Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Joseph and Anthony Livreri, brothers who own the Ozone Park pizzeria Aldo, pleaded guilty in Manhattan Supreme Court to conspiracy and bribery charges tied to payoffs made to Eric Ulrich, former senior advisor to then-Mayor Eric Adams and later the city's Department of Buildings commissioner. The brothers admitted paying Ulrich $4,000 to help stop the DOB from forcing them to vacate a Williamsburg bakery shut down after a fire, one piece of a broader 2023 indictment that also alleged bribes to expedite health inspections at their pizzeria and to clear licensing obstacles for a codefendant's towing business.

The Livreris will not testify against Ulrich, invoking their Fifth Amendment rights under their plea deal, and are set to be sentenced Dec. 10. Prosecutors say the brothers had deep ties to Adams, including campaign donations and a fundraiser they hosted before his term began. Ulrich has pleaded not guilty across five indictments and faces trial Sept. 28. Adams himself was charged separately in the wider corruption probe, though the Trump Justice Department later dropped those charges.

A delegation of Hasidic Jewish community leaders from New York and New Jersey met with President Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office on Thursday, marking the first such gathering at the White House in nearly five decades. The visit, organized by the White House Faith Office under Paula White-Cain, included representatives from the Satmar communities in Kiryas Joel, Lakewood and Williamsburg, along with Rep. Mike Lawler, who represents Orthodox and Hasidic communities in Rockland County. Grand Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum of Kiryas Joel recited a traditional blessing reserved for kings and presented Trump with a leather-embossed copy of the prayer.

The meeting underscores Trump's strong standing among Orthodox Jewish voters, who backed him at the highest rate for a Republican since the 1980s in 2024. Several senior administration officials are Jewish, and Trump has closely aligned with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on countering Iran. The Satmar movement's theological opposition to Jewish sovereignty before the Messiah's arrival added a notable undertone to the encounter with a president who calls himself the most pro-Israel in US history.