No they didn't.
> MARTÍNEZ: Look, Jeff and Lisa, I don't know what's going to happen with gas stoves.
Also NPR was talking about the Federal government. While the article above is talking about the New York _State_ government.
> The facts and strategy behind the outrage over rumors of a ban on gas stoves
> The conservative media was in uproar last week over speculation that the federal government planned to ban gas cooking stoves and possibly seize them.
The aim is clearly to dismiss the concern as manufactured outrage—note the words “strategy,” “speculation,” and “outrage”—rather than a concern about something that may happen because it’s an aim liberals definitely have.
Immigration helps offset those numbers a bit, because like you said people see NY(C) as the capital and plenty of people still want to live there.
Deterioration happens slowly and builds up over time. Humans are very resilient and adaptive to things getting worse (as every war has shown). When things happen slowly you don't notice how bad it is and forget what is lost. The older (usually conservative) people who notice the deterioration are often dismissed as cranks, boomers, out of touch, etc. So immigrants/young college kids still flock to NY and start building a life there before noticing that living there as an adult is way harder than it should be.
Moving states typically requires things to get really bad and people often don't understand the cause/effect of shitty gov and deteriorating cultures.
> Well, the risk for the environment, it's more about what gas stoves have come to represent. And that's the practice of burning natural gas in homes.
rayiner's comment is that NPR told him "the possibility of gas stoves being banned was fake outrage".
Whether or not gas stoves _should_ be banned is irrelevant. NPR clearly stated that they could become banned and that they don't know if they will.