Andrew Cuomo gets mayor endorsement from former critic: ‘Toughness to lead New York'
NEW YORK CITY (PIX11) — A whirlwind week in the race for New York City Mayor ended with a dramatic political about-face and a chaotic rally ending with an arrest.
State Senator Jessica Ramos, once a vocal critic of former Governor Andrew Cuomo, announced Friday she is endorsing him in the Democratic mayoral primary. The surprise move comes despite years of public criticism of Cuomo by Ramos over issues ranging from sexual harassment allegations to the state's handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Ramos said in the end, her decision to endorse Cuomo came down to the looming threat of President Trump, and his experience as compared to the other leading contender in the race Zohran Mamdani.
'Only one of them has the experience and toughness and the knowledge to lead New York through what's about to come, and that's Andrew Cuomo,' Ramos said to loud applause at a rally.
Just six weeks ago, Ramos openly questioned Cuomo's mental acuity. At the time, a spokesperson for Cuomo fired back by implying Ramos was drinking too much. The Senator has also recently failed to qualify for the second Democratic mayoral debate and was passed over for an endorsement by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Cuomo downplayed any recent Ramos criticism: 'You take everything with a grain of salt. I've said things about opponents during campaigns. You get caught up in the rhetoric and energy of the moment. That's the nature of the business.'
Uptown, Mamdani held a rally of his own that was disrupted by a supporter of former President Donald Trump. The man confronted Mamdani, accusing him of being insufficiently supportive of Israel and Jewish people.
Police said 55-year-old Raul Rivera was arrested and charged with assault after allegedly biting one of Mamdani's volunteers who tried to intervene.
Amidst the commotion, Mamdani took aim at Ramos' endorsement of Cuomo.
'Andrew Cuomo is the best example of leadership that has failed New Yorkers,' he said. 'To see him be legitimized is always something that will trouble me.'
Early voting in the NYC Primary begins June 14th.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Boston Globe
43 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Harvard withheld their degrees for participating in a pro-Palestinian protest. They don't regret it.
'It felt like a culmination of things that had already been happening,' said Joshi in an interview this week with the Globe. 'It felt inseparable from the way they were treating pro-Palestinian protests in general.' A year since Harvard refused to award degrees to the 13 graduating seniors who participated in a pro-Palestinian encampment on Harvard Yard, the students say the experience left them feeling disillusioned about their Ivy League education and frustrated with what transpired, but grounded in their activism and largely unscathed. A handful are now pursuing graduate degrees from other elite universities, and others are working. Some are still participating in protests. A pro-Palestinian protest encampment behind a gate of Harvard Yard in April 2024. Andrew Burke-Stevenson for The Boston Globe Advertisement All were eventually awarded their Harvard degrees in the months after their intended graduation, the graduates said. After the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas began, the 2024 tent encampments on Harvard Yard became one of the key symbols of a pro-Palestinian student movement that spread across the nation. At Harvard, both Jewish and Muslim students reported feeling uncomfortable, while a Advertisement On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people from Israel. Gaza health authorities have said that Israel's retaliatory offensive has The Harvard student protesters agreed days before commencement in 2024 to dismantle the encampment; university leaders Days later, the students found out they wouldn't graduate since they were not in 'good standing' with the university due to multiple campus policy violations related to the encampment. That prompted another wave of outrage among students and faculty, more than 1,000 of whom reportedly Graduating students walked out of the 373nd Commencement at Harvard University to call attention to the plight of Palestinians on May 23, 2024. The university's top governing board rejected the recommendation of faculty to allow 13 pro-Palestinian students who participated in a three-week encampment in Harvard Yard to graduate with their classmates. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Some protestors, including Joshi, were allowed to don their caps and gowns at Harvard's 2024 Commencement and walk across the stage. Joshi said she was handed a piece of white cardboard instead of a degree. Others, however, were barred from commencement. Syd Sanders, 23, was told to withdraw from the university (a directive that he says was later dropped) and was banned from graduation. He had several ongoing student disciplinary cases at the time related to what he described as 'a long and storied career' in on-campus activism. 'They kept trying to evict me,' Sanders said in an interview this week, 'They would go by my dorm and be like, 'Why is all your stuff still here?'' Sanders was the final of the 13 students to receive a degree, to his knowledge. Advertisement 'They mailed it to me in February,' Sanders said. In a statement, Harvard spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo said that the university does not comment on student matters and did not further comment for this story. The impact of the withheld degrees varied by graduate. Phoebe Barr, 24, was among the protesters who were placed on an involuntary leave by the university, meaning she lost access to her dorm room and could not work at her on-campus job for the remainder of the semester. 'I was homeless and unemployed very suddenly,' Barr said. She stayed on the couch of someone who offered her a place to crash. Those are the memories of Harvard she wants to recall, she said, the acts of kindness in the community. 'For all the hostility we received, we also saw a real outpouring of support from the community of Harvard students, faculty, and those who lived around us in Cambridge,' she said. Barr was denied access to the Harvard campus at the end of her senior year. Lane Turner/Globe Staff Barr's temporarily withheld history and literature degree also impacted her search for a job after college: She could not list her undergraduate degree as her highest level of education. Not knowing when she would get her degree, she said, was difficult and stressful as she cobbled together cover letters and resumes. To potential employers, she wrote that her degree was still pending. Her degree was conferred in July last year; she got a job at a Boston University library that fall. Joshi's probation was initially to last until May 2025, meaning she would graduate a year later than planned. That timing was a problem: If she weren't in good standing with the university, she'd lose her Harvard fellowship to fund a master's degree at the University of Cambridge in England. Advertisement The funding securing her spot at Cambridge eventually came through after Harvard conferred her degree over the summer. Sanders, however, said that, at least for him, the lack of a degree didn't have any impact on his professional life. He still moved to California and got his dream job as a union organizer. 'I can't imagine a career in college activism was an inhibitor to becoming a union organizer — it was probably an asset," Sanders said. The encampment taught him how to do effective community organizing, lessons he said he is applying today as he helps organize support for immigrants targeted for Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests. 'It was the most sacred moment of community I have ever felt in my life,' Sanders said of the Harvard encampment. 'No regrets.' A protester hung a Palestine flag in the pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard on May 7, 2024. Lane Turner/Globe Staff Sanders is now an activist in Oakland and is working as a bartender and waiter (he quit his union organizing job). 'Just like everybody else who graduated on time, I'm figuring life out,' Sanders said. He's thinking of applying to grad school or getting another union organizer job; he still participates in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Had the protesters' probation resulted in them walking at graduation this year, they would've been at a much different ceremony. This May, Garber was greeted by 'It was pretty jarring,' said Barr, who attended the commencement to take part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration. 'Last year, he was booed by the audience.' Advertisement While she is glad to see Harvard fighting Trump, she said it does not negate her frustrations with how the university handled the encampment last year. Joshi added that while there is a lot of excitement for Harvard's stance against Trump, the school's stance on free speech and academic freedom still 'rings hollow' to her. She is now finishing a master's degree in sociology at the University of Cambridge — funded by the Harvard fellowship that almost didn't materialize — and writing her dissertation on South Asian involvement in the Palestinian movement in the UK. After graduation, she plans to find legal work at a nonprofit. Overall, she remembers the Harvard protests as a success: They drew attention to the thousands of children who have died in Gaza and will never have the chance to grow up to get a degree, she said. Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Erin Douglas can be reached at
Boston Globe
43 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
‘I don't know why the president has this problem': Trump had a history of disparaging Haiti and Haitians before the travel ban
So when Haiti was included late Wednesday in a list of countries on which Trump was imposing a near-total travel ban, some saw a culmination of a long campaign against the population. Advertisement 'Donald Trump has been very consistent in his anti-Black racism, both domestically and globally, and when it comes to the country of Haiti, the people of Haiti, he has a long track record of vile, offensive, harmful rhetoric and policies,' said Boston Representative Ayanna Pressley, who co-chairs the congressional Haiti Caucus. 'It is just purely evil.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Florida Democratic Representative Maxwell Frost, who is of Haitian descent, echoed Pressley's comment that the travel ban is 'rooted in bigotry.' 'It does nothing to make our communities safer, but it does vilify immigrants,' Frost said in a statement. 'It will devastate our immigrant families across this country.' In response to Pressley's accusations, the White House called her assertions 'lazy, unfounded and just straight-up false.' Advertisement 'While President Trump is fulfilling his promise to unite the country and keep the American people safe, Pressley is desperate to divide us and smearing our heroic law enforcement officials in the process,' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement, pointing to the rationale listed in the ban. Haiti is one of 12 countries facing a near-total ban on travel to the United States under Trump's new order, which cites an inability to vet immigrants for national security risks and a high rate of people overstaying their visas as justification for the measure. There are limited exceptions, including current visa-holders, permanent residents, dual nationals, athletic teams, and certain immediate family members of US residents. Other countries affected include Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. The move follows several other Trump administration actions that have had an impact on the Haitian community in the United States, including an early end to Temporary Protected Status protections for an estimated through the appeals process. Trump made similar moves in his first administration though most were ultimately blocked by the courts. The United States first granted Haitian migrants protection from deportation after the 2010 earthquake that devastated the country. Since then, a string of natural disasters and political conflicts have worsened conditions. Today, gang violence, crime, and instability are rampant on the island. Advertisement Amid the worsening situation, many Haitians sought refuge in the United States or came to join family here, either through the CHNV program, legal avenues, or without permission. Massachusetts has the third-largest population of Haitians in the US, including an estimated 15,000 who held TPS, But the influx of migration from Haiti has also spurred backlash, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who was the only Democrat in the 2018 meeting with Trump's now-infamous comments, said he doesn't understand why Haiti seems to irk the president as it does. 'His hatred over Haiti is just impossible to explain,' Durbin said. 'I've been there many times. And this is one of the poorest nations on Earth, the poorest in our hemisphere, these people are suffering and need help, and they're wonderful people. I don't know why the president has this problem.' But Republicans defended Trump's actions and denied there was any animus behind it. Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a Republican who has backed pro-immigration policies in the past, was also in that 2018 meeting. And while Diaz-Balart declined to talk about what was said, he does not believe Trump has an issue with Haitians. Advertisement 'No, I don't,' he said. 'I really don't. I really, really don't.' His South Florida district is home to a large Haitian population and others affected by the CHNV and TPS reversals, including Cubans but he defended the travel ban. 'There are countries obviously that can't guarantee a process where we know that people are [vetted] to keep the country secure,' Diaz-Balart said. 'I don't think it's unreasonable.' Former Florida Republican Representative Carlos Curbelo, a moderate who was part of the immigration negotiations in 2018 that preceded the meeting, said Trump seems to prefer 'white-collar' immigrants or those whom Trump perceives to be have been recruited or have sufficient resources to come here. 'I don't think he understands or cares that those types of comments and campaigns unfairly mischaracterize hundreds of thousands of people at a time, and I don't think he understands that just because you're a refugee or an exile, that doesn't mean that you aren't capable of making major contributions to this country,' Curbelo said. Noting the Cuban exile community where he (and Diaz-Balart) hail from, Curbelo continued: 'It's people who had to leave their country, that was not their first choice, that was their only choice, and that doesn't preclude people from becoming exceptional Americans who do wonderful things.' Pressley, though, is convinced Trump's approach to Haitians is a concerted effort. She compared the trauma inflicted on the migrant community to the terror campaign of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan, saying it gets harder to fight back and project optimism when the actions layer on top of each other. 'It is terrorizing. It is terrifying. It is traumatic,' Pressley said. 'And it's just so intentional. ... Singling out Haitians, I mean, he's moved in a way that is obsessive and consistently, pointedly harmful.' Advertisement Tal Kopan can be reached at
Business Insider
44 minutes ago
- Business Insider
DOGE caucus leader says Elon Musk made a 'massive exaggeration' about spending cuts
Shortly after the feud between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk hit its apex on Thursday, a key DOGE-minded lawmaker in Congress had some pointed words about the world's richest man. "Most everybody knew Elon was exaggerating to what he could do," Republican Rep. Blake Moore of Utah told reporters outside the Capitol. "He was claiming finding $4 billion a day in cuts he was going to get. One time, he said $2 trillion, he was going to find." "It's a massive exaggeration, and I think people are recognizing that now," Moore said. The Utah Republican is one of the three co-leaders of the House DOGE caucus, a bipartisan group of lawmakers who had hoped to support Musk's cost-cutting efforts. The caucus met a handful of times at the beginning of the year, and leaders previously told BI that they intended to compile a report of potential cost-saving measures for DOGE at the end of the first quarter of this year. That didn't end up happening, in part because the White House DOGE Office ultimately had little interaction with the caucus. One Democratic member declared the group to be "dead" last month. "We've always been a little frustrated that there was such limited interaction," Moore said on Thursday. "We couldn't really identify where we were to lean in, and we had a ton of folks ready to support it, but there just wasn't that interaction." Musk did not respond to a request for comment. Moore said that he wanted to pursue cuts to federal spending through the bipartisan government funding process, saying that there are "plenty of Democrats that recognize there's waste in our government." GOP leaders have said they'll pursue DOGE cuts both through that process and through "rescission" packages, the first of which is set to be voted on in the House next week. The first package, which includes cuts to public broadcasting and foreign aid, is $9.4 billion, just a fraction of the cost savings that Musk once predicted. "It's definitely kind of over-promising, under-delivering," Moore said. Musk's public feud with Trump began last week, when the tech titan began criticizing the "Big Beautiful Bill" that Republicans are trying to muscle through Congress. The bill is projected to increase the deficit by trillions of dollars, though Republicans have argued that those forecasts do not account for the economic growth that might be spurred by the bill. That feud boiled over on Tuesday, with the two men engaging in a war of words on their respective social media platforms. "When I saw Musk start posting, just parroting false claims about the tax reconciliation bill, it was clear something's amiss," Moore said. "And so it escalated, yeah. It escalated very quickly."
