233. The Order

New York City now has its first mayoral executive order about bedtime.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed it this week. The order repeals bedtime for children who want to watch the Knicks play in the NBA Finals. The games run late. The children had been going to bed before the games ended. The mayor found this unacceptable.

Executive orders are typically issued for things like emergency declarations, restructuring city agencies, or suspending regulatory procedures during a crisis. Mayor Mamdani has used his to address 9pm.

(He had the legal authority to do this. The City of New York can, through the office of the mayor, intervene in whether your children are awake. This was apparently a power that existed, waiting for the right Knicks series.)

The order does not establish a new bedtime. It simply repeals the existing one. What children do with the hours between their former bedtime and wherever the game ends is between them and the mayor's office.

The Knicks have a 2-1 series lead. The city has approximately 700,000 residents under the age of ten. The order does not specify what happens in Games 5, 6, and 7.

Zohran Mamdani ran on a platform of housing affordability and transit reform. The bedtime issue emerged later. Executive power is flexible.

No executive order has been signed about the city's finances. The finances continue to observe their own bedtime.