Mamdani Budget Bankrolls Drag Queen Story Hour While Veterans Take a Hit

New York City’s freshly-inked $126 billion budget shows exactly where Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s priorities lie — and it’s not with the men and women who served in uniform.

The City Council, with Mamdani’s sign-off, carved out roughly $7 million for so-called “trans equity” initiatives, including $6.45 million funneled to a laundry list of LGBT advocacy groups and another $40,000 specifically earmarked for “Drag Story Hour” programs in city schools and libraries, The New York Post reports. Council Speaker Julie Menin alone kicked in $10,000 for drag readings in her district, while six other council members, Shaun Abreu, Tiffany Caban, Julie Won, Shahana Hanif, Gale Brewer and Crystal Hudson, chipped in $5,000 each.

Meanwhile, over in the Department of Veterans’ Services, the story is the opposite: a roughly $1 million cut, shrinking the department’s budget from about $7.6 million to $6.6 million — a drop of more than 13 percent. The mayor’s plan would also scrap the “Homecoming of Heroes” ticker tape parade in favor of a cheaper substitute march, and trim funding for annual events honoring former service members by about $60,000 a year through 2030.

Put plainly: the city is spending more on gender-identity programming and drag performances than it’s spending on services for the roughly 200,000 veterans who call New York home.

For the record, Drag Queen Story Hour now receives more city funding than the Department of Veterans Services.

Understand where we are. https://t.co/vwQxqBVxUK

— Hon. Vickie Paladino (@VickieforNYC) July 2, 2026

Critics wasted no time pointing out the math. State Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar questioned why police funding lags while cash flows toward what he called fringe initiatives, saying, “Why isn’t there more money for police? There are countless dollars going toward extreme, far-out programs. This goes way beyond recognizing transgender individuals into spending millions of taxpayer dollars to promote transgenderism.”

Nassau County Executive and GOP gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Blakeman echoed, “Only in [Democratic Gov.] Kathy Hochul’s New York are your hard-earned tax dollars funding drag queen story hours instead of new police officers, roads, and schools. It’s a slap in the face to every New Yorker who goes to work every day to provide for their family, and it ends when I’m governor.”

Veterans advocates are similarly furious. Marine Corps veteran Osbert Orduna called the cuts insulting to disabled veterans who sacrificed for the country.

But this is par for the course for a mayor who hates what America stands for.