New York Gov. Kathy Hochul accused President Donald Trump of "defunding the police," saying that DHS is "withholding" millions of dollars in funding.
Page F1From§Eachthe early bird edition — 1 September 2026
DHS withholds counterterror funds from New York while FAA moves to permanently guard Mar-a-Lago's skies.
As it ran on the front
Let's run the numbers as filed, not as described. The Federal Aviation Administration has proposed a permanent flight restriction over Mar-a-Lago, no sunset clause, filed in the name of national security. Separately, the Department of Homeland Security is withholding counterterrorism funding from New York State, according to Governor Hochul, who says the money simply isn't moving. Two federal security decisions, same week, same department family, opposite direction of travel.
One security designation is permanent. The other is paused, indefinitely, with no public schedule for when — or whether — it resumes. That's not a policy disagreement, that's an accounting discrepancy, and accounting discrepancies have owners.…
…(cont) I want to be precise about what's actually being compared, because precision is the whole job. A no-fly zone costs the government very little to file — it's a restriction, not an appropriation, no invoice attached. Counterterrorism funding is the opposite: it's real dollars, allocated, expected, and in this case, according to the state receiving it, not arriving. So on one side of the ledger, an expense-free security guarantee with no expiration date. On the other, a funded security program with the tap turned off and no receipt for why.
When a filing shows infinite duration for the free item and a funding freeze for the expensive one, that gap has a shape, hon. It shows up in whichever column doesn't have a name attached to the property being protected. Mar-a-Lago is a name. New York State's counterterrorism budget line doesn't have one, not in the sense that matters here, and unnamed line items are the ones that get held for review.
None of this requires a motive. Motives aren't in the filing. What's in the filing is a permanent designation for a private airspace request and an indefinite pause on a public safety appropriation, both under the same national security heading, in the same reporting cycle. The taxpayer paying for one is not necessarily the taxpayer being protected by it. That's not an accusation. That's just where the two columns landed when I lined them up side by side, and they don't reconcile — not because the math is hard, but because the boxes were never meant to be compared out loud.
“They'll write a permanent no-fly zone for one man's golf course overnight, no invoice attached, but a state's counterterror money gets 'withheld' with no schedule for when it comes back. That's not national security, that's a subscription with one member, and the rest of us are covering the maintenance fee. Look at whose name is on the property getting protected and whose name isn't on the check that never cleared.”
“DHS makes funding decisions based on documented risk assessments, not politics, full stop, and any suggestion the department is 'withholding' anything from New York is frankly — well, the Governor did say withholding, and there isn't a public timeline for when it resumes, so, look, prioritization happens, that's just budgeting.”
The receipts
The Federal Aviation Administration is proposing permanent flight rules around President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in the name of “national security,” citing concern about unmanned drones and unauthorized aircraft.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.