New York City lawmakers introduced a bill to make it easier to revoke press credentials from Luigi Mangione's fan base after a trio of supporters flashed city-issued passes outside his courthouse hearings, and one compared the man Mangione killed to Osama bin Laden.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced the legislation Thursday on FOX 5 New York's "Good Day New York," calling out what she described as a breakdown in the credentialing process that allowed Mangione admirers, not working journalists, to obtain official New York City press passes and use them to access court proceedings. The bill, sponsored by Councilmember Chris Banks and co-sponsored by Councilmembers Carmen De La Rosa and Inna Vernikov, would lower the legal bar for the city to pull a press pass and hand enforcement authority to the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment.
Menin, a former commissioner of that same office, did not hold back about the problem. As Fox News reported, she framed the bill as a direct response to Mangione's online fan base, sometimes called "Mangionistas", infiltrating the press pool.
"We are introducing a bill today, sponsored by Councilmember Banks that will make reforms to press credentials to solve the problem of the Luigi Mangione fangirl, if you will."
She added: "These fangirls, who are not journalists, are showing up at the trial with press credentials that the City of New York is giving to them."
The bill traces directly to an incident in May that drew national attention. Three Mangione supporters, Ashley Rojas, Abril Rios, and Lena Weissbrot, showed off their city-issued press passes to the New York Post outside the courthouse on the day of one of Mangione's hearings. None were described as working journalists. Rojas and Rios were identified in photo captions as influencers granted NYC press passes.
Rojas used the moment to deliver a statement about Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare CEO whom Mangione killed on a Manhattan sidewalk on December 5, 2024. Her words were not a journalist's observation. They were a profane tribute to the man accused of murdering a 50-year-old father of two from Minnesota.
"F--- Brian Thompson. That's all I want to say. F--- Brian Thompson. F--- his mom."
Weissbrot went further. Fox News characterized her as claiming that Thompson "was responsible for more deaths than Usama bin Laden", the al Qaeda leader and mastermind behind the September 11 attacks. That comparison, made by someone carrying a city-issued press credential, captured the absurdity of the credentialing failure in a single sentence.
Even Mayor Zohran Mamdani acknowledged the problem, telling reporters that "those three individuals should not have received press passes." That a city administration would issue credentials to people who openly celebrate a killing and then publicly admit the error raises an obvious question about what screening, if any, existed in the first place.
Under current rules, the city needs "clear and convincing evidence" to justify revoking a press pass, a high legal standard typically associated with civil commitment proceedings and fraud cases. The proposed bill would drop that threshold to "preponderance of the evidence," a far lower bar that essentially means more likely than not. The change would also grant the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment explicit authority to suspend or revoke passes when that standard is met.
The distinction matters. "Clear and convincing evidence" requires near-certainty. "Preponderance of the evidence" requires only that the case for revocation is stronger than the case against it. For a press credential, not a criminal conviction, not a property seizure, but a government-issued pass granting access to public proceedings, the current standard is unusually protective. The bill's sponsors plainly believe it has been exploited.
Menin said the goal is straightforward. She wants the city to ensure credentials go to people doing journalism, not people using press access as a fan-club perk for a confessed killer.
"We want them to reform their practices so it's really journalists, legitimate journalists, who should be getting the press credentials."
The case echoes a broader pattern of individuals exploiting institutional access for purposes far removed from the system's intent, not unlike a recent indictment of a former podcaster who allegedly used media platforms to make threats against public figures rather than cover the news.
The press-pass controversy unfolds against the backdrop of Mangione's sprawling legal situation. Surveillance video from December 5, 2024, showed Mangione approaching Thompson from behind on a Manhattan sidewalk and firing with a silenced handgun before fleeing on a bicycle. He was arrested days later at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after customers and workers recognized him from a wanted poster.
Mangione pleaded guilty to federal charges earlier this year. His legal team is now fighting to have New York state-level murder charges dismissed on double jeopardy grounds, and the state trial has been adjourned until December over those concerns.
The federal case carries the highest possible stakes. An AP discussion among reporters covering New York's major trials noted that the Trump administration has filed paperwork to seek the death penalty in the federal case, which will now proceed before the state case. Mangione is currently held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
AP courts reporter Larry Neumeister observed that winning a death penalty case in Manhattan would be difficult, but the federal government's decision to pursue it signals how seriously prosecutors view the targeted killing of a corporate executive on a public street.
The gravity of the charges makes the press-pass spectacle all the more jarring. A man who confessed to killing a father of two in broad daylight has become a folk hero to a segment of the public, and the city of New York handed his admirers credentials to sit in the press section and cheer.
Several questions remain unanswered. The bill has not been assigned a public legislative identifier, and it is unclear how many total press passes have gone to individuals the city now considers non-journalists. The criteria MOME currently uses to issue credentials, and whether the bill would tighten those criteria beyond the revocation threshold, have not been spelled out.
What is clear is that the existing system broke down badly enough for the City Council speaker, three council members, and the mayor himself to publicly acknowledge the failure. That kind of bipartisan admission in New York City politics is rare. It usually means the embarrassment was impossible to ignore.
The broader pattern of individuals targeting prominent figures, whether through assassination plots against senior government officials or through the glorification of a confessed killer, reflects a culture that has grown disturbingly comfortable with political violence. Press credentials are supposed to serve the public's right to information, not provide front-row seats for a murder defendant's fan club.
Meanwhile, the federal justice system continues to process serious criminal cases at scale, from sweeping drug-ring indictments to the Mangione prosecution itself. The question is whether New York City's own bureaucracy can keep pace with the basic task of vetting who gets a press pass.
When a city government hands official credentials to people who curse a murder victim's name on camera and compare him unfavorably to the architect of 9/11, the problem is not a gap in the rules. It is a gap in common sense, and no bill can legislate that back into existence.