September 7, 2022

Masks Are Now Optional on New York City Transit

Anthony Behar/Sipa USA/AP

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If you ride the bus or take the train in New York City, you can say goodbye to your mask.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced today that masks are no longer required on mass transit, marking the end of an era for one of the last nationwide.

Compliance was already low, and some New Yorkers say the change won’t make much of a difference. Still, others are concerned that the state has been too quick to let its guard down with the virus still circulating.

Hochul has also caught flak for the public messaging campaign accompanying the announcement. The “mask optional” signs are a play off a previous ad campaign that encouraged proper mask usage.

The decision brings New York in line with the federal government, whose nationwide airplane and public transit mask mandate was overturned in April. Now, will San Francisco be next?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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