BLOCKING OUT THE HATERS: Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres is blocking Gov. Kathy Hochul’s staffers on X as he mounts a likely bid to run against her next year. He’s also spent the last few months deleting the issues page from his website, scrubbing lefty posts from his X account and blaming the “Defund the Police” movement for Democrats’ loss of the White House — even though he supported it at the height of the pandemic. At least three Hochul staffers — both on the campaign side and the government side — say the Bronx pol has blocked them. Torres’ X shutdown is even more remarkable given that he’s made a name for himself for never being above a vicious back-and-forth on the site, no matter how petty. “If someone attacks me, I return fire. It is that simple,” Torres told Playbook in June when asked about his extremely public feud with former Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou. “You’re a pathologically unstable person (your reputation precedes you) and a political has-been,” he told her in one post. He’s since blocked her, too. In addition to the Hochul staffers, Torres has blocked dozens and dozens of his critics on X (too many for us to count). Torres’ unrelenting stream of posts, often showing support for Israel, have earned him his fair share of critics on the site. And his latest move on X is now drawing him into a debate around the free speech rights of a politician to block detractors. Former President Donald Trump’s decision to block his critics on Twitter was ruled an unconstitutional violation of free speech by a Court of Appeals, but the Supreme Court later ruled the issue moot when he left office. Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also had to apologize to New York Republican Dov Hikind for blocking him from her non-governmental X account. The forced-apology was part of a court settlement between AOC and Hikind after he sued her for blocking him. Eugene Volokh, an expert in free speech law and senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said the latest case law indicates Torres is free to block whomever he wishes. “This is his account for his political purposes, and he can try to control the conversation on that account for his political purposes, and the check on that is political, not legal,” Volokh said. Jen Goodman, the spokesperson for Hochul’s campaign, was blocked by Torres after she posted a video of the congressman saying “I do” when asked if he supports defunding the police in a 2020 interview with a morning radio show. Torres also touted a proposal “for defunding the NYPD by $1 billion” in the video. Avi Small, the spokesperson for Hochul’s government side, was also blocked by Torres after he retweeted Goodman’s post. “He’s just a coward and clearly not ready for prime time,” said Goodman. “He can block all the people he wants but his defund the police record isn’t going anywhere…and it seems like even Ritchie understands just how damaging that is.” One year after Torres’ radio interview, the congressman started calling on Democrats to “abandon” the policy of defunding the police, and in November he partially blamed the movement for sinking the party’s White House bid. Torres has also deleted old X posts as he eyes Hochul’s job, including one where he thanked Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Bronx state Sen. Jamaal Bailey for ending cash bail. The “issues” pages on his campaign website that was present at least until September — where he vowed to “reimagine our criminal justice system” — has been wiped as well. (His spokesperson said a new website will be up if Torres decides to run for governor.) In a statement to Playbook, Torres said he’s “been much tougher on the far left than Kathy Hochul has ever been in her whole life.” “Doesn’t Hochul and her staff have a state to run?” he said. “Team Hochul is too busy taking self-congratulatory subway selfies while New Yorkers are being burned alive, stabbed, slashed, and shoved in front of a subway car. That is why the clueless and corrupt Kathy Hochul is ‘among the most unpopular Governors up for re-election in 2026.’” — Jason Beeferman
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