McDonald’s is facing a class action lawsuit from plaintiffs who allege the fast food chain has long deceived customers about what type of meat is in the popular, limited McRib sandwich.

The lawsuit was filed late last month in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois by eaters from California, New York, Illinois and Washington, D.C. who claim the sandwich is marketed as containing pork rib meat but actually has none.

The complaint alleges that despite the patty’s rib shape, the item’s name and price, the sandwich is actually made of lower-quality grounded up pork — from cuts like shoulder and tripe — not rib meat.

The company’s website claims the meat is a “pork patty” made of “seasoned boneless pork.”

“The name ‘McRib’ is a deliberate sleight of hand,” the lawsuit reads. “McDonald’s willfully, falsely, and knowingly omitted various material facts regarding the quality and character of the McRib — namely, that despite its name and distinctive rib-like shape, it does not actually contain any actual pork rib meat. McDonald’s knew these facts would be material to reasonable consumers but still chose not to disclose them.”

McDonald’s denied the lawsuit’s claims.

“This lawsuit distorts the facts and many of the claims are inaccurate,” the chain told NBC 5 Chicago. “Food quality and safety are at the heart of everything we do – that’s why we’re committed to using real, quality ingredients across our entire menu. Our fan-favorite McRib sandwich is made with 100% pork sourced from farmers and suppliers across the U.S. We’ve always been transparent about our ingredients so guests can make the right choice for them.”

McDonald’s debuted the McRib in 1981. After becoming a limited-time-offer, it’s sporadically appeared on menus since.

“One might think that socialism and deregulation do not go together, but Mamdani’s campaign gave hints that he might be willing to take on some heretofore untouchable interest groups.”

Zohran Mamdani at an event in December. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

As an economist and city planner inclined to let markets have free rein, I didn’t view democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as my ideal mayoral candidate. However, now that he has won, I would prefer that his upcoming mayoralty improve the city, rather than accelerate its decline. In a new report for the Manhattan Institute, I have outlined some good actions his administration could take to mitigate the city’s housing supply crisis and jump-start its stagnating economy, without repudiating his principles.  

The potential actions Mamdani might support fall into three categories: deregulatory interventions, zoning changes to take advantage of the City Charter changes approved by voters last November concurrently with Mamdani’s election, and pragmatic policy changes to mitigate the adverse consequences of past left-leaning policies. One might think that socialism and deregulation do not go together, but Mamdani’s campaign gave hints that he might be willing to take on some heretofore untouchable interest groups.

One such group is car owners, a minority of New Yorkers but an important constituency to many City Council members. Under prior Mayor Eric Adams, the Council agreed to some reforms to the city’s outdated requirements for off-street parking in new housing developments, but didn’t go far enough. The city also retains decades-old requirements for off-street parking in new nonresidential buildings, such as offices and shopping centers. Requiring parking the developer thinks unnecessary raises costs and encourages new residents, commuters and shoppers to own and use cars, rather than public transit. Recent reform in Illinois—dubbed the “People Over Parking Act,” which prohibits requiring parking in areas well-served by transit—suggests a model for changes Mamdani could push through in New York City.

The City Charter changes create a shortened process for certain types of pro-housing zoning changes, cutting out review by the City Council, which in the past gave local members a de facto veto over new housing in their districts. Mamdani will need to use these new tools carefully, since he still needs a good working relationship with a Council majority. However, he should be comfortable with utilizing new Charter provisions allowing him to push through affordable housing projects in 12 designated community districts where the least amount of such housing was permitted in the past five years.  Moreover, he can also take steps to allow two-family homes and small apartment buildings in low-density neighborhoods where the demand for housing is strong and the potential for adverse effects is limited.

Lastly, and a bigger reach for Mamdani, are changes that require ideological flexibility and in some cases a willingness to allow investors to profit while providing housing the city desperately needs. It’s recognized at this point that the state legislature’s draconian 2019 rent stabilization amendments have created a financial crisis for at least two large groups of owners: private investors whose buildings are 100 percent rent-stabilized and never benefitted from onetime rules allowing deregulation of high-rent units; and non-profits who run low-income housing on behalf of the city and are just as squeezed between rising costs and tightly regulated rents as the for-profit owners.

That problem is too big to solve with public money alone. Mamdani should ask the state legislature to allow bigger rent increases upon vacancy, provided that for-profit landlords agree to maintain affordability standards like those that already bind the non-profit landlords.

Another potential target for pragmatic flexibility is Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH), a flagship achievement of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and continued under Adams. MIH requires new apartment buildings in rezoned areas to include 25 to 30 percent permanently affordable units. Sold as seizing the windfall profits of greedy developers, MIH in fact depends on compensating developers with generous tax exemptions on the whole building, including the market-rate units. Unfortunately, that mechanism doesn’t always make construction financially feasible. This is particularly an issue with the latest version of the tax-exemption law, known as Section 485-x, to which the state legislature attached “prevailing (union) wage” requirements to buildings with more than 99 units. 

That’s asking for more than many developers can give and still make a profit. Like the rent regulation issue, that problem can’t be papered over with more public subsidies; the city needs far more housing than it can pay for. Private developers need to be permitted a decent return on investment. There is an existing MIH waiver provision, but it has never been used. Mamdani’s administration should clarify the circumstances where waivers might be granted because new housing investment is not otherwise possible.

In summary, Mamdani and his appointees should consider pragmatic actions that would help the city and do not contradict his core beliefs. If he does, the city can be better off at the end of his term than it is today.

Eric Kober is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He previously served as director of housing, economic and infrastructure planning at the NYC Department of City Planning.

The post Opinion: How Mamdani Can Keep His Principles And Still Do Good For NYC’s Housing Market appeared first on City Limits.

With the possibility of freezing rain overnight and a slick commute Tuesday morning, the National Weather Service Twin Cities has issued a winter weather warning.

If the temperature dips below freezing when the rain hits overnight, it could cause freezing rain and icy roads with as much as 0.2 inches of ice in some parts of southern Minnesota, the weather service said on X.

“Icy & slick travel expected as it falls and afterwards,” the Monday post said. “Temps will be very close to freezing, and how much ice ends up accumulating will be closely tied to how warm we are.

Meteorologist Tyler Hasenstein agreed with that statement later in the day Monday, saying that if the temperatures remain around freezing or slightly above, the area might only see rain instead of freezing rain.

“The big concern is icing overnight,” he said.

The way the weather pattern was trending Monday afternoon, the icy rain was more likely to strike southern Minnesota, including Mankato and Rochester, than the Twin Cities metro area.

“It’s favoring that track,” he said. “It’s looking like the higher amounts (of rain) may stay to the south.”

And it will depend on how cold it gets overnight, particularly at midnight when the rain is most likely to fall.

Hasenstein said the warming trend will continue throughout the rest of the week, meaning that any ice on the roads won’t stick around long.

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By MORIAH BALINGIT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is telling Head Start providers to avoid dozens of terms in federal grant applications, including “race,” “belonging” and “pregnant people” — a directive that could reshape the early education program.

A coalition of organizations representing Head Start providers and parents said in court filings last month that the Department of Health and Human Services told a Head Start director in Wisconsin to cut those and over a dozen other terms from her application. She later received a list with nearly 200 words the department discouraged her from using in her application, including “Black,” “Native American,” “disability” and “women.”

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President Donald Trump’s administration associates the terms with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which it has vowed to root out across the government.

The guidance could lead Head Start centers to preemptively drop anything that could be seen as fitting the administration’s definition of DEI, said Ruth Friedman, who led the Office of Child Care under President Joe Biden.

“Grantees are sort of self-selecting out of those activities beforehand because of fear and direction they’re getting from the Office of Head Start that they can’t do these important research-based activities anymore that are important for children’s learning and that are actually required by law,” Friedman said.

The filings came in a lawsuit filed in April by parent groups and Head Start associations in Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other officials. They allege the Trump administration is illegally dismantling Head Start.

The plaintiffs say the administration is trying to force providers to change how they operate in violation of the Head Start Act, which requires directors to provide demographic information about their families, a task that becomes difficult if they are banned from using “Black,” “disability” and “socioeconomic.”

Health and Human Services officials said they do not comment on pending litigation.

Head Start centers receive the bulk of their funding from the federal government. The long-standing preschool and family support program serves babies, infants and toddlers who come from low-income households, foster care or homeless families.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys say the anti-DEI guidance has generated confusion for Head Start programs, which are operated by nonprofits, schools and government agencies. The grant application itself contains many of the banned words, asking directors to include demographic data about their community that includes estimates of the number of pregnant women and children with disabilities.

“This has put me in an impossible situation,” the unnamed Head Start director in Wisconsin wrote in the court filing. If she complies with the Head Start Act and includes the banned words in her application, she could end up losing her grant, she said. But if she follows the Trump administration’s guidance, she said she fears she’ll face penalties for violating the law down the line.

Another Head Start, located on a Native American reservation in Washington state, was told to cut “all Diversity and Inclusion-related activities,” leading it to drop staff training on how to support autistic children and children with trauma, according to the court filing. Officials there also told the director that she could no longer prioritize tribal members for enrollment — even though the Head Start Act expressly permits this. The word “Tribal” is among the disfavored terms.

For some, the new grant application rules are another attempt to undermine Head Start, a program with a history of bipartisan support that some conservatives have been attacking as problematic and ineffective.

“They don’t believe these public programs should actually be open to serving all communities,” said Jennesa Calvo-Friedman of the ACLU, an attorney for the plaintiffs. The effort to ban words from applications “is a way to gut the fundamentals of the program.”

Not long after Trump took office, his budget chief unsuccessfully tried to halt all federal grants, saying they needed to be reviewed to root out any DEI efforts. Head Start was not supposed to be part of the freeze, which was quickly reversed, but in the months afterward, grantees reported problems drawing down their funding. Some had to briefly close.

The Government Accountability Office later said the delays violated the Impoundment Control Act, which limits when the president can halt the flow of government funds.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.