Elections

If you care about social justice, you have to care about zoning.Housing segregation by race and class is a fountainhead of inequality in America, yet for generations, politicians have been terrified to address the issue. That is why it is so significant that President Biden has proposed, as part of his American Jobs Act, a $5 billion race-to-the-top competitive grants program to spur jurisdictions to “eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies.”Mr. Biden would reward localities that voluntarily agree to jettison “minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements and prohibitions on multifamily housing.” The Biden administration is off to an important start, but over the course of his term, Mr. Biden should add sticks to the carrots he has already proposed.Although zoning may seem like a technical, bureaucratic and decidedly local question, in reality the issue relates directly to three grand themes that Joe Biden ran on in the 2020 campaign: racial justice, respect for working-class people and national unity. Perhaps no single step would do more to advance those goals than tearing down the government-sponsored walls that keep Americans of different races and classes from living in the same communities, sharing the same public schools and getting a chance to know one another across racial, economic and political lines.Economically discriminatory zoning policies — which say that you are not welcome in a community unless you can afford a single-family home, sometimes on a large plot of land — are not part of a distant, disgraceful past. In most American cities, zoning laws prohibit the construction of relatively affordable homes — duplexes, triplexes, quads and larger multifamily units — on three-quarters of residential land.In the 2020 race, Mr. Biden said he was running to “restore the soul of our nation,” which had been damaged by President Donald Trump’s embrace of racism. Removing exclusionary barriers that keep millions of Black and Hispanic people out of safe neighborhoods with strong schools is central to the goal of advancing racial justice. Over the past several decades, as the sociologist Orlando Patterson has noted, Black people have been integrated into the nation’s political life and the military, “but the civil-rights movement failed to integrate Black Americans into the private domain of American life.”Single-family exclusive zoning, which was adopted by communities shortly after the Supreme Court struck down explicit racial zoning in 1917, is what activists call the “new redlining.” Racial discrimination has created an enormous wealth gap between white and Black people, and single-family-only zoning perpetuates that inequality.While exclusionary zoning laws are especially harmful to Black people, the discrimination is more broadly rooted in class snobbery — a second problem Mr. Biden highlighted in his campaign. As a proud product of Scranton, Pa., Mr. Biden said he would value the dignity of working people and not look down on anyone. The elitism Mr. Biden promised to reject helps explain why in virtually all-white communities like La Crosse, Wis., efforts to remedy economic segregation have received strong pushback from upper-income whites, and why middle-class Black communities have sometimes shown fierce resistance to low-income housing.If race were the only factor driving exclusionary zoning, one would expect to see such policies most extensively promoted in communities where racial intolerance is highest, but in fact the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities, where racial views are more progressive. As Harvard’s Michael Sandel has noted, social psychologists have found that highly-educated elites “may denounce racism and sexism but are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.” Class discrimination helps explain why, despite a 25 percent decline in Black-white residential segregation since 1970, income segregation has more than doubled.By addressing a problem common to America’s multiracial working class, reducing exclusionary barriers could also help promote Mr. Biden’s third big goal: national unity. Today, no two groups are more politically divided from each other than working-class whites and working-class people of color. For centuries, going back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, right-wing politicians have successfully pitted these two groups against each other, but every once in a while, America breaks free of this grip, and lower-income and working-class people of all races come together and engage in what the Rev. William Barber II calls “fusion politics.”It happened in 1968, when Mr. Biden’s hero Robert Kennedy brought together working-class Black, Latino and white constituencies in a presidential campaign that championed a liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism. It happened again in 1997 and 2009 in Texas, when Republican legislators representing white working-class voters and Democrats representing Black and Hispanic constituencies came together to support (and then to defend) the Texas top 10 percent plan to admit the strongest students in every high school to the University of Texas at Austin, despite the opposition of legislators representing wealthy white suburban districts that had dominated admissions for decades. And a similar coalition appears to be coming together in California, over the issue of exclusionary zoning. State Senator Scott Wiener, who has been trying to legalize multifamily living spaces, told me that Republican and Democratic legislators representing working-class communities have supported reform, while the opponents have one thing in common: They represent wealthier constituents who “wanted to keep certain people out of their community.” More

The endorsement comes at a critical time for the city comptroller, who has struggled to gain traction in the race.New York City’s influential teachers’ union endorsed the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, in the race for mayor on Monday, providing a much-needed boost to a campaign that has struggled to gain momentum thus far, despite Mr. Stringer’s deep experience in city politics.Mr. Stringer is a decades-long ally of the United Federation of Teachers and was long considered the front-runner for its support. With nine weeks before the June 22 primary, the endorsement comes at a critical time: In the limited public polling available, Mr. Stringer consistently trails the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang and the Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams.In recent weeks, some labor leaders, political operatives and his own allies had privately worried about Mr. Stringer’s viability in the race, as the more moderate Mr. Yang has threatened his Manhattan base, and left-wing activists and leaders — expected to be solidly in Mr. Stringer’s corner — have not yet coalesced around a single candidate.Mr. Stringer is hoping to assemble a broad coalition that includes both traditional sources of Democratic power — in particular, union support — as well as backing from the left-wing activist slice of the party that has been influential in several recent elections across the city. Last week, in an effort to build a unified progressive front, the Working Families Party endorsed Mr. Stringer as the party’s first choice, followed by Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, and Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio.Mr. Stringer referenced his position in the race during a news conference to announce the endorsement on Monday. “This race is getting started,” he said. “I’ve been known to close strong, this union closes strong, and I promise you the race of your lifetime.”The U.F.T.’s endorsement is coveted, because of the union’s political influence and its ability to mobilize its roughly 200,000 members. Still, its members are split into several political caucuses and may not vote as a bloc, and the union does not have the same organizational prowess as other large city unions.Over the last year, the teachers’ union was at odds with elements of the city’s push to reopen schools in the nation’s largest school system during the pandemic, placing the U.F.T. under an unusual level of scrutiny. Some parents who were not politically active before the reopening debate became deeply frustrated by the pace of reopening and critical of the union.It is not at all clear whether there are enough parents who have turned against the union to actually make a difference in the upcoming election; the vast majority of city parents have kept their children learning from home this year, and most city parents do not play close attention to union politics.The city has now reopened all grades for in-person learning, with many younger students back full-time, though some high school students who have returned to classrooms are still learning online from inside their school buildings.Mr. Stringer, who is himself a public school parent, was not a vocal supporter of Mr. de Blasio’s push to bring students back into classrooms last fall and was sometimes sharply critical of the mayor’s effort. Mr. Stringer and his wife decided to send one of their sons back into classrooms last fall and keep their other son learning remotely.As comptroller, Mr. Stringer has also criticized the mayor’s handling of the city’s homeless student crisis, and appeared to briefly jeopardize the rollout of the successful universal prekindergarten program after he raised alarms about the contracting process for some of those programs.Mr. Stringer’s promise to put two teachers in every elementary school classroom as mayor is attractive to the union, since it would boost its membership. But the idea has also appealed to education experts who have said adding more teachers could make traditional public schools more attractive to parents who might have considered gifted and talented programs or private schools, which tend to have large teaching staffs.Mr. Stringer is also one of a small group of mayoral hopefuls who have committed to eliminating the high-stakes exam that dictates entry into the city’s top high schools, including Stuyvesant High School. Like many of his rivals, he is skeptical about charter schools, a position that is all but a prerequisite for the U.F.T.’s backing.Mr. Stringer’s campaign is likely to use the endorsement as fresh evidence that his coalition-building strategy remains viable. Perhaps more than any other candidate in the race, Mr. Stringer’s candidacy — already supported by a long list of prominent New Yorkers — will test whether endorsements move voters in an unpredictable election unfolding amid a pandemic.The U.F.T.’s choice of Mr. Stringer also carries enormous stakes for the union.Unlike other powerful city unions, the teachers union has failed to endorse a winning candidate since 1989, when it backed the former mayor David N. Dinkins. That has prompted concern among U.F.T. officials that the union’s clout in electoral politics could shrink if it again bets on the wrong candidate. The former mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who clashed with the U.F.T. throughout his tenure, went so far as to call the union’s endorsement “the kiss of death” during the 2013 race to replace him.“I don’t know what goes through voters’ minds, but maybe they understand if the U.F.T. wants it, it ain’t good and you don’t want that person,” Mr. Bloomberg said at the time.The outcome of the race could offer major clues about how much weight the U.F.T.’s endorsement — or the backing of any municipal union — still matters in local politics.With the U.F.T. endorsement settled, most major municipal unions have made their choices — with the notable exception of the union representing transit workers. Many prominent unions have backed Mr. Adams, but Ms. Wiley scored a major victory in February when she won the endorsement of Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, the city’s largest union.In some years, labor unions have largely flocked to a particular candidate. Mr. Stringer, for example, had overwhelming support from labor groups in his 2013 race for comptroller, when he defeated the former governor, Eliot Spitzer. But this year, the labor endorsements are diffuse.One of the biggest open questions in the mayoral race is whether there will be any union-affiliated independent expenditure effort to stop Mr. Yang — but it is not yet clear which organizations, if any, would have both the resources and the inclination to mount one.Mr. Stringer has won the backing of other education unions, including the union representing school principals and administrators, and the union representing teachers and staff at the City University of New York. Mr. Yang has not earned a major union endorsement yet, but is leading in all publicly available polling.The teachers’ union membership includes about 75,000 active classroom teachers — as well as roughly 64,000 retirees, many of whom no longer live in New York. About 90 percent of the U.F.T.’s delegate assembly — a group of about 3,400 elected representatives, including educators from each school in the city — voted to back Mr. Stringer on Monday afternoon.The union has, for decades, played a major and occasionally decisive role in key education decisions, and that has been particularly true over the last year.The U.F.T. made a number of safety demands last summer, and tensions escalated to the point that the union president, Michael Mulgrew, suggested that teachers would strike if those safety demands were not met. Public health experts supported many of those demands, such as improved ventilation, but some families were angered by the union’s insistence that all rules remain in place even as teachers were vaccinated.Advisers for Mr. Yang are hoping to attract at least some of those disaffected families.During a recent interview on Fox Business, Bradley Tusk, the powerful political strategist and lobbyist who is, with his team, managing Mr. Yang’s campaign, said his candidate “takes positions that are a little at odds with the Democratic orthodoxy on things like education.“The teachers’ unions [have] blocked the ability for students to come back into the schools of New York City,” he added.Though Mr. Yang accused the union of delaying school reopening in an interview with Politico, he walked back his comments during a recent U.F.T. forum held to determine the endorsement. Mr. Yang said he and Mr. Mulgrew had agreed that the mayor, not the union, was primarily to blame for any stumbles on reopening. City Hall officials say that last summer, the union represented a significant obstacle to reopening.Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting. More

Apple said it had reached an agreement with Parler, the rightwing social media app, that could lead to its reinstatement in the company’s app store. Apple kicked out Parler in January over ties to the deadly 6 January siege on the US Capitol.In a letter to two Republican lawmakers in Congress, Apple said it has been in “substantial conversations” with Parler over how the company plans to moderate content on its network. Before its removal from the App Store, Parler was a hotbed of hate speech, Nazi imagery, calls for violence (including violence against specific people) and conspiracy theories.Apple declined to comment beyond the letter, which didn’t provide details on how Parler plans to moderate such content. In the letter, Apple said Parler’s proposed changes would lead to approval of the app.Parler did not immediately respond to a message for comment. As of midday Monday, Parler was not yet available in the App Store and Apple did not give a timeline for when it would be reinstated. According to Apple’s letter, Parler proposed changes to its app and how it moderates content. Apple said the updated app incorporating those changes should be available as soon as Parler releases it.Google also banned Parler from its Google Play store in January, but Parler remains available for Android phones through third-party app stores. Apple’s closed app system means apps are only available through Apple’s own App Store. On Monday, Google reiterated its January statement that “Parler is welcome back in the Play store once it submits an app that complies with our policies”.So far, this has not happened.Parler remains banned from Amazon Web Services. Amazon said in January that Parler was unable to moderate a rise in violent content before, during and after the insurrection. Parler asked a federal judge in Seattle to force Amazon to reinstate it on the web. That effort failed, and the companies are still fighting in court.The Republican political donor Rebekah Mercer has confirmed she helped bankroll Parler and has emerged in recent months as the network’s shadow executive after its founder John Matze was ousted as CEO in February. More

A federal judge has ordered two leaders of the far-right Proud Boys group to be detained in jail pending trial for their involvement in the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC.Both were indicted in one of many Proud Boys conspiracy cases to stem from the investigation into the assault on the building that followed a pro-Donald Trump rally.Ethan Nordean of Washington state and Joseph Biggs of Florida, along with two other Proud Boys regional leaders, are charged with conspiring to stop the certification of the 2020 election – and with organizing and leading dozens of Proud Boys to the Capitol.Many of those followers were among the first to breach the building and cause damages in scenes of violence that shocked the world and led to five deaths.“The defendants stand charged with seeking to steal one of the crown jewels of our country, in a sense, by interfering with the peaceful transfer of power,” the US district judge Timothy Kelly said as he explained his decision on Monday. “It’s no exaggeration to say the rule of law … in the end, the existence of our constitutional republic is threatened by it.”The judge’s decision to detain the pair is a reversal of an earlier notion to release them after the Department of Justice argued for pre-trial detention based on new accusations in an updated indictment filed by prosecutors in March.The judge cited profanity-laced social media posts and encrypted messages sent by the defendants, in which Biggs said it was time for “war” if Democrats “steal” the election and Nordean called for militia groups to contact him.Though the evidence does not point to the defendants using direct physical violence against others on the day, Kelly said, their communications and movements before, during and after the riot showed they played a part in planning and leading the efforts that day, celebrated the events of the day and have not expressed remorse.Nordean will be detained in Seattle as opposed to DC after the judge granted his defense attorney’s request to cease the transfer, arguing: “Capitol defendants have been violently assaulted in DC jail.”Another alleged co-conspirator, Charles Donohoe, is set for his own detention hearing later on Monday afternoon. More

Facebook on Monday said it planned to limit posts that contain misinformation and hate speech related to the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with the murder of George Floyd, to keep them from spilling over into real-world harm.As closing arguments began in the trial and Minneapolis braced for a verdict, Facebook said it would identify and remove posts on the social network that urged people to bring arms to the city. It also said it would protect members of Mr. Floyd’s family from harassment and take down content that praised, celebrated or mocked his death.“We know this trial has been painful for many people,” Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of content policy, wrote in a blog post. “We want to strike the right balance between allowing people to speak about the trial and what the verdict means, while still doing our part to protect everyone’s safety.”Facebook, which has long positioned itself as a site for free speech, has become increasingly proactive in policing content that might lead to real-world violence. The Silicon Valley company has been under fire for years over the way it has handled sensitive news events. That includes last year’s presidential election, when online misinformation about voter fraud galvanized supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. Believing the election to have been stolen from Mr. Trump, some supporters stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6.Leading up to the election, Facebook took steps to fight misinformation, foreign interference and voter suppression. The company displayed warnings on more than 150 million posts with election misinformation, removed more than 120,000 posts for violating its voter interference policies and took down 30 networks that posted false messages about the election.But critics said Facebook and other social media platforms did not do enough. After the storming of the Capitol, the social network stopped Mr. Trump from being able to post on the site. The company’s independent oversight board is now debating whether the former president will be allowed back on Facebook and has said it plans to issue its decision “in the coming weeks,” without giving a definite date.The death of Mr. Floyd, who was Black, led to a wave of Black Lives Matter protests across the nation last year. Mr. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who is white, faces charges of manslaughter, second-degree murder and third-degree murder for Mr. Floyd’s death. The trial began in late March. Mr. Chauvin did not testify.Facebook said on Monday that it had determined that Minneapolis was, at least temporarily, “a high-risk location.” It said it would remove pages, groups, events and Instagram accounts that violated its violence and incitement policy; take down attacks against Mr. Chauvin and Mr. Floyd; and label misinformation and graphic content as sensitive.The company did not have any further comment.“As the trial comes to a close, we will continue doing our part to help people safely connect and share what they are experiencing,” Ms. Bickert said in the blog post. More

The Democratic representative Maxine Waters has come under criticism from the Republican house minority leader, after she expressed support for protesters against police brutality at a rally on Saturday in Brooklyn Center, the Minneapolis suburb where Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by police last week.
Waters said she would ‘continue to fight in every way that I can for justice’, prompting the Republican minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to accuse Waters of ‘inciting violence in Minneapolis’

Republicans demand action against Maxine Waters after Minneapolis remarks More

The ballot order for the June 22 New York mayoral primary was decided by lottery, not alphabetical order, but Andrew Yang will still appear last.Much of the focus in the New York City mayoral race has been given to the eight best-known Democratic candidates, who lead in fund-raising and in early polling. But on the June 22 primary ballot, none of the eight will appear at the top; that honor will go to a more obscure candidate.For Republican voters, the ballot will be far less involved: There will only be two candidates, after a third dropped out of the race last week.The contest, after months of being largely conducted virtually through online forums and fund-raisers, has shifted to a more normal pace, with candidates hitting the campaign trail in earnest last week. But they can’t put away their laptops just yet — they would risk missing the next big televised debate in May.Here’s what you need to know about the race:12 Democrats will appear on the ballot. Who is first?In a crowded field, being at the top of the ballot could arguably be an advantage, and with a dozen Democrats in the mayor’s race, it is almost certainly better to be first than last.That theory may be tested this year: Aaron Foldenauer, one of the least-known Democrats running for mayor, won top billing in the Board of Elections lottery last week.A lawyer who ran unsuccessfully for City Council in Lower Manhattan in 2017, Mr. Foldenauer celebrated the news, tweaking Andrew Yang, who got the last spot.“I’m first on the ballot for mayor, Andrew Yang, and I had to look quite far down the list to find your name!” he said on Twitter.Mr. Yang, considered the current front-runner in the race, responded to his bad fortune with a smiley face: “This feels like grade school where I was always last alphabetically.”Here is the full lineup for Democrats, from top to bottom: Mr. Foldenauer; Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive; Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller; Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive; Maya Wiley, the former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio; Paperboy Prince, a rapper; Art Chang, a former executive at JPMorgan Chase; Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner; Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president; Isaac Wright Jr., a lawyer who was wrongfully convicted on drug charges; Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary; and Mr. Yang.On the Republican side, there are just two names: Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, who is listed first, and Fernando Mateo, a restaurant operator who has led or founded Hispanics Across America, the state Federation of Taxi Drivers and United Bodegas of America.The only female Republican candidate exits the race.Sara Tirschwell dropped out of the Republican mayoral race after failing to get a sufficient number of petition signatures.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesSara Tirschwell, a former Wall Street executive and the only female candidate in the Republican field, ended her campaign last week after failing to gather enough signatures to make the ballot.“The common wisdom is that the Democratic primary is the de facto election, and that is going to turn out to be true without me in the race,” she said in an interview. “I truly believe that I was the only chance the Republican Party had in the general election.”She said that Mr. Yang, Mr. Adams or Ms. Wiley would be likely to win the Democratic primary and become the next mayor. And she offered to put her “financial acumen” to use for any of them.“I would serve in anybody’s administration — Republican or Democrat — except for Fernando Mateo,” she said, blaming one of Mr. Mateo’s allies for challenging her petitions during a pandemic.Her biggest lesson from the campaign? New Yorkers, she said, want city government to “get back to the basics — picking up the trash and filling potholes.”Ms. Tirschwell said she planned to vote for Mr. Sliwa, who had defended her and had said Mr. Mateo “should call off his henchmen and stop intimidating” her.The first major debate will not be in person.Maya Wiley called for three debates to be held in person.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesAs the mayor’s race grows increasingly contentious, a number of the campaigns found agreement around one idea last week: A series of official debates should be held in person.“This election will decide what kind of city we want to be and doing the debates on just another Zoom is not going to cut it,” Ms. Wiley wrote on Twitter as she called for the three primary debates affiliated with the city’s Campaign Finance Board to be held in person. “When I am mayor, I won’t be in a box on a screen, I will be out with New Yorkers and our debates should be the same.”Nearly instantly, many of the leading candidates and campaigns agreed. Many hope to engage with each other directly — and in person — in the homestretch of the race and see the upcoming debates as one of the few opportunities for breakout moments in the contest.But as of now, the first debate, scheduled for next month, is not expected to be held in person, a spokesman for the Campaign Finance Board said.“With the first debate on May 13 less than a month away, and more than 2,000 Covid-19 cases reported daily in New York City, an in-person debate is not possible at this time,” said Matt Sollars, a spokesman for the board.He added: “The board and our co-sponsors share the view that the best debates are in-person debates” and left that possibility open for future debates.“We have a history of holding debates in front of large, live audiences,” he said. “We are confident that the 2021 mayoral debates will match or exceed the quality of those events and allow city voters to learn about and compare the candidates.”Will Stringer’s big endorsement translate into votes?The Working Families Party endorsed Scott Stringer as its first choice.Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesLeft-wing activists and leaders are growing increasingly worried as they contemplate the staying power of Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate who embraces some progressive positions but is undoubtedly one of the more moderate contenders in the mayoral field.One major open question, though, is whether left-wing voters can coalesce around a candidate or slate of candidates to stop Mr. Yang’s momentum.The Working Families Party last week moved toward trying to facilitate a unified progressive front by issuing a ranked-choice endorsement: Mr. Stringer was endorsed as the party’s first choice, followed by Ms. Morales, the most left-wing candidate in the race, and Ms. Wiley.After months of struggling to break through the crowded mayoral field — and often being drowned out by Mr. Yang — Mr. Stringer received a dose of energy from the endorsement. But he already had the backing of many prominent progressives. His task is to turn those endorsements into enthusiasm on the ground.Some Democrats hope that if left-wing voters list the three Working Families-backed candidates first on their ballot, in any order, then one could come out on top under ranked-choice voting.That’s what Chas Stewart, a 30-year-old teacher, plans to do. He favors Ms. Morales first, then Mr. Stringer and Ms. Wiley.“It appears that her politics align most closely with mine,” he said of Ms. Morales, “especially regarding reining in the N.Y.P.D., and what else is the point of ranked-choice voting if I can’t rank that person No. 1?”Viral Yang video creates opening for opponentsMs. Wiley called Andrew Yang’s behavior “unacceptable.” Mr. Stringer released a statement from several women calling Mr. Yang’s behavior “disqualifying for someone who is seeking to be mayor of New York.”What led to their denunciations?In an encounter outside a comedy club captured on video and then broadcast on Twitter and TikTok, a comic, Lawrence Reese, asked Mr. Yang if a man could keep his Timberland boots on while having sex with women, using a coarse word for sex and a derogatory word for women.Mr. Yang patted Mr. Reese’s shoulder and suggested that “if your partner is cool with it,” that was fine. Then Mr. Reese asked if Mr. Yang choked women, again using the derogatory word for women. Mr. Yang laughed — too uproariously, his critics say — indicated that the conversation was over and walked away.Mr. Yang’s reaction — that laugh — created an immediate opening for his opponents, who have been eager to highlight his every gaffe as they look for ways to gain traction in the race.Ms. Wiley held a news conference condemning his behavior that featured the local president of the National Organization for Women, and Mr. Stringer’s allies tied Mr. Yang’s response to the allegations of “bro” culture that trailed his presidential campaign.Mr. Reese, who said he has no horse in this year’s mayoral race, suggested that Mr. Yang’s critics were just playing politics.“His opponents are going to go against him in any way they can,” he said.The 25-year-old comedian said he was merely performing one of his regular bits, where he asks people on the street random questions about their lives. In his own remarks, Mr. Yang suggested that his laugh expressed how shocked he was, and that he shut the discussion down as quickly as he could. He noted that his wife was the victim of sexual abuse.But that was not enough for some critics.Mr. Yang “should have been straight-faced and unequivocal in his reproach,” Charlotte Bennett, who has accused Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of sexual harassment, wrote in an op-ed on Saturday. “Failing that, even a simple ‘That’s not funny’ would have sufficed.” More

Or the mayor who ran for president.Bret Stephens: Gail, you’re a New Yorker and I’m now a former New Yorker, albeit one who is often in town. How are you feeling about the city these days? And do you have any preferences in the race to succeed Bill de Blasio?Gail Collins: Bret, my city (and yours — if you work here you at least have rooting rights) tends to switch back and forth between regular party Democrats and feisty independents. De Blasio, a deep, dull Democrat, was preceded by Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg, who were very, very different versions of the political outsider.Bret: Some might even call them Republicans. Go on …Gail: And before that David Dinkins, who was the city’s first Black mayor. But also a clubhouse politician.If it’s time for a new outsider, it does sort of seem that Andrew Yang ought to fit the bill. Yet he’s run a rather strange campaign — lots of interesting ideas but often the kind you hear from a guy who’s on a six-month internship at City Hall before being posted someplace else.Bret: I’m generally sympathetic to Yang because — math! New York got a bailout this year from President Biden’s Covid relief bill, but the city is still going to need a mayor who can balance its books and create a business-friendly climate, especially if the financial industry deserts it and the M.T.A. continues to lose riders and revenue. I’m less thrilled about Yang’s $2,000 a year cash-relief plan for New York’s poorest, but post-pandemic I can at least see the case for it.Also, who else has been supported by Anthony Scaramucci and Whoopi Goldberg?Gail: OK, that’s definitely a dynamic duo. Meanwhile, I hear Rudy Giuliani’s son, Andrew, is thinking about running for governor. You’ll be voting in that race — how would you rate him versus Andrew Cuomo?Bret: Hemlock or cyanide? Devoured by a saltwater crocodile versus bitten by a venomous sea snake? A year of solitary confinement in a supermax prison or an all-expenses paid trip to Cancún in the company of Ted Cruz? I’m trying to think of equivalently horrible alternatives.Gail: Wow, that was quite a mountain of metaphors.Bret: OK, I confess I don’t know a thing about Rudy’s son. And I try to subscribe to the words from Ezekiel: “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.” So I’ll, um, keep an open mind.Gail: Well, Andrew G. was introduced to the New York public on the day his father was sworn in as mayor. The little kid took over the ceremony, blowing kisses to the cameras while Rudy was trying to deliver his serious speech.Bret: Now I remember …Gail: Dad held up pretty well. I remember, at the time, saying that Rudy obviously had the right temperament for politics, since he could maintain such a show of good humor while losing the crowd’s attention to a cavorting child. So much for my talents at political analysis.Bret: Your talents were just fine. Rudy proved to be a mostly terrific mayor who restored the city to glory and led us through 9/11. However, sometime later, on a fishing trip in the Catskills, he was captured by a race of dyspeptic, prank-playing space aliens who removed his brain and replaced it with Roy Cohn’s, which they had been keeping in a jar of formaldehyde.That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.Gail: Not sure the real Rudy of 9/11 lived up to the later legend. But I do like that idea about Roy Cohn’s brain.Anyhow, I think Andrew’s high jinks back at the 1994 inauguration rank, so far, as the political peak of his life. More recently, during the Trump era, he did a great deal of golfing with the president. It was his job, more or less.Bret: Not what I would consider a qualification for high office. I definitely would like to see a sane Republican as governor. One-party rule is never a good thing, and a liberal state like New York could use a socially moderate, business-friendly chief executive like Maryland’s Larry Hogan or Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker.Gail: And New York has had some. But except for Nelson Rockefeller our gubernatorial Republicans weren’t very exciting. Have we ever discussed the George Pataki years? No? At least with Andrew G. we’d have a Republican who knows how to putt …Bret: I’ll take the Pataki years over the Spitzer-Paterson-Cuomo years!Gail: Because …Bret: Because Pataki-Not-Wacky? Because he never did what Cuomo is doing now, which is jacking up state taxes on the rich to some of the highest rates in the country. That’s just going to accelerate the exodus of people to income-tax free states like Florida. The large homeless population and rise in shootings isn’t exactly helping to keep people in New York, either.Speaking of shootings, we have another nightmare in Indianapolis.Gail: It breaks my heart because it feels so hopeless. We have a president who’s a champion of sane gun regulation, but lately there’s been a mass killing every week. Meanwhile, the House has passed a very, very, very modest reform to the background check system, which is in danger of dying in the Senate.And remember the El Paso massacre? Apparently the Texas House doesn’t, since it just voted to eliminate the requirement that people get permits to carry handguns.Why can’t we ever manage to get this dragon under control?Bret: You know, after 9/11 the country collectively accepted that we needed far tougher security at airports and on airplanes. And most of us, conservatives included, were OK with all of it — standing in lines; taking off our shoes; removing electronic devices from our bags; throwing away large bottles; all the rest of it — because we understood there was a national emergency and a common-sense need to improve security.Gail: While retaining the right to sigh deeply when those lines stretched on forever …The FedEx facility in Indianapolis where a former employee killed eight people last Thursday night.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesBret: And aside from the ordinary griping, few Americans really considered it an infringement on our basic constitutional rights because we understood that personal safety is also a civil right and that a duty of government is to “insure domestic tranquillity.”But we’ve had more than 45 mass shootings in the United States just since the Atlanta killings last month. Many of which we haven’t even heard of because there were more injuries than deaths.Gail: True, a mass wounding doesn’t get as much attention as a road closing.Bret: And yet we won’t even undertake the kind of basic precautions that we accept as normal and logical when it comes to boarding airplanes. The killer in Indianapolis had his shotgun taken away from him last year because of mental-health concerns, but he was still able to buy two rifles after that.I wish I could convince my fellow conservatives of this. But noooooo. It’s like trying to talk someone out of an article of religious faith that seems preposterous to those outside the faith but fundamental to those within it. I’d offer an example of what I have in mind but I’d hate to insult anyone who believes in Immaculate Conception.Gail: Speaking as the product of 14 years of Catholic education, I’m gonna bet you don’t know that Immaculate Conception refers to the belief that Mary was born free of original sin.Bret: I stand chastened and corrected. To make amends, I hasten to note that Yiddish has at least 20 different words to describe useless Jewish men, of which I’m clearly a yutz, a putz, a schmendrick, a schlemiel, a schlimazel, or something else beginning with “sch.”Gail: Hey, never heard of a schmendrick before. I believe this conversation is going to provide one great step forward in cultural understanding.Bret: Or at least some mutual kvetching.Gail: Which I hope we can continue soon over drinks or dinner. Do you feel as if we’re actually being sprung from pandemic purgatory?Bret: It may be my congenital contrarianism, Gail, but after spending the better part of the pandemic feeling optimistic about the future, I’ve now sunk into deep fatalism. Cases are edging up again, driven by the new virus variants, and the steep decline in Covid deaths since January also seems to have bottomed out at an average rate of around 700 a day, which is just horrific.Gail: Yeah, never going to accept the idea that 700 daily fatalities is good news.Bret: The idea that we may all need boosters in six months or a year doesn’t faze me, and neither do the (very rare) instances of people reacting badly to the vaccines. But it also likely means continued social distancing, continued working from home, continued masking, continued nonsocializing, continued all-purpose nervousness.Gail: Have you noticed that the most faithful mask wearers seem to be blue staters? I guess accessorizing only counts in some places when it involves carrying weapons.Bret: I observe that Covid deaths in Texas have fallen by about 70 percent since the state dropped its mask mandate in early March. But I don’t draw any conclusions, since I really don’t know what to think anymore. Our colleague David Brooks wrote the other week that living through the last year has felt like one long Groundhog Day. Except that, unlike Bill Murray’s character, I’ve mostly been getting worse at everything.Gail: Maybe we’ve gotten better at personal interaction that doesn’t actually involve being face to face. It’s been even more fun conversing with you than prepandemic.Bret: Still miss the old kind of interaction. I’m getting my second shot in two weeks. Let’s get together for cocktails once I’m fully vaccinated — and not on Zoom.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. 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