’ve talked before about New York For All, but for people that are just coming into this midstream, could you briefly explain to us what this bill does?

State Senator Gounardes: Absolutely. So, New York for All is a piece of legislation that I sponsor that would prohibit any local or state government agency or any local or state law enforcement agency from colluding and conspiring with ICE for the purposes of immigration enforcement unless there is a signed judicial warrant by a federal judge. And why this is so important is because we’ve seen all across the state an increase in the circumstances and instances where local governments, particularly local law enforcement, are working hand in hand with ICE or CBP, which is Customs and Border Patrol, along many of our northern border communities. And they’re working hand in hand with them to carry out immigration enforcement. And that looks like a lot of different things. It could be that local law enforcement are arresting people on false pretenses, and then turning them over to ICE. It could be that local law enforcement is tipping ICE off to where undocumented immigrants might be, or sharing information about undocumented immigrants, and then kind of facilitating this dragnet of a draconian immigration policy that we’re seeing play out all across the country.

And why this is so important to stop is because A, we just fundamentally believe that New York State resources and New York State personnel and our tax dollars should not be used to facilitate and contribute to this terrible immigration crackdown that is literally tearing families apart, especially because ICE is now one of the most well-funded law enforcement entities in the country. I mean, they have a $75 billion budget. Why do they need our help?

And secondly, and this actually might be more important, it actually doesn’t help increase public safety when you let local governments or local law enforcement work hand in hand with ICE, because all that does is push people into the shadows and it tells them that they should not call local police for help, that they should not trust that when they call 911 for assistance, that they’re actually gonna be taken care of, that they should not go to a local public hospital when they need emergency care. And what could be more destabilizing to the safety of not only an individual, but to a whole community when you can no longer trust your local government? And that’s what we see happening play out all across the state, which is why New York for All is so critically important.

BJ: Absolutely. And just so you can help me clarify a couple of things that popped up in Orange County.

Recently, there was a protest about the agreement with Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus to house ICE detainees at OCJ, Orange County Jail.

The county executive, when asked about the protest, said that legislation in Albany, such as New York for All, would end that agreement. Is that right? Is that how that works?

State Senator Gounardes: So it would not be the New York for All bill, it would actually be the Dignity Not Detention bill, but the same premise applies. So Dignity Not Detention basically says that local governments cannot enter into contracts with ICE to use their jail facilities for immigration detention. So broadly speaking, he [Neuhaus] is correct. He got the name of the bill wrong, but he’s correct. We’re trying to both of these practices.

BJ: In the town of Monroe, we’ve been trying to get them to pass a purely ceremonial resolution in support of New York for All. And one of the reasons they gave against it was that Hochul apparently has like this watered down version. So I’m just hoping you can clarify what the difference is between the actual New York for All and this watered down weak version that Kathy Hochul is pushing.

State Senator Gounardes: Well, the governor proposed several weeks ago a measure called Local Cops Local Crimes Act, which would basically ban any formal agreement between the local government and ICE.

These are known as 287-G agreements. Now, these types of agreements are where local entities enter into a formal partnership, it’s like a signed contract, about what they will or will not assist ICE with. And there’s different ways that this could take. There could be agreements to house immigrants in local detention facilities.

It can be agreements to share certain types of information. It can be agreements to deputize your local law enforcement to act as ICE agents side by side with ICE, as we’re seeing in Nassau County. So the governor’s proposal is to ban those. And that’s good, and that’s important. And New York For All would also ban those. But we’ve seen so much collusion that is not formalized in a contract, like a 287-G agreement all across the state.

Earlier this year, everyone has made national news, the Rohingya refugee in Buffalo, Nurul Alam who had a legal status to be here, he was a refugee with legal status, was arrested by the Erie County Sheriff on false charges, was held for nearly a year, and then was just simply turned over to Customs and Border Patrol. For whatever they were going to do with him and then five days later he showed up dead on the side of the road. The governor’s proposal would not address those circumstances.

In Port Chester, West Chester County earlier this year, there was a young man driving to church and he was pulled over by the police for having tinted windows. Now, tinted windows, you if you have them, you get a ticket, you get a desk appearance ticket, you gotta show up.

Just like if had a broken tail, you gotta show up, you gotta say, well, I fixed the window, I fixed the tail light, whatever. He was not given a desk appearance ticket. He was brought into the local precinct, he was detained, and then he was transferred to ICE for immigration detention. And last we heard he was in Louisiana trying to fight off his deportation.

That’s the type of collusion that New York for all would prevent that the governor’s proposal would not put a stop to. And then just last week, the governor made another amendment to her proposal and she said, we would not allow local law enforcement to coordinate with ICE unless they had probable cause that an immigrant may have committed a crime.

Now, that to me, and I think to many people, is highly problematic because that is such a subjective standard. And, you know, just last week in Brooklyn in a different circumstance, local police officers went into a bodega to arrest someone that they thought they had probable cause to believe was a drug dealer, they beat the living tar out of him, and they had the wrong guy.

And we know that this story plays out time and time and time time time time again, right? I mean, local police make mistakes. That’s, you know, everyone’s human. But now we’re saying that if local police believe that an immigrant or frankly someone who looks like an immigrant may have committed a crime, we’re just gonna tell ICE.

Without zero protections, without zero due process, without anyone being charged, without anyone being convicted, without any proof whatsoever, that’s highly problematic. And so we’re still trying to hold the line and push to ban all types of collusion because we know that that actually is going to be the thing that keeps people safe and that keeps communities stabilized.

BJ: Absolutely. And it makes me nervous too, because the city of Newburgh just has an awful track record in terms of how it works with the residents of its city and its transparency.

And the Orange County Sheriff also actively stymies FOIL requests concerning ICE and detainees. So when you talk about leaving it to these local police forces to make these decisions, that’s sort of just sounds scary. [At the time of this writing, Orange County Attorney Rick Golden is attempting to hold up a FOIL request placed by The Monroe Gazette concerning Orange County’s communications with ICE involving Orange County Jail. The Monroe Gazette will be submitted a FOIL appeal shortly.]

Why wasn’t this bill passed in early January when everyone came back into session? It just seemed like such a, I mean, it’s a Democrat trifecta in New York state. It just seemed like a slam dunk. What held it up?

State Senator Gounardes: Well, were trying, New York for All is an important piece of a much broader puzzle, much bigger puzzle. And there are many other things that we want to do to protect immigrant New Yorkers that are not covered by New York for All. For example, what happens when schools are involved, when children are removed from schools, when parents are separated from their kids, when someone, an ICE agent shows up at a school and a school staff member doesn’t know how to respond and they let someone in the building inappropriately.

You know, there’s no guidance there. What do we do around other types of sensitive locations? Churches, hospitals, daycare centers, things like that. What legal recourse do people have when their civil rights have been violated by these ICE officers? Are there measures we can put in law to give people access to the courthouse whenever their civil rights have been violated by ICE, as we’ve seen happen across the country? So we had been working to put together a comprehensive immigration package, the centerpiece of which would have been New York for all with a couple of these secondary but equally as important pieces.

And then the governor put out her proposal right after she dropped her, made her executive budget presentation. And then the immigration conversation got folded into the budget debate. And so we’re on this track right now where everything is being negotiated as part of the budget. The budget is nearly a month late and we only have a couple of weeks left before the legislature gavels out of session. And so this might be the only opportunities we have to pass as comprehensive a package of immigration protections as we can get this year.

BJ: Right, and so then we only have time for one more question because I know you have to run, so just just tell us in brief where where are we right now as of this morning this recording and what can people do to help push it over the finish line?

State Senator Gounardes: Well, right now we are still trying to push back against the governor’s proposals and to try to bring her closer to the New York for All side of the spectrum to say that there should be no instances in which local police are actively working with ICE. That local police are not creating fabricated instances of probable cause to turn someone over to ICE, that local police are not taking civil infraction matters and then turning them into criminal investigations to justify sharing information with ICE.

I think that anyone who’s concerned about keeping ICE in check and anyone that is concerned about protecting ⁓ immigrant and non-immigrant neighbors alike need to make sure that they are calling the governor’s office and calling their state legislators, state legislators telling them that this is really important to them and that we should not sacrifice, be willing to sacrifice people’s safety under the guise of trying to do something that’s actually not going to protect people.

BJ: That’s perfect. And for people listening, I can’t stress enough the importance of calling Paula Kay, Chris Eachus and James Skoufis, all of whom, at least in principle, support New York for All. I at least say they do, but some of them have given reasons that they won’t co-sign or sponsor the bill because they’re afraid of their constituents, apparently. So please do get on the phones. Senator Gounardes thank you so much for joining us this morning.

Share

Note to readers:

We have reached out to Assembly Member Kay about her meeting with the Mid-Hudson Valley DSA concerning New York For All. Eric Feinblatt on behalf of the MHVDSA told The Monroe Gazette. We hope to get clarity on what her exact positions are, and how she will vote, on both NY4All and Dignity not Detention. A post on Dignity Not Detention is forthcoming.

“Four representatives of Mid-Hudson Valley DSA traveled to Albany on April 21 to take part in the No Collusion, No Cages Advocacy Day and meet with Assembly Member Paula Kay about two immigration bills moving through the Legislature: New York for All and Dignity Not Detention.

We had scheduled the meeting a week earlier, but were told that Assembly Member Kay would be unavailable all day and that we could instead meet with an administrative assistant. We sent the assistant our talking points and asked that they be shared with Kay in advance, so she could come prepared for a substantive discussion. When we arrived, however, it became clear that the “assistant” was actually an intern who was unfamiliar with both bills and said she could not speak on Kay’s behalf. This was the second time Kay had sent an intern to meet with DSA’s Solidarity Working Group.

Kay then stepped out of her office, asked what the meeting was about, glanced at her schedule on a computer screen, and decided it would be better to join the conversation herself.

Her answers were essentially the same as when I met with her five weeks earlier in Narrowsburg: she said she would support New York for All, though not sponsor it, but, as a former prosecutor, could not support Dignity Not Detention. That position seemed inconsistent and suggested a limited understanding of the legislation. When pressed, she shifted to saying that she had received significant constituency feedback opposing Dignity Not Detention, which raised further questions. Are her constituents really able to distinguish between these two bills so clearly? Is she?

We asked whether, if enough phone calls, emails, and postcards came in support of Dignity Not Detention, she would reconsider. She did not give a direct answer.

We left the meeting with the impression that Assembly Member Kay is making legislative decisions based on which way the political winds are blowing, though it remains unclear what is shaping those winds. Twice now, she has treated DSA’s request for a serious conversation about urgent state and national issues as worthy only of sending an intern.”

State Senator Skoufis refuses to answer any questions submitted to his office by The Monroe Gazette.

Assemblyman Chris Eachus does whatever Senator Skoufis tells him.

If we hear from any of these people, we’ll update this story here and let you know.

Share

We’ve suffered a loss in our family over the weekend. As many of you know, I’m the care giver for three disabled adults, so I have my hands full at the moment. We will be back on April 22nd, 2026, with your next post from The Monroe Gazette.

Episodes of our podcast, Stupid Sexy Privacy will continue without interruption because many of those have been pre-recorded. If you haven’t listened to the show, we hope you’ll check it out.

Please forgive any delays there may be in me emailing, calling, and writing back the many people who provide us with tips and additional information for our stories.

-BJ

P.S. Our lawsuit with South Blooming Grove is still waiting to be heard by the judge.

This is the lawsuit where we’re asking for documents related to the 2024 “skipped” village election, that NYS Attorney General Letitia James decided not to do anything about.

We need the information from this lawsuit in order to file the federal lawsuit against Letitia James and SBG.

So if you’re wondering, “When are we going to sue South Blooming Grove for election fraud in federal court?” The answer is, as soon as this other FOIL lawsuit is finished.

If you’re curious, the current case is BJ Mendelson v. Village of South Blooming Grove, Index No. EF012691-2025.

A copy of the petition we filed against the Village can be read here.

If you are interested in being a volunteer for the rally’s safety team on April 12th, reach out to me on Signal at bjmendelson.32 and I’ll put you in touch with the appropriate people.

You can You can RSVP here for the April 12th event.

And just a reminder for those living in Southern Orange County (Chester, Warwick, Tuxedo, Sloatsburg, Monroe, Woodbury, Blooming Grove, and Palm Tree) that Hands Off Hudson Valley will be having another stand-up event this Saturday, April 11th, at 1pm at the corner of 17M and Lake Street. All are welcome.

Special note for Village and Town of Monroe residents: We are looking for Monroe residents who want to join us in organizing a resistance to the South Blooming Grove led takeover of our Village, as well as advocating for the Town of Monroe to pass the resolution announcing its support for New York For All.

Subscribe now

(The following podcast transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.)

BJ Mendelson, reporter, The Monroe Gazette: Well, hello everyone. Thank you for joining this free edition of The Monroe Gazette podcast. Usually these are reserved for subscribers only.

I wanted to let you know that over in Goshen on Sunday, April 12th at 1 p.m. is going to be another Melt ICE event in Orange County. A lot of us have, I think we’ve all done the victory lap at this point of preventing DHS and ICE, for now, from setting up over in the Village of Chester. But as I keep trying to remind people that fight isn’t over.

In an official statement provided by the Department of Homeland Security to the Monroe Gazette, they said at this time, being the keywords, they have no new concentration camps — They didn’t use those words. I’m using those words — to announce. But that doesn’t mean that they’ve necessarily abandoned the village of Chester. So a lot of us all did a victory lap, and now I think it’s time to sort of refocus. And I’m not the only one, because the local DSA chapter and a number of great organizations throughout our part of New York are organizing a rally.

It’s called Melt ICE in Orange County. And again, it’s Sunday, April 12th at 1pm at the Village Green. South Church Street and Main Street in Goshen. So I hope to see you all there.

Noel, would you like to take a moment just to introduce yourself?

Noelle Peñas, New York Lawyers for The Public Interest: Hi, I’m Noelle. I’m the health justice community organizer with NLP New York Lourdes for the Public Interest and for years since about 2017 we’ve working to advocate for improved medical care in detention centers in New York State and then after repeated efforts to advocate for reform we realized ultimately there will never be adequate care in these detention centers and are not advocating for the closure of these jails so that folks can receive care in their communities.

BJ: Now, when you say adequate care can you just explain a little bit about what that means when it comes to the people in the facility? What are they expected to get versus what are they not getting?

Noelle: They should be getting the care that they would be receiving otherwise if they weren’t detained. ICE has also provided its own national detention standards for medical care. And so this is another standard of care that should be adhered to. But in practice, people are experiencing critical gaps of care. This includes lack of follow-up care for conditions that they experienced prior to entering detention. [Such as a] lack of proper medication, sometimes not receiving medication at all, lack of nutrition or language access, and also incorrect treatment. And we can go deeper into this as well. But overall, when people are requesting care, ICE has showed repeatedly that they are not adhering to the own standards that they provide.

BJ: Yeah, and you know, there’s just published reports now about the number of people that have been killed while in detention at facilities across the country that are operated by DHS and ICE.

And we’ve had anther guest on previously who represents a legal organization where she was saying, you know, Orange County Jail in particular, there’s questions of people not necessarily getting blankets, for example, to our food, for example, that would be adequate for their dietary restrictions.

And so we’ve definitely been paying attention of issues at Orange County Jail in Goshen and some of the issues surrounding ICE. So just so people who are listening this understand, there is about, and this isn’t the exact number, but there’s about 470 total inmates at Orange County Jail and about 110 of them are officially ICE detainees.

And how it’s supposed to work is they’re supposed to be kept in a separate wing, although reporting from the New York Times has indicated that at least on one occasion documented from the Times, someone that was supposed to be in what’s called the ICE wing was actually in the general population, which is not how that’s supposed to work.

So, Noelle, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the report that came out, Denied Care, Denied Dignity.

This is something that was circulated in Signal groups as we were organizing over what was proposed for Chester. And I think it kind of got lost in the shuffle. So I’m hoping you can tell us a little bit about the findings of the report.

Noelle: Sure, I can share a bit of the background on how we started developing this report. This is our third report documenting the conditions of medical neglect in detention centers in New York State, specifically, Orange County Jail. For this report, this captured referrals that we received between January 2022 and May 2024. During this time, we received overall 92 referrals to our medical providers network. 37 of these referrals were for New Yorkers across the country. 19 of these were for clients detained in New York. And these were the individuals profiled in the report. And to share a bit more on our methodology for analyzing the medical data, the medical letters serve as a primary data source for this report. So we receive requests for medical legal advocacy for legal health assessments to our medical providers network.

And upon receiving these requests for referrals, we’ll partner with volunteers for MPN to conduct medical records reviews, to also evaluate the adequacy of care provided, and then to identify any violations of established medical standards. We then work with these doctors who will synthesize their findings into advocacy letters that the legal teams then use to support their clients’ And so these are the letters we’re referring to that serve as a primary data source for the report.

And for these 19 individuals, they each had critical gaps in their medical care while detained by ICE. And so we also worked with healthcare professionals to analyze the data from these medical letters and we found patterns that we ended up categorizing to four different types of failures of medical care, but they also overlap. Some examples we’ll share is when people come into OCJ, they will not receive follow-up care for conditions they had prior to OCJ. They’ll either have care that was supposed to be planned but was never completed, care that was provided only after significant delays, and sometimes care is never planned at all. What this looks like is, for example, someone has come in diagnosed with glaucoma in one of his eyes and he had already been prescribed daily eye drops to manage pressure and to prevent vision loss. But once he was detained, he was denied access to his medication and that puts him at risk of irreversible optic nerve damage and blindness. He was also withheld lidocaine or medication for post dental extraction pain. And in another instance, he was denied hemorrhoid treatment. So these are just overlaps of a denial of medical care. We’ve also seen people being given really insufficient pain medication treatment for, for example, for chronic back pain, someone was just given a mattress. Another patient was, another individual was denied anesthesia for a tooth extraction, which is a pretty very severe withholding of adequate medication care.

We’ve also seen folks being denied necessary tooth extractions or receiving a botched spilling procedure which resulted in facial pain and swelling. Or they’ll be experiencing chronic pain and they’re just prescribed over-the-counter medication and they really need chronic pain management. And we also see this in mental health care plans as well.

Another individual was suffering from major depressive disorder with psychotic features, but he was prescribed an antidepressant dosage that was way below the recommended therapeutic level. And that can lead to an escalation of psychotic episodes, suicidal ideation, or complete functional impairment. And these are patterns. Many times, folks will receive multiple instances or have experienced multiple instances of denial of medication or improper treatment.

BJ: Yeah, it’s sort of astounding to me when you compound that with sometimes the lack of or inadequate access to legal counsel or the reports of people that were supposed to be seen by an attorney that then got shipped off in the dead of night without anyone knowing about it. Let me ask you … Because OCJ in particular has a history, right? Like it has a history of previously there was a hunger strike there. The New York City ACLU has previously documented some of the issues at OCJ. Did that play a role in selecting OCJ as the subject for this report?

Noelle: We selected OCJ because the greatest number of referrals came to us from OCJ. It’s the primary detention center with lapses of medical care where we’re receiving referrals, unfortunately.

BJ: Wow, okay. So, you know, and this is just my opinion. It doesn’t sound like Steve Neuhaus who is the County Executive, ever got the message, right? In terms of properly taking care of the prison population here.

As I think I mentioned before we started recording that the Monroe Gazette has asked people to send ice scrapers to his office to encourage him to cancel the contract between Orange County and ICE DHS, which is, I’ve been told from members of the legislature, only he can terminate the agreement specifically.

So it has to come from him. Let me ask, because these findings are alarming. Anytime anyone has been denied basic medical care, it’s a denial of their human rights. What steps were taken after the report was completed to share this with Orange County?

Noelle: We reached out to organizations based in Orange County to share our report since local officials are more likely to listen to folks that are advocating based within Orange County. we’ve reached out to, alongside the Dignity Not Detention Coalition, have reached out to a couple of folks. We, from what we’ve been hearing through our work with the coalition … There’s been some interest and concern, but... many have taken more the position that further investigation is needed before action can be taken. We’ve also reached out to some outlets and have been able to speak about our report in a few with some local media.

BJ: And what’s the response been like from the county itself in terms of the report? Because I remember looking through this and it came after we had already talking to a number of organizations that were reporting similar issues and had also mentioned the historical problems at OCJ. But what did the county say in terms of this report?

Noelle: That I am not too sure of.

BJ: Well, I can tell you from what we saw, I have to preface this. And I know we talked about it before I started recording. But so for people listening to The Monroe Gazette has documented a number of instances where we’ve submitted FOIL requests to Orange County. Orange County then delays them repeatedly. And we’ve caught County Attorney [Rick] Golden stating that there are no records for some of these requests, lo and behold, for us to have some of the records that he claims does not exist.

We also pressed him quite a bit, and this is probably getting into the weeds, but there’s a court case that’s going on concerning Gonzaga Park and Orange County and claims made by the village of South Blooming Grove that Rick Golden was present at a meeting, which he publicly claims he’s not. There’s been, this is a long way of saying that we have concerns about statements that come from Orange County, statements that come from County executive Neuhaus, you know, we’ve documented him specifically on issues of immigration lying.

For example, during his county address one year, he told the story of for some reason he was at the border. You know, for whatever reason, a county executive in upstate New York is at the southwestern border. You know, he claimed that he was down there in a man cross that allegedly had enough fentanyl on him. And this is a direct quote, to kill everyone in New York City. Of course, that wasn’t true.

But that’s just to give people listening a kind of the context of what the response from the county when we do try to get answers from them on issues about OCJ or issues just about general operations. And the one thing I did see was Golden kind of dismissing this report saying that the findings weren’t true.

But then the Monroe Gazette did reach out to him and said, OK, well, if you’re disputing this report that was put out, surely, you you you’ve issued some kind of response or you’ve talked to the people at NYLPI about about their findings.

Pictured Above: The Monroe Gazette first reached out to Orange County to discuss the NYLPI report back in February. As of this writing in April, we have received no response from either County Executive Steve Neuhaus or County Attorney Rick Golden about the report.

Share

BJ: Has there been any communication with Rick Golden since the report came out?

Noelle: No, they have not reached out to us.

BJ: Yeah, that’s, I figured, I mean, I was kind of teeing you up for that. Yeah, but that’s just, it’s unfortunate and it’s frustrating. And so that kind of brings me to, you know, I mentioned the Melt ICE event in Orange County, which again is Sunday, April 12th at 1pm at the Village Green, which is South Church Street and Main Street in Goshen. So people that are interested in having Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus — who again is the only person who can do this, terminate the agreement between Orange County and DHS ICE to house detainees at Orange County Jail — they should come out.

Let me ask you, after the report came out, has there still been investigations or exploration as to what’s going on in Orange County Jail? Is it still something that you guys are keeping track of?

Noelle: Yes, in the sense that we continue to receive referrals from advocates representing clients detained in Orange County Jail. We received a as recently as last week.

BJ: Oh wow

Noelle: Yeah.

BJ: What can people do, and this is really the next to last question for you, what can people do who are listening to this who are interested, I mean, obviously we’ll post to the report, we’ll make sure people can see it when we run the transcript for this. So we’ll make sure people are aware of it …

But what can people do to help the work that you do and to also help the detainees at Orange County Jail?

Noelle: I would encourage folks to join the groups that are organizing locally in Orange County to fight back for the closure of Orange County Jail.

This includes the Dignity Not Detention Coalition, which is in contact with orgs in Orange County. The coalition is also running a hotline in Orange County jail where folks can reach out. I would also encourage folks to try to visit folks who are detained to join the letter writing events that the coalition host to join the phones apps as well to join in actions. Sharing about the issue to the elected officials continuing to raise the issue. I would say that really these detention centers were in our design to isolate people from community and to make them feel like they’re alone and that people have forgotten about them.

And so what we can do as community is to show up and to let them know that we’re still fighting for them and that we haven’t forgotten and to continue to reach out. Show up and tell them that we’re still fighting for them and that we have a good bottom and to continue to reach out.

And to try to fight for the passage of legislation that would terminate contracts with Orange County Jail because ultimately, while reforms would be great, while oversight and accountability would be great, the only way to really ensure that people don’t suffer is to terminate these jails. And you can do that by passing the Dignity not detention act and also related legislation like New York for All, which would, end collaboration between local government and ICE.

BJ: Yeah, and just for people listening, you know, I keep I keep talking about the big five bills to protect us from the Trump regime. You know, it’s it’s New York for all. It’s the New York melt act. It’s the New York Dignity Not Detention Act. It’s the Privacy Act and it’s the Health Act. And currently our state senator, James G. Skoufis, does not support New York for all. He does support the melt act. Although I think that that seems to be reluctant on his part. And our state assemblymen for people that are listening to us in our typical coverage region, which is Monroe-Woodbury, your assemblyman, Chris Eachus who’s a Democrat, does not support any of these bills.

And then if you live in one part of Monroe, you are unfortunately represented by Carl Brabenec who is one of the few Republicans who also does not support any of these bills.

It’s frustrating to me that January 7th was the first day in a state where we have a Democratic trifecta, they did not pass any of these bills including New York for all. So I’m glad that you mentioned that because that’s, it’s infuriating to me. Like we have had all this time to pass these bills and as we record this, none of those bills have been passed, although it looks like the melt act will survive in some form.

Let me ask you my last question. So specifically about NYLPI, what, if people are listening to this and they’re learning about you for the first time, how can they support the work that you do?

Noelle: I would say get organized. The work that we do is because we’re fighting for the health and safety of our communities in New York, but any of the policies or reform that we’re fighting for can only be passed when our communities want it and are also pressuring our representatives to pass these bills. And the more we’re organized, the more we build collective power, the more effective our work can be.

BJ: Yeah, I agree. We’ve been telling people to organize local signal groups with their neighbors. Is there anything that, you know, I didn’t ask you that you think is worth mentioning?

Noelle: Concerning claims that the data is not being sufficient to potentially reveal any patterns at Orange County Jail, I would... I would say that the experiences of 19 people should be enough. And even if one person was experiencing this, should already because for some kind of urgency for investigation or accountability. And so I would hope that representatives with the ability to terminate the contract would see these experiences and for this to be enough. I’m not sure how many people, like how many people would be needed to establish a pattern is my question. I think the experiences of 19 people should already be sufficient.

BJ: Our philosophy is that everybody counts. If it’s one person that has a problem, the problem should be addressed. I totally agree with that.

Noelle: I appreciate all the work that you’re doing documenting this, not letting the pressure up and making sure that the support gets out there and does the work that needs to do.

BJ: Well, thank you. Let me me put in one more point before we go. So again, Melt ICE in Orange County. It’s a rally to end Orange County’s contract with ICe for the ICE detention wing at Orange County Jail. There’s over 100 people that are held currently there. It’s a significant chunk of the OCJ population. So it’s incredible to me that we are holding so many people there often without them receiving their due process or adequate access t attorneys and to basic medical needs.

So if you are as outraged as I am, it’s Sunday, April 12th at 1pm at the Village Green. That’s South Church Street and Main Street and Goshen. We’ll post the link for people who are interested in attending. You can RSVP here.

Share

Pictured Above: The March 2025 swearing in of former Woodbury Town Board member, Kelly Rinaldi. The local equivalent of former British Prime Minister, Liz Truss.

Happy Monday. We’re back. If you missed last week’s episode of our Stupid Sexy Privacy podcast, you can check it out here.

Our other podcasts, The Finley and Privacy Tips, will return as soon as I finish “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” It’s looking like the end of the month for that book to be completely edited.

Just a reminder: This book is free. All you need to do is sign up for the Stupid Sexy Privacy newsletter. As soon as the .pdf and .mp3 of the book are ready, we’ll send them to you. And if you want additional tips on how to protect yourself from fascists and weirdos, that newsletter has everything you need every Thursday morning.

Now, due to a request for privacy, at the time of this writing, I can’t give you the full context behind this story. Someone died. It’s very sad, and we’d like to give our condolences to those affected by this loss. When it becomes appropriate to do so, we’ll fill you in.

But.

I can give you something incredibly shitty that happened related to this loss. And, honestly, even if you don’t live in Southern Orange County — a bigger and bigger chunk of our readership as we transition towards covering more state-wide and national news in addition to the local coverage — there’s still a lesson to be learned here. Or two at least.

The first explains how karma actually works.

The Monroe Gazette is advertising free and has no pay-wall. Meaning you can now access our full archive of posts going back to 2024. If you want to help keep the lights on, between now and December 31st we’re looking to convince 500 of our free readers to become paid annual subscribers at $120 a year.

Like we explain on our About page, our “competitor” The Photo-News, despite being advertising disguised as a newspaper, is asking for non-tax deductible contributions of up to $150 in each issue. So while $120 sounds like a lot, when compared to what The Photo-News is asking for, we feel you get much more value for less money.

If you’d like to become an annual subscriber and get access to our private Facebook group, the ability to leave a comment on these posts, and subscriber only posts like this one, we hope you’ll join us.

Subscribe now

Pictured Above: A couple of hours after a tragic loss was shared on Facebook, former Woodbury Town Board member, Kelly Rinaldi, decided to share what many Woodbury residents claim was her opinion on that passing. (The Monroe Gazette was unaware of this story until numerous Woodbury residents sent us these screenshots voicing their outrage. The Monroe Gazette reached out to Mrs. Rinaldi for comment and will update this story if we hear back. We’ve included Mrs. Rinaldi’s response at the bottom of today’s post. Mrs. Rinaldi has since deleted the above Facebook post.)

Share

Current Woodbury Town Board member, Gretchen Weiners, decided to chime in as well. This was followed by the wife of Woodbury Town Board member — and far right MAGA Bigot — Brandon Calore. The other two people in the picture above were blurred because they are not public figures or closely associated with a public figure. We’ve previously written about Mrs. Calore’s odd behavior toward Woodbury residents here.

Now, if you don’t live in Southern Orange County, all you need to know is that Kelly Rinaldi is essentially the local equivalent of former British Prime Minister, Liz Truss. Mrs. Truss served as Prime Minister for 50 days, which is the shortest tenure in British history.

During the dark times of the Luciani Error — not a typo — in the Town of Woodbury, the Woodbury Town Board saw not one, but two resignations. The first being Timothy Finnegan, who formerly operated Finnegan’s Pub at 504 State Route 32 in Highland Mills. The bar was owned by local real estate douche developer, Wayne Corts. Mr. Corts then sold the bar to 297 Hart LLC, who then sold it to Yeh Realty Holdings LLC. We mention this because Yeh Realty Holdings LLC is based in South Blooming Grove, not too far from Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein’s United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove headquarters at 29 Merriewold Lane South, and may be owned by Yosef Horowitz.

You can draw your own conclusions there as to whether or not these things are connected, given Isaac Ekstein’s involvement in the most recent Village and Town elections in Woodbury. Both Stern and Ekstein are alleged to be at the center of an ongoing federal investigation involving voter fraud and voter coercion. Allegedly, New York State’s Attorney General Letitia James is investigating them as well, but we’ll believe that when we see it.

The second resignation was of Robert Beckley, who replaced Timothy Finnegan. To this day, Mr. Beckley has not explained or commented on his abrupt departure from the Woodbury Town Board. It’s speculated that Mr. Beckley did not get along with Supervisor Luciani, but there is no evidence publicly to support that conclusion. All we can say to you factually is that his resignation was abrupt, and it occurred following a tense meeting of the Woodbury Town Republican Committee. It was Ms. Rinaldi, who — over the objections of current Town Board member, Martha Lopez, and others — was appointed to fill Beckley’s seat by Kathryn Luciani. Despite the fact that an election was starting up at the time of Beckley’s departure. Lopez and others insisted that the Town Board seat abandoned by Finnegan and then Beckley be left open so that the voters can have their say. Mrs. Katrhyn Luciani ignored these suggestions and appointed Kelly Rinaldi.

Mrs. Rinaldi proceeded to miss a bunch of meetings, and when she was present, did little more than nod her head at what Mrs. Luciani had to say. This can be verified by watching any Woodbury Town Board meeting between March and Rinaldi’s sudden and permanent disappearance in November of 2025. (Upon losing their respective bids for re-election, Mrs. Rinaldi ghosted the Woodbury Town Board for the duration of the term she was appointed to serve.)

The Monroe Gazette has reached out to the Town of Woodbury to confirm the exact number of meetings missed by Kelly Rinaldi, as well as how much money she made while acting as a rubber stamp for the corrupt and inept Luciani-Calore administration. We will share that information once provided.

That’s Not How Karma Works, Kelly

Let’s assume for a second that Mrs. Rinaldi is not a Buddhist. So, if that’s the case, it’s probably true she doesn’t believe in death and rebirth.

Outside of like, Jesus.

So if we’re talking about spiritual rebirth, and bringing what you did — or did not do, like show up to Woodbury Town Board meetings — then that’s how karma works in one sense. If you’re a terrible person in one life, in the next life, you’re going to face the consequences of your actions, or at least suffer in some form because of the consequences of your actions in a previous life.

It’s a safe bet this isn’t what Mrs. Rinaldi is talking about in her Facebook post.

And also, Buddhism, like any religion, is not a monolith. So your mileage may vary as to this explanation and whether or not it’s believed or followed by all Buddhists.

So then there’s the other kind of karma, which is that — if you like the works of Thích Nhất Hạnh like I do — you subscribe to this idea of interbeing. Basically, it’s aligned with a similar belief found in Shintoism that everything is interconnected with everything else on an atomic level. In that sense, karma doesn’t refer to some God sitting around and keeping score of how you behave. (Which, I feel, is how we get this Western misinterpretation of Karma in the first place, because it fits in perfectly with the monotheistic religions and their concept of a singular God that’s keeping score.)

Basically, karma in this sense means, if you’re a good person, then by virtue of being a good person, you’re making the people and environment around you better in ways that you and others may not even realize.

If you’re an asshole, the opposite is true.

You’re making everything and everyone around you worse, which is funny since we’re talking about Kathryn Luciani’s Reign of Error in Woodbury. Her behavior, and the behavior of her other Town Board members (specifically Luongo and Calore), made Woodbury worse through their actions in both big tangible ways — like gutting the Woodbury ethics law — and small ways, like the chaotic dysfunction caused by multiple resignations and giving away Town Board jobs to your friends.

That’s karma. That’s how that works. If you do something bad, like Teresa Luongo/Gretchen Weiner’s threatening to dox the former town supervisor at a Town Board meeting, you’re not going to suddenly get instant justice for your bad behavior.

Make sense? So, what we have here instead isn’t an example of karma. We have here an example of what happens when you scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of finding people to represent you in local government.

Go Door to Door and Keep Going Door to Door

Recently, there’s been a big discussion about the need for more volunteers in Woodbury. Volunteers for different boards like the deeply troubled Woodbury Public Library Board. Volunteers for the Animal Shelter. And just getting people more engaged with their local government.

Here’s the thing, though …

Politics, whether it’s local, state, or national, is an aristocratic activity.

That doesn’t mean everyone involved is wealthy. Although wealthy people like Wayne Corts, James G. Skoufis, and Avrum Bur Jacobowitz certainly like to try to shape and warp our local elections. But what it means is that the people who typically show up to Town Board meetings, volunteer, and vote have the luxury of time to do so.

Most people don’t have that.

Most people live paycheck to paycheck. Many are working two jobs, if not three. And others are trying to juggle not only their jobs, but taking care of their kids or their elderly parents. That’s not to say these people couldn’t make time to volunteer — some can — but they’re going to need some convincing. That’s because they’re constantly being bombarded by messages of government bloat and inefficiency (on the Right) and government corruption and inaction of the government to enforce the laws against the wealthy (on the Left). This isn’t about which side is correct. This is about the information we’re constantly being hit with, that we all need to filter out.

So, when you say at your meeting, already attended by people who can afford to contribute some of their limited time — we are all time constrained in one way, shape, or form, some more than others, though — that’s not going to reach the people you want to reach. Neither is posting on Facebook. As we’ve said repeatedly here at The Monroe Gazette, these Facebook groups are great for activating your base. But they’re not very good at reaching the 90% of people who are not getting their news and information from these Facebook groups in your community.

What you need to do is make phone calls and go door to door, as your local government, and make your pitch directly.

The funny thing is that when it’s election time, we already do this with our petitions. (Petitions for my state Senate campaign are available for you to sign, by the way.)

But after election season is over, all that door knocking stops. It shouldn’t. Especially when you live in a place like southern Orange County that is almost entirely a news desert.

This disengagement isn’t a southern Orange County problem though. It’s an American problem. And it’s one that’s up to all of us to solve. Because if we don’t, we will keep getting worse and worse local, state, and national candidates to choose from, like Kelly Rinaldi.

That’s an example of how karma actually works.

So, for whatever it’s worth, my advice is to continue knocking on doors on behalf of the local government and recruit the volunteers that way. And in the process, ask those people what the local government can do for them. Because while it’s nice to help small businesses, the business of government should never be about business. The business of government should always be about making sure everyone knows how their taxes are being spent; and making sure that the government is doing all it can to help their community. Especially now, as we experience a national emergency and crisis of leadership at the very top.

Share

4/7/26 1:31pm Update:

We had a chance to speak with Mrs. Rinaldi. She claims the comment was not directed at the person Woodbury residents assumed it was. She gave us permission to provide her statement below. Out of respect for the family’s privact we’ve removed their names, but have left the statement otherwise intact.

The truth is since the election I have not been on Facebook that much. My Facebook use to be private but when it was election time I had to make it public. I forgot after elections to put it back to private. As for [Name Removed] I did not know [Name removed] died at the time of my post and I am very sorry [Name removed] died.

I have nothing against [name removed] we have always been hello and good by to each other even when I was on the board. I may not agree with some of the politics but I have nothing personally against [name removed]. As for the post it has to do with my friend in Texas if you need to know. My response to [Woodbury resident] Janine [Cortese] and her husband was well deserved. It would have been better to just ask me privately and then I would have told her the same I am telling you. I took it [the post] down due to the harsh comments left by Janine and I and also no I would never in my life talk about anyone who lost a family member that way that is horrible.

I too lost my husband tell me does it make sense for someone to say that about another human being that just lost their loved one no. As for the other people that comment on that post I don’t know what they were talking about or meant you will have to ask them. I took this off out of respect for [Name removed] and her family also even though I didn’t have to. Now there is the truth and that will be the last time you will ever contact me.

Mrs. Rinaldi missed a total of five meetings during her brief tenure as a member of the Woodbury Town Board. Her appointment cost Woodbury taxpayers $9,641 according to the Town of Woodbury.

Share

Pictured Above: Congressman Pat Ryan refuses to support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United (House Resolution 54). Of New York State’s 26 congressional representatives, 19 are Democrats. Of those 19 Democrats, 10 support House Resolution 54.

Congressman Ryan is not one of them.

A big part of the reason Ryan does not support this bill is that Congressman Ryan accepts large sums from MAGA-aligned billionaire front groups such as AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

Don’t let their name fool you: AIPAC has little to do with what’s best for Israel and more to do with keeping Republicans in power and pushing the Democratic Party further to the right.

As George Washington warned in his Farewell Address, Americans should be wary of allowing foreign countries to influence our government. As we approach America’s 250th birthday this July, we should recommit ourselves to preventing the wealthy, and any foreign country, from influencing our politicians, regardless of party.

Share

There’s no shortage of local and national news to cover right now. But today, I want to direct your attention to something short and simple you can do once a week that will make a difference in your local community.

If you don’t live in Congressman Pat Ryan’s district, that’s okay—you can copy and paste the same process explained below and apply it to your congressional representatives.

Before we get to that, the Monroe Gazette is aiming to sign up 500 new annual subscribers between now and December 31. There’s no paywall for our archives and no advertising—we’re entirely reader-supported.

If you like what we do, please consider becoming a new annual subscriber by signing up below. Subscribers receive bonus content like this subscriber-only post, access to our private Facebook group, and the ability to comment on posts like the one you’re reading.

Subscribe now

Step 0: If You Are Not Represented by Pat Ryan

If you are not represented by Congressman Pat Ryan, call the United States House of Representatives switchboard at (202) 224-3121. They can help you identify your representative and connect you directly to their office.

All of the steps below will be the same no matter who you’re calling.

Step 1: Identify Yourself as a Constituent

For this exercise, be sure you’re calling the correct representative — in my case, Pat Ryan of New York’s 18th District.

While it can be useful to contact politicians who don’t represent you, this particular action is most effective when done by actual constituents.

Congressman Ryan’s district is displayed below. You’ll see all of Orange County (it’s shaped like the head of a dog.) Within Orange County, over by Monroe, is the Village of South Blooming Grove. We talk a lot about South Blooming Grove here at the Monroe Gazette.

When the person in Congressman Pat Ryan’s office answers, identify yourself as a constituent and tell them where you live. (See the sample script below.) Make sure to include your zip code when you do. The zip code verifies that you’re a constituent in their system.

Step 2: Identify Your Position on a Specific Issue

Don’t do the Grandpa Simpson thing and rattle off every complaint you have about the congressman.

Be specific: name the single issue you’re calling about and state your position on it (for or against.)

Keep calls to one issue. Staffers are underpaid and overwhelmed, and you want them to document your call accurately.

Not every issue ties to a bill. If you’re calling about the alleged voter suppression and coercion in South Blooming Grove—conduct Pat Ryan should comment on, but hasn’t—there may be no specific legislation to cite. That’s fine, but without a bill your call is more likely to be lost in the system and may not be consistently tracked.

For this specific exercise, call Pat Ryan’s office every Tuesday about a specific bill: House Resolution 54.

The Citizens United decision has warped our national, state, and local politics.

For example, here in Southern Orange County: 2025 saw Democratic State Senator, James G. Skoufis, form an independent expenditure committee (New York’s version of a super PAC).

Mr. Skoufis, a man who ran to be chair of the Democratic National Committee, then spent over $20,000 supporting far-right MAGA bigot Brandon Calore for Woodbury mayor—an action made possible by Citizens United.

If you don’t want state senators, AIPAC, or others spending large sums on local elections, you have an interest in seeing House Resolution 54 passed.

Step 3: Request That The Staff Call You Back

Unless you’re Joel Stern (far left) or Isaac Ekstein (right, next to Pat Ryan)—both men are alleged to be at the center of a federal case involving voter suppression, voter fraud, and coercion in South Blooming Grove—you’re never going to get this close to Pat Ryan.

Stern and Ekstein have a friendly relationship with the congressman and significant access; Pat Ryan even has his own tag for Joel Stern’s United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove newsletter.

But that doesn’t mean his people can’t call you back.

When you call the congressman’s office, you should—and absolutely can—request that someone contact you back. Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll send a generic form letter about how hard Congressman Ryan is working for you. It doesn’t matter. The point is to always ask for a reply and for them to clarify the congressman’s position on your issue.

When I asked Pat Ryan’s team for a response on House Resolution 54, I received a generic letter that didn’t even mention Citizens United. (See below.)

So, you bet your ass I’m going to keep calling them until I get an answer.

The point here is not the lack of response but your continued effort to request, and ultimately obtain, a reply.

Your elected officials work for you. It’s not the other way around.

Step 4: Call Every Week Around The Same Time

This is the most important part: it’s not enough to call Congressman Pat Ryan once on a Tuesday. You must call his office every Tuesday until you get an actual response from him or his staff on your issue.

This is where everyone messes up.

It’s not that you called—individually, our voices are easy to ignore. Unlike Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein, most of us don’t have wealthy friends like Avraham Ber Jakobowitz (sometimes spelled Avrom Bur Jacobowitz) to buy and keep a congressman’s attention.

Volume is what matters for us.

If, of 3,000 South Blooming Grove residents, 500 called Pat Ryan every week, things would change quickly about the voter suppression and election fraud. But we don’t do it. So nothing does.

Instead, Pat Ryan will call his friend Joel Stern, ask Stern about the illegal helipad at 58 Fort Worth, Stern will tell Ryan too bad, so sad, and then Ryan will shrug his shoulders and tell his constituents there’s nothing he can do for them.

(This by the way, is currently happening to Monroe resident, Mr. Javier Dam, who’s property connects to 58 Fort Worth.)

This tactic of calling at the same time every week applies to any issue. If you want a politician to respond, it takes many people calling about the same issue repeatedly, at the same time, and all asking for a response.

That’s the bad news.

The good news: everyone has five minutes on a Tuesday to call Pat Ryan’s office and ask, for example, why the congressman does not support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United—and to urge him to publicly commit to co-sponsoring House Resolution 54.

You can use this tactic with any representative on any issue. Just follow the four steps explained here and share this post when you’re done.

Share

Example Call Script

(Note that the items below in bold are just to show you the parts of the four steps mentioned above. Don’t take the bold to mean you should shout those parts. As funny as that would be, it would be counterproductive to our goal here.)

Hi. My name is _________________ and I am a resident of ______________. My zip code is ___________, which makes me a constituent of Pat Ryan. How are you?

Great. I’m calling to let the Congressman know I support House Resolution 54 Which is a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United. I am greatly concerned about corporations, billionaires, and other wealthy individuals controlling which candidates get nominated, and which candidates get elected.

Of the 19 New York Congressional Democrats, 10 of them support this bill. Congressman Ryan does not.

I am requesting that someone from the Congressman’s office call me back at _______________ to explain why Congressman Pat Ryan does not support overturning Citizens United.

I will continue to call every Tuesday until I have a satisfactory answer. Thank you for your time.

Share

This is a little bit of an experiment. I took the audio transcript and ran it through Duck.Ai for spelling, grammar, and punctuation checks. I noticed it (the chat model, ChatGPT5) went ahead and made some other un-suggested and unwelcome edits; however, since I encourage you to watch the video or listen to the podcast audio, I thought I’d leave the transcript as provided.

Use it as a guide to give you an idea of what I covered, but don’t take it as the gospel.

Kiryas Skver and Introduction

All right. There is a lot happening in Sullivan County, southern Orange County, and Rockland County. We typically cover southern Orange County, but sometimes events in Rockland spill over into Sullivan County, and sometimes those events affect what’s happening where we live in southern Orange County. Often you can’t separate those things.

I’m going to do my best to work through this huge list of current news stories. If you’re watching on YouTube, you can watch us live right now. I …

Read more

BJ Mendelson: Hello there. No, the book isn’t done, but I thought tomorrow was really important. So I thought I could burn some time that should be used to finish this book, to talk about No Kings instead, so hang with me.

You might be wondering what’s going on in my area. There are events everywhere in Orange County. We will have a list of the ones that we’re aware of in today’s edition of the Monroe Gazette. I just want to talk to you about the one in Monroe, though.

Local Event Details Beyond Monroe

Goshen No Kings Event Details:

• What: ‘No Kings’ Rally

• When: Saturday, March 28, 2026

• Where: Village Green, corner of Main Street and South Church St

• Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Warwick No Kings Event Details:

• What: ‘No Kings’ Rally

• When: Saturday, March 28, 2026

• Where: At Railroad Green

• Time: 10am-11:30am

Port Jervis No Kings Event Details:

• What: ‘No Kings’ Rally

• When: Saturday, March 28, 2026

• Where: Veteran’s Memorial Park

• Time: 12-2pm

Cornwall

• What: ‘No Kings’ Rally

• When: Saturday, March 28, 2026

• Where: Cornwall Plaza Sidewalk 17 Quaker Av (Don’t go to Skoufis’s office. Boo him for trying to ban masks for protests and doing literally nothing to pass New York For All.)

• Time: 12-2pm

Middletown

• What: ‘No Kings’ Rally

• When: Saturday, March 28, 2026

• Where: 14 Old Church St.

• Time: 11:30am-1pm

Newburgh

• What: ‘No Kings’ Rally

• When: Saturday, March 28, 2026

• Where: Colden Street & 2nd Street

• Time: 12-2pm

And of course …

March 28th at 1 p.m. in the Village of Monroe on the corner of 17M and Lake Street.

That’s going to be where, if you’ve driven through the Village of Monroe on a Saturday, you might have seen Hands Off Hudson Valley. There’s some other groups that have also been out protesting, but Hands Off Hudson Valley is there every other Saturday, And so that’s where you should go. Tomorrow at one o’clock, Village of Monroe. Right in the downtown, right where the mill ponds are, between the two of them, that’s where they typically gather.

Full disclosure, I am a member of the steering committee for Hands Off Hudson Valley, although really all credit goes to Carol and Nora and Irene for all of their work, because really they’re the ones driving the bus, and I’m sort of like doing the best I can as I have time to contribute. So I think it’s important to go out if you’re in Chester, if you’re in Woodbury. If you’re in Woodbury, you can go to the one in Cornwall. If you’re in Chester, you can go to the one in Warwick if you’d like. We would encourage you to come on down to Monroe, though. We think that there’s a nice base here to build off of and it’s gonna be fun.

We have 44 people signed up right now. Hopefully all 44 come.

But even if they don’t, even if it’s five people, it’s still great. And this is why I want to talk about this and this is why it’s important.

Here’s Why You Want To Come Out For Events Like No Kings

I’m going to give you an example involving climate change. Most people in America right now know that there’s a climate emergency. It doesn’t matter if you’re like the reddest red Republican or the bluest blue Democrat. The majority of Americans understand and acknowledge that we are living through a climate emergency.

The thing is, is that not a lot of people say it out loud. And the reason why is because they don’t see or hear other people talking about it. When you turn on the news, you don’t really hear about the climate emergency. When you’ve got a bad storm outside and you’ve got 60 mile per hour winds, you think, oh, well, that’s climate change. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t acknowledge it. We don’t acknowledge it because we don’t see other people talking about it. So the reason why an event like No Kings is so important is to let people know that they’re not alone

So even if there’s five people tomorrow in Monroe, March 28th at one o’clock downtown, Village Monroe … Rven if there’s five people, those five people demonstrate to others that they’re not alone, that there is a problem, that there is something worth talking about. So just showing up has a lot of power. It’s not gonna fix things overnight. We’re not gonna end the climate emergency in a weekend. We’re not gonna, regardless of your political ideology, we’re not going to get rid of the corporate influence, which has made our politics so batshit crazy overnight, right? Like that takes a constitutional amendment and that’s not something that happens overnight.

But by showing up, we start to walk down that road a little bit. And the more often these events happen and the more people show up, the further down the road we get. So it’s a starting place. So I know a of people sometimes go, why bother showing up? It won’t change anything. It does. The thing is, is that the change won’t happen overnight, right? Like nobody’s going to snap their fingers and change things. It’s going to be this constant drip over the next, God, I hope not three years, but it could very well be over the next three years, just this constant drip of people showing up and saying what’s happening is not okay.

We need things to change. And the more people show up at these events, it gives permission to other people who are kind of on the fence, which is most people right now, if we’re being honest. That’s the key here. You showing up empowers others to show up too, and the more people who come out, the more powerful you are as a group.

You’re either aware that there’s a national emergency right now, or you kind of suspect that something’s wrong, but you don’t want to deal with it, either because you’re busy, which I understand, totally get it, or because you’re afraid, which is most of us, or because you don’t know what to do, you don’t know what else to do. So by going to these events, you give permission to others to speak their thoughts out loud and share their concerns, and that gives permission for more people to tune in.

No Kings isn’t designed to change things over night.

It’s designed to give people permission to think and act as if there is a national emergency, because we know there is one. And the more of us that start to do that, the more power you start to build, the more power you start to build, the more that you can change things, whether it’s here on the local level, because there’s gonna be a big fight coming in the village of Monroe. Let me tell you, we’ll talk more about that next week.

The only way any of these things change is by showing up. And right now, not enough people show up. Not enough people show up in the Village of Monroe. Not enough people show up in Blooming Grove. Not enough people show up in Chester at the Village. At the Village Board meeting. There was only three people at the last one on March 9th.

If you want to change things, the first thing you do is show up. So what better place than tomorrow, March 28th, 1 p.m. The Village of Monroe in the downtown between the mill ponds, hands off Hudson Valley, is hosting our No Kings event.

We hope to see you there.

If you can’t make it, there are plenty of other events to join, including ones in Cornwall and Port Jervis and Warwick and Goshen. We’ll have all of that information for you. (See above.)

Either way, we just want you to get out there. And if you’re thinking, well, you know, I voted for Trump, that’s okay. You’re welcome here too. This isn’t a partisan event. This is an American event. This is us as Americans saying that there’s a problem. So if you’re a Republican and you voted for Trump, you’re welcome here. If you are super liberal, like I am, you are welcome there. If you’re on the fence and don’t have a political position, you are welcome there. That’s how you build a movement.

Share

Pictured above: For those of you who watch professional wrestling, you’ll get this joke. Otherwise: in AEW — think WWE with way less MAGA politics and a stunning inability to tell a coherent story for more than three characters — there is a group called the Don Callis Family. It is essentially just a huge group of dudes. A huge group of dudes was reported outside Monroe Village Hall throughout Election Day. But since posting a picture of a large group of Satmar men without context feels antisemitic, I decided to go with the Don Callis Family.

I will also use this as an opportunity to ask, “Why are there no women in the Don Callis Family?” As much as I have enjoyed AEW since the 2025 Continental Classic, this remains my biggest pet peeve. You mean to tell me there isn’t one woman on the roster who isn’t sufficiently evil enough to make evil faces at the camera? Really? REALLY?

Share

Where’s BJ?

Hello friends. I am still finishing up my new book, “How to Protect Yourself From Fascists & Weirdos.” So, I’ll be back with some articles and videos next week.

If you’d like a free .pdf and .mp3 of the book when it’s ready, come on over to our sister website, Stupid Sexy Privacy and sign up for the newsletter.

Until then, I’m going to share with you a few letters that have gone out. Two of them involve the scandal plagued police chief of Blooming Grove, Alex Melchiorre. As of April 1st, Mr. Melchiorre will become mayor of Monroe.

The first letter involves local grave robbing con artist, Jay Westerveld. Let’s deal with Mr. Westerveld first.

As of this writing, he has 9 business days to turn over his last three Form 990s from his Sugar Loaf Historical Society not-for-profit before I report him to the IRS.

Ticktock Jay!

Why Does This Matter?

If you want to defeat the fascists and weirdos, documentation is king.

And the simplest, easiest thing any of us can do is write letters. Whether it be to your local officials like Supervisor Jeroloman — why is your police chief not enforcing the law? — or to a Village Clerk to document election irregularities. (In New York, the Village Clerk is completely in charge of local elections.)

Document everything you can, and then write to your local elected officials and municipal employees to let them know you’re watching.

Share

Letter to the Town Board of Chester re: The Local Con Artist

(Note: This letter was also sent to Straus News, which continues to give Mr. Westerveld a platform despite being made aware of Mr. Jay Westerveld’s penchant for spreading virulent anti-semitic conspiracy theories, which we discussed here. We sent this letter to them because we knew they would never run it, and we wanted to prove that point.)

Dear Chester Town Board Members,

I understand that, for at least the third time since 2011, the not-for-profit organization the Sugar Loaf Historical Society—and its only visible member, as far as the public (myself included) can tell, Jay Westerveld—is lobbying for a memorial to Trooper William McDonagh in Sugar Loaf.

To the best of my knowledge at the time of this writing, no minutes, agendas, meeting dates, or other records are publicly available from this alleged organization that would indicate whether there are any board members beyond the voices in Mr. Westerveld’s head.

This alleged organization recently told readers of The Chronicle in December 2025 that it was “proud of the fact that, despite being a not-for-profit corporation registered with the IRS, they have never solicited public monies and they pay full taxes on their properties.”

Mrs. Jeanne Straus, publisher of The Chronicle, was made aware of virulent antisemitic conspiracy theories being spread by Mr. Westerveld over a year ago. I am not surprised, but nonetheless disappointed, to see that Mrs. Straus has continued to give Mr. Westerveld a platform to spread his disinformation throughout the Southern Orange County community.

This disinformation campaign, as recently as this weekend, involves the matter to which I am writing you today.

Under federal law, all not-for-profits registered with the IRS must provide their three most recent Form 990s upon request. In September 2024, the Monroe Gazette requested these forms from Mr. Westerveld. We also requested these forms from the other organizations he claims to own and operate around the region, some of which do not have functioning websites. We never received these documents. We again requested the three most recent Form 990s in March 2026 and are waiting to see if we receive them.

As part of this investigation, The Monroe Gazette found instances of Mr. Westerveld claiming to be a visiting lecturer at West Point, a claim West Point says there is no evidence to support. Mr. Westerveld also repeatedly claimed to be a visiting lecturer at Columbia University. This is, at best, a half-truth: about a decade ago he gave one lecture at Columbia’s adult extension program in or around 2014. This is not the same as being a visiting lecturer at Columbia University. Some may disagree, but I believe this pattern makes Mr. Westerveld a serial liar and speaks to his character and motivations.

I mention this because, much like the existence (or lack thereof) of the Sugar Loaf Historical Society, Mr. Westerveld’s request for a memorial to Trooper McDonagh in Sugar Loaf is fraudulent.

It is a request submitted to the Town—and then used to attack the Town if it does not cooperate with Mr. Westerveld’s wishes—in order to aid his failing attempts at local relevancy.

At no point has Mr. Westerveld discussed the memorial he has repeatedly tried to create with Trooper McDonagh’s family. Had he done so, he would know the family is adamant that it does not want, in any way, shape, or form, a memorial created where Mr. McDonagh’s life ended.

If Mr. Westerveld had, at any point in his more than decade-long quest, stopped to speak with the family, he would also have been told that there are already local memorials for Trooper McDonagh in Monroe and Middletown.

Please do not continue to humor Mr. Westerveld in his attempts to grave-rob the memory of a brave state trooper, merely to keep his own name in the public eye. That is all this man wants, and it seems he wishes to use this matter to attack the Town Board and its reputation.

If you wish to respect the memory of Trooper William McDonagh, the best course of action is to ignore Mr. Westerveld and honor the family’s wishes: Do not create any memorial in Sugar Loaf, no matter how many times Mr. Westerveld asks.

Thank you.

-BJ Mendelson

P.S. I copied The Chronicle and Warwick Advertiser on this letter, since they ran an unnamed letter to the editor, likely submitted by Mr. Westerveld, from the Sugar Loaf Historical Society.

They will, of course, not publish it, but I want to demonstrate that they are clearly in Mr. Westerveld’s corner by not doing so, and continuing to harm the public by sharing his disinformation and misinformation.

P.P.S. There is only one actual Sugar Loaf organization dedicated to preserving the hamlet’s rich history, and it is the Sugar Loaf Community Foundation.

When Will Alex Melchiorre Enforce The Law in Blooming Grove?

The next letter — sent to Blooming Grove Town Supervisor, Robert Jeroloman — is a behind the scenes look at a story we’ve been working on here at The Monroe Gazette for a number of months, involving the South Blooming Grove rogue helicopter, which you can read about here.

Pictured Above: Within minutes of the Monroe Village election ending, Deputy Clerk of South Blooming Grove, Isaac Ekstein, posted the above to the Village’s FB page.

Mr. Jeroloman,

I’ve had the chance to speak to representatives from the FAA. They stated that there is nothing prohibiting Alex Melchiorrie, your Chief of Police — until April 1st? — from enforcing state and local laws / codes that may be violated due to operation of the helicopter at 58 Fort Worth. A helicopter which was again present yesterday (March 22nd.)

So, I ran a search of some of the laws that could be violated by the operation of the helicopter, which residents claim is flying lower than allowable under FAA regulations and endangering their health and safety.

If it is the belief of the FAA that there is no prohibition on Mr. Melchiorre enforcing the following laws, perhaps you can explain why he has not charged Moshe Ostreicher (who owns the property) and George Kalaj (who may live at the property) with:

• Reckless endangerment in the second degree (Penal Law §120.20): class A misdemeanor — up to 1 year jail (or local sentence), fines. Charged when person recklessly creates substantial risk of physical injury to another (e.g., flying/landing near people or dwellings).

• Reckless endangerment in the first degree (Penal Law §120.25): class D felony — up to 7 years imprisonment, fines — requires depraved indifference and grave risk of death (applied rarely but possible for dangerous helicopter operations).

• Trespass, criminal nuisance, disorderly conduct or related local offenses: penalties range from violations to misdemeanors (fines and short jail terms) depending on statute.

Given that Mr. Melchiorre may become Mayor of Monroe, there is serious concern that he did NOT enforce these laws because of the electoral support provided to him by Moshe’s business associate, Isaac Ekstein.

If you’d like to respond, I hope you will do so before my deadline this week for this story, which is Thursday.

-BJ Mendelson

Is This Enough To Take to a Judge?

And finally, if you live in the Village of Monroe, here is a letter you can copy, paste, and send to the Monroe Village Clerk at clerk@villageofmonroe.org.

I can confirm it’s already been sent by a number of people, and the more who send it in the better.

We will have more on this story soon.

Date: _______ (Must be submitted before March 31st.)

To: Village Board Canvassers and Related Village Election Officials of Monroe, New York

Re: Formal Objection to Certification — Village Election held March 18, 2026 at Village Hall

I __________________________, a qualified voter and observer/challenger in the above‑referenced election, hereby object to certification of the results for the reasons below and request the relief set forth.

Background and Grounds for Objection

1. Unknown/unauthorized person present during count. During the canvass and count at Village Hall on March 18, 2026, an unidentified male was alleged to be present and attempted to view the counting area. He displayed identification indicating a role as a poll watcher; however, no one could identify him when asked by The Monroe Gazette to do so. The presence of the unknown man was shared with The Monroe Gazette via incumbent Mayor Neil Dwyer’s poll watcher, Maria May, Ph.d. Dr. May claims to have seen the man enter the building and attempt to watch the count. Dr. May saw the Clerk ask the man to provide proof of his credentials, which he reluctantly did. The man was then kept away from the counting area. But.

There is no documentation to verify his identity or authorization to be in or near the counting area to my knowledge. All because the man was said to have credentials does not mean they were legitimate credentials. For example, Mr. Isaac Ekstein, discussed below, may currently be driving around with out of date credentials concerning his business, Orange County Emergency Medical Services, Inc. d/b/a Blooming Grove EMS. An organization presently under NYS DOH investigation as confirmed by the Department of Health to The Monroe Gazette. Mr. Ekstein is also the subject of multiple lawsuits — including an active one with Orange County — involving claims of deceptive behavior and misrepresentation on his and the other defendants parts. See: The County of Orange v. CIOFFI 1, Inc. d/b/a CIOFFI Services et al. The unknown man identified himself as EMS, coming and going frequently according to Dr. May. Mr. Ekstein and Mr. Avrohm Flohr also work as EMS, suggesting a possible relationship and conneciton with both men.

The alleged presence of an unidentified person near the counting area raises serious concerns about the integrity of the canvass. Particularly if that individual turns out to be connected to Isaac Ekstein, who is under both a confirmed state investigation into voter fraud and voter coercion related to the most recent “election” in South Blooming Grove, and a rumored FBI investigation on that same matter.

Mr. Ekstein is also at the center of a confirmed investigation by the New York State Comptroller’s office involving financial irregularities at the Village. If Mr. Ekstein is using South Blooming Grove’s village money, for example, to fund Alex Melchiorre’s campaign is something that requires immediate investigation.

Mr. Isaac Ekstein and Joel Stern are publicly known to be contributing to a situation in the Village of Monroe involving the release of potentially dangerous gas at the children’s playground. According to News 12, Mr. Stern and Ekstein will not turn on the ANUE Water Technologies until Orange County drops the above named lawsuit. Given Mr. Ekstein and Mr. Melchiorre’s relationship — described in more detail below — how can Village residents reasonably expect their newly elected mayor to bring a potentially dangerous situation involving public health to a close?

2. Relevant misconduct, investigations, and potential undue influence. Individuals closely associated with the declared winner, Alex Melchiorre, including Isaac Ekstein, are subject to confirmed state and federal investigations and public reports alleging voter fraud, coercion, and other misconduct. On the night of March 18th, Mr. Ekstein, who serves as Deputy Village Clerk of South Blooming Grove, posted on social media within minutes of the final count being confirmed in Monroe, congratulating the Village on working with Alex Melchiorre as mayor. Leading many, myself included, to believe Mr. Ekstein is connected to the unidentified male present at the poll during the Village’s counting of votes.

Additionally, according to Dr. May, there was a large group of men present just outside the building throughout the evening peering in through every window, which Dr. May described as creepy and intimidating. Who were these men and why were they looking into every available window as voting took place?

Dr. May noted at least one instance where someone attempted to vote twice involving a woman who came once with a child, and later to vote again by herself. The unknown man was reported by Dr. May to allegedly be sharing the current vote counts with Mr. Melchiorre, which was then followed by a large rush prior to polls closing at 9pm. “I’m sure there were at least 80-90 people in the last hour” May told The Monroe Gazette. Going as far back as 1996, the Times-Herald Record has documented instances of people pretending to be other people in the Satmar community in order to win elections. In other words, if Mr. BJ Mendelson did not vote, someone would keep track of the voter roll of the Village of Monroe, and send someone else to vote as if they were BJ Mendelson. Whether or not the Village checked that people were who they said they were is unknown.

Given what happened in South Blooming Grove, I feel it’s of paramount importance that the sanctity of our vote be preserved here in Monroe, meaning this requires further investigation before the results of the election can be finalized.

Given the number of investigations into Mr. Ekstein, and his connections to persons who reportedly supported Mr. Melchiorre’s campaign — Lipa Deutsch and Avrohom Flohr — the presence of an unidentified person during the count, potential attempts at intimidation outside the building by a gang of men, combined with immediate post‑count public commentary, creates reasonable grounds to fear that unauthorized influence, intimidation, or improper coordination affected the voting, the canvass; and perhaps the signature gathering process as well.

Mr. Deutsch, for example, is alleged to have bribed former Town Supervisor, Tony Cardone, in order to advance the Monroe Commons project that Deutsch represented before the Town Planning Board. Did Mr. Deutsch pay off anyone who voted for Alex Melchiorre or signed the signature ballot for him, Mr. Mancuso, and Mrs. Pfeiffer?

Did the Village of Monroe, complete a check to confirm whether or not residents who signed Mr. Melchiorre’s ballot signatures reside in properties owned by either of these three men (Flohr, Deutsch, Ekstein) or their associates such as Joel Stern, Moche Halpern, and Lazer Schvimmer? Or that they are who they claimed to be?

Did the Village of Monroe make any effort to confirm that the people who signed these ballots actually exist?

In Halpern and Schvimmer’s case, alongside Mr. Ekstein in 2022, an attempt was made to register hundreds of absentee ballots to a single address in South Blooming Grove, which resulted in an Orange County District Attorney investigation. The OC DA confirmed turning over all 2022 election matters to the FBI for further investigation. Last year, the District Attorney’s office confirmed with The Monroe Gazette that the status of the FBI investigation into Mr. Ekstein, Schvimmer, and Halpern remains open.

Mr. Ekstein, and his associate Joel Stern, were accused by South Blooming Grove residents — according to Mr. Skoufis’s letter to the Attorney General – of only making sure their friends and associates voted, and not informing others, of a shambolic election held in South Blooming Grove in October of 2025. Did the same thing happen in Monroe?

Under Isaac Ekstein and Joel Stern, the Village of South Blooming Grove also “skipped” the March 2024 and March 2025 elections out of concern that they would lose their positions with the village, following a near defeat in the 2023 South Blooming Grove Village election.

Finally, Stern, and potentially Mr. Ekstein, factually, submitted ballot signatures obtained from yeshiva students at at least two locations that Stern claimed were residences. Those ballots have since been found to have numerous irregularities including non-existent people according to residents of South Blooming Grove.

To be clear: If the Village of Monroe cannot verify if the man at the Village Hall during the counting of ballots is connected to Isaac Ekstein, I am left with the belief that he very well could have been based on the South Blooming Grove Facebook post. The presence of the large group of men as well suggests a potential attempt at voter intimidation by Ekstein or people associated with him, which fits the pattern seen in South Blooming Grove of keeping away people Mr. Stern and Mr. Ekstein did not want to vote.

If so, given the active criminal investigations into Mr. Ekstein, there are many concerns here that must be addressed prior to certification of the election and Mr. Melchiorre taking office with Mr. Mancuso and Mrs. Pfeiffer.

3. Potential ineligibility and conflicts of interest. The declared winner, Alex Melchiorre, currently serves as Town Police Chief of Blooming Grove. Has he ever accepted any bribes or payments from Isaac Ekstein in order to look the other way on crimes committed by Ekstein and his associates? (For examples, see below.)

In the case of Mr. Melchiorre serving as mayor, can the public be assured that Mr. Deutsch won’t bribe Mr. Melchiorrie in the same way Mr. Deutsch claims to have bribed former Town Supervisor Cardone?

There is also a substantial question as to whether simultaneous service as Town Police Chief in Blooming Grove and Village Mayor in neighboring Monroe would create an impermissible conflict of interest or render Melchiorre ineligible under applicable law and the doctrine of incompatible offices. Has the Village of Monroe requested a legal opinion from the New York State Attorney General Office’s Public Integrity Bureau?

I note here that Mr. Melchiorre has a history of holding incompatible positions, including the time he served as both the Village of Monroe Police Chief and Village of Tuxedo Park Police Chief, until he was forced to resign from Tuxedo Park. Melchiorre, according to the Times Herald Record, was asked to resign only after it became clear that he intended to acquire a third simultaneous position, as chief of the Blooming Grove police.

There is also a history of behavioral problems. For example: It is my impression that the Town of Monroe has asked the Town of Blooming Grove to investigate potential illicit behavior by Melchiorrie concerning his illegal storage of hundreds of rounds of ammunition at the Town Senior Center. (This was reported by News 12.)

During an unknown period of time, Mr. Melchiorrie used the Monroe Senior Center — located near the boundary of the Village — as his personal storage shed. Mr. Melchiorrie, or someone working with him, also adjusted the security cameras in the Senior Center area used as his personal storage for unknown purposes. Can Mr. Melchiorrie serve as mayor if he is under an investigation by the Town of Blooming Grove, or other parties, that could lead to criminal charges before the District Attorney? Mr. Melchiorrie arguably endangered the lives of numerous Monroe residents for a significant period of time by improperly storing his ammunition next to flammable material. Is Mr. Melchiorrie mentally competent to serve as mayor given his illicit storage of weaponry, in a senior center, right next to flammable substances?

The Town of Blooming Grove, when asked this week, declined to answer questions from The Monroe Gazette concerning whether or not they would ask Mr. Melchiorre to resign as police chief now that he was elected Mayor in Monroe. Thus far, they also have not explained Melchiorre’s lack of enforcement of the law beyond statements claiming it’s up to the FAA to act by Supervisor Jeroloman made to The Monroe Gazette.

Mr. Melchiorre, during his time as Police Chief in Blooming Grove, has demonstrated repeatedly an inability, or unwillingness, to enforce the law against Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein. This is the point we raised about the ANUE Water Technologies System. How can we expect Mr. Melchiorrie to resolve a potentially hazardous situation threatening the public after his continued and demonstrated rolling over for Mr. Ekstein?

For just one example, according to both News 12 and The Monroe Gazette, an illegal helipad is operated at 58 Fort Worth Place in the Village of South Blooming Grove. The FAA has stated publicly they had no awareness of the construction of the helipad, which is required under federal law. An FAA spokesperson told The Monroe Gazette that, despite this, there is no prohibition preventing local police, such as the Town of Blooming Grove, to enforce local and state laws relevant to the illegal operation of a helicopter — one reported by residents to often be flying far lower than federal regulations allow over a residential neighborhood.

Why hasn’t Mr. Melchiorrie taken action against Mr. Ekstein’s business associate over the continued operation of the helicopter. One that was spotted as recently March 22nd by South Blooming Grove residents.

58 Fort Worth is owned by a business associate — confirmed via court filings — of Isaac Ekstein, named Moshe Ostreicher. The following are just some of the laws Mr. Melchiorre could have enforced, at the repeated request of South Blooming Grove and Blooming Grove residents, that he has thus far refused to do so:

• Reckless endangerment in the second degree (Penal Law §120.20): class A misdemeanor — up to 1 year jail (or local sentence), fines. Charged when person recklessly creates substantial risk of physical injury to another (e.g., flying/landing near people or dwellings).

• Reckless endangerment in the first degree (Penal Law §120.25): class D felony — up to 7 years imprisonment, fines — requires depraved indifference and grave risk of death (applied rarely but possible for dangerous helicopter operations).

• Trespass, criminal nuisance, disorderly conduct or related local offenses: penalties range from violations to misdemeanors (fines and short jail terms) depending on statute.

Instead of taking any action at all, Mr. Melchiorre has instructed Town Police to refer callers to the FAA directly, despite the FAA stating nothing on their end prohibits Mr. Melchiorre from enforcing the laws in his local jurisdiction.

In addition, concerning conflicts of interest:

Public reports concerning Melchiorre’s relationships with former Town Supervisor, Tony Cardone, give rise to a reasonable basis to seek a legal determination of eligibility before certification.

In or around March of 2025, Melchiorre was hired by the Town of Monroe to perform confidential negotiations with the Village of Monroe and Orange County Sheriff’s department concerning police coverage of the Town of Monroe. This role provided Melchiorre with intimate details on the operations of the Village Police, the Village, its budget, and position concerning any public employee contracts that would be impacted by expansion of Village Police coverage into the Town.

Mr. Melchiorre, during his time working on behalf of the Town, assisted in the Town’s frequently documented attempts at disinformation, which were detrimental to the reputation of the Village and Village Police he wishes to now serve.

At no point, for example, did Mr. Melchiorre publicly rebut any of the factual misinformation and disinformation spread by Tony Cardone and former Town Board member Dorey Houle at multiple Town meetings concerning the positions of the Village of Monroe. Again demonstrating Mr. Melchiorrie has no interest in serving his constituents.

Mr. Melchiorre has also indicated that he will not proceed with expanding the coverage of Village Police into the Town, despite wide-spread support by both Town and Village residents. This was confirmed by The Monroe Gazette via a source close to the Town of Monroe Board, familiar with Melchiorre’s position.

Meaning, that despite being elected to the position of mayor, Mr. Melchiorre intends to continue maintaining the position of the Town of Monroe’s former supervisor, Tony Cardone, and not the majority of the constituents of the Village. I feel this is an obvious conflict of interest.

4. Lack of transparent campaign financing. There is no publicly available disclosure identifying who funded Mr. Melchiorre’s campaign advertising, including a Photo‑News advertisement, road signs, and other election collateral. If persons under investigation, such as Mr. Ekstein, or otherwise impermissible sources funded campaign materials, such funding could constitute unlawful coordination or undisclosed contributions that affected the election.

Legal basis and statutory demands

-Pursuant to New York Election Law §§ 16‑104 and 16‑110 (canvass and certification procedures), I formally object to certification and request immediate suspension of certification and a supervised recanvass/recount.

-I request that all chain‑of‑custody records, ballot custody logs, poll books, and observer/sign‑in logs as required by N.Y. Election Law § 17‑126 be produced, as well as related record keeping provisions (see also N.Y. Election Law § 8‑100 et seq.).

-The presence of an unidentified individual near the counting area, attempting to observe the counting area, appears to contravene rules governing poll watchers and unauthorized persons under N.Y. Election Law § 17‑130

-On the basis of N.Y. Public Officers Law § 73 and the common‑law doctrine prohibiting incompatible offices, I request a determination whether Mr. Melchiorre’s simultaneous service as Town Police Chief of Blooming Grove renders him ineligible to hold the office of Village Mayor in Monroe, as well as whether the lack of enforcement of the law against Isaac Ekstein’s business associate, Moshe Ostreicher, as well as Mr. Melchiorre’s prior work on behalf of the Town of Monroe concerning the Village Police expansion project, and his current adoption of the former Town Supervisor — and not the Village’s — position against that expansion, also renders him ineligible.

-Please preserve and produce all documents responsive to Election Law Article 14 campaign‑finance disclosure requirements, including payor information for advertising and signage.

-If certification is not stayed, I demand preservation of rights to initiate an election contest or seek expedited judicial relief under N.Y. Election Law § 16‑116 and CPLR Article 78. I expressly reserve all other administrative and judicial remedies available under New York law.

Relief requested

A. Immediate suspension of certification of the election results pending investigation and resolution of the matters alleged herein (N.Y. Election Law §§ 16‑104, 16‑110).

B. Production, within 48 hours, of:

1. Identification of all persons present in the counting area, including job title and affiliation;

2. All chain‑of‑custody records, ballot custody logs, poll books, and any sign‑in or observer logs for the canvass (N.Y. Election Law § 17‑126; § 8‑100 et seq.);

3. Any video or photographic recordings of the counting/canvass area;

4. Copies of any communications, including emails or written authorizations, that permitted non‑official individuals to be present during the count (N.Y. Election Law § 17‑130 and local rules).

C. A supervised re-canvass or recount conducted in a secure location with properly credentialed observers and prior notice to all parties (N.Y. Election Law §§ 16‑104, 16‑110).

D. Preservation and expedited production of documents and records related to campaign expenditures and financing for Alex Melchiorre’s campaign, including receipts, invoices, and payor information for Photo‑News advertising, signage, and other campaign collateral (Election Law Article 14).

E. If necessary, initiation of prompt judicial proceedings to determine (i) whether illegal conduct occurred that affected the election results, and (ii) whether Mr. Melchiorre is legally eligible to serve as Mayor; until those issues are resolved, certification should be stayed and the presumed winner restrained from taking office (N.Y. Election Law § 16‑116; CPLR Article 78).

Service and contact

Please serve all notices, communications, and produced documents to:

[Your Name]

[Address]

[Phone]

[Email]

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of New York that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge.

[Signature]

[Printed Name]

Date: (Put the date here. Must be sent before March 31st)

Cc: Orange County Board of Elections: elections@orangecountygov.com

New York State Board of Elections Division of Enforcement: enforcement@elections.ny.gov

News 12 Blaise Gomez: bdgomez@news12.com

Mid-Hudson News: statewidenews@gmail.com

Note: I expressly reserve all rights to supplement this objection with additional facts, evidence, and legal claims as appropriate.

Subscribe now

Please pardon the typos.

BJ Mendelson: Why doesn’t Congressman Pat Ryan support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United?

Damn good question to ask, right? Well, here’s the thing. Tomorrow, March 24, from 5:30 to 6:30 is going to be one of those call-in town halls that Congressman Pat Ryan does. The phone number to call at 5:30 is 833-980-3644. That’s tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24, at 5:30 p.m.: 833-980-3644 to call into Congressman Pat Ryan’s town hall.

We’ve tried in the past to get people to call in. We had dozens of people call in the last time he did this about South Blooming Grove. And, of course, the congressman’s people did not select any questions concerning South Blooming Grove because—

Ever since the Monroe Gazette has been covering the tight relationship between Joel Stern, Isaac Ekstein, and Pat Ryan, there’s been no comment from Pat Ryan’s office on anything. Anything. The fake election? Nothing. The skipped elections? Nothing. The municipal water infrastructure crisis? Nothing. The hydrogen sulfide problem in the Village of Monroe that’s caused by the Village of South Blooming Grove? Nothing. So we had people call in last time, and they ignored all of us.

But this time, think: if we all call in and we talk about one federal thing, you might actually get an answer. And it’s something that you should probably hear. So again, I’m going to give you the information one more time. Then we’ll be real quick about the constitutional amendment, and then I’m going to shut down.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24, 5:30 to 6:30—if you live in New York’s 18th Congressional District, that’s Congressman Pat Ryan—5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 24, call 833-980-3644 starting at 5:30. Again, it’s 833-980-3644.

When you get through, ask very simply: “Why doesn’t Congressman Pat Ryan support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United?” I know that’s a mouthful, but it’s an important question. That’s the way you want to ask it: why doesn’t he support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United?

Why Citizens United matters to you: if you live, say, in Woodbury, you just saw State Senator Skoufis spend over $20,000 supporting a far-right MAGA bigot named Brandon Calore. He was able to do that, Skoufis, through what was called an independent expenditure committee, which is basically the New York version of a super PAC. Citizens United was the tail end of about 200 years of basically giving liberty rights to corporations. That means treating the corporation as a person, saying that the corporation has a right to speech, and then saying that the corporation has a right to speech in the form of money that it can give to elections.

In 2024, when we saw over $250 million spent by Elon Musk to support President Trump, that’s what Citizens United allowed. Congressman Pat Ryan has talked a whole lot about being a trust-buster and being against the big corporations and how tough he is on them. This is the test of that, because if he does not support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United, you could say he’s full of it. Overturning Citizens United—yes, I know it’s hard to do a constitutional amendment—but it can be done. Remember, this country enacted Prohibition and then quickly repealed it.

We can amend the Constitution, and we can do it faster than anyone thinks. We can do big things. You just have to raise your expectations. We as Americans need to start raising our expectations. So if Congressman Pat Ryan does not support a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United, you can say he’s full of it; he’s not going to do anything to curb the corporations.

All of this matters because there will come a time when the current regime is out and MAGA is dead, and it will mutate into some crazed, extremist strain with a new name, I’m sure. There will be a day when everything we’re dealing with now will be in the past, and we will ask ourselves how to make sure this never happens again. There’s a longer answer to that, which is the second Bill of Rights. I don’t have time today to talk about the second Bill of Rights, but I can tell you one item in it: overturning Citizens United. If we can get private money out of our elections, you can take your country back from the rich oligarchs. It’s as simple as that. The oligarchs are the ones that fund the fascists in the first place.

If you want to get big money out of politics—whether it’s in the Village of Woodbury where a state senator spent $20,000 supporting a far-right candidate, or the state level where the big tech companies clearly influence Governor Hochul’s agenda, all the way to the national level where people like Elon Musk spend hundreds of millions—if you want to stop that, you have to overturn Citizens United. More explicitly, you have to get all private money out of public elections. If there were a constitutional amendment, it should say that private money in elections is forbidden; we’ll get there—that’s a longer conversation.

Again, if you live in Pat Ryan’s congressional district, which is New York’s 18th, I’m encouraging you to call and put his feet to the fire. Even though he’s running against, well, nobody knows—probably going to be some crazed MAGA fringe candidate—he’s basically going to run against nobody. It’s important that you still hold people accountable even if nobody’s running against them.

Some will say the big fight is Lawler and we should all focus on Lawler. I hear you—that fight matters, and The Monroe Gazette will be covering what happens in Rockland County with Mike Lawler, because that could determine who controls the House. But that does not mean you let Pat Ryan off the hook. We can walk and chew gum at the same time.

So that’s all I’ve got for today. Again, this is not a real record store, as you can see from my hand blurring—woo—it’s not real. I wish it was. That was a frequently asked question that we got.

If you look at the transcript, there may be typos and errors; it was generated from an AI. If I had the time, I would stop and edit more, but right now I have to finish my book, so I don’t really have time to do that. Please forgive me if there are typos and errors in the transcript. I try to catch the egregious ones, but I don’t catch them all, obviously. I’ll be a little quiet this week because I need to finish the book. If something crazy happens, you will hear from me.

Share

His name was William V. McDonough.

I won’t go into the whole thing, but it happened … my family moved here in the 80s. So it happened a decade before we even got here. But Officer McDonough is memorialized both in Monroe and Middletown, and believe in another place as well. And Mr. Westerveld, as he wants to do about a decade ago, started pushing for some kind of monument or memorial in Sugarloaf for Officer McDonough.

Here’s the thing, both a decade ago and recently, if you read this week’s edition of The Photo News, Mr. Westerveld has not talked to the family of Officer McDonough. He has not obeyed their wishes that they do not want a memorial of any kind for Officer McDonough. They don’t want to commemorate where he was murdered, essentially.

And yet, because Mr. Westerveld wants it … Here we are talking about, so what’s going on?

Well, some of you remember back in September of 2024, we started an investigation into Mr. Jay Westerveld. So there’s like a litany of people who approached us that said that he was bullying them, that he’s made racist comments. We were told that he made racist comments towards the Chester Conservation Advisory Chair. We were told that he was bullying and harassing Riverkeeper. We were told that Mr. Westerveld was bullying and harassing Sustainable Warwick. We were told that he was bullying and harassing the actual Sugarloaf historical society and on and on and on and … like there is a laundry list of people that that wrote to us and said “What the fuck” and “this guy is an asshole. Can you say something?” Can you write about it?”

So we started digging around and in September 2024 we made a request to Mr. Westveld. He claims to be like in charge of all these different organizations

And so what we did was, under federal law, if you run a not-for-profit and someone says to you, I would like to see the last three years of your Form 990s, under federal law, they have to give that to you. Otherwise, you’re in a lot of trouble. And it raises questions of whether or not you are actually running a not-for-profit. Mr. Westerveld in those two years, has never, never turned over any documentation ever to show us his Form 990s, the Articles of Incorporation, the meeting agendas, the board minutes. Nothing.

We’ve tried to find websites for some of these different organizations. They don’t exist. The one that he does use most often, which he calls the Sugarloaf Historical Society, which is not the actual official historical foundation that protects and preserves the memory of Sugarloaf and all the wonderful things that have happened there. He’s just sort of created like his own thing, essentially. That is the one that is incorporated, if you go looking, but...

Again, we asked for the Form 990s. So like he’s filing something to the IRS, but he has not provided the documentation publicly for reviews, which is incredibly sketchy. We looked into the other claims involving the racist comments, you know, the poor behavior at meetings, throwing temper tantrums. Those have all been independently confirmed by multiple sources, but we don’t have like a smoking gun. (Meaning, there’s no recording to share of this behavior.)

We do have this though …

And if you’re looking at the screen, what you see right now is Mr. Westerveld promoting an anti-Semitic conspiracy about yours truly, wherein he’s saying that I filed for bankruptcy and I received big bags of money from the Satmar.

So you can see, like, he’s implying that the Monroe Gazette represents some kind of psyop that’s funded by “them”, by the Satmar by the Jews, which is anti-Semitic. So I can say I have factual evidence of Jay Westerveld spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

His statements are factually inaccurate. They’re libelous, and we were ready to take him to court. We had a number of lawyers review Mr. Westerveld’s comments as well as talk to the people that he has attacked.

Factually, we can say that he’s a bully.

What we found in our review of his finances was that he does not have any assets. Kind of interesting, right? This guy has all these not-for-profit organizations and all these different groups that he claims to be running. He has not turned over his Form 990. And wouldn’t you know it, we couldn’t find any real assets either.

So the question the lawyers were like was, well, what do you sue him for if he owns nothing or if he’s like hiding his money somewhere? And so we started to do some more digging and we noticed that Mr. Westerveld for years was telling people that he was a guest lecturer at West Point and at Columbia University.

The Columbia University at West Point things are half truths at best, depending on how generous you want to be. I think they’re completely fraudulent. That’s my opinion. I taught once, for example, I did a guest lecturer once at SUNY Potsdam and I’ve given guest lectures at other institutions, including Marist College and Alfred State and down at NYU and down at Columbia University at their J-school. Like I’ve given guest lectures all over the fucking place. Never once have I ever said that I was a continuing lecturer at any of those institutions.

But for years, Mr. Westerveld and we’re gonna put up a copy here on screen so you can take a look at it, has presented a bio to the public saying, you know, that he’s a regular guest lecturer.

What we were able to find is that Mr. Westerveld one time provided a walking tour at West Point and one time, again, as far as we can tell, offered a guest lecture at an adult extension school that linked to Columbia University.

So he was not a guest lecturer at Columbia University. He gave one lecture, again, as far as we can tell, at Columbia University’s extension school one time over a decade ago. And yet that hasn’t stopped him from repeatedly telling people that he’s a guest lecturer at these two institutions.

So we reached out to Columbia University and West Point for comment. Both of them said, “we can’t verify that this guy ever taught here.” We talked to the people at West Point off the record who adamantly said, you know, if this guy’s running around saying he’s giving guest lectures at West Point, that’s a problem.

So I tell you all this because...

There’s an article in the Photo-News this weekend and in the Chronicle and in the Warwick Advertiser. And I don’t know where else Jeanne Strauss put it. We could talk about the The Photo-News at length some other time, but there is a article or there is a letter to the editor in the The Photo-News where Mr. Westerfeld did not use his name. And I kind of wonder if that happened because we wrote to Jeanne Strauss and we showed Jeanne Strauss the anti-Semitic comments that were factually inaccurate that were posted and spread by Jay Westerfeld and some of his fake accounts that we’ve been made aware of.

And so we said to her, you are a platforming a Nazi, essentially. Like this anti-Semitic conspiracy is virulent You’re implying that there’s like some Jewish conspiracy involving a Jewish reporter and the Satmar.

So why do you, we said to Strauss why do you continue to platform a Nazi essentially? So this morning, if you look at the photo news, which is where I saw it, there is a letter on behalf of the Board of Directors of the Sugar Loaf Historical Society.

We don’t know who those board of directors are as far as we know. It’s just Jay Westerveld. He did not put his name. He also claims that he’s essentially being derailed in some way that we should have a monument in Sugar Loaf for Officer McDonough, despite the fact the family has said, no, we do not want it. We do not want it.

This man, this con man, and I have no problem saying to you right now. And Mr. Westerveld, I know you’ll watch this at some point. Feel free to sue me. Because I believe that J. Westerveld is an anti-Semite and a con man, and I got the receipts. And if he wants to use the memory of a brave man who served our community and was murdered in the line of duty, well, I think that just speaks volumes about him.

Any chance that I get to take a shot at a con man and anti-semite Jay Westerveld, I will do it because I believe these people are dangers to the community and they’re vectors of disinformation and misinformation. And in the case of Mr. Westerveld, there is all, like I said, all litany of groups and people who have been bullied by him, who have been mischaracterized by him, who have been on the receiving end of letters to the editor that Jeanne Strauss has published without fact checking.

The one that ran this weekend is another example of something that was not fact-checked and probably should have been fact-checked, but wasn’t. So I just think it’s important to call these things out.

One other fun thing about Mr. Westworld, he’s tried to make himself a public figure. He claims that he invented the term greenwashing. There’s no evidence of that. He might have used it once in an essay that was published back in 1983, but it’s not clear how many people actually saw that essay. What is clear, however, is that he’s certainly taking credit for creating the word, greenwashing, but there’s no peer-reviewed research anywhere that he’s ever published. And so this claim that he’s an environmental expert does not hold much water. (I don’t dispute that he’s done work in the field, but based on his online behavior, I am skeptical of his overall expertise.)

In fact, one of the organizations that I can factually say he started shit with is Riverkeeper. And if you’re starting a fight with, I mean ... Riverkeeper isn’t perfect.

But if you’re starting shit with Riverkeeper, in this area, if you know the history, like if you know the environmental history of Southern Orange County involving Cornwall and Cornwall on the Hudson and the plant that they wanted to put there, and the huge battle that took place, which led to, I don’t know if it was the formation of Riverkeeper, but it was one of the early significant battles that Riverkeeper waged on behalf of this community. So if you’re talking shit about Riverkeeper, I mean, that says a lot about you. (For more on Riverkeeper’s founding and action in Cornwall), see the recent documentary, “The Keeper”)

So, Jay Westerveld is a con man and anti-Semite. I will say that every single day at every opportunity. He’s free to sue us because if he does, we get to depose him. And that also means that we get to talk to everyone that he’s ever bullied and we get to bring them to court as well. And believe me, these people have wanted a day in court with Mr. Westerveld.

So, please bring it Jay.

I hope you all have a great weekend. I know it was a rough week. Things are very challenging in the world right now.

I was hoping this ridiculous story might bring you some entertainment or amusement. I don’t know if it did. It might have pissed you off if anything else. And so, you know, I just want you to keep an eye out for organizations and people like this because we need fact checkers and we need people to stand up and say, that’s misinformation, that’s disinformation. And so in the case of Mr. Westerveld and his … to me, it’s grave robbing. Honestly, like I feel like it’s a local anti-Semite doing some grave robbing to continue his quest to remain relevant.

Leave this trooper alone. Leave his family alone. This has been some kind of like sick quest of his for over a decade now. We’re tired of it. We’re tired of the bullying. We’re tired of misinformation. And from now on, every single time his head comes out of the sand, we’re gonna be there to smack him back down.

I’ll catch you on Monday.

Share

3.22.26 Addendum:

I want to talk real quick about this specific part of a longer, bullshit statement that appeared on the MAGA Free Warwick Facebook group. They don’t like our Hunter S. Thompson style presentation. Many Facebook groups admins don’t. We don’t blame them. But our style gets results, and so we must defend it whenever possible.

Their statement followed my request for members of the group to write to us with their stories about Jay Westerveld. Something we encourage the Chester and Warwick community to do by emailing us at BJ@MonroeGazette.com.

The part of their statement we took issue with is this:

“When pressed for evidence, he made statements that were proven to be inaccurate, and when those inaccuracies were pointed out, rather than step back and consider new information, BJ waved off the corrections and persisted in his attacks."

This was a statement made by MAGA Free Warwick’s moderator, Christopher Keelty and others moderators. And …

It’s total bullshit.

There is no inaccuracy in our reporting about Mr. Westerveld. There is no evidence that he ever served as a guest lecturer at West Point and Columbia University.

The video above provides screenshots to support our statements.

We also invited, repeatedly, Mr. Westerveld to sue us if we said anything that wasn’t true. In two years since our investigation into him began, he has not done so.

The reason we keep daring Mr. Westerveld to sue us is because he would have to demonstrate that we’re lying. Which we are not.

We also provided Mr Keelty with screenshots from both West Point and Columbia University (below) which Keelty and the moderators conveniently ignored in their statement posted in the group.

Keelty had asked if we had verification of statements by both universities. We did. He claims Westerveld has a screenshot showing that he taught one class, one time, a decade ago, at the extension school for Columbia University, which again, is not the actual Columbia University. Or at least the same Columbia Mr. Westerveld mislead people to believe for many, many years.

And, as mentioned, Mr. Keelty also informed us directly that he / other moderators don’t prefer our Hunter S. Thompson-style presentation, and that Mr. Thompson was not a journalist.

This too, is bullshit.

And it reminds me of Skoufis’s chief of Staff, Emma Fuentes, saying Frederick Douglas wasn’t a journalist.

Both statements are moronic and historically inaccurate. Since the state of Journalism in America today is awful, we feel an obligation to speak up for Mr. Thompson.

While he is known for fiction, other books concerning the Hell’s Angels and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 are considered modern classics in the field of journalism.

Especially the latter book, which is often pointed to as the second best work of political journalism concerning an American presidential campaign.

(The first book, by the way, is The Boys on The Bus by Timothy Course.)

If you don’t want to take my word for it though, check out how Britannica refers to Thompson (highlighted.) See the word journalist?

We asked Mr. Keelty to provide supporting documentation for his claim Hunter S. Thompson does not count as a journalist, which he refused to do.

So, I guess it’s cool to make inaccurate claims about our reporting with no evidence. But when we ask for evidence of a claim made by Mr. Keelty and others, none was provided.

Usually we’d ignore this, but for a group calling itself MAGA-Free anything, that behavior sure felt very MAGA-like: Slander the journalist with BS, not be able to support your claims when challenged.

If anyone wants to come and take shots at our reporting? You better believe we have all the receipts. Here are the screen shots Mr. Keelty was provided with, that he then, with the other moderators, told the public “were proven to be inaccurate.”

This is a libelous statement.

The only other context you need for the below screenshots is that we had an extensive off the record conversation concerning Mr. Westerveld’s West Point claim, which is alluded to in the Columbia email below and explicitly mention in the video we recorded on Friday.

To reiterate: West Point would be PISSED to learn Mr. Westerveld is still implying some kind of connection with them concerning his teaching there.

We gladly take criticism. What we won’t take, from anyone, is an attack on the credibility of our reporting or statements to the public.

People demanding a MAGA-Free anything should know better.

Share

We can confirm as of 9:46pm the final tallies for the Village of Monroe vote are:

676 for Alex Melchiorre. 548 votes for Neil Dwyer.

730 votes for Joe Mancuso. 733 for Nancy Peifer, 487 for Andy Ferraro and 483 for Martin O’Connor.

(Editor note: I have revised the numbers above on 3/19 at 3:42pm to reflect final tallies. Last night when this article published we only had the unofficial results.)

So, congratulations Village of Monroe, you now have a MAGA Board, and guess who got the results and posted about it immediately?

Full Transcript From Today’s Video.

Please pardon any typos as this was generated via our podcast software. I’ve edited the transcript below for clarity, not spelling and grammar. I’ll come back and fix up any egregious mistakes asap.

BJ: It’s Wednesday. It’s time for another recording and we’re going to cover three different things that are happening. It would help if I can speak. Three things that are happening that I wanted to talk about. We’re not going to do the Q and A every week. I might do it every other week because we have, sorry, I have a cat and the cat likes to lay in the microphone. So there’s always cat hair on this microphone. Pardon me. Okay.

So there’s three things I wanted to cover in today’s video. We’re gonna do the Q &A maybe every other week, just so I have time, because if I do the Q &A, it’s like an hour long. And as you saw on Monday, when I post the Q &A transcript, it takes effort to read through for people. I might do it like every other week, just to give people a break. And in between weeks, I’ll come out here and I’ll talk to you about a couple of things that are going on. So.

Mrs. Moslem vs. The Village of Woodbury

First I want to tell you about the Post that went up yesterday, which was dealing with Mrs. Moslem who has been speaking at the Woodbury Village meetings and town meetings for as long as the Monroe Gazette has been around, which is about two years now. And after I published the article, there was just like a bit of a knot in my stomach because I...

I felt like on one hand, I understand where Mrs. Moslem is coming from. I have a level of empathy that I have for her situation.

So, you know, I can understand if my husband and son went away to prison for 96 months, I think it was, in one case, and a lesser sentence for Saeed Moslem I, you know, if I was Mrs Moslem and I believed that my son is a hero, which you saw her leave in a Facebook comment in the Better Woodbury, or For a Better Woodbury Facebook group, Mrs. Moslem was very adamant that she believes her son is a hero, so.

I can understand trying everything to try to prove innocence, right? So on one hand, I get it. On the other hand, the concern is there doesn’t seem to be any sort of surefire link between the town of Woodbury, the village of Woodbury and Mrs. Moslem’s case. she, so if you watched the most recent meeting, which I think was

I’m looking at my calendar here. I think it was the Thursday, March 12th meeting in Village of Woodbury where they essentially, she just derails the entire meeting because lately I don’t know if you noticed, but since Mr. Freiband and Mr. Fabbro are gone, the Village of Woodbury meeting is now like a half hour long, which is fantastic. And also in town of Monroe, not to be left out, also now has much shorter meetings, which is kind of great.

But at the meeting just recently, Mrs. Moslem had just this sprawling extended discussion concerning her case and her belief that the village, the creation of the village somehow led to it. still, I’ve read the email that she sent me. I still do not understand where the connection is between the creation and the town and the creation of the town and the village of Woodbury or the separation of Woodbury.

into a town and village and defrauding the federal government. Because if you read the court documents that are in PACER, which is PACER.gov, which is sort of like the federal court lookup system, you can find all of the records involving the Moslem’s case. And what it looks like is that the case hinged on hours and hours of recording from a really shady accountant that they were working with. Now,

I don’t like, I don’t know, you don’t know, she may not know what was going on with the context of those recordings, right? But the accountant that they were working with was Shady. He was an FBI informant. He did help other people inflate their income. Those people were also arrested, which is something Mrs. Moslem has not mentioned. And I think that’s important to point out because I think part of her argument that she sent me was, you know, they were dealing with an FBI informant. Well,

He wasn’t an FBI informant when you started to work with him. He became an FBI informant about two years later. And at some point, he started to record conversations with Mr. Moslem and Mr. Moslem’s son, where they said, allegedly on the recording, that they basically knew what they were doing, and they knew it was wrong, and they just wanted him to do it. Again, without those actual recordings, I don’t know.

what was said, but we know the recordings exist and we know the recordings exist because the accountant a year later, a year after Mr. Moslem and his son were found guilty, the accountant also faced additional criminal charges for another case. And when he was facing sentencing, the prosecutors that he had worked with wrote a letter on his behalf to the judge. And in that letter, they said the hours of recording that documented fraudulent activity on the part of Moslems is what led to that conviction. So

It’s her opinion that there’s some kind of conspiracy. It’s her opinion that something untoward happened, but factually, at least from what the judge ruled. And, you know, look, if you look at Moslem v. United States v. Moslem and then Moslem v. United States, which are all the appeals, you just see the judge throwing out appeal after appeal after appeal. So does that mean she’s wrong?

I don’t know. But it does at least suggest that whatever happened is not the business of the village of Woodbury and it’s not the business of the town of Woodbury. And that’s really important because if Mrs. Moslem for over a year now or over two years has derailed essentially or has used public comment to essentially, I feel this is my opinion, to essentially entrap the village of Woodbury or the town of Woodbury.

She shouldn’t be allowed to do that. Like that’s not a thing you should be allowed to do. I had the same problem and many of you had the same problem where James Freiband when he was a village trustee, was constantly trying to entrap the village of Woodbury into lawsuits. You he tried that with the New York State Thruway Authority, where he was talking about stuff from the executive session. I’m just gonna take these glasses off, sorry. They’re just gonna bother me.

So in New York state, thruway authority, took stuff that he had heard in executive session and like started blurted out during village meetings, like to try to, to get the New York state thruway authority to sue the village of Woodbury. That wasn’t okay either. So regardless of what Mrs. Moslem believes and regardless of whether or not there was a conspiracy, factually, we can say that the village of Woodbury played no role in that conspiracy and the town of Woodbury played no role in that conspiracy. And the person Mrs. Moslem alleges was the village attorney was not the village attorney. Does that mean that he did something shady? Again, this is something that happened almost 20 years ago and we’ve reached out to everyone for comment. The shady accountant, we reached out to him for comment. I don’t know if I can show you, I was gonna hold on my phone, but that’d be kind of foolish.

We reached out to everyone for comment. We gathered all the facts that we could before we published our story.

My issue is simply, you can’t. Public comment is something that I think people don’t think about a lot. Like they assume that they have the right to speak at a meeting. And, you know, on paper you should have a right to speak at a town and village meeting. But that’s not really how it works. Like public comment is not a right, it’s a privilege. Which is really fucked up. It should be right, but it’s not.

And so at any time, a town or village, if you live in Woodbury or you live in Monroe, you’ve seen it with Tony Cardone, limiting people’s speech to three minutes. Public comment is something that a town or village can mess with. And so what you don’t want is someone abusing public comment in such a way that it creates an excuse for the Kathryn Luciani’s of the world and the Brandon Calore’s of the world or the Tony Cardone’s of the world to say, we’re just not going to let people speak. If you’re going to come up and repeatedly try to get us entrapped in your lawsuit, we’re just not going let you speak. And we’re not going let anyone speak, because that’s how it works. You can’t ban one person from speaking. You can ban all people from speaking. But you can’t ban one person. In the case of Mrs. Moslem we as the Monroe Gazette Wrote a letter to the town board and the village board, essentially arguing that while we sympathize with the case, know, any, again, if I put myself in her shoes and if I was the mother of a son who was in prison, and in prison for a long time, and, you he was in solitary according to the paperwork that I read, the federal case, and Mrs. Moslem filed an appeal in February of 2026 on Saeed Moslem’s behalf.

So again, I have a lot of empathy. just, you don’t want people to use their own, whether it’s well motivated or not, you don’t want people to use their personal agendas during the public time. That’s your time. That’s your time to come and talk about the budget. And that’s your time to talk about taxes. And that’s your time to talk about issues that are affecting you that are related to town and village or city business. It’s not the time to...

to litigate essentially, is what’s happening. And by the way, like there was another, I’m blanking on his name, but I don’t know if you remember, it was recently, there was another attorney that came during public comment, I think it was in November or December, at a Village of Woodbury board meeting. And he was kind of like, who do I sue? Because he was talking about the sewer moratorium. And that’s not okay either. Like I don’t think that’s right. So we wrote a letter to the Town and Village Board where we were like, listen, if you’re going to use public comment to entrap the village or the town, you really shouldn’t be allowed to do that. That’s not okay for anybody. Because let’s say, let’s put our shoes on, I’m sorry, let’s put ourselves where Mrs. Moslem is coming from, Let’s say, hypothetically, that the guy that she claims worked for the village of Woodbury actually did something wrong. Let’s assume, just for sake of argument, that he did something wrong. And someone at a village board meeting says, yeah, he did something wrong. Then Mrs Moslem could, pro se, file a lawsuit against them. She doesn’t need a lawyer. You can do it yourself. It only costs you like $500. What if she just files a lawsuit saying, the village of Woodbury engaged in conspiracy against my son.

And here are the minutes from the village board meeting, right? That where someone said, yeah, that’s fucked up and that person did something wrong. So that’s my whole thing. But I just, felt uncomfortable because I didn’t want to feel like, I didn’t want to give the impression that we were singling her out because that’s not really what we were trying to do. We just, when people appear before, we don’t want people to ruin public comment. It is really like our, position of The Monroe Gazette is that public comment should be a right.

It is not a right, it’s a privilege, which means that it can be taken away. And so you really, as a community, you really want to police yourselves a bit and say, all right, you you’ve been talking about this for over a year now, maybe it’s time to sit down and try another route. And, know, we’re not saying don’t fight the good fight. Well, what we’re saying is this is not an appropriate forum. So that’s, that’s the whole thing. I just didn’t feel right after I published that story.

That rarely happens. We think a lot. And it is we. It’s not just me that works on this stuff. We put a lot of thought and care into the stories that we publish. even when we’re snarky, or even when it’s a character, B.J. Mendelsohn is a character, it’s Hunter S. Thompson writing a local news story. That’s the whole shtick of the Monroe Gazette that is what if Hunter S. Thompson could only write local news. Happening within like a 10 mile radius. And so that’s fun. And most of you get that. But occasionally, you don’t know where we’re coming from. Or if you don’t realize that the Monroe Gazette is that it has an exaggerated voice. It could seem mean spirited And so we just didn’t feel right about that. So that’s the whole thing. I don’t know where that goes. I don’t think it’s the end of that story. We are actually.

Trying to get the recordings that were submitted in federal court. There’s apparently like 10 hours of recordings between the Moslems and this accountant. We’re gonna try to get that. I’m not necessarily gonna publish it, but I am gonna try to get it. So if this comes back up, for whatever reason, if the story continues, well, we at least have it and we can share it with you if we need to. We’re also gonna put in a FOIL request for everything having to do with Exclusive Motorsports, which is the name of the business.

For example, Saeed Moslem was before the village of Woodbury Planning Board, and they were talking about these apartments and how many people are going to live in the apartments. I guess he made, Saeed made a flip remark about how many people could live there. it was something going to the effect of maybe there’s two to four people living there unless they’re Mexicans is essentially what he said, which is offensive.

So I’m trying to get that as well because we did this. We did ask Mrs. Moslem to respond to, you know, your son said like she said her son was a hero and we were like, all right, well, your son made a racist comment at the planning board meeting. Like that’s part of this story. Like we can’t you don’t do you shouldn’t diefy anyone. But anyway, so we’re going to try to do some information gathering on that just just to see. Let put my glasses on for just a second.

Because I just want to see if we’re actually like live streaming or if it’s just fucking me and saying that’s live streaming. Okay, so that’s that. Let’s go to our next story, which is the village of Monroe.

How Alex Melchiorre Is Going to Fuck Monroe Residents This Time …

I’m recording this at it’s 2.31 PM. At this time, the head count is not looking good for Neil Dwyer and Andy Ferro and Martin O’Connor. I don’t have the results.

We will not have the results until about 9:15 or 9:30 this evening. A lot can change. know, people haven’t gotten back from work yet. So if you haven’t voted yet in the Village of Monroe, I encourage you to go vote. Let’s play But let’s play this out, right? The reason why I wanted to record this today instead of doing a Q &A is I want to talk about this. Like what happens in the Village of Monroe if you suddenly have a hostile mayor, right? If you suddenly have a MAGA mayor, which is what you’re looking at. There’s a lot of issues here. Chief among them is Alex Melchiorre is the Blooming Grove Chief of Police. Can he run as the Chief of Police and be the village mayor? So New York State Board of Elections was kind of like, you know, maybe, like they weren’t very, they didn’t write back and they weren’t emphatic. Like they were kind of like, you know,

Maybe you should check with the County Board of Elections and see if it’s OK. Supervisor Robert Jeroloman and the Town of Blooming Grove didn’t have an issue with Melchiorre running. So that’s a whole different issue, right? So there’s this question I’ve gotten of, can you be the police chief and run for mayor in the neighboring municipality? And the answer seems to be maybe. But then there’s this other question of, OK, well, if you’re elected mayor and you were the police chief in Blooming Grove,

How does that work? And that there seems to be a bit more documentation around conflicts of interest from the attorney general’s office. The Monroe Gazette has reached out to the attorney general’s office about is there a conflict of interest and if so, how is it remedied? If you’re watching this, you know the attorney general’s office kind of sucks. They’ve only ever gotten back to us once, no, twice in the history of The Monroe Gazette Like they have only ever replied to us twice. First was about a thing in Sullivan County.

And then the second time was just recently where we wanted, we put in a FOIL request for a letter that the state AG had sent to ICE. And they got that right to us. within an hour or two that I put in the FOIL, the head of PR and communications for Letitia James got back to us. So, it’s not that they’re not reading the emails, clearly they are. They just choose to get back to us whenever they feel like it. So we did ask the attorney general’s office about whether or not there was an issue.

with Melchiorre being police chief and mayor. The second issue is if you are the 40 % Latino population in the village of Monroe and you suddenly have a MAGA Mayor what happens? Does he fire Chief Guzman? Probably not because Guzman and Melchiorre apparently

They know each other. They’ve got a good relationship. I haven’t heard or seen anything that would indicate a change in the chief of police, which is good because Chief Guzman has been very good in communicating with the Latino community about ICE and about some of the issues. But there is a concern of, well, you know, before Dwyer wasn’t backing the Melt Act resolution, right? Like he wasn’t backing New York for All. Well, now you’ve got a MAGA mayor and you’ve got a MAGA majority on the village board.

So you can just kiss that goodbye. That’s an issue. That’s a very big issue that we’re probably gonna have to spend a lot of time and resources just figuring out what’s going on there. Like who is speaking up for the Latino community in the village of Monroe? It’s not gonna be Alex Melchiorre So that’s another issue. And then there’s other complications, right? So like the Roscoe Smith property, the village of Monroe wanted to, or is, I never...

I never quite got the status of this. My understanding is that they did file an eminent domain, but don’t hold me to that because I haven’t found any documentation to show that there’s an eminent domain proceeding. But now you’ve got this question of, if the village entered an eminent domain proceeding for the Roscoe Smith property, and suddenly you’ve got a MAGA board with the backing of Satmar landlords such as Avrohom Flohr

and real estate representatives such as Lipa Deutsch, what happens to the Roscoe-Smith property? Because they wanted to subdivide that. does that eminent domain request get thrown out? That’s a question for the Village of Monroe residents to start asking. And that’s a question for us as The Monroe Gazette to investigate. So that’s a thing to pay attention to. And then there’s also other issues. So we talked about ICE. We talked about the eminent domain issue.

Flohr and Deutsch have properties with about a decade worth of building code violations. I have a list of all of them. Some of the citations aren’t huge deals, to be fair. One of them is like, a tree was down. The tree is down on your property. Come get the tree. OK. I was looking for something a bit more concerning, honestly, when I put in the FOIL request for Flohr and Deutsch’s properties. And I was much more concerned about.

Is there mold, right? Are they renting the property and there’s mold and the mold is not being treated? Are they renting the property and then are they harassing and taking advantage of the undocumented Latino community, right? Are they saying, if you don’t pay rent, we’re going to call ICE? Are they saying that, like, those are the things that we, as The Monroe Gazette we’re concerned with. What we got was instead a list of like code enforcement violations, which, yeah, those are legitimate. Like, I’m not, I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses. Like if you are,

wealthy enough to be a landlord, you are wealthy enough to take care of your property, period. And so I don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing it, but we were looking for something a more substantial and we just didn’t see it. But there are questions now of, okay, well, if you want to take the housing in the village of Monroe and you want to build on it let’s say you want to put in an accessory apartment. On one hand, there is a housing shortage. I just wrote a letter to the town board saying, I don’t want any Airbnb.

Because every time you take a housing unit off the market and make it a rental, you’re making the housing shortage worse. So if you live in Southern Orange County and you’re like, I don’t want high density housing, you should be opposed to those Airbnbs It’s because every time it becomes a rental, that’s a house that’s come off the market, which means that there’s one more house we need to build. There’s one more housing unit we need to build. So on one hand, you know, if you say to me, well, we want accessory apartments because grandma needs a place to live. I totally get it. I totally support that.

But then there’s this question of, well, is grandma really gonna live in the accessory apartment or is it gonna be someone who’s here that’s undocumented that you’re gonna take advantage of because they need housing and you know that they can’t get housing through other means because they’re undocumented. these are all things to be concerned with with the Village of Monroe.

My other concern is this. a big issue in the town election was what happens with this IMA between the village and the town, this proposed IMA, where the village would offer police services to the town of Monroe at a rate of about $2 million. It was $2 million at start, and it would come down to about $1.87 million. That was the offer the village made. was like it was for 10 officers and new vehicles and... support staff and just all these things that you would need to expand. Is that going to happen under Alex Melchiorre? Because remember, Alex Melchiorre was hired, and I have to use the quotation marks because it was never really clear if Melchiorre was making money off of this. The Town of Monroe said no, but the Town of Monroe under Tony Cardone lied, so we don’t know.

But there is a real concern of Alex Melchiorre was the one that was shepherding the arrangement between the town of Monroe and Paul Arteta, the sheriff who is pro-ice. So is Alex Melchiorre going to be amenable to a village IMA that provides police services to the town of Monroe? And if not, what does the town of Monroe do? So that’s a big issue. Like that was an election. was...

That was an issue that I think played a massive role in, you know, because voters, if you’re watching this, you’re not in like in the 90 % of voters, right? Like you’re in that 9 % or even 1 % of like you’re engaged or kind of engaged. So you pay attention to local issues, but that’s not most people. Like most people only start to pay attention maybe a month, if that, right? Before an election. And so whatever’s top of mind that month, that’s why they call it an October surprise.

In presidential politics. They call it the October surprise because that’s when the majority of people are paying attention. so the October surprise for Tony Cardone was this sheriff thing. And so now you’ve got people that voted for Maureen Richardson and Beth Stephens and Luis Rivera on this issue of we want the police force to police the town. And now you’ve got a hostile mayor.

Right? Like you’ve got a mayor who is not for that. So what happens? And we don’t, you know, again, it’s 2:41 it’s not nine o’clock yet. We don’t know how the selection is going to turn out, but I’m just trying to game out now, or at least run scenarios by you of things to look out for if Alex Melchiorre wins. I mean, Neil Dwyer wins great. There, you know, there’s no secret that I have issues concerning ICE’s presence in the village of Monroe. I think that you, Monroe, the village of Monroe , well the town has already passed a resolution supporting the MELT ACT and I understand the town is also going to support a resolution for New York for All, which is fantastic, but the village wouldn’t, right? So you can just forget that under Alex Melchiorre. Like, it’s just not gonna happen unless you scream at him. I’m happy to arrange that screaming, so more on that. So it’s a long way of saying,

The scenario here is very fluid. And the town of Monroe now, if, if Melchiorre and remember it’s not just Melchiorre, it’s Mancuso and Pfeiffer. So you now have a board majority. You have the MAGA majority if they went on the village of Monroe. And then you’ve got, you know, I’m sorry, you’ve got John Karl and Debbie Behringer left. I’ve got, I’m sure Mrs. Behringer is very nice. I have not met her in person. Maybe I have once. I have issues with Mrs. Behringer because during the sheriff debate, for three straight meetings. She just kind of sat there and let Tony Cardone and Dorey Houl lie to the town. And not once did she get up and say, hey, none of that was true, which I thought was really fucked up because she’s friends with Dorey and Tony and that’s fine. But when you’re an elected official, your job isn’t to protect your friends. Your job is to speak on behalf of the people that elected you. And on behalf of the people that elected you, Tony Cardone and Dorey Ghoul as I call her, are lying.

And your job is the fact check. Your job as a village trustees is to get up and say, no, none of that was true. She didn’t do that. She didn’t do that at three meetings, three consecutive meetings. She did not do that. And then she got up to defend Sal Scancarello because we at the Monroe Gazette had asked about, you know, I think you know the story, if not, Scancarello’s son had a TikTok account and he recorded videos this summer at the Monroe Target, his son, not Sal Scancarello, where Sal’s son was like threatening to murder.

Hasidic men, Samar men. And ⁓ that’s a real thing that people were upset about. And we asked him we said, do you want to apologize on behalf of your son? Or do you want to apologize to the Jewish community for these videos? And Debbie Behringer got up and was like, well, you got to bring your sons into it. And I’m thinking like, what the fuck, Debbie? That’s not what, I don’t care that his kid did it. I care that an elected official during a time of rising anti-Semitism across America had a son.

Recording videos at the local Target where he threatened to murder Satmar men. Now, or not it was a prank, which I’m sure it was, I don’t think it was like an actual hate crime or an attempted hate crime, whether or not it was a joke, it doesn’t matter. nationally, there is a problem with anti-Semitism. So Debbie got up and that was the thing that she spoke about with Sal Scancarello’s son. like, as far as I’m concerned, if you live in the Village of Monroe, you should vote her out when she’s up. So she’s left over and then John Karl’s left over. And John Karl to his credit has been the one consistently that has talked about the hydrogen sulfide issue in the village of Monroe. Like he has, him and Neil Dwyer have repeatedly since 2021 emailed Orange County saying, there’s an odor, we know where it’s coming from. We know it’s South Blooming Grove. We know it’s because South Blooming Grove won’t turn on the ANUE system. And will you do something about it, right? Like they were the Neil Dwyer and John Karl were the ones banging on drum. And then Maureen Richardson picked it up. Rightfully so, because it is an issue, because Tony Cardone ignored it for years. So like John Karl is one thing, like he’s been pretty consistent about communicating this. And by the way, that hydrogen sulfide issue isn’t over.

In fact, the issue is a little worse than people thought, not in terms of the hydrogen sulfide levels. So the hydrogen sulfide levels, at least I’m trying to think of the day. I saw documents going as far back as like January. I haven’t seen anything recently, but as of January, the levels seem tolerable. You occasionally smell it, but it’s not dangerous. But the issue is this. The issue is how we all thought, including myself.

That the hydrogen sulfide was only coming out of two sewer grates, right? It was coming out of the one in the playground and it was coming out of the one across the street. You know, I took the bus for years across the street from what was Monroe taxi and then became The Depot and I don’t what’s there’s now, but that’s sewergrate where you stand to get the short line bus into the port authority was the other source of the emissions. As it turns out, it’s multiple sources. Like it’s not just those two manholes. The hydrogen sulfide smell is coming from many manholes in the Village of Monroe And that’s sort of that situation now. And so here’s another question to think about. Alex Melchiorre is buddies with Isaac Ekstein That’s a fact. There was a fire recently at 33 Tanger Road. Robert Jeroloman, the supervisor of Blooming Grove, disputes this story. But I’ve heard from multiple first responders that were on the scene that Melchiorre and Ekstein were palling around. And Melchiorre was telling anyone that would listen that Isaac is great and the media should be nicer to him.

There was another instance where the NBC reporters came to George Kalaj’s house to talk to him about the helicopter and George Kalaj called Isaac. Ekstein blocked in the NBC reporters and then Ekstein called Blooming Grove police. And then within a couple of minutes, Blooming Grove police was there to question the reporters. Ekstein and Melchiorre are tight. So here’s another question. Ekstein and Stern have publicly said that they will not turn on the ANUE system, which would stop or at least cut down on the hydrogen sulfide problem in Monroe until Orange County drops its lawsuit over Gonzaga Park, which is not happening. I think we’ve bullied Neuhaus enough to where that case is not going to be dropped, or at least it’ll be suicide for Neuhas to drop that case. But what happens when you have a mayor of Monroe who doesn’t want to deal with the hydrogen sulfide issue, because it’s his buddy, who he doesn’t want to upset Ekstein

That’s a real problem. And that’s something we have to think about. So more to come on the village of Monroe. It is deeply concerning. I’ve been on the phone. I’m supposed to work on my taxes today. I was supposed to. I had this whole day set aside where I was like, all right, I’m going to go and I’m to meet with some people. We’re going to talk to some local activists about me running for state senate as a write-in. More on that later. And then I’m going to come home and I’m going to work on my taxes. And that was my plan. And then …

It’s just sort of been nonstop of talking to local elected officials about, OK, well, let’s say Melchiorre wins. How does that impact the town of Monroe? How does that impact the town and village of Woodbury? How does that impact the town and village of Chester? Can, for example, the town of Chester provide police coverage to parts of the unincorporated section of Monroe that’s on the border? And could the town of Woodbury provide police coverage to parts of Monroe and Harriman?

So that maybe we don’t need to expand the village police, maybe we just create like these zones where maybe there’s some help from the neighboring municipalities, maybe it’s the IMA. Personally, if it was me, if it was me.

I would take all of the police forces in Monroe, Woodbury, Chester, Blooming Grove, and Palm Tree if they’re interested, and Warwick and Tuxedo if they were interested, and even Cornwall if they were interested, and I would merge them. And I would say we now have a one unified municipal police force, and they police everywhere. They’re held accountable to a higher standard if you do that.

I know people’s first reaction is usually, no, layoffs. And I don’t want layoffs. I want more police. I want more police. I want better paid police, better trained police. But I feel like we have all these little fiefdoms with the local police forces and we have all these territorial disputes and you have parts of Monroe that have no coverage. You have other parts of the area that have no coverage. And it seems to me that a simple solution would just be to unify the police.

And have one agency responsible. That’ll never happen. That’s just me. I would love to see it happen. It will never happen. There’s too many egos involved. There’s too many fiefdoms involved. I don’t want to take shots at anybody. I don’t think it will happen. But I think it’s a good idea, honestly, because if you’re a town of Monroe resident, great idea, because you’ve got your police coverage. I also think for EMS and fire.

I want those people paid. I don’t want volunteer firefighters and volunteer EMS in the 21st century, in 2026, in a world where no one can afford to live, let alone do much of anything else, including vote, including coming to town and village meetings. I want everyone paid. The only way to do that though is a merger.

Do You Think This Is An Emergency Or Not?

Anyway, the last thing I want to talk to you about is really two simple questions.

The first one is this.

If you feel, or the question should be, do you feel that we are living through a national emergency? Yes or no? Because a lot of people say no. And you can tell. You can tell with the ice and Chester thing. There was a lot of people who showed their ass. There was a lot of people that were like, know, it’s a Chester, we’re in Woodbury, that’s a Chester problem, why are we talking about a Chester problem?

And it’s like, well, listen, dipshit, this is a constitutional problem first. And last time I checked, all elected officials are sworn to uphold the Constitution. So in our Constitution, I’m looking for my copy of it. I can’t reach it and be on camera at the same time. In the Constitution, you’ll notice it says people and it says citizens. And that is very deliberate. Like that was a deliberate choice by the founders of America and the framers of the Constitution and by the people who wrote the 14th Amendment.

Like … Roscoe Conklin is a guy not a lot of people know. If you saw Death by Lightning on Netflix, actually here, do this. If you want to look for a fun watch, it was really good. It was a lot of fun to watch. But the bad guy is not really the bad guy in real life. So the bad guy in Death by Lightning, one of them is Roscoe Conklin, right? And he’s sort of this rival to Garfield who’s running for president, not.

No, not Andrew Garfield, guy who played Spider-Man once. The other Garfield, the ran for president. Him and Conklin were at odds. And so if you watch Death by Lightning, Conklin is portrayed as a bad guy. But Conklin is one of the framers of the 14th Amendment. And Conklin was very clear in the wording of the 14th Amendment where he said, it says people, not citizens, all people.

In the United States, the law shall be applied to them equally. That was an intentional choice by the founders or framers of the 14th Amendment. So when we talk about things like ICE, it’s a constitutional issue. And I don’t care if you are a MAGA Woodbury town board member, like Calore or if you’re MAGA mayor, like Alex Melchiorre if you do become mayor, because it doesn’t matter what you think. The Constitution says the laws of the United States shall be applied equally to people, period.

For further proof of that, after the 14th Amendment was passed, the Supreme Court, people get mad at the Supreme Court, saying like, oh, look at them selling out to the corporation. But with the exception of the 1960s, 50s and 60s and part of 70s, there was like this brief blip. And there was a blip where the Supreme Court was like, we’re going to put people first. But before and after, the Supreme Court was putting corporations first.

And they were always put in corporations first. And we can show that through the history of the 14th Amendment. Because the 14th Amendment says the word person and people and not just citizen, the rights of corporations grew after the 14th Amendment because the argument that was made repeatedly in different cases was corporations are people too. That was something that was implied a bunch of times. Other times it was outright stated. So the 14th Amendment says that people.

You have to apply the laws equally to all people, which includes people that are here undocumented. And so, the question is, do you think we’re living through an emergency? And when the 14th Amendment is, that is the most important amendment, and I understand.

Look, most people don’t go to college. College is expensive. College is as expensive as shit. And it shouldn’t be. So most people who graduate high school, they never open a history textbook. If you’re lucky, maybe they’ll pop open a book. Maybe if you’re lucky, they’ll watch something like Death by Lightning and they’ll see Roscoe Conklin and be like, all right, I would like to learn more about that weird gentleman who is a bad guy in this TV show, but in real life, wrote the 14th Amendment, which is the most important amendment in the Constitution. Most people don’t know. And so I understand when you start talking to them about the Constitution, that they just assume because they saw the Fox News or they just don’t know what the Constitution, what the 14th Amendment says. But it says people. It says people. And so if you acknowledge that we’re living in an emergency, you can’t behave as if everything is normal. And so that’s sort of my issue right now of I see a whole lot of people and I see a whole lot of elected officials, Skoufis among them. Not to single him out though, because it’s all of them. It’s all of them. It’s Hochul it’s Letitia James, it’s the Comptroller. Like it’s all of them. It’s Brian Maher, it’s Steve Neuhaus Like Neuhaus, for example, during the ICE thing, what did he say to you in his videos? He said,

I’m more concerned about the protests. He was adamant, like he said, he was much more concerned about the protests than he was anything else. So there’s people that realize that we’re living through an emergency and people that don’t, and the majority of people are people that don’t. And that’s a problem because the situation that we’re living in is only going to get worse. The problem in New York is that New York state politics, they have what they call the big ugly, right? And the big ugly is essentially

We don’t, New York only does things by smushing it into the budget, right? Like if you want the laws to change in New York state, you have to find a way to get it into the budget, basically. And if it’s not in the budget, if it’s not part of the budget negotiations, then maybe, it gets passed

but that doesn’t happen all that often. Instead, if it’s not in the budget, it’s dead, at least for a year, right? Or alternatively, at the last, usually there’s a big push at the end of the session, right? Like last year there was a big push for the Package Reduction Recycling Infrastructure Act. I’m sorry, it’s P-R-R-I-A, I think is what its initials are. And so there were these calls at the last minute saying, you know, we need to pass this on the last day, but Speaker Heastie wouldn’t bring it to the floor.

Because of course not, because he works for the corporations, because he thinks everything is fine. And so if you think that we’re living through an emergency, now is the time for you to plant your feet and start to speak up. Not enough people speak up. Not enough people speak up. I’m seeing the same people, and this isn’t anything against the people who come, God bless the people that come to town and village board meetings. Seriously, like I’m not even a religious person, but if you take the time every day to... participate in a town meeting or a village meeting. Thank you. But not enough of us do. And some of it, look, some of it is because we’re all time poor, right? Like we’re all being squeezed financially. Our lives are not designed to have time to participate in local government because some of us are working two, three jobs. Some of us cannot pay for groceries. And so, you know, I don’t have two hours to spend on a Monday night because I might need to work a second shift at a gas station. like that’s a real thing.

But if you have time and you know that we’re living in an emergency, then I just want to implore them to speak up. Every chance you get, you plant your feet, you use your voice. Not enough of us are. And it shows. It shows because in a world where people plant their feet, in a world where people vote, and in a world where people organize, we don’t have these crazy situations like we have in Orange County where a couple of landlords, you mean to tell me a couple of landlords got pissed and so they’re going to get rid of the mayor so that they don’t have to pay like all these fines. That’s why we’re getting a new mayor? Really? Really. What about the fact that he’s MAGA? Well, that doesn’t seem to be a problem because the two guys don’t care. They only care about their money because money warps our politics and so

This is the time for you to get up and say, I’m not a corporation. I’m not a wealthy person. I’m not a real estate developer. I just live here. yeah, things are not normal. They are going to get worse. And until we start to behave as if there’s an emergency, things will continue to get worse. You should look carefully at your food that you’re buying at Shop Rite because the FDA cuts staff left and right. So who knows whether or not your food’s been checked?

That’s a real thing. Do we have avian flu? We don’t know. ⁓ You might be, here’s another example that you might not think about of a way that this emergency has affected you. You might’ve noticed when you’re watching the weather where, weather people are notorious for getting it wrong. I used to do a lot of work in Chicago with the local media. And when I met the Chicago weatherman, shit, I’m blanking on his name. It was about a decade ago now.

But the first thing he said to me was, BJ, it’s nice to meet you. Do you know what the most dangerous job in Chicago is? I said, what? And he said, weatherman. So weather people are notorious for getting it wrong, a blowing forecast. But if you watch the news, you might have heard something different where they’re saying, according to this model, listen carefully. The next time you listen to the weather, the next time you watch the weather on News 12 or NBC4 or any of local TV stations, listen to them carefully.

Because you’re going to hear them say, according to this model. And the reason why is because the Trump regime has cut a lot of funding to the National Weather Service. so, for example, one of the things our government does is we put out weather balloons in the Pacific Northwest, because that could tell us which way the winds are blowing and which way the storm systems are coming in. We’re not doing that. We’re not, because someone decided it was too expensive and we didn’t want to do it. And so now we have these competing weather models that are giving us different information at different hours.

So that is incredibly dangerous and very scary because we’re heading into yet another spring and summer of climate change and climate emergency where our storms are more powerful. You’re getting 50, 60 mile per hour winds, which are incredibly dangerous that could blow in without much notice or advanced warning. that’s, a lot of people, even if you’re the most selfish person, even if you’re like, the only thing I care about is my house and my property value. Okay, well, let’s play that out.

If you care only about your house and the only about your property value, what are you going to do when 60, 70 mile per hour winds take down a tree and the tree falls on your house? And then you might go, well, FEMA is going to cover it. Well, guess what? FEMA has also undergone a lot of budget cuts. And if you look at what happened out in California with wildfires, if you look at what’s happening in Nebraska right now with their fire. They’ve got a huge fire. It’s the largest in their history. If you look at the Jennings Creek fire which we had in our region, yeah, we was eight miles away from Monroe. These are large scale problems. And if you think that the federal government’s gonna come and bail you out through FEMA, it ain’t happening. And that’s to blame Trump specifically, because I remember during Hurricane Sandy, I wasn’t here, I was up in Potsdam at the time, but I remember there was a lot of damage to my parents’ house. And FEMA basically said, yeah, the only thing we can pay for is like a casket.

So FEMA has always had problems, always, always, always had problems, but now the problem is worse. And that’s the difference. So do you live in an emergency? Yes or no? I say yes. And if you think yes, it’s time for you to speak. And the thing you can do, the last thing I’m tell you is, and you’re gonna hear me say this a lot over however long we keep doing the Gazette. The thing you’re gonna hear me say a lot of this ...

The answer to the question of whether or not you are organized is this. If you say to me, we are organized, the first thing I’m gonna say to you is, okay, well, that means you have a Signal group with 10 of your neighbors. And then the thing I’ve heard repeatedly is I don’t have that. Then you’re not organized. You’re not. You are either depending on Facebook, which is fine to a point, but you have to remember that Facebook does not reach everybody.

Repeatedly since we’ve been doing the Monroe Gazette. I constantly do sentiment analysis, which is basically looking at what everyone is saying in the comments section of popular threads, whether it’s on Nextdoor or whether it’s on Facebook or whether it’s in For A Better Woodbury or whether it’s in Monroe Matters. And yes, I have burner accounts in different groups. I’m not going to tell you who those are. But I do use the burner accounts to lurk, essentially, and see what’s being said.

And repeatedly, what you see on Facebook is not reality, not in our region anyway. Like it’s just not true. A great example of this is during the sheriff’s thing where, you know, if you went by like the threads on Monroe Matters, you would think everyone supported the sheriff. But if you went to the meetings, completely different story, completely different story. Like the people that came out, the people that actually live here did not want a PRO-ICE sheriff. And so... you have to have these Signal groups. These Signal groups are the key. This is how whoever you want to fight, whoever it is, whether it’s the real estate developers, whether it’s Trump, whether it’s bad Democrats, we have a lot of bad Democrats too. And I’m an independent by the way, I’m not registered Democrat anymore, so I’m not affiliated with them. So it’s anyone, anyone that you want to oppose or deal with. If you don’t have these Signal groups, you have nothing, because a Signal group allows you one, to organize and say, all right, we got a town meeting, who can go, who can’t go.

If you can’t go, do you have five minutes to copy and paste this letter? If you can’t go, here’s a script to call Skoufis and tell him you should support the New York Health Act. And who cares if it’s too expensive because it’ll save billions of dollars in, I’m sorry, it’ll save us billions of dollars and millions of lives. That’s a fact. It will save us $4 billion a year once it’s fully implemented. That’s from the RAND Corporation. Like that’s not me pulling that out of my butt. That is from a very conservative think tank saying, yeah, New York Health Act will actually save New York State.

Billions every year and it’ll save millions of lives. So it’s not acceptable for Skoufis to say, it’s too expensive. It’s like, yeah, we know it’s expensive, but we will make that money back. That’s why you invest. That’s why like any business owner will tell you that you eat shit the first one to three years that you’re running a small business, you will eat shit. Like you will not make a lot of money. But over the long term, over the long term, you will see a growth curve and you will start to see the money coming and then you will start to make up for the losses as long as you’re growing the business appropriately doing things you’re supposed to do. Anyway, so my challenge for you is this, you’ve made it this far and you’re listening to us and you think you’re organized, do you have 10 of your neighbors in a signal group? Because once you’re organized, you can do things like I just mentioned. You can also do things like spread actual information and correct disinformation. So for example, if you see like a crazy Tim Mitts post where he’s...

I’m trying to think of some crazy, he has me blocked, so I’m trying to think of some crazy shit that I’ve seen from him recently. ⁓ yeah, where he’s like going on and on about Maureen, or I’m sorry, Supervisor Richardson. Saying she’s in bed with Satmar but she’s not in bed with Satmar. She has a better relationship with Kiryas Joel than Tony Cardone does. Whether or not you like that, that’s not for me, I don’t have a problem, but there are.

A lot of bigots and anti-Semites, But within your Signal group, you would be able to discuss this without having to worry about astroturfing, without having to worry about someone with a fake account trying to persuade you, without having to worry about Facebook. Because people think if I post something on Facebook, everyone will see it. Well, it’s not the case. This is my field of expertise. I’ve been in this space. I’m a published author in this space, you know, my first book came out, social media is bullshit, like I know these algorithms. And people think if I post something on Facebook, everyone’s gonna see it. It’s just not the case. Facebook is constantly scanning for what they think the most engaging thing is to show you. And if you’re posting very calm updates about stuff that’s happening locally, Facebook is not showing it to people. If you’re posting like bad shit, crazy things, that’s the thing that Facebook’s gonna show people because rage and anger, you might have heard the term rage bait. That’s essentially what that is, right? Like rage sells. And that’s what Facebook shows you. So in a Signal group, you don’t have that problem. It’s one to one communication with people that you’ve vetted. If you can get enough people in that group and then get another, know, so the idea is this. You, if you organize it, you’re you’re the neighborhood captain. Your job then, once you have the 10 people, is to recruit other neighborhood captains and have them form a Signal group and have them form a Signal group of another neighbor. You see how this works? And then you scale up. You don’t want to too many people into one Signal group. That gets crazy. But you do want to have this constellation of local signal groups where information can hop from one group to another through the captains. Once you have that established, you will see some serious shit change around here. I promise you. If I had 1,000 people.

A thousand dedicated people calling Skoufis every day to pass the New York Health Act. He would cave and say, oh yeah, it’s a good idea. If we had a thousand people call Neuhaus every day and say, no more ICE agreement with Orange County Jail, he will cave. The thing is, there is no local infrastructure. There isn’t. There’s a lot of well meaning people who set up a Facebook group. Or there are, but they’re a one and done, right? So a good example, and I’m not picking on anybody with us, we the people of Woodbury right? Did an amazing job. did, they did, that group did an amazing job with the petitions to the DEC. And what happened? They won. But then what happens? What happens to that coalition after you’ve won? Right? Because a lot of people think, okay, we won, it’s over. It’s never over though. It’s never over. This is an ongoing battle. This is a thing that requires

If you want to live in a democracy, if you want to live in a place where all people, regardless of their citizenship, where all people, regardless of how they came here, what color they are, what their religion, whatever. If you want to live in a world that upholds the 14th Amendment, that says that all people count, essentially, is that everyone counts, then that requires constant vigilance. That requires staying in touch after you’ve won, staying in touch after you’ve elected your people, and saying, OK.

Kathryn Luciani is coming back. We’re going to stop her. This person is going to run against Robert Jeroloman again. Jeroloman is up for reelection. That’s a big issue in Blooming Grove. That’s a huge thing that’s coming up is Supervisor Jeroloman’s reelection. Are you organized? Do you have that signal group? If not, you’re not organized. It’s a constant battle. It’s a constant fight and it’s exhausting.

And I understand that. And that’s why you want these neighborhood groups, because you shouldn’t have to carry the load. The whole point of the group is that everyone is doing their part. Everyone is chipping in. Everyone is building momentum. Everyone has a role to play, as opposed to an amazing show of force ⁓ with We the People Woodbury. It’s about consistency. It’s about being able to continue to show up, even after you’ve had a victory and continuing to speak out and continuing to be organized. And that requires on the ground one-to-one organizing and we just don’t have it. So my project with the Monroe Gazette is gonna help this community build that. I didn’t answer any questions. I still spoke for almost an hour. I apologize. That was not my intent. I wrote down three things I wanted to talk about and here we are for an hour. So, man, there’s a lot happening. I wish. I truly, know, I, when Maureen, Beth, and Luis and Andrew, and Jackie, like just Martha, when everyone won, and Vernick. I’m sorry, I’m just blanking on everyone’s name, but when everyone in Woodbury and Monroe won, I was so happy, because I.

Because I thought, OK, now I could just write about South Blooming Grove. Right? Like, now I can just focus on the fire, the big fire that we have to deal with, which is South Blooming Grove. It hasn’t worked out that way. And that’s not their fault. It’s just the nature of we’re living through an emergency and things like the ICE concentration camp comes up, right? And then things like, how do the police protect us? Because that’s next story that we’re working on, If you drive on 32, along 32 along Woodbury Commons are those flock safety cameras, which are constantly collecting and gathering information that goes to Woodbury police, just for example. And in that database, that database may be accessed by DHS and ICE.

Do you want that? Well, I don’t know. But that’s another story that’s coming that we need to talk about. So because we live in an emergency, I haven’t been able to step back and take a breath. Because the thing I want to leave you with, you can’t put your head in the sand. You can’t. I’ve had this conversation with people where a lot of people just want to pretend that nothing is happening. But bad things are happening. I know that’s simplistic.

but that’s the world we live in. And you might not know this specific bad thing. You might not have known about the weather thing until I told you. You might not have even thought about the safety of the deli meat. You buy at Shop Rite You might not have thought about algorithmic pricing and Shop Rite You might not have thought about Trump wanting Medicare to make decisions using artificial intelligence instead of a person, which would mean that some of you watching this maybe denied medical coverage, maybe denied coverage for a procedure that you need. You might not have known. And I get it because part of the game, right? Part of the game plan is just to flood everyone with so much shit at once that you don’t know what’s up and down. And so it’s very easy to put your head in the sand and say, all right, I’m just gonna pretend it’s not happening. But it is affecting you. It is impacting you and you need to plant your feet and you need to speak up. So I’m gonna shut up now. I will leave you with that. I will let everyone know on the Monroe Gazette Facebook page and through our notes, if you go to MonroeGazette.com and click on notes. There is a little section there that I update as I get stuff. So I’ll make sure to update that with some village election results and I’ll see you all next week with another video.

Subscribe now

Above: Starting at 12:56, you can watch Mrs. Saeideh Moslem completely derail yet another Woodbury Village Board meeting. Each time she appears, whether at the Town or Village, Mrs. Moslem asks questions that we at The Monroe Gazette believe are intended to entrap the Village in potential litigation.

Mrs. Moslem asserts that a grand conspiracy involving the former Village of Woodbury law firm, Kiryas Joel, and the federal government were plotting against her husband and son.

Share

Woodbury’s Mrs. Saeideh Moslem believes I have the power to ban people from speaking during public comment at all Woodbury Village and Town meetings.

I do not.

If I did, I would probably start by banning the MAGA supporter who suggested there were “too many brown people at the pool.”

Next, I would ban the disingenuous members of the Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats (Valerie Hebel and Matthew Fabbro). Both recently asked the Village Board what measures they would take regarding ICE, despite the fact that Matthew Fabbro served as a Village Board member for two years. In October 2025, he was directly asked what he would do about ICE in Woodbury, and he dismissed those questions by stating that inquiries about ICE were not relevant to Village business.

I hope that kid isn’t considering a future in political office, because that kind of moral cowardice ends careers.

But that’s just my opinion.

I don’t like racists, and I don’t like hypocritical politicians either.

Most people don’t.

I must also admit that every time Mrs. Moslem approaches the podium at either a Village or Town meeting in Woodbury, it often signals an unofficial bathroom break for many residents.

You can see this for yourself.

I’ve personally observed numerous residents get up to use the restroom as Mrs. Moslem approaches the podium at various Village meetings I’ve attended since The Monroe Gazette started.

In fairness to Mrs. Moslem, if Woodbury Town Board member, Brandon Calore, spoke more at Town meetings, that would actually be the best time to use the bathroom.

At this point, everyone seems tired of hearing the conspiracy theories shared by Mrs. Moslem, and the number of community members heading to the restroom is proof of this.

However, that doesn’t mean I would ever exercise some incredible, magical power to ban people from speaking at these or any other meeting—like that kid who sends people to the cornfield in the Twilight Zone.

If I had that power, Carlos Mendoza would not be managing the New York Mets right now

So What Gives?

Is Mrs. Moslem just another one of those “crazy locals” you expect to see at a Town or Village meeting?

Maybe!

It depends on how you prefer your conspiracy theories:

“With Jews” or “Without.”

As a Jew, I prefer them WITHOUT.

What we believe Mrs. Moslem is doing—if you check PACER and look up her son, Saeed Moslem—you’ll find multiple entries for a case known as United States of America v. Moslem, among others filed by both Mehdi and Saaed, whom we’ll get to in a second.

Mrs. Moslem seems to be using both Village and Town of Woodbury’s time during public comment to ensnare these municipalities into making statements that could lead them into to legal trouble.

We say this because Mrs. Moslem has talked privately with village and town officials, we’ve been told, numerous times. So the continued, and repeated, line of questioning during public comment following multiple public and private discussions is concerning.

We’ve uploaded the original indictment for Mehdi Moslem and Saeed Moslem if you’d like to read the criminal complaint yourself.

The Moslem family later told News 12 in 2022 that the FBI and these other parties entrapped them.

As recently as February of this year, Mrs. Moslem has been filing motions to the court on behalf of her son. This is something she has not disclosed while using Town and Village time during public comment to inquire about the Woodbury comprehensive plan and its potential connection to her son’s case.

THAT is a no no.

We at The Monroe Gazette did not appreciate when Committee to Elect Woodbury Democrats member, current brain-dead zombie, and former Village Trustee James Freiband repeatedly attempted to entrap the Village of Woodbury in litigation with multiple parties during meetings, including the Village of Kiryas Joel and the New York State Thruway Authority.

We feel the same way about what Mrs. Moslem is doing now.

This behavior is an abuse of public comment, a waste of time for the public, our elected officials, and government employees, and it could be costly for Woodbury residents if Mrs. Moslem is successful in suing either the Village, the Town, or both as part of her conspiracy theory regarding her husband and son’s criminal convictions, which you can read about here.

And they were convicted. Let’s state that in no uncertain terms.

In October of 2022, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams stated:

“This father and son duo spent nearly a decade lying about their finances to get millions of dollars in fraudulent loans while hiding their income from the IRS and, in Saaed Moslem’s case, evading his creditors through a fraudulent bankruptcy filing. Today’s sentences send a strong message that perpetrators of fraud will be held accountable and brought to justice for their actions.”

What Does The Village of Woodbury Have to Do With This Case?

Honestly, this is the only reason why we’re talking about this. On March 12, 2026, this whole thing became a public discussion during an otherwise brief Village board meeting that kept people there longer than necessary.

How the Village of Woodbury splitting off from the Town of Woodbury is responsible for Mr. Moslem and his son carrying on a decade-long conspiracy to defraud people is something only Mrs. Moslem can explain. (She did not address this in her email to The Monroe Gazette.)

When the co-conspirator, Stephen Strauhus, faced charges of his own in 2023, Assistant prosecutors Nicholas S. Bradley and James McMahon stated in their sentencing letter to Judge Seibel that with the Moslem case specifically, “the sheer number of recordings over the years that backed up Strauhs’s testimony made it nearly impossible for defense counsel to undermine Strauhs’s credibility during cross-examination and summation.”)

Public comment should not be abused by any bad actors looking to burden you, yes, you reading this Woodbury taxpayer, with higher taxes due to a lawsuit they intend to file.

As disreputable as Convicted Felon Tim Mitts is, one thing we can say about him is that he keeps his deranged, often incomprehensible, and potentially intoxicated rants on Facebook, where virtually no one sees them.

The other nice thing about Convicted Felon Timothy J. Mitts posting solely on Facebook is that, for now anyway, the platform still allows you to block people.

Or better yet, if you want Tim Mitts to block you, all you need to do is repeatedly post a link to USA vs. Tim Mitts in the comments of anything he posts.

He’ll immediately block you and cry about it. (Here’s a link to one file you can reference, where his appeal was dismissed, and the judge notes Mitts’ failure to take responsibility for his crimes.)

This situation is quite similar, we believe, to that of the Moslems, where instead of potentially taking responsibility for their crimes, it’s somehow the fault of the Village of Woodbury, its former attorney, the Village of Kiryas Joel, and the federal government.

I have first hand knowledge that the Satmar don’t like talking to the FBI. So. Yeah. I’m not buying that particular claim at all. That said, even if the conspiracy was true, the Village of Woodbury does not appear to have any sort of connection to it, thus not making it worth something to discuss at each and every public comment.

Mrs. Moslem claims the indictment contains old or otherwise outdated information but did not respond to comments concerning the guilty verdict. She stated, “In post-conviction filings, we have presented forensic evidence alleging that key court documents—including the indictment and critical transcripts—contain metadata inconsistencies and signs of alteration. The original ‘wet-ink’ indictment has not been produced despite repeated motions requesting it.” So far, no Judge has bit on these claims, as most motions submitted by Saaed that we could find in PACER have been dismissed.

Mrs. Moslem also did not respond when asked about the racist comments her son, Saeed, made before the Woodbury Planning Board. This came regarding the potential of renting out apartments he proposed to Mexican families. The Monroe Gazette has put in a FOIL request for the meeting minutes where this statement occurred, and have also requested other documents related to Mrs. Moslem’s claims.

Additionally, Mrs. Moslem has not clarified how the Village of Kiryas Joel is involved, stating only in her email:

A CPA accountant initially hired by the Moslem family later became a cooperating federal witness / informant.
• The FBI Informant, Stephen Struhus [SIC] , had connections to networks associated with Kiryas Joel, a nearby municipality with significant regional political influence (emphasis added)

Michael Burke, the Woodbury Village Attorney worked in close proximity to matters involving this FBI accountant for years, and later served as his FEDERAL defense counsel.

Why those “connections” to Kiryas Joel would be relevant is unknown, but it’s disappointing to even have to mention here. Like I said the other day, you can absolutely criticize Kiryas Joel. Much in the same way you can criticize Israel. But to just lob them in and assume or imply that Kiryas Joel did something bad in this specific circumstance … That definitely gets into sketchy territory.

I know “Blame the Jews” is a popular narrative around these parts, but I seriously doubt “The Jews” instructed Mr. Struahus to assist Mr. Moslem and his son in defrauding people.

Mr. Struhaus is not identified in the original federal indictment, as he is only referred to as Co-Conspirator 1.

At this point, there is no evidence to support that Mr. Struahus was working with the FBI beyond this specific case concerning the Moslems’ accounting practices. Nor is there any evidence of wrong doing on the part of Michael Burke, who represented Struhus in federal court, according to Moslem. We reached out to Mr. Struahus for comment on this story and did not hear back from him prior to publication.

Michael Burke did not work for the Village of Woodbury, according to Village Treasurer and former Woodbury Town Clerk, Desiree Potvin.

So again, there goes the tie-in to the Village of Woodbury and this case.

We are attempting to find Michael Burke for comment regarding Mrs. Moslem’s numerous claims.

We reached out to both the Village and Town for their comments and forwarded them Mrs. Moslem’s letter. If you watch the video above, you can see that discussion unfold for yourself involving the Village, where the Mayor brings up Mrs. Moslem’s letter that we forwarded for comment.

Mrs. Moslem believes something untoward happened here, but it’s pretty standard procedure in reporter land to go to an elected official and say, “Yeah. Someone’s saying all sorts of crazy shit about you/your town. Here’s what they said. Would you like to respond?”

So now, Mrs. Moslem believes our asking the Village Mayor for comment is part of the grand conspiracy too. Personally, I really can’t wait to see how far she takes the “Let’s blame the Jews” thing.

Jewish reporter? Mysterious connections to Kiryas Joel?

Next thing you know, she’s going to start talking about Israel’s camera that they maintained in one of Jeffrey Epstein’s apartment.

Actually, that last one is true.

As always, we’ll investigate. But in the interim, I hope Mrs. Moslem spends just a little less time using the public’s.

Share

Pictured Above: According to Village of Chester Mayor, John T. Bell, the endangered bog turtle could be the reason why ICE did not proceed with its concentration camp planned for 29 Elizabeth Drive. When asked directly about the bog turtle claim, an ICE spokesperson did not address that claim specifically. Only stating that they have no new facility openings to announce at this time. US Fish and Wildlife, who oversees the management of endangered species, told The Monroe Gazette that only ICE could say whether or not the bog turtle’s presence played a role in their decision making.

Photo credit: Lisa Brouellette/USFWS

Share

Once a week I’ll do a Reader Q&A on local, state, and national events. If you are a paid subscriber of The Monroe Gazette, you’ll get the video and audio of the Q&A. For our free subscribers, I’ll publish the transcript a few days later, which you can read below.

Everyone is welcome to email their questions to BJ@MonroeGazette.com or send questions anonymously using either Signal — I can be reached at bjmendelson.32 — or to our anonymous PO BOX: PO BOX 5, 996 Route 17, Stop 2, Arden, New York, 10910. Make sure not to include a return address in order to remain anonymous.

-BJ

You can follow me on BlueSky here.

Reader Q&A Transcript From March 11th, 2026

BJ Mendelson: Well, hey, in the interest of trying to write less, I’m going to do something new. So this is going to be an experiment of our mailbag, because I get a lot of email from readers, a lot of Signal messages. And so sometimes it takes me forever to get back to them because I’m trying to juggle doing Stupid Sexy Privacy stuff and then doing the Monroe Gazette and everything else on top of that. So it’s a lot of work.

So I thought it might be a little faster if we answered your questions this way. if you don’t mind, we’re going to try this and if you like it, we’ll do it again. You can send me questions at BJ@MonroeGazette.com There’s one Z and two T’s in gazette, MonroeGazette.com BJ@MonroeGazette.com And you can also message me on Signal anonymously at bjmendelson.32, the number 32, bjmendelson.32 on Signal.

So let’s see what we got here in the mailbag this week. This is something from December.

Chester Gets Land Preservation Bill Passed. So What Gives in Blooming Grove?

Things have been so crazy. So you might have missed this, but Chester has a land preservation deal. It’s sort of same thing that Blooming Grove was trying to get that Kathy Hochul vetoed. And Chester actually got it through and Blooming Grove didn’t. And so people want to know what the difference is. I have a really long answer from Supervisor Jeroloman who’s up for reelection, by the way, that sort of gives his answer. And then we’ve got the Joel Stern version of events, where he’s talking about Blooming Grove and the land preservation deal. The thing that’s important right now is that Blooming Grove is still trying to get that land preservation thing through.

According to Stern, Blooming Grove “snuck” this new attempt through at the last minute since Chester got one. Stern did his usual thing of calling Jeroloman anti-Semitic and saying the Town board is anti-Semitic and engaging in conspiracy against the Jews. You know, just the whole completely bullshit, insane things like that real estate developers like Stern and Ekstein have gotten away with over the years. “If we don’t get what we want, it’s antisemitism, it’s anti-chassidim.” I don’t know where things stand right now with Blooming Grove’s attempts at land preservation. That’s the question that we keep getting asked. I don’t know where that is right now. I will reach out to Supervisor Jeroloman and let you know.

The One Car Police Car Accident

The town of Blooming Grove isn’t very happy with me right now. We’re trying to get information on a single car police vehicle accident that occurred through a FOIL request and they really haven’t been cooperative with that.

And also their police chief, Alex Melchiorrie, is running for mayor over in Monroe, which is super fucking weird. And so another question that we got, let me just make sure I’m reading this correctly …

This question is, “Can the town of Blooming Grove police chief Alex Melchiorre run for mayor of the Village of Monroe? Can you hold both positions?”

The Town of Blooming Grove doesn’t have a problem with this, according to Supervisor Jeroloman. We didn’t get a clear answer on what would happen if Melchiorre is the Blooming Grove police chief and elected as the village mayor though.

We should know on Wednesday the 18th. That’s the Village of Monroe election. So if you live in the Village of Monroe, make sure you get out there and vote.

At this point, you know how I feel about Dwyer, Ferraro and O’Connor. I like Neil Dwyer. I’ve met him. I don’t always agree with everything that he’s said and done. Clearly with the ICE thing, we don’t agree. I like Andy Ferraro. He seems like a nice guy. He’s also the only Democrat on the board as far as I know. Not that that matters locally, because as we say at The Monroe Gazette, if you live in Orange County, and this is true for Rockland and parts of Sullivan … You don’t have Democrats and Republicans.

You have people who work for the real estate developers and people who don’t. So we did reach out to the Attorney General’s office to see if there’s a conflict of interest. If Melchiorre was both Mayor and Police Chief.

The New York State Board of Elections didn’t identify a conflict of interest with Melchiorre RUNNING, for whatever that’s worth.

But as we see in New York, the laws are only enforced when you’re on the opposite side of people in power.

If you’re working with the people in power, then they don’t enforce any laws. Just look at South Blooming Grove as a good example of that.

So if the question is, “Can Alex Melchiorre be both a police chief in Blooming Grove and Mayor in the Village of Monroe?” We don’t know. It depends on who feels like enforcing the laws around these parts, and as you might have guessed, New York State has mostly left our region twisting in the wind.

Speaking of which … What’s Going On With The New York State Comptroller?

We do have a story coming on Thomas D’Napoli. On his audit of South Blooming Grove and why he’s hiding it. D’Napoli’s office denies that they’re hiding it, yet can’t explain why the SBG audit has never been listed once in their newsletter as an ongoing audit for two years (and counting.)

Jennifer Freeman, Director of Communications for Thomas DiNapoli, did however answer two of our questions.

So the first question we asked was, “what is going on with the South Blooming Grove audit?”

If you go back through the archive of the weekly newsletter since March of 2024, to the present it has never been mentioned. That doesn’t mean it’s not listed on the website. That’s something they pointed out was, they said that sometimes, they list everything that they do on the website.

But I specifically wanted to know what the hold up is. And so what they said about the South Blooming Grove audit is, quote, “an audit will be issued when it is completed. During the audit, we identified matters requiring additional review, which has impacted the timing of the audit. All completed audits are released publicly and published on our website.”

They said they would stay in touch with us. That was the last time we’ve heard from them.

I did send a follow-up request asking whether or not these irregularities were reported to the attorney general’s office or to the FBI. And so they said “we can’t elaborate on that,” … which, of course, but you still sometimes as a reporter, you have to ask obvious questions just to say that you asked. Because sometimes people will get cute and be like, “well, you never asked us.”

What’s The Latest on ICE in Chester?

When we’re talking about the situation in Chester, we only know what we know and what we know is ICE lies.

So anything that ICE says really can’t be taken factually. Personally, I think it’s journalistic malpractice to take anything that the Trump administration says with 100% truth. We now have another example of this. Just to use something that I saw on the news this morning of the US military dropping a US-made Tomahawk missile on a girls’ school in Iran.

And there’s a reporter, there’s video footage I’m going to use in upcoming Gazette post, of a reporter saying to Trump, the US military has evidence suggesting that we dropped a Tomahawk missile on a girls’ school in Iran. And of course, his response was, “I don’t know about that.”

So.

You can’t take anything that they [the Trump Regime] say seriously. It’s just unethical, I feel, as a journalist, which is why I’m supremely pissed at, you know, Straus News and The Photo News and their whole assortment of papers because they’ve done what I feel is like both sides-ing fascism with the Chester warehouse story.

Where they interviewed people who were excited about the Chester warehouse or thought it was a good idea. it’s like, you know, look, fascism …

There’s no two sides to this.

As a journalist, your job is to answer, basically to protect your readers and answer their questions. A journalist is no different than a plumber, right? Where with the plumber, you call up a plumber because you have a problem. Hopefully not a terrible problem because … Who hasn’t been there?

But you call them up because you have a job that needs to be done. Like you have a question that needs to be answered. You have a problem that needs to be solved. And journalists do the same thing. The journalist’s job is to... you give them money or you give the media outlet they work for money, although that model is dead, those days are over.

So now the business model for journalism is you give the journalist money directly And then in exchange the journalist asks the questions that you have and gives you answers and tries to get you the truth.

So quoting something that is absolutely detrimental to a reader’s health and safety, like say, people that are excited about a detention center opening up, or people that are like “yeah, war in Iran is good actually.”

You don’t need to do that. There’s no two sides to fascism. It’s wrong, it’s evil, we know it’s evil. We have collectively as a society agreed that it’s evil.

So anyway, like it’s tangent, but this long wave saying with the Chester Detention Center, we don’t know what’s happening. Here’s a fun rumor though and I have to qualify this and tell you it’s a fun rumor only.

Fun Rumor Alert: The Bog Turtle

So at the March 9th Village of Chester board meeting, Mayor Bell told a few people that were in attendance that, from what he was told, and we’ll get to that in a second, from what he was told, ICE is not proceeding with a warehouse, and that the warehouse was sold to someone else. (Fact check: It was not sold to someone else.)

Bell went on to claim that the reason ICE isn’t proceeding is because of the presence of the bog turtle, which is an endangered species here in New York. it’s a protected species federally. And so what that would have meant for ICE is there’s all sorts of federal laws about endangered species or protected species. And even though ICE runs roughshod over pretty much whatever it wants, it would seem in this situation, if the mayor’s story is to be believed that ICE didn’t want to go through the process of, “all right, well, the bog turtle is here. How do we work around it? How do we mitigate it? Can we mitigate it?”

ICE didn’t want to do any of that.

Where’s this information coming from?

So some of you might know that Brian T. Boone, on the Village of Chester Board, is the father-in-law for assemblyman Brian Maher. So Brian Maher, some of you know, claims … and there’s no reason to, I don’t think he’s lying to people.

Like, I don’t think Brian Maher is lying to anybody, but the story goes is that Brian Maher spoke with someone who was somehow connected to the director of ICE and …

After speaking to that person, someone else at ICE is alleged to have called Brian Maher and said, “yeah, the Chester thing isn’t happening.”

I have no reason to believe Maher is lying.

Most people that I’ve talked to, including Chester town supervisor Brandon Holdridge, also doesn’t believe that Brian Maher is lying.

But the story is sketchy, right?

You mean to tell me that this random ass New York state assemblyman, while away on active duty, had the time to speak with some higher up at ICE, who he won’t name, and then someone else at ICE, who he also won’t name, told him that the concentration camp is is dead?

It’s just sketchy. Like, again, I don’t think he’s lying. I’m not calling Brian Maher a liar, but as a journalist, my radar definitely went off when I heard that. So that’s probably where all this information is coming from to Bell about the turtle.

I don’t think there’s any reason to lie to people. I think everyone, from what I can tell anyway, everyone is just as confused as everyone else.

So I tell you that because you might be hearing a lot about the bog turtle. My personal suggestion, and hope is that if you are a graphic designer or artist, or if you know a graphic designer or artist, I definitely encourage you to make drawings and make art featuring the bog turtle.

And maybe that’s our sign here in Orange County that we use whenever we protest ICE or DHS or whatever else the regime is doing. Maybe the bog turtle should be our symbol.

So that’s sort of the bog turtle story. For now.

Skoufis And The Power of Low Expectations

Let’s see what else we got. So Skoufis put out a thing. Days after I said I was going to run for state senate, his newsletter announces he is trying to lower prescription prices.

Listen, any legislation that saves you money is good legislation.

It doesn’t matter if it’s introduced by Skoufis, it doesn’t matter who introduces it. These things are good. So the fact that he’s introducing legislation on this is great. Nobody’s saying that that’s bad. But. I also I don’t think it’s enough.

I really don’t. There’s 1.2 million New Yorkers, myself included, who are gonna lose their health insurance no later than December 31st. Most of us will either have lost it or been kicked off of it for one reason or another, because the money that was originally going to Medicaid, much like for those of you who might be receiving SNAP, you know, the money that went to SNAP and Medicaid, they took that out and that’s what’s funding ICE.

They (Congressional Republicans) took that money and moved it over because I don’t know if anyone pays attention to like how Congress budgets stuff. I do. You know, the whole deal with the super conservative Republicans is “no new tax increases.” So anything that you want to spend on, you have to cut from something else. When they want to spend all this money on ICE, it had to be cut from something else.

So that’s where the money came from. And now you have 1.2 million New Yorkers who are going to lose their health insurance. Have hospitals such as the one in Newburgh, which are at risk of closing because a lot of hospitals in New York, particularly upstate, are dependent on the aid that comes through Medicaid.

People don’t, and this isn’t anyone’s fault, but the government, especially Democrats, but the government is really bad at explaining to people where their money goes and how it comes back to them in the form of services. So people think Medicaid goes to poor people, but they don’t understand that they are also receiving Medicaid, right?

They don’t, because the Medicaid might get to them through a different name or under a different company that is acting like a third party service provider for the government to get you Medicaid. It changes depending on what state you’re in. So they might not realize that they’re getting Medicaid.

And so that’s part of the problem. And the other part of the problem is that Medicaid doesn’t just go and provide health insurance for people that can’t afford health insurance. Medicaid goes to hospitals. It pays for a lot of different programs. And so when we talk about cuts to Medicaid, we’re not just talking about taking insurance away from people. We’re talking about taking money away from hospitals and all these different programs and offerings. And so all of that money went away to pay for ICE. And in New York State … it’s not that they’re not doing anything.

To be clear, Governor Kathy Hochul has asked permission to take people like myself who are on Medicaid and put us onto the lowest tier of health insurance that’s provided through New York State. So that’s something that the federal government has to approve. They are looking, if you look at the one house, one budget plan that was put out by the state Democrats this week, they’re proposing a corporate tax hike. A billionaire tax. And what they want to do is use some of that money to patch holes in the system.

There Are Two Kinds of People Right Now. Which One Are You?

The problem is that I feel that there are two kinds of people right now. There are people, and again, I don’t care what political party someone is, I truly don’t. I also don’t care if someone’s liberal or conservative. It’s not a factor to me. What’s a factor to me is if you’re a white supremacist. If you’re a white supremacist, I have a problem. But if you’re a conservative Republican, who cares?

Anyway, so there are two kinds of people. And so the first group of people are people who understand that we’re living through an emergency and people who don’t, and that’s the other group.

The majority of people are in that second group.

And so when I looked at the state Democrat, you know, one house, one budget plan, which is just a proposal, like right now they’re negotiating. This is just a big negotiation right now between the assembly and the Senate and Governor Hochul.

It’s still not enough. It’s just, you can see that these are mostly, not all, most of these people, which I include Skoufis in this group, are wealthy. Our New York state representatives are the highest paid anywhere in America. And a lot of them are out of touch and a lot of them just don’t realize this is an emergency. Like this is a situation that’s not gonna get better.

As long as the regime is in place, they’re gonna continue to cut.

They’re going to continue to take things away. They’re going to continue to obstruct funding that was already proportioned to be spent. I am very concerned about FEMA funding, for example, even with Kristi Noem out, the head of, well, we don’t know how this is going work, but under Noem, who was, remember, the head of DHS, and DHS covers over 20 different federal agencies, one of them is FEMA.

Under Kristi Noem, where anything over $100,000 she had to approve and that delayed funding and a lot of people got hurt, a lot of people died and a lot of people didn’t get the assistance they needed because of that.

And so I have a great concern about what’s gonna happen this summer with FEMA once we start getting these severe storms again.

Pay attention:

So for... For New York state, to me it’s not enough to just, it looks like they understand that there’s a problem, but they don’t … they’re not acting as if there’s a problem. There’s a disconnect that’s occurring and that’s what scares me.

So this is all stuff to pay attention to.

Like with Skoufis again, it’s great. You want to lower prescription prices, but what would be even better is having a universal healthcare coverage plan, which is the New York Health Act. That has been in committee for years now.

And we know it’ll save New York money. Even the Rand Corporation, which is as conservative as conservative can be, went out there and said, yeah, the New York Health Act will save you money in the long run.

Skoufis will tell you, it’s too expensive. And he’s right. Like he is right to say that. Like it’s not, it’s not a criticism of him to say that it’s too expensive. It is a criticism though, for him to use that as an excuse to not pass this bill.

Because if we pass the bill, we will save billions of dollars and we will save millions of lives. And we will also make New York state much more affordable for people to stay here. You know, the Democrats will always tell you, we don’t want people to move to Houston or Florida. I think the the Hochul quote last year was we want we don’t want to lose any more people to Palm Beach. No, people will stay if you give them health insurance coverage, that’s a big chunk of money every month. We’re talking about your drugs, your co-pays, your premiums, everything else. Co insurance. Sometimes you have surgery, some insurance plans. You know they want you to spend 10 % out of pocket.

Emergency rooms visits, you know, you’re talking about a couple hundred dollars too depending on your plan to check into an emergency room. So this will take care of all of that. This will cover everything and if you have Medicare, NYHA will not change your Medicare coverage at all.

You still have Medicare. NYHA covers what Medicare does not. It’s as simple as that.

And so I think about all of the, we have an older community in Orange County. New York State’s population is also on the older side. We have a lot of baby boomers and a lot of them need dental coverage. A lot of them need vision coverage. A lot of them need hearing coverage and they don’t get it through Medicare. So I tell you this because I saw the Skoufis newsletter and I was like, “what a joke,” because he’s just gonna do the minimum. Every corporate Democrat has the same playbook: Do the least and make it seem like they care about your pain while doing so. But if they did truly care about your pain, they’d be doing a fuck of a lot more.

There’s a lot of ways that this campaign, and remember it’s not a campaign, the whole point of me running is to make the New York Health Act front and center and to make sure that you know about what it is, what it does, and that you’re demanding it be passed.

I don’t care if like 500 people vote for me. I care if 2000 people call Skoufis and call Eachus and call Brabenec and call Maher and call all the other Orange County Assembly people. And they start demanding NYHA get passed.

That’s a win. That’s how I win. That’s how we win. The campaign isn’t about me. It’s about you and getting you health care that doesn’t make you choose between food and medical care every month.

Where Are Alex Melchiorre’s Campaign Finances?

I’ve got this like long crazy email that I’m not gonna answer. A lot of people wrote to volunteer for the campaign, which is really cool. Thank you for that. I will have more information for you soon. I just am not … I’m not there yet.

There’s a lot that has to be done. My full-time job is helping to take care of a couple of disabled adults and I do The Monroe Gazette as a hobby. It’s not really a job.

Thank you though. For everyone that’s reached out, I will get back to you. I will absolutely get back to you. I got another question here. “BJ, how do I find Alex Melchiorre’s campaign finances?”

He hasn’t filed them. It’s as simple as that. He’s running ads. Someone is definitely paying for road signs and he had at least one advertisement in The Photo News. Someone is, it could be him, it could be out of pocket, which is totally cool. But he is running with the backing of the majority political faction in Kiryas Joel That’s not a bad thing. I want to be clear. You can tell people to vote for whoever. Like, it’s a free country.

The problem, and I just had this whole conversation with someone like, the problem in Orange County isn’t that there’s a Haredi bloc vote.

And we’ve seen this in Woodbury. Like I have now actively been involved with three elections and the elections I’ve been involved with, I’ve won all three. So, we’ve beaten “the bloc” in all three. And the reason is simple. People don’t vote. We may have the highest paid elected representatives in New York state, but we also have one of the lowest voter turnouts across America.

And so the reason why the bloc vote is even a thing, like, yeah, for historic context, when people say the “bloc vote,” what they’re referring to is, before the creation of Palm Tree, it is true that voters in Kiryas Joel, unlike the other voters in Monroe, would come out and vote for a candidate. And they did have a system that would make sure that everyone voted. And sometimes that system’s utilization got a little sketchy. But two wrongs don’t make a right. I’m not saying that’s okay.

But. If a Kiryas Joel political party wants to endorse someone? I just don’t care. You shouldn’t either.

What we should care about is voter turnout because when we all vote, win.

When we vote, there is no bloc to worry about. And that’s true in Rockland County, that’s true in Sullivan County, that’s true in Orange County. If you come out and vote, you don’t have to worry about a bloc.

But, in the case of Alex Melchiorre, is that political party paying for his campaign? That’s something we should know about.

Is Mr. Melchiorre’s campaign being funded by Lipa Deutsch and Avrohom Flohr? That’s not something Melchiorre has commented on despite his claims of transparency.

Some of you may know that name, Lipa Deutsch. He is usually the middleman for lot of big projects that he works on behalf of, or he’s a representative of a property developer.

So a good example is Monroe Commons, where Lipa Deutsch was sort of the front man for that. Deutsch is also the one that claims that he paid Tony Cardone money under the table in order to advance Monroe Commons.

Of course, Mr. Cardone stopped a town board meeting to deny that claim. So there’s no way to know if it’s true without an FBI agent going through Tony Cardone’s income statements. (Not outside of the realm of possibility, by the way.)

And the other guy’s Avrohom Flohr. So Avrohom Flohr is another landlord in the village of Monroe. Both of them (Flohr and Deutsch) own property in the village of Monroe. Both of them have like a litany of building complaints. I just got all those complaints from the village of Monroe through FOIL. So essentially what’s happening Monroe is that you’ve got Lipa Deutsch and Avrohom Flohr, and maybe other people, who are pushing for Alex Melchiorre and Nancy Pfeiffer, and former Monroe Mayor, Joe Mancuso.

And those are the same people that are running with the support of Flohr and Deutsch who have a major political party in Kiryas Joel backing them too.

So, do with that information what you will. The concern that I have is you want to avoid a South Blooming Grove situation where, you know, George Kalaj is a puppet and he just does, and we can say it factually, he just does whatever Isaac Ekstein and Joel Stern tell him.

So we definitely don’t want that to happen in the Village Monroe.

If you ever want to see who is funding a political candidate, I’m going to give you the six steps on how to do so here:

Who’s Funding Your Least Favorite Political Candidates?

I just wanted to give you the steps. There’s six.

Number one is go to elections.newyork.gov. It’s elections.newyork.gov.

Click on campaign finance.

Click on search candidates and disclosure.

Then you’re going to click on Contributions by Recipient.

And then you can see over on the left where it says candidate name.

So just for example, you’ll enter Melchiorre and a little box will pop up as you’re entering.

Like don’t spell out his whole name, just write like M-E-L-C-H-I-O. A little box will show up as you’re completing his last name. And it’ll say Alessio Alex Melchiorre, Mayor 580753. You will select that little box that pops up.

Then you’re gonna click on the search button.

You could repeat these steps for any candidate and you will see all of their contributions.

And just for my campaign, I’m not taking contributions over $35. I’m not taking contributions from LLCs or PACs or anything remotely connected to the real estate business, unlike Mr. Skoufis.

Facebook Is Not An Accurate Reflection of Reality

Here’s what I wish people would know about Facebook. It is not an accurate reflection of reality. Monroe Matters and Families of Woodbury look huge until you realize that most of those accounts are people that don’t fucking live there, are people that used to live here, or they’re just bots or troll operations. So if you read the Mueller Report, going back to 2016, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and also lots and lots of bad actors here in America run troll farms.

And how it works is you hire someone, you go to like Fiverr.com, you find someone in the Philippines who knows English really well. And you say to them, look, I will pay you $3 for every like negative Facebook post that you leave or every anti-Trump Facebook post that you leave. I’ll just pay you. And there’s billionaires that pay for this stuff. I used to work in PR and marketing. Like this is not something I’m pulling out my butt. This is something that I’ve firsthand done for and organized campaigns on behalf of.

They call it astroturfing. It’s a really old term, but there is a lot of astroturfing in every Facebook group. Like Facebook as a platform is inundated, mostly because, you know, when Trump voters skew, they skew white, they skew older. A lot of them are like small business owners, but they tend to use Facebook. And what I’m trying to say is, demographically, they tend to use Facebook. so...

If you ever lpost something on Facebook and you’re like, wow, and I didn’t get a lot of engagement, let me tell you that the numbers you see don’t matter. Like the likes don’t matter because I’ve posted stuff where I’ve seen no engagement, but it’ll be something that I get stopped for and people will ask me about, or I’ll get a ton of emails about, or I’ll see like something that I’ll post on Facebook that doesn’t get a lot of engagement will get a lot of traffic on the Monroe Gazette. I urge you to not take these numbers seriously. And to also not think, that if you post something on Facebook, your work is done because it’s not.

If you’re posting about politics, about Woodbury, for example, in a Woodbury group, that’s great, but you’re only reaching like 1% of the entire community. You are missing so many people out there. So anytime you talk about Facebook, I always have to say to be careful with what you see on Facebook. Beause a lot of it’s bullshit, a lot of it’s fake.

I try my best to fact check, you know, I do. A lot of other people do as well. And so I get these screenshots, like I get these screenshots from from Monroe Matters So like I got one here from like Rich Goldstein and it’s a picture of a house and there’s a bunch of boxes in front of it and he’s like, “This is what happens under the current administration of the village of Monroe and we need change and that’s why you should vote for Alex Melchiorre.” That’s bullshit.

Here’s my bet. I would bet, let’s see, what can I bet that’s like not, that’s valuable and important, but not … I bet my pinky finger, if you go to Worley Heights right now, if Alex Melchiorre and Nancy Pfeiffer and Joe Mancuso are elected to the Village Monroe Board, I would bet you my pinky that by the end of their term, the Village Monroe will look like Worley Heights right now.

So when you see someone post crazy shit on Facebook, you can ignore it.

Or you can send me screenshots. Thank you for sending me screenshots, because it’s only way I see some of this stuff. I’m not allowed in either Monroe Matters or Families of Woodbury because fact checking is apparently now allowed. It upsets too many people, I’m told.

So your screenshots are often how I stay in the loop om some things. For example that’s the only way I would know that Kathryn Luciani is out there gathering signatures for Paul Arteta. You know, pro-ice Sheriff Paul Arteta?

So it’s good to keep an eye on this stuff, but again, just be careful. So let’s see what else we got. Am I researching the bog turtle? Yes, I am researching the bog turtle. We already covered that.

For the record: ICE did not, I asked ICE … ICE does get back to the Monroe Gazette, which is really funny. It’s funny, like who writes this back and who doesn’t? Like people that you would never think would write us back, like the White House, wrote us back. The White House wrote us back.

But like, if I try to ask Thomas DiNapoli a tough question about South Blooming Grove, we don’t get an answer. I’ve tried to ask Kathy Hochul repeatedly about the South Blooming Grove phantom election, no response. Nothing from Congressman Ryan either. Probably because he doesn’t want to upset his buddies:

Above: Congressman Pat Ryan (right) with Isaac Ekstein (left) and Joel Stern (Far left.) Both Ekstein and Stern are at the center of numerous state and federal investigations right now. But we’re sure Pat Ryan is going to help get to the bottom of some of those, like the FAA and the helicopter issue, in no time. Right Pat?

Share

I know some of you have seen the commercial Hochul put out, where there was a guy with like a vanity license plate that was revoked by the DMV.

And so she [Hochul] recorded a campaign commercial where she calls the guy up and she’s like, well, “I’m working real hard on your behalf and I think everyone should pee before you go.” Beause that’s what the license plate said. And so I wrote to Hochul’s press people. I was like, look, she’s got a time to comment on this, but she has not released any statement on South Blooming Grove. None. Nothing on the water, like nothing on misappropriation, potentially of federal funds. Nothing on this forever comptroller audit, nothing about the stolen election. Just you name the subject that we talked about in South Blooming Grove and Hochul has not commented on any of it.

So it’s funny like who responds to us and who doesn’t. And just generally speaking, like this is a good pro tip is that Republicans will, Republicans will always get back to journalists. Always, always, always, always. And they might be completely full of shit.

Like last year, there was something that we were doing at the Monroe Gazette. I don’t remember what it was, but I called. It involved something that was being discussed on the Senate floor. And I called Senator Kennedy from Louisiana. You know, the one with the fake foghorn leghorn accent. We called him up. We asked for comment. They got right back to us. I didn’t speak to the senator directly, but like, his head communications, called us right back. And we called Schumer and Gillibrand. You know what we got? Nothing.

Never heard back. So Republicans, generally speaking, are very good at communicating. They’re very good at, even if they’re telling you bullshit, they’re very good at communicating the bullshit, and Democrats are not.

What’s The Latest on the Helicopter & Clovewood

Yes, we’re still working on the helicopter issue. I’m kind of working in conjunction with someone, but I won’t tell you who.

I’m sort of waiting for their information to come out so that my information can be timely. I know this from the South Blooming Grove situation because there’s so much to consider, and it’s best to write about it when people are thinking about it. I will have a follow-up on the helicopter; I’m just waiting for this information to be released, which should be soon.

There are a couple of court cases that have been decided recently that are really important. The first one is Town of Blooming Grove vs. Village of South Blooming Grove and the DEC. That’s the Clovewood case, which we’ve been following closely. If you’re watching this and you’ve made it this far, you’re probably aware of this court case; it’s a safe bet you are. However, a new judge was assigned to the case, and this judge decided that no one has standing. Isn’t that nice?

Because again, in New York State, the laws are only enforced if you’re wealthy and powerful enough to get them enforced. Otherwise, it’s optional.

The Town of Blooming Grove doesn’t have standing, and the three or four residents of South Blooming Grove who joined the lawsuit were also told they don’t have standing, which is just ridiculous.

It’s a bad decision. One of the plaintiffs in that case has their property flooded by the work that’s being done on the Clovewood property. So how can you say that they haven’t suffered an injury, which would give them standing?

It’s just ridiculous. I hate saying that to you because it feels like a cop-out, like I’m not doing my job of looking into it. But it’s just a poor decision from the judge. Please don’t take that to mean “they” control the courts. We need to stop using “they” as a blanket term in our community.

Something that is factually true, which has been categorically peer-reviewed and documented, is that the Satmar community has considerable political influence. That’s a statement you don’t need to hide from; it’s a fact backed by over 50 years of evidence.

Remember: It’s okay to criticize Israel, especially given recent conflicts. It’s also okay to have criticisms of the Satmar community

However, it’s not okay to say things like, “they control the court,” because that ventures into anti-Semitic conspiracy theory territory, which is what we want to avoid.

It is acceptable to say that the New York State Democratic Party, in particular, has demonstrated they can be influence by that political power.

Look, I wasn’t born here—I was born on Long Island but grew up here. When I attended elementary school at North Main in Monroe, I distinctly remember the Kiryas Joel Supreme Court case. Essentially, Governor Mario Cuomo was asked, “If the Supreme Court says that the Kiryas school district is illegal, what are you going to do about it?” Cuomo responded, “Well, we’re just going to redo the law. If they strike it down, we’ll redo the law.” He actually said that. (This is all documented in the book, The Curious Case of Kiryas Joel, by the defendant in the Supreme Court case.)

So you can say, as someone who lives in South Blooming Grove, Rockland County, or even near where Kiryas Skever — Which is a distinct branch of Haredi from the Satmar — that is being built in Bethel, that the Satmar and other sects of the Haredi community has demonstrated outsized political influence.

Now, do we know for a fact that political influence played a role in this case? No.

As a reporter, I can’t definitively say that to you. I don’t know. Is it possible? Certainly. It absolutely is possible. It’s the same reason why Letitia James won’t act on South Blooming Grove. Over the last 50 years, the New York State Democratic Party has chosen to work for those who do vote because people in New York State don’t.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and that isn’t...

We should be able to discuss that. We should be able to say that the reason the Satmar community might receive what we perceive as “preferential treatment” is that they vote, while we don’t. If we voted, we wouldn’t have this problem. It’s on us. It’s not a “them” thing; it’s an “us” thing.

The fact is, we don’t show up, and that’s really the core problem. It’s not “they,” it’s not the bloc, it’s us. We are the problem.

I did reach out to the supervisor to see if they’re going to appeal, and the answer is possibly. So the situation with Clovewood is not over yet. The Town filed a notice of appeal, which gives them the option to appeal for almost a year. (Six months usually, sometimes extended to eight.)

Maybe it’s just me as an optimist, but I feel that we haven’t even begun the fight. We really haven’t.

If I had a car, I would be out there knocking on doors and getting my petition signed. I would be out there asking people in South Blooming Grove, “I need 30 of you.” We currently have six; I need 30 property owners in South Blooming Grove who want to go to court and say, “I want to do what Thomas DiNapoli won’t do, which is a complete audit of the village’s finances.”

Then I would want you to release those documents because I believe we’ll find wrongdoing. If we find wrongdoing, then maybe these people will get prosecuted. There’s a lot that’s going to happen with South Blooming Grove, so don’t take the dismissal of the Clovewood case as the end. It’s not.

The other court case involves Gonzaga Park There were two lawsuits from Orange County against the Village of South Blooming Grove. One was about a completely illegal attempt at eminent domain, and the court recently ruled that this was completely illegal. Orange County won that case.

Now, regarding the second case, I suspect Orange County will win, but I don’t want to jinx it. I don’t want to invoke the commentator’s curse—where I say that Orange County will win only for them to lose tomorrow. But I’m optimistic that Orange County will win that case, and I think that is causing some action over at 58 Fort Worth. I want you to pay attention to this. This is sort of the last thing we’ll discuss today because I’ve already talked longer than I anticipated.

As you know, 58 Fort Worth is where the helicopter and the helipad are located. It’s also where George Kalaj alleges he lives. I don’t believe he lives there. The Monroe Gazette has kept tabs on that property for over a year, and he’s rarely, if ever, there. It was particularly amusing that the one time real reporters visited his door was the one time Kalaj happened to be there. That’s a whole story we haven’t shared yet, but we’re going to get to it.

Whether he lives there or not is beside the point at this moment. What’s important is that part of the plan for the Mangin Bypass is to build a road connecting from Seven Springs Mountain Road—or adjacent to it—that would go through Gonzaga Park and then empty out by cutting through Woodbury, briefly touching a tiny slice of Woodbury before entering Kiryas Joel at the end of Seven Springs Mountain Road

For years, Stern has been discussing the Mangin Bypass. So the concern now is: if they lose the Clovewood case and these Orange County cases, what sneaky maneuvers might they attempt next? Knowing these individuals (Stern and Ekstein), I can say this because I’ve been following them for over two years; these individuals will likely try to build some sneaky scheme through 58 Fort Worth.

This is something to watch, especially if you’re a Town of Monroe resident. In the Town of Blooming Grove court case, one of the allegations was that South Blooming Grove illegally took land from the Town of Blooming Grove, which they did. They expanded the Clovewood property well beyond its original size, and that expansion covered land that did not belong to the village of South Blooming Grove.

The concern is that this could happen in Monroe. I’ve already alerted Supervisor Richardson and the Town of Monroe Building Department.

We’ve also submitted a FOIL request for all documents involving 58 Fort Worth and all permit requests. However, since the Monroe Gazette is the one asking, South Blooming Grove has delayed the response by 90 business days. So it’s going to be a while before we receive anything. Another journalist is also working on this and has submitted a FOIL request for permits related to 58 Fort Worth.

This is something to keep an eye on because I fully expect some kind of deceptive move regarding the Mangin Bypass.

How can I help protest the ICE concentration camp and support an emergency ban?

Okay. Last but not least, “Does it make sense to call Orange County if you don’t live in Orange County?”

This is part of the Neuhaus campaign, where we’re asking people to send ice scrapers to his office. The answer is yes. It doesn’t matter where you live right now. There will come a point where it’s important for Orange County residents to step up and be heard. But right now, we’re just going for volume. We’re just going for noise. If you live in Dutchess County, Ulster County, or anywhere within 50 miles of Chester and you’re upset about the concentration camp, you should absolutely call Steve Neuhaus’s office and tell him you don’t want it. You should urge him to publicly pledge to sign an emergency ban that would prevent ICE from setting up a detention facility or concentration camp anywhere in Orange County.

As we know from what happened in New Windsor, a story broken by the Monroe Gazette—which Congressman Pat Ryan refuses to credit us for—I did say he left his balls in Iraq, so I understand if Pat has some issues with us. I stand by that statement, by the way. If you want to know why, stick around next week and I’ll tell you why.

So yes, it is still important to send Neuhaus your ice scrapers. It is still important to make phone calls. This is all crucial. We should all be jamming his phone line. The phones in Orange County’s government should ring every day, every hour, until that emergency ban is passed—period. This effort requires everyone, including those in our region who might be impacted by ICE.

I was trying to communicate to the ICE group that I’m a part of that if you live near an ICE detention center, they’re gathering information on you, whether you know it or not, or whether you like it or not. Most of that information is commercially available. So, you might not live in Orange County, but they could say to a data broker, “Give us data on everyone who lives within 50 miles of Chester, New York.” Within that radius is Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, New Paltz, and Nanuet. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of people who aren’t in Orange County but may get caught in this dragnet as part of ICE’s process to protect their detention center.

This issue will affect you even if you don’t live in Orange County, which is why it’s so important to call.

I’ve received that question a lot. Here’s a related one:

What is the Orange County Legislature doing about ICE?

We haven’t been able to confirm this. I haven’t been able to get a straight answer on the matter. That could simply be because they don’t want to say anything; I understand. What I have been informed is that at least the Democrats have put together legislation for an emergency ban. However, they want Neuhaus to publicly commit to signing it because he has to be the one to terminate the agreement between DHS and ICE to house people at the Orange County Jail. He also has to be the one to sign this emergency ban. So it’s kind of a twofer.

The legislature seems to be dragging their feet on it.

I’ll have more to say about that soon; it’s something I’m currently working on. In the meantime, you should call your Orange County legislator and express your concerns. We don’t know what’s happening with ICE and DHS in Chester. We don’t know what’s occurring in New Windsor. We’re uncertain whether they are going to expand their presence in that building. There’s just a lot we don’t know. We would really like some kind of reins put in place on what ICE can and cannot do in Orange County, and the sooner we act, the better.

The time to act has long passed. So if you have an Orange County Legislature representative, even if you’re unhappy with them, like Peter Tuohy, you should still absolutely call them and demand this legislation be passed as soon as possible. No more stalling.

If you like this Q&A, we’ll do more of it. If you have a question, you can email me at bj@monroegazette.com (that has one Z and two Ts) or you can find me on Signal anonymously at bjmendelson.32. We also have a PO Box where, as long as you don’t put a return label, you can send us mail anonymously. It’s PO Box 5, 996 Route 17, Stop 2, Arden, New York, 10910. That’s like an anonymous Dropbox. You can send us anything anonymously.

That’s all I have. Stay safe, get vaccinated, and keep your gas tanks full.

-BJ

Share

I can also be reached anonymously via Signal at bjmendelson.32.

If you don’t want to use electronics, The Monroe Gazette has an anonymous PO Box. You can send questions, without a return address, to The Monroe Gazette, c/o BJ Mendelson, PO BOX 5, 996 Route 17 Stop 2, Arden, NY, 10910.

Read more

Pictured Above: At least one of your current Woodbury Town Board members. This story will explain.

Share

Howdy,

Things have been hectic lately, so I’ll be increasing the frequency of my posts. I thought Southern Orange County was going to quiet down after Tony Cardone, Kathryn Luciani, and Dorey Ghoul were chased out of town.

Stupid me.

Because then we had the phantom South Blooming Grove election, the ongoing helicopter saga, the proposed Chester concentration camp and secret New Windsor ICE offices, and now everyone in local politics has decided to get syphilis and act crazy.

Ok. I don’t know for sure if the people I write about have syphilis, but there’s an outside shot at least one of them do.

Keep an eye on your inbox, is what I’m saying.

And if you’re not receiving our newsletter, visit MonroeGazette.com for the latest.

With the increase in posts, I’ll keep them shorter—at least shorter for me anyway.

The ABC’s

A. Yes, I am running for the State Senate as an independent. I’m not registered with either the Democratic or Republican Party. One party seems to have been taken over by white supremacists who love war, while the other has been taken over by corporate interests and billionaires who also love war. If you can distinguish between the two, please let the rest of us know!

We’re seeking volunteers to gather signatures. If you’re interested, email me at bj@monroegazette.com.

All you need to know about the campaign:

1. I’m not taking donations over $35. I refuse to accept money from PACS, LLC, and anyone connected to the real estate industry. I want to ban all private financing of elections in New York with a constitutional amendment.

2. I believe Trump will try to screw with the Mid-Term elections, so I want you to visit this website, apply to get an early mail ballot, and then write me in as your State Senate candidate if you live in Orange County. Voting early and getting your ballot in before election day is going to be supremely important. We want enough people to vote all across America in such high numbers that nothing the Trump Regieme says or tries will matter.

3. I believe Healthcare is a human right. I want to pass the New York Health Act. State Senator James G. Skoufis does not. He says it’s too expensive. I believe he’s right to express that concern, but wrong to use it as an excuse to force New Yorkers to choose between groceries and medicine. In fact, I think it’s kind of heartless. Not only will the New York Health Act pay for itself, but it’s the right thing to do when over 1.2 Million New Yorkers could lose their health insurance by the end of this year. To say nothing of everyone else struggling to afford their premiums, medications, and co-pays with the plans that they have. Ask anyone with Medicare who has hearing, vision, or dental problems.

B. No, we’re not in Iran for any legitimate reason beyond the president wanting you to forget he’s been accused of attempting to coerce a teenage girl into sexual acts, followed by hitting her when she refused to cooperate.

More specifically, the victim told the FBI that Trump was forcing her, a teenage girl, to give him a blow job. She refused. She bit him on the dick. And then Trump slapped her on the head.

That’s the current president of the United States. An alleged pedophile.

Now, call me crazy, but the appropriate response to credible accusations of pedophilia isn’t bombing a school full of teenage girls.

But that’s exactly what the president of the United States, an alleged pedophile, did.

The Associated Press was informed by U.S. officials that the missile that hit the girls school was likely ours. Fox News and other regime friendly outlets will tell you otherwise.

I mention this because you might be hearing, “Why are we at war with Iran?” You might be asking yourself that question.

Fascists are constantly trying to re-write history. So it’s important we all be clear on the answer. And that the answer does not get lost to history.

The answer everyone needs to share is this: “The president was accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl, so he wanted to blow up some other teenage girls in a country where no one would care if he did.”

Six American soldiers are dead right now for that exact reason.

C. Also, if you’re not deeply alarmed by this bullshit, you should be:

-If you appreciate our work, consider supporting us by participating in our annual subscriber drive. We aim to sign up 500 new annual subscribers by the end of the year. It’s just $120 for the year, which is less than what you’ll probably pay for most things as oil prices soar.

Subscribe now

In Local News: What The Fuck, Woodbury?

Recently, the Woodbury Republican Committee sought a candidate for Town Supervisor.

This was due to New York State’s decision to eliminate odd-year elections. The change means everyone who ran and won in 2025 have shorter terms. Including the current Woodbury Town Supervisor, Jacqueline Hernandez, a Democrat.

In a normal scenario, the Supervisor typically serves a two-year term. Hernandez’s 2025 term is only one year long, expiring on December 31, 2026. She will be running for re-election again this Fall.

In Southern Orange County, we don’t have Democrats or Republicans in the normal sense.

There are exceptions, like Woodbury Town Board member Brandon Calore. A far-right MAGA bigot. One who received over $20,000 in campaign support from State Senator James G. Skoufis through Skoufis’s independent expenditure committee, Protect Monroe-Woodbury.

The question of why someone like Skoufis, who spent thousands running for chair of the Democratic National Committee, would support Calore, during a national emergency is something for Mr. Skoufis to address. So too, are Mr. Skoufis’s attempt to ban masks at protests last year during an ongoing national emergency.

Calore even resorted to mailers—likely also funded by Skoufis—labeling incumbent mayor Andrew Giacomazza as a “RINO,” or Republican In Name Only. For clarity, “RINO” refers to Republicans who don’t align with the MAGA. Aka supporters of an alleged pedophile and his alleged pedophile friends.

Like I always have to say here: Not all Trump voters are MAGA. The majority are not. When I mention “MAGA,” I refer specifically to the 30-35% who consistently support Trump’s actions, even when they contradict themselves, such as the current war in Iran. Something that contradicts his campaign promise of avoiding endless wars.

The Monroe Gazette reported Skoufis to the New York State Election Law Enforcement Division for not disclosing all of his activity surrounding his shady expenditure committee. But, as we observed with South Blooming Grove, that department seems unmotivated to assist Orange County residents in doing much of anything. Ditto the DEC, the DOH, the AG, the Comptroller, and the Governor herself.

Calore is atypical for our area though. What we have instead of Democrats and Republicans are candidates who are supported by the real estate developers and candidates who are opposed to the real estate developers.

For example:

Can you be both a Mayor and a Police Chief?

Town of Blooming Grove Police Chief, Alex Melchiorre, seems to think so. And so too does his current employer, Town of Blooming Grove Supervisor, Robert Jeroloman.

But here’s what you need to know about that election.

Alex Melchiorre, former Village mayor Joe Mancuso, and Nancy Peifer are running at the behest of a landlord and a real estate representative, Avorhom Flour and Lipa Deutsch.

Between Flour and Deutsch, these two men have racked up an impressive amount of code enforcement and other building and property violations in Monroe.

So the thought is, Lipa Deutsch and Avorhom Flour want Dwyer, Ferraro, and O’Connor out from the Village Board. This way those three can be replaced with Peifer, Manusco, and Melchiorre, who will do whatever Mr. Deutsch and Mr. Flor have to say. That is why the majority party in the Village of Kiryas Joel is encouraging its members who live in Monroe to vote for Melchiorre and his ticket.

If that arrangement between Melchiorre, Deutsch, and Flor sounds at all familiar to you, it should.

That’s the same arrangement George Kalaj has in South Blooming Grove with Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein.

So, disaster looms in the Village of Monroe.

The Village of Monroe Election is on Wednesday, March 18th, at Village Hall and is open to Village residents between 6am and 9pm that day.

So.

Here we have an example of Alex Melchiorre, a Republican, running for Mayor in the Village of Monroe because Lipa Deutsch and Avroham Flohr want him to run against the incumbent mayor, Neil Dwyer, who is also a Republican.

That’s how politics work in Southern Orange County. Your party doesn’t really matter. You’re either working for the real estate developers or you’re not.

If this sounds familiar to Woodbury residents, it should, because former Woodbury Village Trustees Matthew Fabbro (and his Mom), and James Freiband, both Democrats, were actively working on behalf of developers like Wayne Corts and people speaking on their behalf like Mordechai Kellner.

Some of those real estate developers happen to be Satmar, but no serious person gives a shit about that. All anyone cares about is that we have wealthy people trying to buy our elections.

No different than what you see with Miriam Adelsen giving the alleged pedophile $100M and Elon Musk spending $290M to get the alleged pedophile elected president in 2024. (Miriam Adelsen, apparently, really wanted Trump to attack Iran. Her husband, now thankfully dead, wanted Trump to nuke Iran.)

So. Probably to the surprise of no one, Real Estate Developer Backed Kathryn Luciani is now the Republican pick to be your next Town Supervisor in Woodbury.

It’s the song that never ends, it goes on and on my friends …

Share

Let The Ethics Violations Begin

So, of course, this wouldn’t be a Kathryn Luciani story without an ethics scandal. And let’s get to her latest one … It’s pictured above. But the screenshot doesn’t make sense without the context, which is what we do here at The Monroe Gazette. Unlike at The Photo-News, who we’re absolutely sure will provide Mrs. Luciani with as much fawning coverage as they provided her over the course of her previous two-year reign of terror.

Although I guess it’d give them something new to put in their Letters to the Editor section instead of yet another nothing burger of a letter from NPC (Non-Playable-Character) Assemblyman Karl Brabenec.

For those with a short memory, you may remember other ethics scandals and other allegations involving Kathryn Luciani such as:

Deep Breath

Giving herself a massive raise on her first day on the job as Town Supervisor, a long, long, long list of people resigning from their positions in the Town because they didn’t want to work for her, pressuring Town employees to fire other Town employees and volunteers for making fun of her on the Internet, throwing out the Town Ethics Code so that she can hire her son to work at the animal shelter, joy riding in the Town vehicle, the repeated disasters at the animal shelter ranging from the Kitten in the Dryer, overcharging Monroe residents via an IMA conjured up by Tony Cardone, to sewage runoff potentially contaminating the reservoir water. Something Mrs. Luciani knew about for a long time and did nothing to remediate while repeatedly lying to the public, sending out newsletters and official town communications using Comic Sans moving town meetings to a time people couldn’t attend, moving town meetings to a potentially unsafe building, the constant fighting with the Village Board, conjuring up stories about one Woodbury resident, which apparently was concocted while Luciani and Gretchen Weiners were in a broom closet together, and two consecutive tax increases without offering Woodbury residents additional services.

There’s probably more I’m forgetting.

Anyway.

So, to say people do not want Mrs. Luciani to run for office is probably the local challenger for understatement of the year. But it’s not about what the people want. It’s about what the real estate developers want.

We know this is true because at the meeting where the Republican Committee decided to nominate Luciani, there was a massive walkout and multiple resignations were submitted. I reached out to Committee Chair, Dan Lux, to discuss the walkouts and resignations. As of this writing, The Monroe Gazette has not heard back from him, but was able to confirm the story through multiple attendees at the meeting. So not even the Republican committee wants Luciani to run again outside of Calore, Gretchen Weiners, Chair Dan Lux, and Ralph Caruso.

That brings us to Mrs. Luciani’s since deleted Facebook post. Pictured above.

What she’s saying in that post was the topic of discussion at a recent executive session of the Town Board. Thanks to Luciani — and sources at the Town and Village — was that the discussion involved the current location of Town offices and the state of things in their current building.

The thing is, Executive Session is supposed to be confidential. This allows your local government officials to discuss sensitive or confidential information involving things like union contract negotiaitons and hiring and firing decisions. Like the decision the Town of Cornwall made when they suggested Mr. Calore get his hat and leave their highway department.

So, somebody broke the executive seal and told Mrs. Luciani what was being discussed, which resulted in her Facebook post.

Is it illegal? It doesn’t seem so, but we’re looking into that. It is; however, definitely unethical.

If we had to guess, the clown is Brandon Calore. Our second guess is Gretchen Weiners. Although we’ve heard she’s at least been amendable to working with the new Board majority. Mr. Calore has not been, to nobody’s surprise.

Your friends at The Monroe Gazette put in a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request to see if there were any communications sent to Luciani by Luongo and Calore the week of the Executive Session. Both Calore and Luciani deny they sent anything. (Probably because, since The Monroe Gazette has been around for a while, they’ve smartened up and know that people can FOIL text messages from private phones if you’re an elected official using them for public business.)

I don’t think I need to tell you how important ethics are right now. From the federal level all the way down to the Woodbury Town Board. Nobody’s an angel. We don’t expect our elected officials to be angels either. But we do expect them to do the right thing on behalf of the people they were elected to represent, and not their wealthy donors.

Mr. Calore and Mrs. Luciani have, repeatedly over the last two years, demonstrated they’re not going to do that. They’re going to serve their donors and ignore all the rules because New York State’s various departments likes to pretend Orange County doesn’t exist. Two wrongs don’t make a right. You do the right thing and follow the rules because that’s the job. If you are incapable of doing that job, you shouldn’t be there.

If you’re a Republican that hasn’t been indoctrinated into the MAGA Cult, which is most of you, I encourage you to not sign any of Mrs. Luciani’s petitions.

And if she does fail upward onto the ballot this Fall, I encourage you re-elect Mrs. Hernandez.

Thus far, the relationship between the Village and Town has never been better. And Mr. Skoufis has no allies where he can try to ram through the desires of real estate developers — like merging the Town and Village, remember that one?

Given what’s happening on the State level with the dysfunctional Democrats, and on the federal level with crazed white supremacists and the Epstein class calling all the shots, having a local government where there’s very little to complain about is kind of nice. And that’s what the Village of Woodbury and Town of Woodbury have right now.

Why ruin it?

Share

Let me get the basics out of the way for new readers. (There are always new readers here, and like Stan Lee used to say to his writers at Marvel, treat every comic like it’s someone’s first.)

I’m BJ Mendelson, an investigative journalist who covers news in New York’s Southern Orange County region and beyond. You can follow me on BlueSky here. If you want to join a community of concerned residents looking to fight back against authoritarianism, you can join the Hands Off Hudson Valley Facebook group here. (Don’t mind the name; Facebook only lets you change it every so often, and I am waiting for that clock to expire so I can fix the Facebook group’s name to Hands Off Hudson Valley.)

But if you’re not in our region, there’s still a lot here for you since we also discuss what’s happening nationally. If you want to support my work, we are looking to sign up 500 new annual subscribers, which costs $120 a year. I know a lot of Substacks charge less than that (usually they’re at or just under $100 for the year), but I’m usually breaking news and not just talking about it, especially locally.

The higher amount helps to cover the enormous time I spend reading, researching, interviewing, and talking to people to put these stories together. Unlike other Substacks, our posts are incredibly long and detailed, so you’re getting your money’s worth.

500 sounds like a lot, but if half of our current free subscribers become paid subscribers tomorrow, we could hit this goal in no time.

Subscribe now

When There Is A Fire, You Are Obligated to Say So

No Kings 3 is coming up on March 28.

Last year, Hands Off, No Kings 1, and No Kings 2 were some of the largest mass protests in American history.

I suspect that, between our dictator being accused of sexually assaulting a child, the war in Iran that he started to distract everyone from the possibility that he’s a pedophile, and the fact that you and I paid about $1,700 extra last year because of his tariffs that were just deemed illegal, 2026’s mass protests will be even bigger.

At this point, I have to give my standard disclaimer: when I say MAGA, I am not referring to people who voted for Trump. I’m referring specifically to the crazed white supremacists, gun nuts, and Christian nationalists who, together, make up a solid 30–35% of America. Those people are MAGA, and those people are the ones you should be worried about—especially as their God King’s dementia grows worse and they see their last best chance at wielding power for this generation slip away.

They are not going to go away quietly. Neither will Trump.

It’s important we distinguish between Trump voters and MAGA. Because there were many reasons not to support Clinton, Biden, or Harris. In the latter case, one reason that apparently doomed the Democrats in 2024—which they are allegedly trying very hard to keep from you—is that both Biden and Harris allowed Israel to commit genocide in Gaza. Talking about this would mean losing out on all that sweet, sweet, AIPAC money. You know, like this guy is raking in:

So, few of the Democats said boo about what should have been Israel’s quest for justice after October 7th, and not what happened instead, which was a vengeful massacre of 75,000 people (and counting.)

To which I’ll point out, if “Never Again” is to have any meaning, “never again” must mean never again, for everyone. Not just us as Jews.

Kamala Harris’s canvassers were told that people were (correctly) upset about what was happening in Gaza, and her team decided to ignore those concerns. If you look at how narrow the margin of victory was for Trump in 2024—one of the narrowest in history, with him winning by under two percent in the popular vote—the millions of people who stayed home because of the genocide in Gaza that Biden and Harris enabled is the reason we’re in the mess we’re in now.

That’s because, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Israel is “the reason” we’re in a war with Iran—he later backtracked on this statement—I hope we can all stop pretending that, like criticism of our Haredi brothers and sisters, criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic.

In fact, as a Jew, according to Halakha, we are especially obligated to call out bad behavior by our fellow Jews whenever we see it. Some of this is because we don’t want to give non-Jews a reason to be angry with us.

But some of this is also because, as Jews, our religion and culture are based on a foundation of justice. When someone steers away from that, we’re supposed to guide them back toward it. This is how we repair the world.

But between Jeffrey Epstein, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, there are plenty of bad Jews that need to be called out these days.

When there is a fire, we are obligated to say that there’s a fire.

In fact, I honestly feel like now is an awful time to be Jewish.

-Secret billionaire pedophile sex ring? Jeffrey Epstein was the ring leader. A fellow Jew.

And you know what we’re not talking enough about? Epstein’s ties with the Israeli government and the classified documents that are not subject to release. (There are millions of unreleased Epstein documents because the DOJ appears to be intentionally hiding them, but we don’t talk enough about the classified documents that are exempt from the Epstein Files Transparency Act. See below where it says “all unclassified records.”)

If our Congressman, Pat Ryan, wanted to show his independence from AIPAC, one thing he can do is ask to review all of the Epstein files—he can do this under his investigative powers as a congressman—that are specifically focused on the Israeli government and what role they played in Epstein’s operations.

And speaking of Israel …

-War in Iran? This is Israel’s war. Benjamin Netanyahu said he’s been wanting to take out the Iranian regime for forty years. Now he did, and we’re stuck holding the bag for him.

Obviously, the regime in Iran sucks. They just murdered thousands of protestors. Nobody feels bad that those assholes are dead. But …

Saddam Hussein and the Taliban sucked too.

By the way, how did those regime change wars work out for us? Good, right? I mean, because we’re now getting involved in another one and it’s not like the Taliban are still in control of Afghanistan or ..

What’s that?

They are?

Well … that was 20 years and the lives of 2,459 men and women in our armed services well spent.

-Mass deportations and concentration camps? That’s all taken from the mind of Stephen Miller. Trump’s cognitive state is exactly what all the MAGA people claimed Biden’s was. He’s got resting 25th Amendment face. He dozes off, sleeps during cabinet meetings, and has no idea where he is half the time. He was caught on camera talking to statues instead of answering questions from reporters about the war in Iran.

That man is not in charge of America.

Stephen Miller, Russel Vought (Director of the Office of Management and Budget), Elon Musk via his DOGE cronies—remember that while Musk may be out of the spotlight, he’s installed his flunkies all over the federal government, and they’re all still running things—and Vice President Couch Fucker.

Those are the people running America right now.

And that’s really scary.

Especially Stephen Miller. Because take him, and Epstein, and Netanyahu, and what do you have? Three of my fellow Jews, doing very bad things all over the world with little to no impunity.

And as a Jew? I am afraid.

Because this is exactly what all those nutbag “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” people talk about.

And if you don’t think MAGA sees what I see, you haven’t been paying much attention to Nick Fuentes and his “cool” Groyper friends. This wing of the Republican Party is who JD “I Fucked A Couch” Vance keeps cozying up to. Thinking they’ll elect him in 2028, assuming there is an election in 2028.

Now look at what’s happening right now with ICE, and ask yourself, “Are the Jews next?”

Because I’d bet my life that the answer is yes.

So. Why are we talking about this?

I sure hope my fellow Jews take note and get off that MAGA cult heroin they’re doing before it’s too late. Because once these white supremacist assholes are done rounding up and deporting our Latino brothers and sisters, you’re next. You may think you’re not. But you are. And yes, when you and I are sitting in a truck and being carted off to the concentration camp in Chester, I’m going to laugh my ass off at you the entire ride.

If you think this is an exaggeration, try to answer the following question: Let’s say the Trump regime is successful with their mass deportation program. Now you have these empty concentration camps all over America, like the one ICE is maybe or maybe not opening in the Village of Chester.

Who exactly do you think is going into those concentration camps next?

When there is a fire. You are obligated to say that there is a fire. I am telling you right now that there is a fire. And I am asking you to help put it out. You can take the first step in doing this by attending a local No Kings event in your area.

There will be multiple No Kings events across Orange County that day. I’d like to invite you to the event in the Village of Monroe, which takes place from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. at the corner of Lake Street and 17M. This event is organized by Hands Off Hudson Valley, where I serve on the steering committee. I will, of course, share the other locations and times as I get them confirmed.

For my Rockland County friends, Indivisible Rockland will be holding events in both Tarrytown and Nyack from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. I am not 100% positive on Sullivan County locations, but I’ll share those as well as I get them.

Share

In This Bar, We Don’t Serve Nazis

If you have a local community event that you want me to promote, you can email it to BJ@MonroeGazette.com.

As you might have figured out, The Monroe Gazette does not have a regular posting schedule. We post these long articles at least twice a month (totaling about 20,000 words, meaning you get the equivalent of a book every few months).

But if you have a long enough lead time for your event, I will do my best to incorporate it. For example, our friends at the Warwick Historical Society sent us the following to share with you:

Celebrate 250 Years of America at Tavern Night 2026

The Warwick Historical Society invites the community to Tavern Night 2026 on Thursday, March 26, from 6–8 p.m. at Baird’s Tavern — as America marks its 250th anniversary and the Society celebrates 120 years.

Built before the founding of the United States, Baird’s Tavern played a role in the nation’s earliest days. Guests will enjoy pub-style fare, beer and wine, tavern games, and access to the rarely opened second floor and attic, where docents will share stories of Revolutionary War history, including visits from George Washington and Martha Washington.

Tickets: $50 WHS members in good standing / $60 non-members. Advance purchase recommended on the calendar page of warwickhistory.org. Info: 845-986-3236.

Signs of Solidarity & Local MAGA Boycotts

I also like to promote small businesses. There’s no cost or charge; I just want to ensure I’m supporting the local ecosystem as much as I can. If you know of a small business in Southern Orange County (Blooming Grove, Tuxedo, Warwick, Chester, Monroe, Woodbury, and Palm Tree) that deserves a shout-out, let me know.

My only rule is that they MUST have a Signs of Solidarity flyer (such as the one above) in their window or on their website.

If you would like to help distribute these signs or get one to display in your window, please contact Nora and Carol at our Hands Off Hudson Valley group at HandsOffHudsonValley@gmail.com.

Should We Boycott Local MAGA Businesses?

This question has been coming up frequently from readers. Here’s my answer.

Regarding MAGA-owned businesses, this might sound contradictory unless you read what I said earlier very carefully.

If you can confirm that a small business owner or service provider is MAGA—like any of the large companies we should be boycotting (Amazon, Apple, Google, Home Depot, Paramount+, Lowe’s, etc.)—then you should quietly boycott them.

I know it’s hard; I struggle with this too. But hear me out:

The most powerful weapon we have is our money and how we spend it. Money is the only thing billionaires and corporations care about. They are the ones in charge. A recent Supreme Court decision regarding tariffs demonstrates this. The billionaires hated the tariffs, so the Supreme Court struck them down. Trump being mentally impaired, brought the tariffs back, but only for the next 140 days or so.

Otherwise, the Court would follow Congress’s lead and pretend it is powerless to stop the regime. (In fact, the Supreme Court has much more power than Congress and has been facilitating this fascist agenda for the last 50 years.)

If you are a small business owner or service provider who still supports Trump at this time, you’re supporting an alleged pedophile and endorsing the idea that anyone who isn’t white must show their “papers” or risk being detained in a concentration camp.

I don’t need to give you my money.

That said, I’m not going to make it a big deal either.

I will simply ghost you.

I’ll tell my friends to ghost you.

And I’ll ask them to tell their friends.

If you’re still MAGA at this point, you are a victim of a cult. Nothing I say or do will convince you otherwise. As Wittgenstein said, the fly will find its way out of the bottle, or it won’t.

All I can do is calmly take my business elsewhere.

It’s like when you see MAGA supporters at a County meeting’s public comment session. The goal isn’t to yell at them— they don’t care; they want you to react. Instead, just go silent or even turn your back on them.

So, if you discover a small business owner is MAGA, don’t make it a big deal. Don’t harass them or compile lists of MAGA-friendly local businesses to post online. Some things are better kept to your Neighborhood Signal Group for sharing.

The second you start making noise and announcing, “Let’s boycott the local MAGA businesses,” you’ll face backlash. People may say, “That doesn’t support the community!”

Some folks don’t understand we are living through a national emergency or are trying hard to pretend everything is fine. They won’t grasp how crucial it is for you to use your economic power to boycott MAGA-affiliated businesses.

Instead, look for businesses displaying Signs of Solidarity in their windows. If they have the sign, support them financially and encourage your friends to do the same.

We need to ask ourselves: What kind of community do I want to live in? For me, I refuse to live in a community that supports a white supremacist movement that poses a clear and present danger to our country, our democratic system, and our way of life.

We must ensure our local ecosystem is strong and healthy. MAGA’s presence is a cancerous tumor in our society. It must be removed, or we’re all going to suffer—whether through continued inaction on the climate emergency (as the oil companies want) or the initiation of senseless wars (remember Venezuela? Do you think Cuba’s next?) without a plan. Authoritarianism and fascism always need an enemy, and once they eliminate one group, they just move on to the next until they are consuming their own.

You don’t want to be like Steve Jobs, thinking you can eliminate cancer just through leafy greens and good vibes. That approach didn’t work out so well for him, did it?

Anyone who identifies as MAGA must be barred from holding any government position.

And anyone who openly supports MAGA should not receive money from you.

Use your economic power to foster the kind of community you want to live in.

And remember this: If a small business owner can refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding, there should be no issue with a cashier denying service to anyone wearing pro-MAGA paraphernalia.

Those now-former Smoothie King employees were correct to refuse service to customers in MAGA gear. At this point, it’s no different from serving a Nazi.

And in this bar? We don’t serve Nazis.

Share

Get To The Choppa!

Last but not least, we’re still on the hunt for Joel Landau’s helicopter, VP-CZS.

If you see it taking off or landing in and around South Blooming Grove, please let us know immediately. Right now it looks like he’s parked it at Kearny Point, New Jersey, at the HHI Heliport.

If you see the helicopter, make sure to take pictures and videos if you can.

Things have been a little quiet at the illegal helipad at 58 Fort Worth since a couple of reporters stopped by “Mayor” George Kalaj’s alleged home there.

However, I have no doubt Stern and Ekstein will let their guard down, and the helicopter will be back in no time.

These are not smart men; they’re dumb and arrogant. As soon as they think the coast is clear, the helicopter will return.

You can anonymously and safely send pictures and videos to us via Signal at bjmendelson.32

I’ll be back soon with the helicopter story. The challenge I have right now is that the Village of Monroe election is going to be a disaster, and the time I was supposed to spend on the helicopter story is getting eaten up with the Village election.

If you live in the Village of Monroe, or know someone who does, it’s imperative you say to them “Girl. You’re in Danger.” Because Lipa Deutsch and Avroham Flohr, two land lords who you’re going to be hearing a lot about soon, want Alex Melchiorre, Nancy Peifer, and former mayor Joe Mancuso to do for them what George Kalaj is doing for Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein.

(It’s worth pointing out this is yet another local election that Ekstein and Stern injected themselves into. First over in Woodbury in the mayoral race with Isaac Ekstein’s support of far right MAGA Bigot Brandon Calore, and now with the Village of Monroe race on behalf of the Blooming Grove Police Chief, Alex Melchiorre.)

And if you don’t think those things are connected, wait until I get to the story about the Town of Blooming Grove’s Police Chief, Alex Melchiorre, his great relationship with Isaac Ekstein, and that mysterious one car police vehicle accident that happened earlier this year.

South Blooming Grove is a national embarassment, but Blooming Grove’s Town government isn’t looking so pretty these days with Brian Nugent as the Town Attorney, Building Inspector Jeanne Ovensen frequently accused of taking bribes from Joel Stern and Isaac Ekstein’s friend Moche Halpern, and Alex Melchiorre summoning police cruisers the moment Isaac Ekstein asks for them, but allegedly delaying coverage or outright ignoring Town and Vilage residents who call for assistance.

In response to these accusations, the Town Supervisor Robert Jeroloman told The Monroe Gazette, “The Town Police respond to all calls for service in an appropriate and safe manner. If you have factual evidence to the contrary, please provide it to me, including but not limited to, the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of all complainants.”

Supervisor Jeroloman also disputed the claim, made by multiple eye witnesses who spoke to The Monroe Gazette, that Alex Melchiorre was at the scene of the recent fire at 33 Tanger Road, praising Isaac Ekstein. So, I’m not going to say the Supervisor just called some of his first responders liars, but …

Here’s what he said: “I was requested to respond to the fire scene by the Fire Chief of the South Blooming Grove Fire Department and subsequently to the SBG Fire Department Station. I arrived prior to the Police Chief and did not see or hear him make any statements that would confirm your allegation.

Again, if you have factual information supporting your claim, please provide it to me, including, but not limited to, the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of all complainants.”

Speaking of the allegations concerning Building Inspector Jeanne Ovensen and Moche Halpern, the Town of Blooming Grove has invented what seems to be its very own FOIL policy, which is, “we’re going to print out stuff, redact it by hand, and then charge you per page because we can and we don’t want to give these records to you.”

This is actually an incredibly common response to FOIL and FOIA, when agencies don’t want to turn over potentially embarrassing documents. It’s not something BG came up with. But like any other agency, they know the more they charge, the more likely it is an independent journalist will just give up and walk away. (Again, we’re all broke doing this shit. So it’s not like we’re doing it to make any money. We do what we do to protect our readers and get the truth out there.)

So currently, there is $30 worth of documents sitting in the Town of Blooming Grove’s offices right now. These are documents for records The Monroe Gazette requested, among other things, any communications and interactions between Joel Stern’s Pal Moche Halpern and Town of Blooming Grove Building Inspector Jeanne Ovensen.

We are discussing (our attorney and I) what we want to do, because there’s another FOIL coming due this week concerning the mysterious one car police vehicle accident. If we face the same sort of obstruction, which Mr. Brian Nugent insists is totally legal (and we can’t wait for a judge to hear that one), then we may sue the Town of Blooming Grove.

And once we do, and when we win, we’re all going to talk a lot more about the allegations from residents that the Building Inspector is taking money from a local real estate agent and Joel Stern’s wealthy pal.

If it were me, and I was a Blooming Grove resident, I’d start demanding some heads roll over there.

Also on the South Blooming Grove front…

I’ve heard from about ten residents who are interested in suing Letitia James. I’d like to get that number closer to thirty. So I need your help.

If you live in South Blooming Grove and would like to join the lawsuit, please reach out to me. If we have thirty residents, there’s extra stuff we can do. For example, we can also ask a judge to essentially perform their own audit of South Blooming Grove’s finances. I have a story coming soon involving New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who we feel is doing everything he can to bury the audit his office has been conducting into South Blooming Grove since March 2024.

I have absolutely no faith that the Comptroller’s office will ever finish this audit, let alone turn over what it finds to the FBI or the Attorney General’s office. So if we can get a court to do its own forensic accounting of what’s happening there, we can at least ensure that the information found is made available to the right people—just like I recently did with the voting records for everyone Joel Stern claims is a resident of those two yeshivas.

In other SBG news, our lawsuit is currently just sitting there. This is the one The Monroe Gazette filed against the village concerning the 2024 Village Election that the village decided not to hold. You know, the thing Senator Skoufis should have investigated and asked the Attorney General to get involved in? Instead of waiting until after it was too late to do anything about the October 2025 alleged election and then acting like he was all concerned?

(Letitia James was in fact sued by a South Blooming Grove resident for not investigating the 2024 election. The judge said the resident was better off suing the Village instead of James, because there’s nothing in New York State’s legal code that requires the Attorney General to act which … is bullshit. But that’s just another way our system protects the wealthy at our expense.)

-BJ

P.S. I know of two young female cats, a mother and daughter, in need of a home. If you’re looking to adopt these two little angels, email me at BJ@MonroeGazette.com. They’re both spayed and very sweet. I would adopt them, but we don’t have the room here for two more friends.

Share

Yes. I am running against Convicted Felon Timothy J. Mitts and State Senator James G. Skoufis for the 42nd District seat.

For now, I am doing this as a write-in candidate.

I need to speak with an election lawyer about the deadlines for third party ballot signatures to see if it’s doable to get on the ballot.

I honestly don’t know much about how this works. I’m not a politician. I’m a care giver for three disabled adults.

The other concern is, as many of you know, my car was wrecked last month, and being a investigative journalist means I’m at the financial level of someone using rope for a belt.

So, hiring canvassers, which I need to do, is impossible at the moment.

For that reason, if I find out this is doable to get on the ballot, I’ll be setting up some kind of election entity and taking contributions.

Unlike both Skoufis and Mitts, I refuse to take any contribution over $35, and I refuse to take any contribution from LLCs, PACs, real estate developers, and Trump supporting Republican Billionaires like John A. Catsimatidis. Mr. Skoufis accepted $11,000 from Mr. Castimatidis in 2022:

My entire platform is very simple. You can fit it on a nice mailer:

Hi. I’m BJ Mendelson. I believe Healthcare is a Human Right.

You should not have to choose between buying groceries or medication.

I will spend every day fighting on your behalf for the passage of the New York Health Act

This legislation will provide insurance to every New Yorker.

And if you already have Medicare? You get to keep Medicare.

Better yet: The New York Health Act covers everything for you that Medicare does not.

Like your hearing aids, vision, and dental care.

Our State Senator, James G. Skoufis, REFUSES to support this bill.

He says it’s too expensive.

He’s wrong.

YOU pay only what you can afford each month. Directly to New York State.

Not to a greedy corporation like United Healthcare.

The New York Health Act will also save our state billions once implemented.

So, how can we pay for it?

By doing what State Senator Skoufis REFUSES to do:

-Pass a one-time tax on billionaires and …

- Increasing taxes on large corporations and the wealthiest among us.

Forcing everyone to suffer without medical coverage, because our State Senator doesn’t want to tax the wealthy is a choice.

We can make a better one.

Write in BJ Mendelson as your choice for New York State Senator.

Share

I am currently writing a very long column that should be out by Friday at the latest. This was just a short post to tide you over.

Since I believe in full transparency, I’ll also be posting about what’s going on with the campaign as it rolls along.

My goal isn’t to win. That would be nice, but it’s also not my goal.

My goal is to make sure the New York Health Act gets passed.

This is an emergency as over 1.2 Million New Yorkers will lose their health insurance because of the One Big Beautiful Bill. This “Beautiful” bill took all the money out of Medicaid and SNAP and gave it to ICE.

If you have a State Senate or Assembly race happening, you should absolutely make sure each candidate supports the New York Health Act.

If they don’t, you shouldn’t vote for them this Fall.

Share

Howdy.

USUALLY the podcast is for paid subscribers only. But. Because of the interest in what’s happening at 29 Elizabeth Drive in the Village of Chester, I’m making it free for everyone. We’ll be doing more videos like this in the future only for subscribers. So if you’d like to help us meet our goal of 500 new paid annual subscribers by December 31st, you can do so by pressing the big blue button below.

Subscribe now

If you want to get involved in sending an ICE Scraper to Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus — in order to protest his refusal to terminate the ICE/DHS contract with Orange County and his refusal to sign legislation banning for profit prisons and detention centers in Orange County — directions and the email you can send is here. There’s also a script to use to call Schumer and Gillibrand.

(The following transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.)

We’re All One Chester

BJ (00:00): Hey Brandon, thank you so much for joining us today. There are a lot of people who don’t know who you are and who are probably going to see this. I mean, I’ve known you for over a year, so I feel comfortable calling you Brandon; I should be calling you Supervisor Holdridge. Why don’t you take a moment to introduce yourself for those watching this for the first time and meeting you for the first time?

Brandon Holdridge (00:14) Yes, I’m Brandon Holdridge. I’m the town supervisor of Chester, New York. I’m also the vice chair of campaigns on the Orange County Democratic Committee, and I’m the co-chair of the Chester Democratic Committee here in the great town of Chester. That’s it.

BJ (00:27) This is the end of your first term in office, is that right?

Brandon Holdridge (00:31): Yes, this is my third year of my first term. My term ends at the end of next year, so I’ll be running for re-election next year.

BJ (00:34): Okay, we’re going to talk about that as well. But first, I’ve noticed there’s a lot of confusion between the town of Chester and the village of Chester in the national media. At a high level, can you explain the difference between the town and the village and what role the town does or can play concerning what I call the concentration camp at 29 Elizabeth Drive?

Brandon Holdridge (00:56) Sure. The town and the village are two separate entities; they’re two separate municipalities and governments. The village of Chester has about 4,000 people, an elected mayor, and a board of trustees made up of five members. They have their own police department, street department, building codes, zoning codes, planning board, zoning board, etc.

The town, on the other hand, has its own government, town supervisor, and a town board made up of four council members plus me, making five. We have our own police department, building department, planning board, zoning board, etc. The town includes the village, so village residents are also town residents. They vote in town elections. Altogether, we’re about 13,000 people strong. However, town residents do not vote in village elections. So village residents have the unique position of voting in both. If you’re just a town resident, you are only a town resident.

In terms of how active the town can be, it’s primarily related to political, PR, and people-power activism. I’ve spoken to the attorney about this a couple of times. The town does not have direct jurisdiction over the proposed facility at the Pep Boys warehouse, which is within the village of Chester. Therefore, it falls under the village’s jurisdiction concerning building, zoning, planning, and environmental matters. However, that doesn’t mean the town couldn’t have indirect standing or possible damages from a facility being placed there.

We would definitely seek to support or sign on to a legal challenge from the village or the county in any way. That would be my stance, at the very least. Of course, we would look to cooperate with our village counterparts in any sort of law enforcement response if the facility were to come and if protesters were to come. We’re all one Chester, so we need to be on the same team.

BJ (02:53) For people who don’t know, New York State has an interesting dynamic regarding town and village relationships. Before all this happened, how would you describe the relationship and interaction between the village and the town of Chester?

Brandon Holdridge (03:05) Cordial and cooperative. We work on things where it makes sense to work together. I’ve made it a point to reach out and be more integrated in a few areas. Those talks are ongoing, and I’m hopeful we can find productive solutions for our residents. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s about—making sure our residents are taken care of in the best way possible and at the least cost. If there are ways we can cooperate on a more integrated level, that’s what I’m interested in.

Brian Maher’s “Peace For Our Time” Letter

(Note: This interview was recorded on February 20th, 2026. In the above video, I have the latest update on Assemblyman Brian Maher’s claims about the ICE facility.)

BJ (03:36) As of this morning, because I know this situation has been incredibly fluid, what do we know concerning this property?

Brandon Holdridge (03:45): Right now, as far as we understand, the facility has not yet been purchased. Until a few moments ago, I was under the impression that ICE was still interested in purchasing it, as I hadn’t seen anything confirming otherwise—no actual physical emails, letters, or statements from ICE. That’s something I’ll probably mention a few times: ICE has refused to communicate with anyone on the ground since the beginning of this situation, following the Washington Post story back in December or January when we first learned about this. They have not communicated even once to anyone in the village, town, or, according to the county executive.

So, every piece of information we receive is coming from news outlets, and we’re essentially at their mercy because nothing has been confirmed from ICE. When a news outlet reported something was confirmed about the warehouse being purchased, that turned out to be false, and I believe that spokesperson for ICE was let go. That’s where we stood until this morning.

Moments ago, there was apparently a press release from Assemblyman Brian Maher stating he had spoken with ICE and they confirmed they are no longer interested in purchasing the facility in Chester. That would be amazing news, and I’d be very happy to shake Brian’s hand if that’s the case. However, I’m very much interested in seeing that as an official statement from ICE itself to confirm that this is true. I hope it’s not a mistake and that someone doesn’t get fired and later retract that statement. The incompetence is making it very difficult for us to plan, prepare, and organize; it’s making it very difficult to do our jobs.

BJ (05:39): Yes, New Windsor is a great example of this behind the scenes. I saw a story in Wired reporting that ICE/DHS was looking to open offices in New Windsor. I called around; the town supervisor had no idea. He went over with the building inspector, and it turned out ICE had been operating there since the summer without any communication with anyone. Regarding the letter from Assemblyman Maher...

Brandon Holdridge (05:50) Yes.

BJ (06:06): Not that I doubt it, but we’ve heard from readers that ICE lies. This is something we’ve also repeated. Do you think there’s any credibility to the idea that this isn’t a mistake and that ICE is simply pretending they’re not purchasing while actually moving forward with setting up the facility?

Brandon Holdridge (06:31): I wouldn’t put it past them. I really wouldn’t. I also want to say, I know Brian personally; I don’t think he would put out a statement like this unless he believed he was being told the truth. So I hope he is correct. I’m hoping against everything that he’s right. However, I wouldn’t put it past ICE to play those kinds of games and misdirect people, lulling us into a sense of security before moving forward with the purchase.

[Note: ICE officials told The Monroe Gazette they have no new facilities to announce at this time, when asked about Assemblyman Maher’s letter. They, nor Assemblyman Maher, would clarify who Mr. Maher spoke to from ICE. Whomever this person is, is alleged to have told Maher the concentration camp won’t be opening here.]

BJ (07:04) Just for clarification, because this is something we’ve been asked a lot: as you mentioned in drawing the distinction between the town and the village, the town can’t send building inspectors into 29 Elizabeth Drive; only the village can do that, is that right?

Brandon Holdridge (07:15) Yes, that is correct; it’s only within the jurisdiction of the village.

BJ (07:18): To your knowledge, has that happened?

Brandon Holdridge (07:21): Not to my knowledge; I wouldn’t be able to confirm that. You would have to ask the mayor.

BJ (07:25): Yes, the village of Chester, just for those listening, won’t answer any comments. Everything goes to Brian Nugent, the village attorney, who we’ve written about quite a bit at The Monroe Gazette, and he will simply say “no comment.” So that’s sort of where that stands with the village. I’m hoping your relationship with them is a bit better, and that you’re at least communicating with them, right?

Brandon Holdridge (07:44): Yes, I’ve communicated with them at least once a week, and I’ve also been in contact with the county executive, Congressman Ryan, the assembly’s office, state Senator Skoufis’s office, and I spoke once to Senator Schumer’s office. I’ve been trying to talk to everyone.

BJ (08:12) I’m glad to hear that. I mean, Schumer and Gillibrand in particular have been quite quiet. I understand they’re busy with issues, but Schumer was just in Buffalo this week for a press conference. If he has time to stop in Buffalo, he should also have time to stop in Chester. Just my two cents.

Let me ask you: I think Chester is one of the first town boards to pass a resolution calling for the Assembly and the State Senate to pass the MELT Act. Is that correct?

Brandon Holdridge (08:46) Yes.

BJ (08:47): What has the response been since you passed the resolution?

Brandon Holdridge (08:51): Not much, really. I feel like there were some people online who were supportive, and others who were against it. I think it’s just common sense. We don’t want masked individuals going around that you can’t identify. That’s the basics of living in a democracy. It’s something I believe everyone should be able to get behind.

Unless you are part of SWAT or some other sort of special forces conducting internal operations in the United States, I don’t think you need a mask and I don’t think you should be unidentifiable. We’d like to hold our law enforcement officers accountable for their actions. When you don’t have a badge or a name and wear a mask, you’re making it as hard as possible to hold yourself accountable.

That doesn’t sit well with us.

[Note: On Friday, February 27th, Congressman Ryan and Senator Schumer released a joint statement, and sent a letter to the DHS Inspector General concerning the Will They or Won’t They vibe ICE is giving everyone. You can read their letter here.]

BJ (09:39) I know there was a discussion about New York for All as well. This brings me to the upcoming election you are running in. What are the implications for this election regarding support for a resolution asking Governor Hochul to pass New York for All, or simply standing up to DHS and ICE? What does this election mean for Chester residents?

Brandon Holdridge (09:57): I think the MELT Act and New York for All probably won’t play a major role in whether someone votes for a candidate here in Chester. The ICE facility is definitely going to be a wedge issue. The majority of people, including Republicans, are against the facility, as are elected officials. I don’t believe there will be any candidate running on the platform of welcoming ICE into our community.

At least, I hope not. I can tell you that everyone on the Democratic ticket, which will be announced in the coming weeks, is against this facility, and they will focus on keeping ICE out of Chester for sure.

2026’s Grossest Question: How Does The Concentration Camp Impact Local Taxpayers?

BJ (10:39): That’s great to hear. There’s a lot of talk about canvassing and going door-to-door in Chester to ensure people are aware of the issue. That’s definitely something for Chester residents to keep in mind. Another thing I wanted to ask about is the impact of this facility being set up in terms of taxes and tax revenue for the town.

Brandon Holdridge (10:45): Yes. If the government takes over this warehouse, it’s important to note that governments don’t get taxed on buildings they own. For 2026, $520,000 was collected in tax revenue from that warehouse. This revenue goes toward Orange County, the town of Chester, the village of Chester, the library district, the school district, the fire district, and the ambulance district.

If that $520,000 goes to zero, it would significantly hurt all of the taxpayers here, impacting everyone’s budget and, ultimately, their pocketbooks. This is especially concerning for people who want us to keep budgets and taxes as low as possible. Every dollar helps, and taking even a dollar away in tax revenue means that a dollar must be covered elsewhere through increased taxes or by cutting services, programs, and personnel, which no one wants to see.

Additionally, the broader implication of the facility taking over the warehouse would be inevitable protests. Whether people think protests should or shouldn’t happen, it’s an American right and a constitutional right. This means there will be protests that require law enforcement to keep things orderly and peaceful, ensuring the safety of protesters, counter-protesters, residents, and visitors. Having police present for this also comes with costs—personnel costs, overtime costs, equipment replacement costs, etc.

If it’s anything like we’ve seen nationwide, we might need to consider increasing hiring for the police department, which will come with additional costs. To put it in perspective, the city of Minneapolis had about 600 officers on the force, and after two or three weeks, they were exhausted. In contrast, between the village and the town of Chester, we have about 40 police officers combined, which is minimal compared to larger areas. All of this incurs costs for our Chester residents and taxpayers.

BJ (13:28): So, conceivably, in exchange for ICE setting up what I’m calling a concentration camp, both the town and village might have to cut services just to make up for the lost tax revenue, correct?

Brandon Holdridge (13:39): Yes, either cut services or increase taxes. Those are really the only two options unless some magical way to obtain other revenue appears. I don’t see that happening anytime soon. Development takes time, and new businesses take time to set up. You can’t just snap your fingers and have another warehouse or shopping center built.

BJ (13:49): Right. Let me ask you quickly about the impacts on Walton Lake and sewage. I know the village of Chester is at capacity. Walton Lake is the water supply for the village. What impacts are we looking at from the operation of this facility, if you know?

Brandon Holdridge (14:14): I’m less informed about the water situation, but obviously, the village of Chester relies on Walton Lake for its water supply. That’s a concern for sure. We’ve included that concern in the letters we’ve sent to ICE. We’re worried about whether they will need to draw from that water source and the legalities of them accessing that aquifer.

Regarding sewage, I’m more knowledgeable. Essentially, the proposal is for a warehouse initially meant for just over 100 employees, now being turned into a 1,500-bed detention center. Assuming there are a minimum of 1,500 detainees, plus additional staff, legal counsel, and visitation, we’re talking about a couple of thousand people being housed there in a facility originally designed for just over 100 employees.

The village of Chester is already at capacity for sewage. They have no additional capacity unless a new sewage treatment plant is built. Although one is planned, there have been no details released about who will receive allocations from that plant, which I’ve started to vocalize. Water and sewage are the foundational elements of any civilization, and right now, they’re a significant concern regarding whether this facility will come to Chester.

What Are Our Elected Officials Doing About This?

BJ (15:57): Let me ask you before we discuss tactics for what people can do. As a relatively new elected official, what has it been like to deal with a situation like this suddenly dropped on you by the federal government?

Brandon Holdridge (16:10): I’ve kind of felt like that’s been the norm now. My first year as supervisor was kind of a cleanup year, getting myself situated, and trying to figure out how to solve some financial and budgetary holes in our town. That was my first year.

The second year had a bit of a scandal—a situation I won’t get into—that we had to deal with. Just to clarify, the scandal did not involve me. This year, my third year, this situation with ICE is what was dropped on us.

[Note: The Chester Highway Superintendent, like it is in Monroe, is an elected position. So Town Supervisor Holdridge does not have the ability to fire John Reilly. He can, and has, asked Reilly to resign, which Reilly has not done so at this time.]

Brandon Holdridge: It’s challenging trying to do your job—responding to residents’ concerns, preparing for the next budget, and ensuring the town departments function properly—all while dealing with a situation like this. I was getting around 50 emails a day on average; now I’m receiving between 100 to 150 emails daily.

Calls have increased from a handful to a couple dozen every day. I used to get zero interviews from news outlets, but now I’m getting two or three per week. I take these interviews not to promote myself but to raise awareness about what’s happening here and hopefully encourage someone from ICE or the administration to recognize our push back and reconsider their plans.

If ICE refuses to talk to us, I’ll use a megaphone to get the message out. This situation makes it nearly impossible to handle day-to-day work, and my average 10-hour days have stretched into 12 to 14-hour days as a result.

What Can Residents Do?

BJ (18:40): Many people may not understand that local government is still a full-time job. You are responsible for thousands of people, and I think all local officials are underpaid and underappreciated. Thank you for enduring all of this.

Let’s get into what I believe most people would like to learn more about. What can residents of Chester—whether from the village or the town—do if they oppose the establishment of this concentration camp?

Brandon Holdridge: They should continue to reach out to every elected official in the area that represents Chester and beyond, making their voices heard. First, they should be asking the village of Chester to pass a moratorium on detention centers like Kansas City has. I’m hopeful that the village will consider this, and I’ve sent that information along to them; they indicated they would be reviewing it.

Chester residents and others can call the village and suggest they look into implementing the same measures Kansas City did, which I believe would be productive at this time. Additionally, I’ve heard that Orange County can also pass something similar, so they should advocate for that as well.

I recently posted about some residents who found the email addresses of the realtors and brokers involved. That’s another action people on the ground can take: make their voices heard to those shepherding this deal, urging them to abandon it given its implications

[Note: Screenshot from the Pyramid Brokerage Company & Cushman & Wakefield page advertising 29 Elizabeth Drive as available for lease.]

BJ (20:35): I’m recording this after watching the town of Woodbury debate a letter you sent asking everyone to sign on. Everyone except one MAGA representative, Brandon Calore, signed it. What has been the response to the letter you sent to the other municipalities saying to sign on and join us?

[Note: Local MAGA Bigot, and man State Senator James G. Skoufis spent at least $20,000 on supporting last year, Brandon Calore, can be heard sharing his “thoughts” at 38:17 in the above video. If you see Mr. Skoufis around, ask him if all that money he invested in Mr. Calore was worth it after seeing this.]

Brandon Holdridge (20:56): The response has been overwhelmingly positive. We had 35 Democrats from towns, villages, county legislators, state officials, and federal officials sign on. Additionally, about 13 Republican officials, mostly village and town mayors and supervisors, signed it, along with one county legislator who represents Chester, Glenn Ehlers. We also had five independents, mostly village officials, sign on as well. So overall, it’s been mostly positive.

I have additional names to add because several Ulster County officials were interested in signing on. I just haven’t gotten around to it because I’ve been incredibly busy. They have pledged to sign on, so I need to add those names to the official letter for the records. Only a very few individuals outright said no or didn’t respond because they either didn’t receive the communication or simply chose not to respond. Some have expressed concerns about public perception, despite supporting the exclusion of ICE from Orange County for various reasons.

BJ (22:08): For clarity, has County Executive Neuhaus signed the letter?

Brandon Holdridge (22:11) No, he has not. He said he has specific reasons for not wanting to sign, despite his public stance against the facility coming to fruition. You can ask him directly about that; I don’t want to speak for him.

[Note: As of this writing. Mr. Neuhaus has not replied to questions asking why he did not sign the letter.]

BJ (22:26) My impression from his public statements is that he seems more concerned about the potential danger posed by protesters than about ICE. But that’s a discussion for another time. On the county level for the Democrats: my understanding is that there are two specific actions that can be taken. The first is blocking a potential facility, and the second is ending the contract that currently exists between DHS/ICE and Orange County to jail detainees at the Orange County Jail. Is it true that only County Executive Neuhaus can effectively terminate that contract?

Brandon Holdridge (23:02) Yes, that’s how it was explained to me.

BJ (23:05): And I’ve been told that some Orange County Democrats are ready to sign a bill for an emergency resolution stating “no concentration camp, no new prisons, no detention facilities,” but they need Neuhaus’s support to approve it. Is that accurate?

Brandon Holdridge (23:21) I’m not sure.

BJ (23:22) I ask because on the county level, what should residents who don’t live in Chester but do live in Orange County do? Should they reach out to their legislative representatives and express support for that resolution?

Brandon Holdridge (23:32): Absolutely. They should be reaching out to all their county legislative officials and the county executive’s office. I don’t see any downside to signing that resolution you mentioned. It would only reinforce the majority opinion of the people in Orange County.

The Orange County legislature has already passed a unanimous resolution against the facility coming to Chester, so I don’t see why they can’t do the same countywide with the county executive’s support. That should be a no-brainer, and I’m sure most of them would agree.

So, there’s no reason residents shouldn’t contact their county legislators and the county executive to advocate for them to support something like that.

BJ (24:20): What about the contract between DHS/ICE and Orange County to house detainees?

Brandon Holdridge (24:21): Yes, that contract has been in place for quite a while. I think it has overstayed its welcome. There have been data reports indicating about 4,400 confirmed illegal arrests nationwide, which could be much higher. There have also been reports of around 40 people dying in ICE custody. People are people, regardless of citizenship.

I just don’t see the need for Orange County to continue this relationship and risk its legacy further.

BJ (25:06): Before we wrap up, is there anything else you want people to know about that I didn’t ask?

Brandon Holdridge (25:13): Just one last point: I’ve heard a quote that says, “One person’s death is a tragedy; when multiple deaths occur, they become a statistic.” This loss of humanity can occur easily in the dialogue surrounding immigration.

Alex Pretti and Renee Good’s deaths captured national attention because they were American citizens, and the horror of their deaths resonated with many. However, around 40 people die in ICE custody, while another 20 die in CBP custody, and it’s likely the number is even higher. This becomes a statistic, and people often forget the humanity involved.

Even if someone believes in the need for deportation, we must remember that these individuals are still people. If that’s truly the administration’s will, can’t we find a better way to handle this? For instance, we could improve officer training and screening. I’ve heard that training was cut from six months to just 47 days. This change illustrates the inadequacies in how ICE operations and immigration are being handled.

As someone who worked in Congressman Maloney’s office in constituent services for immigration and passports, I can tell you firsthand that the immigration system in America is broken. It’s been used as a political tool by both parties. Yes, we can do better regarding border control, but the core issue lies in the resources allocated for our courts and the legal processes for entering the country.

Some cases I dealt with lasted 10, 15, or even 20 years, with individuals trying to navigate the system properly. We are a nation of immigrants; shouldn’t we have a better immigration system in place? This would help prevent individuals from feeling they must take desperate measures and then get demonized for simply trying to provide a better life for themselves and their families.

Congress is entirely broken right now. Someone needs to step in and advocate for legislation that resolves these issues. The nation was once engaged in productive debates about legal pathways for Dreamers, DACA, and other topics. Yet we’ve strayed far from those discussions.

BJ (29:27): The majority of Americans agree with you—around 70%—across party lines. It’s really just a small minority, about 30 to 35%, that holds extreme views. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Subscribe now

P.S. The next stand-up event for Hands Off Hudson Valley is this Saturday, February 28th, at 1pm at the corner of Lake Street and 17M in the Village of Monroe. If you’re interested in protesting the placement of a concentration camp in Chester, you’re welcome to join us.

Below is the most recent email sent out from the group. (Disclosure: I am on the Steering Committee for HOHV)

Greetings friends,

Yes, latest forecast is for 50 balmy degrees this Saturday, so let’s take full advantage:

Standout, 1:00—2:00pm, same place, same station: corner 17M and Lake Street in Monroe.

1) QUESTION: Is ICE”s plan for the Chester warehouse still on your mind? No? Because you naturally believe various press reports in which an (unnamed) ICE spokesperson claims the report of an ICE purchase was false? So many contradictory statements, so much confusion sown that it may well be a deliberate strategy. One need only read through this piece about the warehouse in Roxbury NJ to see the pattern of lies---with the ultimate horrible outcome. WE MUST STAY VIGILANT. More to come….

ICE has purchased N.J. warehouse for use as a detention center, officials confirm - nj.com

2) UPCOMING NATIONWIDE “NO KINGS” DAY: Saturday, March 28^th. We will be standing out at the usual time, 1-2, which fits perfectly for those who wish to make a day of roving to other regional standouts, e.g.,: 12-2 Newburgh, 2-4 Warwick, 1-3 Goshen. More info to come as the day draws closer.

So, as you mark your calendar, you may also mark these dates of our Monroe standouts through spring--- ah, that glorious word, SPRING – may it spring us into renewed action: March 14 & 28 / April 11 & 25 / May 9 & 23 / June 13 & 27

3) Speaking of “action,” we hope to hear at the Monroe Town Board meeting of March 2^nd that the Board adopts resolutions in support of the MELT and NY4ALL Acts before our state legislature. We’re happy to have brought draft resolutions for their consideration!

4) Speaking of policies to protect immigrants (and us all) from ICE, we note that the Newburgh Board of Ed has instituted a policy for their schools. We need to follow their lead. Carol is tossing around ideas, seeking input---send her an email or text, if just to say you support the initiative: (Ask BJ for Email) / (ask BJ for #)

5) SOLIDARITY SIGNS: This initiative has taken off. NEEDED: a few more individuals to distribute these to shop areas in Monroe. Signs and instructions provided----simply reply to this email, or call Nora at (ask BJ for #)

6) Last but not least, give yourself a pat on the back for standing out, and for every other action you take--- phoning & emailing legislators, included. We’re proud to stand tall together with you and thank you for continuing to energize us. If you’ve noticed some of the professionally created signs, these are the inspiration and labor of Evan, who stands out with us and to whom we are most grateful!

SEE YOU SATURDAY--- and remember: we do not interact with passing motorists. Bullies seek reaction, so resist succumbing!

Share