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Left to right: Justin Brannan, Donna Lupardo, Zohran Mamdani, Michelle Hinchey, Lynn Schulman, and Harvey Epstein. Photo illustration: The Scoop New York

Headlines from Buffalo to Brooklyn

It’s August 8, 2026. This is The Weekly Poop.

This week, we’re finally getting around to discussing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (finally) choosing a director for the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare.

If you’re just joining us, MOAW was a con job foisted upon New Yorkers by former mayor Bill de Blasio in collaboration with former City Council member Justin Brannan.

In 2019, the City Council passed a package of animal-welfare bills, the crown jewel of which was a measure to finally remove Animal Care Centers of New York City [sic] from the clutches of its neglectful step-parents at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene [also sic].

Or so New Yorkers were led to believe.

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Assuming the role since occupied by Harvey Epstein, Brannan marketed himself as the conscience of the council in matters related to the well-being of animals, from the once and would-be family pets at ACC to the slaughtered ducks trucked to faux-fancy city dining establishments from upstate foie gras torture farms. As such, Brannan was lead sponsor of a bill to establish a city department of animal welfare, which would shift responsibility for homeless cats and dogs to folk who unlike Corinne Schiff et al. do not experience an all-consuming urge to snap on the latex at first sight of any living creature that motivates on more than two legs.

Or so New Yorkers were led to believe.

Meanwhile on the corporeal plane, Brannan — like Epstein — was a self-satisfied, self-dealing hypocrite who plotted to secretly swap the animal welfare department for an animal welfare office. Which: Imagine being promised tickets to the World Cup final and ending up with a Ted Lasso tote bag instead. Though to be fair a tote bag at least serves a purpose.

Said the Shelter Reform Action Committee the day after the bill’s passage: “Substituting ‘office’ for ‘department’ doomed what would have been a game changer for NYC animals.”

And how. Not only was there no subsequent improvement to conditions for companion animals in the city’s care (still the case seven years later and counting), city electeds — Justin Brannan in particular — abominably praised themselves as beatific mission-accomplished visionaries in order to sell their sordid backroom deal to credulous media know-nothings who of course spread the lie far and wide.

A year later, MOAW was revealed for what it was and what it remains — a dusty disused desk in the mayor’s office. A distasteful joke that has neither produced nor accomplished anything of consequence to this day.

Fittingly, Eric Adams’ MOAW director was a former ACC flack who hid from reporters lobbing such hard-bitten barbs as “What do you do on a typical day?” before moving on unnoticed after roughly three years in the position.

Then came Zohran “Govern Audaciously” Mamdani, who, when it occurred to his staff they might as well get to it six or seven months in, audaciously picked up right where Adams left off.

Screen grab: Politico New York, July 27, 2026

Shortly after Mamdani took office earlier this year, Allie Taylor and Will Zweigart, leaders of the city non-profit Voters For Animal Rights and Brooklyn rescue Flatbush Cats, respectively, launched a public campaign to push Mamdani to fund pet food pantries and low-cost veterinary services — spay-neuter, especially — among squishier asks like “enforce existing laws” and “[r]equire transparent, quarterly public reporting” from DOH.

And the #1 priority of the #1 Taylor-Zweigart Agenda item? “Appoint new leadership at the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare.”

You see where this is going.

The run-up to the ascendence of the Taylor-Zweigart Agenda seems to have begun in earnest in 2024, when according to publicly-available tax records VFAR “organized” City Council Member Lynn Schulman’s farce of a public hearing, which was ostensibly about providing relief to the New Yorkers who packed the chamber to testify for eight hours on the various ways DOH and ACC are punishing them for the crime of caring for the city’s hundreds of thousands of free-roaming homeless cats — an enormous responsibility that any given 5-year-old could tell you should fall to DOH and ACC but instead has for decades weighed on the backs of city taxpayers thanks to do-nothing seat-warmers like Lynn Schulman.

We’re now a month away from the two-year anniversary of Schulman’s hearing — the last she has convened related to companion animal welfare.

But that’s not how it went down. As council health chair, Schulman is tasked with DOH/ACC oversight. Yet she had the gall to speak the words “ACC does the best that it can” out loud to a room packed with people drawn there after years — decades — of being failed by DOH/ACC’s alleged “best,” which is after all what necessitated the hearing in the first place.

We’re now a month away from the two-year anniversary of Schulman’s hearing — the last she has convened related to companion animal welfare. Will Zweigart’s rescue clinic has since been allocated $1M from the city to support spay-neuter, with an additional $250,000 “spread out among additional animal-care centers and nonprofits,” according to the Post. The most recent city budget, which accounts for $750,000 of that $1.25M, also includes $750,000 in funding for a one-year pet food pantry pilot.

All told, then — not counting millions upon millions pissed away at DOH’s ACC — by our count the mayor and City Council have devoted $2M to companion animals since September 2024. The city’s most recent budget tops out at $125.8 billion. Two million is .0015 percent of $125.8 billion. You might call that a drop in the bucket, had the city ponied up enough to buy one.

Two years after the hearing, there are no apparent plans for a sustained city spay-neuter program, despite Schulman’s implied pledge to develop legislation based on rescuer hearing testimony.

Allie Taylor associate Libby Post controls the New York State Animal Protection Federation, a kill-pound lobby group shown here imploring New Yorkers to stop hating on kill pounds. Screen grab: Facebook

Will Zweigart is a huge fan of the full-hearted, grindstone-nosed guys and gals at the city kill pound, and is not shy about professing his affection. The Taylor-Zweigart Agenda, posted on the Flatbush Cats site, features a horse shit happy talk quote from MOAW founding father Justin Brannan.

In addition to helping Schulman orchestrate her 2024 show-hearing, Allie Taylor — Zweigart’s friend and recurring podcast co-host — and VFAR endorsed the two-term Queens council member in 2021 and 2025.

VFAR also endorsed the aforementioned Harvey Epstein in races for state Assembly and New York City Council.

It may not surprise you to hear that the interest group founded by Mamdani’s new MOAW director endorsed his run for mayor, both in the primary and the general election.

You see where this is going.

Behind the scenes at VFAR we have “advisor” Libby Post, the kill-pound lobbyist who leads the trollishly-handled New York State Animal Protection Federation. NYSAPF, which coincidentally makes campaign contributions, has the ear of state legislators including Donna Lupardo and Michelle Hinchey, whose Assembly and Senate committees hold sway over most animal-related state legislation. Post and her buds at ASPCA and The Humane Society of the United States succeeded in convincing Albany lawmakers to kill the Shelter Animal Rescue Act, which would require New York animal shelters to offer endangered animals to rescues, rather than exterminate them.

VFAR has endorsed Hinchey. If the org has ever endorsed Lupardo, who is finally retiring after years of racking up pet carcasses, we could find no record of it.

A former VFAR board member, Joyce Friedman, simultaneously held a management position at NYC ACC. Coincidentally (ahem), Friedman also briefly worked for Flatbush Cats, according to her LinkedIn page.

As you can see, being an “animal advocate” who also endorses the continual slaughter of family pets opens a lot of doors. Call it the New York Pro-Kill Advocates Club. Membership has its privileges.

Left to right: Former VFAR board member and NYC ACC higher-up Joyce Friedman, compassionate pro-kill fighter Harvey Epstein, and Allie Taylor

Back in February The Scoop New York asked Mamdani’s press shop if the mayor was vetting MOAW director candidates, after one of the many access media outlets covering the Taylor-Zweigart Agenda mentioned the vacancy (otherwise who would even know?). We also asked about Mamdani’s position on an animal welfare department, and whether the mayor was hip to the depravity on display 24/7/365 at the kill pound he had recently assumed responsibility for.

Wouldn’t you know, Mayor Transparency ignored us.

Toward the end of July, after Taylor’s appointment was announced, we queried Mamdani again, in search of an attendant press release and/or a contact email address. Crickets.

After divining Taylor’s city email addy (it’s aftaylor@cityhall.nyc.gov, btw), TSNY sent this:

To her credit, Taylor replied, advising us to forward our questions to Mamdani’s press office, which again pretended not to hear. (Transparency!)

Undeterred, we sent a follow-up, this time CC’ing Mamdani senior flack Dora Pekec (dpekec@cityhall.nyc.gov). We asked how many people were vetted for the MOAW job, and whether there was a connection between Taylor’s selection and all that lobbying of the mayor in the press to fill the position.

More transparent crickets.

This is not the first TSNY story on Mamdani’s animal welfare office. It’s far from the last. In month eight the mayor of New York City has yet to publicly acknowledge the existence of NYC ACC, and has purposely blown off questions concerning same in the year-plus since he began campaigning for the job. You don’t have to cover New York politics for 20 years to assume at this point that, despite the people’s mayor schtick, Mamdani has already outed himself as another opportunistic pol shamelessly exploiting New Yorkers and their love of companion animals to advance his career, no different from the likes of Justin Brannan and Harvey Epstein.

Taylor made a lot of noise about prior MOAW shortcomings vs. what she claims to think it should be doing. If Mamdani doesn’t know this, his underlings do. We’ll see pretty soon if his MOAW lives up to its name, or if the New York Pro-Kill Advocates Club has succeeded in co-opting another position of power they have no business within sniffing distance of.

NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show

Here’s a clip from the premiere of the NYC DOH ACC Puppy/Kitten Death Row Show, henceforth abbreviated in site copy as ACCDRS in the interest of space, time and personal sanity.

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Here’s the latest New York companion animal news:

You can love companion animals or you can love watching their adoptive families terrorized and murdered by the government, but not both.
The New York Pro-Kill Advocates Club all-stars at NYCLASS are dropping five figures (privileges!) on an ad buy praising NYC Council Speaker Julie Menin for saying she supports ending the city’s horse carriage industry.
Staff and volunteers say Saratoga County Animal Shelter is neglecting and abusing animals — a cat kept in a “windowless room with no light” for four months; dogs confined 23.5+ hours a day — and the county is circling the wagons, which is not suspicious at all.
The as-yet unbuilt Syracuse animal shelter — the city’s first (!) — is already too small.
Animals continue to languish at Buffalo Animal Shelter as the city’s slog to find a new location carries on.
Mid-Hudson Times did a short piece on teeny-tiny Town of Newburgh Animal Shelter.
A new cat cafe in Greenwood Lake, in Orange County, will feature adoptable felines from Warwick Valley Humane Society.
“An animal rescue in Oswego County needs help after taking in dozens of guinea pigs from a home in Utica.”
After nearly 100 years in Albany, Whiskers Animal Benevolent League is moving to nearby Latham, at least in part, it seems, to meet new state shelter standards.
State efforts to track rabies cases could be compromised by Donald Trump’s federal budget cuts and Secretary Brainworm’s demented CDC shit-assery.
NY1 filed a nice feature on the new Ontario County abuser registry.
“Jury finds man guilty of animal cruelty for first time in Staten Island history”
Related and finally: The Richmond County DA wants Staten Islanders’ pet pics for its calendar promoting the office’s cruelty prosecution unit, which based on our penultimate headline needs all the help it can get.

From NYC ACC KILLS

Food recalls

FDA announced no pet food recalls this week.

Check here for more info on FDA-announced recalls, and here for details on prior FDA advisories and outbreaks.

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Mamdani's Animal Welfare Director Is Another…