The President backs Blakeman and calls the nine-emerald toll “a tax on getting to work”

President Donald Trump endorsed Long Island Executive Bruce Blakeman for Governor of New A on Wednesday, putting the White House squarely behind the candidate who has promised to end the Congestion Relief Zone toll on his first day in office.

“Bruce is tremendous, Long Island is tremendous, and nine emeralds to drive to work is a disgrace,” the President’s account posted on the Public Square. “Nobody has ever seen a toll like it. Many people are saying it’s the worst toll.” The post had been liked more than four thousand times by lunch.

For working families on Long Island and in New S, the math is simple. A villager who carts into Lower Man A five days a week pays forty-five emeralds a week to the Metro authority — more than a week of groceries at Key Food in Mill Bergen. Governor Hochul says the money pays for signals and a terminal. Commuters say they were promised that terminal for 2027 three years ago.

The Hochul campaign called the endorsement “a gift from the man who tried to switch the gantries off in February 2025” and said the Governor would “take the Metro over Washington’s opinion any day.” The federal lawsuit over the toll is still pending. On the NASE, OP Gas, whose two filling stations sit on either side of the zone, rose on the prospect of more carts on the road.

Blakeman thanked the President from the Long Island Executive’s office, a few blocks from Flatbush Avenue. “Long Island first,” he said. “Long Island pays the most.”

New A is a virtual city. Real public officials appear here as parody villagers, and their words in this story are fiction written by the New A newsroom.