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They're not going down without a fight.

GOODBYE HORSES: New York City isn’t horsing around anymore. The City Council voted overwhelmingly today to abolish the Big Apple’s horse carriage industry, handing a historic win to animal rights activists who’ve pushed to end the tourist attraction for decades. The vote doesn’t mean the industry sunsets overnight, though. The bill enacting the ban — which passed the Council with 40 yays, 7 nays and 2 abstentions — allows the roughly 200 carriage drivers who shuttle tourists around Central Park to continue operating until June 2028, when the industry will be reined into a legal halt officially. Council Speaker Julie Menin, who started making the legislation’s passage a priority over the summer, told reporters before the vote that the carriage horse-related June death of Romanch Mahajan , an 18-year-old Indian tourist, was the last straw. But she also cited a long record of horses dying in the streets as part of the reason for the bill finally crossing the finish line. “This has been a long time coming,” she said. Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who initially withheld support for the measure over labor protection concerns — got behind it earlier this month, sealing the deal for it to become law. He hasn’t yet set a date for signing the bill. Mamdani came on board after the Council modified the bill to give drivers pathways into other lines of work, and the phase-out period is key in that pursuit. Under the bill, the city must create a workforce transition program under which drivers would, between now and 2028, receive career counseling as well as referrals to employment opportunities in both public and private sectors, including with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and hospitality and tourism outfits. The bill would also prohibit drivers from sending their horses to slaughter or using them for carriage duties in another city where it’s allowed. Horse carriage drivers and their supporters remain furious. The Transport Workers Union, which advocates for carriage drivers, announced yesterday that it will file a lawsuit to block the ban, arguing it violates federal and state laws. The union is especially incensed that the bill doesn’t require the city to pay out drivers for the value of their carriage licenses — an omission lawyers for the TWU say flies in the face of the Fifth Amendment’s prohibition on government usurping private property without compensation. Just as the Council was getting ready to vote, carriage supporters received backing from a somewhat unexpected source: President Donald Trump. “So sad to see the beloved Central Park Horse-drawn Carriage Industry ending after over a Century, based largely on one tragic accident,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post , referring to Mahajan. “When there is a car accident in the area, of which there are many, they don’t stop cars from entering the Park. So why would they stop the Carriages? It was a Great Tradition.” Also before today’s vote, dozens of TWU reps and carriage drivers gathered outside City Hall to blast the Council for moving forward with the legislation. One of them brought along a ziplock bag of equine feces with a handwritten label on it reading: “This is horse sh*t.” Christina Hansen, who’s been driving carriages for more than a decade, said she feels “disrespected” by the fact that the bill doesn’t guarantee she and her colleagues will be compensated for their licenses, which are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. “There are people who are owed money on medallions, who have planned families, had children, bought houses, taken out loans,” Hansen said. “What’s going to happen to them?” Fellow carriage driver Danielle Slot, who voted for Mamdani in last year’s mayoral election, told Playbook she feels betrayed by his decision to back the bill without a provision mandating medallion reimbursement. “You say you’re going after billionaires, but you’re really going after the underdogs,” Slot said. “These guys are hardworking, every single medallion is its own…