It’s an outrageous move on numerous fronts: City Council members are attempting to pass a substantial pay raise for themselves.

Mere days after the approval of a colossal $126 billion city budget, they introduced a proposal to increase their salaries by over 18%, effective retroactively from January 1, accompanied by automatic annual raises of 2% thereafter.

These increases would elevate council members’ salaries to $175,500, placing them in an upper-middle-class bracket, more than doubling the city’s median income of $81,228.

This decision demonstrates utter disregard for city voters, whom the politicians evidently believe will overlook this move, as well as a blatant disregard for the City Charter, which outlines a completely different method for salary increases.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Speaker Julie Menin should be held accountable if they permit this to go forward, instead of standing up to members seeking this financial windfall.

And shame on the supposed good-government groups currying favor by claiming a $27,000 increase will attract superior candidates.

Hah! The council awarded itself fat $30,000 raises in 2016 with no sign of improvement at all; the simple fact is that the job was never meant to be a good career move, but rather a public service that might interrupt a normal career.

Los Angeles and Chicago pay their councilmembers more — and those towns are now worse disasters than Gotham.

The City Charter requires the convening of a pay panel every four years — specifically during the third year of a mayoral administration — to prevent immediate conflicts of interest: By moving now, the council majority would be declaring themselves proud to line their own pockets.

Private-sector workers don’t get automatic cost-of-living adjustments, nor do regular city workers: What entitles the council members to them, other than “we think we can get away with it”?

Mamdani should order his City Charter Commission to fix this loophole by asking city voters to explicitly ban this self-dealing.

And if Menin means to be seen as a real leader, she can’t just announce she won’t take the raise: She needs to refuse to allow a floor vote on this outrage.

If neither of them steps up, they’re declaring that they, too, hold regular New Yorkers in complete contempt.

Two of Brad Pitt’s children have taken steps to formally separate themselves from the association with their well-known father.

According to documents accessed by the Daily Mail, Zahara and Maddox, Pitt’s daughter and son respectively, have issued public notices announcing their plans to remove ‘Pitt’ from their surnames.

These announcements appeared in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, spread across the months of June and July.

The Daily Mail has contacted representatives for both Jolie and Pitt seeking their viewpoints on the matter.

One such notice reads: ‘Petitioner Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt to Zahara Marley Jolie.’

‘Petitioner Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt to Maddox Chivan Jolie,’ the other says.

The notices both invite dissenting parties to appear at a scheduled hearing over the matter; Zahara’s is scheduled for September 28 while Maddox’s is on September 14. 

In the state of California, those seeking to legally change their name must publish an Order to Show Cause – a document requesting the name change – for four weeks in a row in a newspaper before their court date. 

It comes a month after Zahara filed a petition requesting that her new name be Zahara Marley Jolie.

Maddox also filed to drop the actor’s last name in late May. 

Zahara publicly dropped the last name three years ago when she joined a sorority at Spelman College. 

‘My name is Zahara Marley Jolie. And [I] landed all the way from the Golden State in the city full of angels: Los Angeles, California,’ she appeared to say while introducing herself to sorority sisters, via People. 

She also went by Zahara Marley Jolie during her graduation ceremony, which her father reportedly skipped, according to TMZ.

‘Nothing prevented him from showing up for her. Or ever visiting her. The day was about all she accomplished. Not whether he was willing to attend,’ a source close to Jolie told the publication.

However, multiple sources have exclusively spoken to the Daily Mail in defense of Pitt, insisting that he is not the absent father he has been portrayed as, and he wants a relationship with his six children.

Maddox was also credited as Maddox Jolie-Pitt while working as a production assistant on his mother’s biopic Maria. 

Jolie and Pitt’s other children, Shiloh and Vivienne, have also stopped using the actor’s last name. It is not known if Pax has stopped using the name as well.

Last year, Shiloh, who was born Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, legally changed her name to Shiloh Jolie shortly after turning 18.

At the time, in a statement shared with People, Shiloh’s lawyer Peter Levine said she ‘made an independent and significant decision following painful events,’ adding that she was ‘merely following legal process’ when publishing notice of the change.

One month after Shiloh filed to drop her father’s last name, a source told People that Pitt’s relationship with his older children remained strained.

‘He has virtually no contact with the adult kids. His engagement with the younger kids is more limited in recent months because of his filming schedule,’ the insider said.

In May 2024, Vivienne was credited as Vivienne Jolie, not Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, on the playbill for the Broadway musical The Outsiders.

The family divide was again brought to the forefront when Pitt’s mother, Jane Etta Pitt, died last year at the age of 84.

Sources revealed at the time that she had been cut off from her grandchildren for about nine years, and they did not get a chance to speak before her death.

‘The most gut-wrenching part is that Angelina kept the kids away from his parents, from their own grandparents,’ one insider alleged to the Daily Mail last August.

Pitt’s relationship with son Pax – who previously called his father a ‘world-class a**hole’ and accused him of making his younger siblings ‘tremble in fear’ – doesn’t seem to be any better.

A source previously told the Daily Mail how Pitt felt after the 22-year-old was pictured stumbling out of the Chateau Marmont last year, propped up by several friends.

‘He has zero concern with what Pax does or doesn’t do. [Pax’s] actions reflect who he is,’ the insider said. ‘Brad honestly considers his relationship with Pax unfixable,’ they added.

The source went on to say that the actor doesn’t appear to be planning any outreach to either of his adopted sons: ‘Pax and Maddox have made it abundantly clear how they feel, and Brad has nothing to say about either of them.’

As for his other children, the source said that Pitt ‘holds out hope that the others will one day come around. Time heals wounds.’

A source close to Jolie also hit back at her ex-husband at the time and said: ‘Brad continues to play the victim. His fractured relationship with his children is a direct result of how he has treated them.’

‘He should stop blaming others. If he wants to rebuild a relationship with the kids, he should acknowledge his own actions and make amends.’ 

After meeting on the set of the 2005 film Mr and Mrs Smith, Pitt and Jolie were seen as Hollywood’s ‘It’ couple during their long-term relationship.

They married in August 2014 during a secret ceremony in the South of France and welcomed three children together during their romance: Shiloh in 2006 and twins Vivienne and Knox in 2008.

They also adopted two more, Zahara and Pax, and Pitt legally adopted the son that Angelina had adopted before they got together, Maddox.

But in 2016, it came to an explosive end after the pair got into an alleged physical altercation while on a private flight with their six children and Jolie later filed for divorce.

Jolie later claimed that Pitt ‘choked’ one of the children during the horrifying dispute and ‘struck’ another in the face, leaving her and the youngsters feeling like ‘hostages’ and cowering in fear under a blanket for hours until they landed.

She also alleged that he grabbed her by the head, slammed her against a wall, and violently shook her at one point during the flight – which resulted in her injuring her back and elbow.

Pitt’s representative called Jolie’s account ‘completely untrue’ to CNN at first, but then released an amended statement to the publication that read, ‘Angelina’s story continues to evolve each time she tells it.

‘Brad has accepted responsibility for what he did but will not for things he didn’t do. He has been on the receiving end of every type of personal attack and misrepresentation. 

‘Thankfully, the various public authorities she has tried to use against him over the past six years have made their own independent decisions. Brad will continue to respond in court as he has consistently done.’

Since they split, the two stars have been embroiled in one of the most publicized legal battles in Hollywood history over custody of their children, as well as the winery that they once owned together.

In May 2021, after years of duking it out in court, Pitt and Jolie were officially granted joint custody of their six children, but one month later, the judge’s decision was thrown out.

Pitt has since moved on romantically and has been dating jewelry designer Ines de Ramon for the last few years. 

Looking to earn the kind of salary a finance professional might enjoy on Wall Street without ever being there? Consider plumbing work for the New York City Housing Authority.

Between July 2024 and June 2025, Jakub Markowski, a plumbing supervisor at NYCHA, took home an impressive $465,000. This amount included $332,000 for nearly 2,600 hours of overtime, which surpasses the combined salaries of both the mayor and the City Council speaker.

Simultaneously, while receiving these substantial paychecks, Markowski was also running two private plumbing businesses.

Currently, Markowski is under investigation by the Buildings Department.

As advocates for the city’s growing socialist left demand more housing under public or nonprofit management, the history of NYCHA unravels tales of inefficiency and corruption, with Markowski emerging as its most recent noteworthy case.

Lest we forget, Shola Olatoye, NYCHA’s chairwoman under Mayor Bill de Blasio, lied for years under oath to the federal government about nonexistent lead-paint inspections and other safety failures.

As part of the feds’ settlement with the city, since January 2019, an independent monitor has been in place to oversee NYCHA’s compliance.

Yet federal oversight has not stopped the rot. In 2024, Damien Williams, the Biden-appointed US attorney for the Southern District of New York, charged 70 NYCHA current and former employees with bribery and extortion.

The takedown represented the largest number of bribery charges brought in a single day in the Justice Department’s history.

All 70 pleaded guilty or were convicted.

Nor has public ownership delivered livable conditions for tenants. In fact, they’re bad enough to qualify as a moral stain on this city.

On July 6, the federal monitor released its latest quarterly report. Despite modest progress, it shows that NYCHA buildings are riddled with hazards.

Under the federal agreement, NYCHA is supposed to ensure that no more than 15% of mold complaints involve visible mold of 10 square feet or more. In the latest report, 86% did.

Without acknowledging why city government has long proved such a poor landlord, Democratic Socialists want to put even more housing under public or nonprofit control, in the name of affordability.

The far left has not shown why NYCHA is a success story in disguise, or why new public housing wouldn’t devolve into similar dysfunction.

Instead, they fall back on the claim that NYCHA is underfunded.

About 80% of NYCHA buildings are 50 years old or more, well past most buildings’ useful lives.

Rents cannot rise to support an estimated $80 billion in backlogged repairs and capital needs. The system has thus grown more dependent on taxpayer-funded city subsidies.

NYCHA’s capital expenditures on capital improvements increased 48% between 2021 and 2025, to $1.2 billion per year, with most new money coming from city and state sources.

One big reason for NYCHA’s recent financial distress is that more tenants aren’t paying their rent.

NYCHA collected only 68.6% of its anticipated rent in fiscal 2025, down sharply from 89.6% six years earlier.

And it’s not because their rents are too high. NYCHA households’ rents average $621 per month, capped at 30% of household gross income.

Only 38.4% of NYCHA families are employed, and the average income of a NYCHA household was $26,129.

Sadly, they’re trapped by the system’s disincentives to work and earn more, a broken public-education system and the lack of new housing supply.

Meanwhile, it costs NYCHA $1,419 per month on average to operate and barely maintain each unit.

Despite 165,000 families waiting to enter, NYCHA has just 6,740 vacant units and takes an average of 371 days to turn one around.

By contrast, the private sector maintains pre-1974 rent-stabilized housing at an average cost of $1,192 per month.

In buildings entirely composed of stabilized units, that figure is $1,037— about 27% less than NYCHA’s average.

In May, a typical market apartment in Manhattan and Brooklyn spent only about 37 days before being rented.

Rent-stabilized owners effectively sustain an affordable-housing program for 1 million units — over five times NYCHA’s 177,000 — and at lower average cost.

Yet Mayor Mamdani and his housing czar Cea Weaver treat private landlords as villains.

The duo is planning to funnel bankrupt buildings to their friends in the nonprofit-housing world.

Yet, if anything, NYCHA offers real-world evidence against greater public-sector involvement.

Even with supposedly strict processes that aim to prevent favoritism, kickbacks and self-dealing, people will find ways to work the system.

Free, competitive markets reduce corruption because they leave government officials with fewer opportunities to intervene.

The private sector should simply build and operate much more housing in New York.

Private owners can’t afford to pay their plumbers $465,000 because they need to stay in business and can’t raise taxes.

Instead, NYCHA will just keep failing — and asking taxpayers to keep funding six-figure overtime rides on its gravy train.

John Ketcham is director of cities and a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.