Rep. Nicole Malliotakis is slamming Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal over his push to remove Newsmax from New York City taxicab screens, calling it censorship and an attack on consumer choice.
In a post on X Saturday, the Staten Island and Brooklyn Republican criticized Hoylman-Sigal for what she described as an effort to "over-regulate" taxi-screen provider Curb and "censor" Newsmax, which she noted is carried "in 60 million homes and is a trusted news source."
"If a cab rider doesn’t want to watch, they can turn it off but that should be THEIR choice, not a leftie politician’s," said Malliotakis.
Newsmax is pushing back sharply against the call to remove the network from the city taxi screens.
"This is a pure act of censorship targeting a news organization reaching over 50 million Americans regularly. Newsmax plays it straight and that drives the far left crazy," Newsmax commented in a statement.
Hoylman-Sigal, in a letter first reported by the New York Post, urged officials to intervene and pressure Curb to drop the network.
"I urge you to summarily suspend the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission’s partnership with Curb ... and demand that Curb cease its collaboration with Newsmax as a condition of licensure given the platform’s history of misinformation and disingenuous reporting,” Hoylman-Sigal wrote in a letter to Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Supporters of Newsmax also told the Post the demand amounts to viewpoint discrimination.
"This is cancel culture in the free market," Stefano Forte, president of the New York Republican Club, said. "I know the socialists want to control everything. But this is ridiculous. I don’t think anyone is getting indoctrinated by right-wing politics in the back of the cab."
New York City’s taxicabs are privately owned, with the city issuing licenses — known as "medallions" — to cab owners.
Last year, Newsmax signed a deal with Curb to provide a one-minute news update hosted by one of the network’s anchors to more than 15,000 taxis across the country.
Newsmax, which launched its cable channel in 2014, is currently the No. 4 cable news network in the U.S., just behind Fox News.
The network is also widely available across TVs and connected devices, including in tens of thousands of hotels, bars, restaurants, commercial centers, and governmental offices nationwide.
Newsmax is carried by every major cable and satellite provider, reaching about 60 million homes, while its streaming channel Newsmax 2 is available in more than 100 million homes through apps and OTT systems.
Mamdani, New York’s just-elected Democratic Socialist mayor, has not publicly responded to Hoylman-Sigal’s request as of Friday, and City Hall has declined to comment.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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