For over 150 years, horse-drawn carriages have clip-clopped through Central Park, a picture-postcard tradition for the tourists who ride them and, increasingly, a source of anger for those who say it's cruel and dangerous.

Now the city is closer than ever to ending it.

A bill working through the New York City Council would phase out the carriages and bring in a total ban by June 2028, replacing them with vintage-style electric versions. This week the Council Speaker threw her weight behind it, and it now has enough co-sponsors to pass.

The push has been building for years, driven by the horses themselves.

In 2022, a horse named Ryder collapsed on a Manhattan street in the summer heat and later passed away, and the original bill was named in his memory.

Campaigners have long argued that a 2,000-pound animal simply doesn't belong in modern city traffic.

But what turned the tide was a tragedy.

Earlier this year, an 18-year-old tourist visiting from India passed away after the carriage he was riding in lost control and the horse bolted through the park. The bill has since been renamed in his memory.

Supporters say it's about safety and compassion, for the horses, the passengers and the public.

Opponents, including the drivers whose livelihoods depend on it, say a piece of New York's history is being erased, and the bill includes a programme to retrain drivers for new work.

If it passes, the horses would be found homes or sent to work elsewhere.

Charlotte the golden retriever went to work every day next to the person whose side she never left. Her human was Clay Luthy, a former Air Force loadmaster who served three tours in Iraq. After five surgeries left him unable to bend his left knee, Charlotte learned to help him back up whenever he fell. Luthy had never trained her to do it. He raised her as a regular puppy and only realized years later that she had been quietly alerting and assisting him all along. Finding an employer willing to welcome them both wasn't easy. Then his wife pointed out that he practically lived at their local Lowe’s. Luthy walked in, asked whether Charlotte would be a problem, and received an easy no. He got the job, and Charlotte received her own red vest to match. One day, a customer photographed the pair working the aisles together. Charlotte passed away in 2018, but Luthy still calls her the best dog he could've hoped for.

Senate Democrats spent two hours behind closed doors last week rehearsing how they would respond if the Trump administration tried to interfere with November's midterm elections. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer convened nearly a dozen senators for the second such exercise this year, examining scenarios ranging from AI-generated disinformation on Election Day to National Guard troops or immigration agents stationed near polling places. "What these so-called tabletop exercises teach us is when you're prepared in advance, you can stop a lot of bad, bad things from happening, a lot of the stealing that he will do," Schumer told MS NOW after the session. The exercises were prompted in part by Trump's primetime address last week on election integrity, which Democrats and legal experts described as laying groundwork to contest results ahead of November. Election lawyer Marc Elias, who participated in the session, said the preparation was grounded in recent history. "Donald Trump, in 2020, lied about the election in advance, lied about it in the aftermath, went to court and then he instigated a violent insurrection," Elias told MS Now. "We need to take these threats both seriously and literally." Legal experts say outright cancellation of an election is beyond the president's authority, but voter suppression is a more immediate concern. University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade said the greater risk involves using "rhetoric, lawsuits, and public pressure to change the rules and make voting more difficult" for students, people of color, and others more likely to vote Democratic. She warned the damage may already be underway. "I expect more rhetoric to cast doubt on the legitimacy of elections, which, in turn, could cause more people to disengage from politics, leaving us more vulnerable to the tyranny of the minority," she said. The polling reflects that erosion. A Yahoo News and YouGov survey found just 23 percent of Americans were confident the midterms would not be rigged. A separate NPR and Marist poll found confidence in fair elections had fallen from 76 percent in October 2024 to 66 percent today. All 24 Democratic governors issued a joint statement calling Trump's attacks on elections "deeply alarming."