Latest news with #Hizzoner
New York Post
2 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
Mayor Adams warns anti-ICE NYC protesters: ‘We will not allow you to destroy our city'
Mayor Eric Adams warned Antifa agitators that he won't allow them to 'destroy our city' as violent anti-ICE protests spiraled out of control across the country. 'We know that there are those who travel our country and embed themselves into issues like Antifa and others,' Hizzoner told Newsmax Wednesday night. 'And they have one goal in mind, and that is to provoke and to create disruption and disorder, particularly with our law enforcement community.' Advertisement 4 NYC Mayor Eric Adams appears on Newsmax, warning protesters against destroying the city on June 11, 2025. NewsMax 'We identify them immediately, remove them from the crowds and take proper police practice when they cross the line,' he added. The NYPD nabbed 10 people in the Big Apple Wednesday as anti-ICE protestor took to the streets, law enforcement sources said. Advertisement It was down dramatically from the more than 80 taken into custody when a massive protest in Lower Manhattan descended into chaos on Tuesday. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has already insisted the NYPD would stand its ground and not let protests get out of control as the violence only escalated in Los Angeles and other major cities. 'Commissioner Tisch gave a very loud and clear message. We will allow peaceful protests, but we will not allow you to destroy our city or harm innocent people,' Adams said. 4 Police detain a protester during a riot in the streets near 26 Federal Plaza in NYC on June 11, 2025. Stephen Yang Advertisement 'And we will take action whenever that takes place.' Elsewhere, Hizzoner blamed the unrest on 'outside agitators' — likening them to those who flooded Columbia University last year to 'radicalize' students amid the wave of anti-Israel demonstrations. 'If you recall during the Columbia protest, I talked about the outside agitators, professional agitators that want to come on our college campuses and radicalize our students,' he said. 'Some of the leaflets and pamphlets that were handed out talk about hating America, hating Israel, hating Jewish people. Just real mean and nasty things.' Advertisement 4 Hundreds of protesters march at Foley Square protesting ICE immigration enforcement arrests across the US. Stephen Yang 4 An NYPD officers drag a protester away from the crowd during unrest in the streets of Manhattan on June 10, 2025. Aristide Economopoulos 'And we went in and took appropriate action when they broke into a dorm room… we found that there were those who were professionals, that they came from other parts of the country and actually agitated and pushed to participate in the taking over of Hamilton Hall,' he continued. 'We're seeing that here as well. These are professional people who believe in disruption and destruction of property.' Additional reporting by Larry Celona
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NYC Charter Revision Commission to recommend overhaul to primaries, target City Council's zoning power: sources
The Big Apple should overhaul its primary elections and pull critical land-use power from the City Council, the city's Charter Revision Commission is expected to recommend this week, sources said Tuesday. A report with the proposals from the independent panel convened by Mayor Eric Adams could drop as early as Wednesday, but any potential changes would still need to be approved by voters and would likely come too late for Hizzoner to take advantage of with his campaign for another four years a long shot. The 13-member commission, which started its work in December, is expected to offer two different possible changes to primary elections. One proposal would call on the city to hold a non-partisan primary in which all Democratic and Republican candidates would be on the same ballot and the top two candidates — regardless of party — would move on to the general election in November, according to sources familiar with the matter. It's unclear if independents would be allowed to vote in that primary or just Republicans and Democrats, under that proposal. However, the other recommendation would allow independent voters with no political party affiliation to vote in the city's primaries, sources said. A source familiar with the commission's discussions told The Post the city needs to get more voters involved in the electoral process. 'Twenty percent of registered voters don't belong to a political party. A lot of young voters are not registered with a political party,' the source said. 'Non-partisan or open primaries would give more voters a say in who gets elected mayor. Why close them out?' Adams, who dropped out of the Democratic primary earlier this month and is now running as an independent, has also been a vocal critic of the current primary system. The commission is also expected to target the City Council's zoning power and suggest lawmakers should no longer have the final say on development projects across the five boroughs. Instead, the mayoral administration should have the ability to override the Council's decision, the panel is expected to recommend, according to sources. Queens Councilman Robert Holden, a moderate Democrat, slammed the possibility of council members losing zoning control. 'Any effort to end member deference and override the will of the people by stripping their elected representative's voice on zoning is nothing more than a blatant power grab and a gift to developers,' he told The Post. 'The council must oppose this at all costs to preserve local control and protect our neighborhoods.' Former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, before her resignation, led the charge behind the scenes to dilute the council's land use sway after council members partly scaled back Adams' sprawling City of Yes housing plan, sources said. Any proposition would be left up to voters in November, should Adams decide to have them appear on the ballot. But with Hizzoner dealing with poor polling numbers due to his scandal-scarred term, it's unlikely he'll get another four years in office when he would have gotten to work with the possible changes. 'Too little, too late. The mayor and Charter Revision Commission can't even weaponize the charter properly,' a Democratic operative told The Post. 'If they were in charge of a funeral home, people would stop dying.' This is the second charter commission formed by Adams after the first panel approved five ballot proposals that went before voters last year.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Cuomo used damaging big-foot tactics, secrecy in dealing with NYC officials battling COVID: scathing study
Mayoral candidate and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo used heavy-handed tactics and secretiveness with Big Apple officials as the city struggled to contain the deadly COVID pandemic, a scathing new study says. Ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio also gets dinged in the report, which was issued by several city agencies that analyzed New York City's handling of the health crisis — and which specifically criticized the toxic relationship between him and Cuomo. 'Coordination challenges between Governor Cuomo's and Mayor de Blasio's administrations impeded City-State collaboration and contributed to duplicative work, inconsistent recommendations, and a loss of trust from New Yorkers,' says the COVID-19 Response Review Report covering January 2020 to July 2022 and obtained by The Post. The analysis was prepared by city agencies — notably the Health Department, Office of Emergency Management and Health+Hospitals — serving under Cuomo's now-mayoral foe, Hizzoner Eric Adams. Cuomo was accused in the report of big-footing City Hall and unnecessarily micro-managing the city's response. 'The Cuomo administration was reluctant to share data with the City and often refused to give advance warning of policy changes and new directives,' the study said. For example, in March 2020, the state restricted the city's access to its Health Emergency Response Data System (HERDS), which tracks hospital capacity across New York state, though the city historically had regular access. 'This limited the City's insight into hospital impacts and hindered its ability to support the NYC healthcare system,' the report said. Don Weiss, the former longtime 'surveillance director' for the city Health Department, said state Health Department officials he worked with for years told him they weren't supposed to share information. 'It was because of the pissing contest between Cuomo and de Blasio. It was ludicrous,' he said. A former state official said Cuomo's 'strong dislike' of de Blasio certainly was an issue but that officials in Albany and City Hall still found 'creative ways' to quietly work together despite the chill between the two power brokers. State officials were also 'slow to release critical pandemic-related guidance,' the report said — resulting in the city either releasing its own guidance or policy which would later be superseded by the state. The confusion 'significantly impacted healthcare operations early in the pandemic,' the report said. The disharmony spilled over into the crucial COVID-19 vaccine distribution period, the findings said. The city obtained its COVID-19 vaccine supply directly from the federal Centers for Disease Control, as it had other vaccines. But unlike previous vaccine campaigns, state approval was required for the city's vaccine allocation and the Big Apple's distribution plan each week, which 'created an additional bureaucratic layer,' the report said. A former state official who requested anonymity said Albany 'micro-managed' the city's vaccination program. The study also pointed to 'state and city guidance contradictions' as creating serious issues. De Blasio publicly announced plans to close schools and non-essential businesses because of a COVID-19 surge in parts of Brooklyn and Queens in October 2020. But Cuomo, who had the authority to impose such measures, rejected the mayor's plan and announced his own geographical areas and closures for the city to enforce, the report said. Bronx state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, chairman of the New York Senate's Health Committee, said Cuomo's 'big-footing everybody' was one of the reasons he voted against legislation giving the governor emergency powers without reporting back to the legislature. 'He's an abusive bully,' said Rivera, a Democrat along with Cuomo and Adams. Cuomo defended his oversight of the pandemic in the city as governor. 'Feeble attempts to rewrite history now — five years later — in the midst of a political campaign are as ineffective as they are disingenuous,' the former governor's spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, told The Post. 'New Yorkers know what happened because they were there with us every step of the way. 'Decisions were made and communicated in real time as the facts on the ground kept changing and lines of communication with local governments, including the city, were open to the largest extent practical.' The Cuomo rep said a strong state presence was needed to aid the city. 'What's forgotten here is that the entire reason a uniform hospital system was set up in the first place was because Elmhurst, a city-run hospital, nearly collapsed and there was no plan from the city to redirect patients,' Azzopardi said. 'The city needed a manager then, and it does now. This was a once-in-a century pandemic and one would think any objective retrospective would be devoid of politics or political campaigns.' But Gustavo also claimed Cuomo blocked vaccine clinics from opening his district to spite him, potentially triggering more deaths from COVID-19. The Cuomo campaign fired back with a list of five vaccination sites in the northwest Bronx in 2021. 'Gustavo is a liar. The facts are the facts,' Azzopardi said. 'He's trying to block and tackle for his [Democratic Socialists of America] buddies.'
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mayor Adams bizarrely invokes ‘Mein Kampf,' takes vicious dig at Dem rival in defiant message refusing to step down
Mayor Eric Adams bizarrely invoked 'Mein Kampf' at a Brooklyn church rally Monday afternoon as he defiantly blasted rivals calling for him to step down — as chaos swirled around the administration. Adams — who delivered the speech to a group of about 50 supporters at the Rehoboth Cathedral on MacDougal Street — also took a vicious dig at public advocate and potential successor Jumaane Williams, who would take over as mayor if the embattled, indicted Adams abdicated his office. 'I still don't know what he does, because it's hard to really serve the city when you wake up at noon,' Hizzoner said of Williams. 'If I step down, the public advocate becomes the mayor. So can you imagine turning the city over to him? That is the top reason not to step down. 'When you don't have a job, you can go all over the city throwing rocks,' he continued. 'I love this city too much to watch him become mayor.' The speech came at an event attended by clergy members who offered words of support for the mayor and even prayed around him. During his remarks, Adams also claimed he once heard Martin Luther King, Jr. recite a quote from Hitler's infamous Nazi manifesto, 'Mein Kampf,' that went something like, 'If you tell a lie long enough, loud enough, people will tend to believe it's true.' 'And that's what you're seeing right there, right now: A modern-day 'Mein Kampf,'' Adams told his supporters, appearing to imply he was being persecuted by liars. The apocryphal quote — which has many variations — is not from the book and is most often attributed to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, not Hitler. Still, Adams launched into a lengthy diatribe in which he defended his mayoral record against attacks on his handling of the city's migrant crisis, among other things. 'I slept in a homeless shelter with my migrant, asylum-seeker brothers and sisters and talked with them on the ground,' Hizzoner said. 'Now they have a loud voice yelling at me — where were you when I was going to Washington, DC, fighting for the people of the city?' He also appeared frustrated with his predicament, which includes a litany of legal troubles and political potholes. 'When we talk about taking homeless off our streets so we won't have encampments, they protested me,' he said. 'When we talk about taking guns off our streets by having our gun units in place, they protested me. When we talk about changing and building new small businesses, they protested me. 'When we talk about putting police officers on a train to make our streets safe, they protested me,' he went on. 'When we talked about mental health issues and crises to prevent people from living in that condition, they protested me. 'All they know how to do is protest.' Most of Adams' problems stem from his legal issues, which began when the 64-year-old mayor pleaded not guilty to charges that he fast-tracked the opening of the Turkish Consulate in Manhattan in exchange for $123,000 worth of bribes — and sought illegal donations from Turks who poured tens of thousands of dollars in cash into his 2021 campaign. But the Trump administration — which Adams has cozied up to — and its Justice Department has ordered Manhattan federal prosecutors to drop the historic corruption case because the feds now claim it was politically motivated. Manhattan's top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, quit in protest over the Justice Department's decree, and wrote in a scathing resignation letter that nixing the charges amounted to a 'quid pro quo' meant to force the now-indebted mayor to comply with Trump's hardline immigration policy. But even if the legal case against him dissolves, his political troubles endure. At least 30 local Democratic leaders have already called on Adams to abandon his post, including high-ranking pols in the New York State Senate. But Adams is stubbornly clinging to his office, and told a Queens congregation on Sunday that he's on a mission from God and isn't going anywhere. But several of his deputies are — sources told The Post that deputy mayors Maria Torres Springer, Meera Joshi, Anne Williams Isom and Chauncey Parker stepped down in the wake of the Justice Department's controversial, case-tossing move. The administration scrambled over the weekend to convince the four to stay quiet about — or at least delay — their plans to punch out. The deputies resigned Monday. The same day, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams threw her weight behind the resignation drive, saying it's 'clear that Mayor Adams has now lost the confidence and trust of his own staff, his colleagues in government, and New Yorkers.' 'He now must prioritize New York City and New Yorkers, step aside and resign,' she said. 'This administration no longer has the ability to effectively govern with Eric Adams as mayor … there is too much at stake for our city and New Yorkers to allow this to continue. ' 'We have endured enough scandal, selfishness and embarrassment, all of which distract from the leadership that New Yorkers deserve,' she continued. 'This is the opposite of public service.'
