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      Former Cuomo aide says New York governor kissed her without consent

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      A former member of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration who previously accused him of sexual harassment offered new details on Wednesday, saying he once kissed her on the lips without consent after a private meeting.Lindsey Boylan said that during her more than three years working as an economic adviser in the administration, Cuomo “would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs”, compared her to one of his rumored ex-girlfriends and once joked they should play strip poker.Boylan, a Democrat running for Manhattan borough president, wrote in a post on the website Medium that the kiss happened after she gave Cuomo a one-on-one briefing on economic and infrastructure projects in his New York City office. “As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking,” she said.“The idea that someone might think I held my high-ranking position because of the Governor’s ‘crush’ on me was more demeaning than the kiss itself.” She confirmed that she had posted the blog, but did not respond to a request for further comment.Boylan, a former deputy secretary for economic development and special adviser to the governor, tweeted in December that Cuomo sexually harassed her, but she didn’t reveal details and declined interview requests.At the time, Cuomo denied that he did anything inappropriate. “Look, I fought for and I believe a woman has the right to come forward and express her opinion and express issues and concerns that she has,” Cuomo told reporters. “But it’s just not true.”Cuomo’s spokesperson, Caitlin Girouard, said on Wednesday that all of Boylan’s “claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false”.Boylan said she initially spoke up about her experiences because of reports Cuomo was being considered as Joe Biden’s pick for attorney general. She decided to elaborate, she wrote, because she hoped it would empower other women to come forward. The more detailed account of her allegations against Cuomo comes amid mounting criticism about the work culture around the three-term governor and how he wields his power.The legislature’s two top leaders criticized Cuomo’s conduct on Wednesday as calls grew for an investigation into Cuomo’s workplace conduct.“I have read the reports,” the assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, said. “These are serious allegations. Harassment in the workplace of any kind should not be tolerated.”The state senate leader, Andrea Stewart Cousins, a Democrat, who is pushing to increase legislative oversight over Cuomo’s emergency powers, said Boylan’s account disturbed her.“This is deeply disturbing,” Stewart Cousins said. “Clearly, there is no place for this type of behavior in the workplace or anywhere else.” More

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      Andrew Cuomo and the Lincoln Project were media-created debacles. What now? | David Sirota and Andrew Perez

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      In the chaos of 2020, the national press corps used all of its magical myth-making and storytelling powers to conjure two towering political heroes for a country in crisis. From the maw of the media machine, the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, and the Lincoln Project emerged as our alleged sentinels bravely battling a deadly pandemic and an authoritarian president – and supposedly leading us with principles and morality into a new era of accountability and integrity.For millions of credulous liberals already bingeing on West Wing reruns, the twin tales conjured some more of that good old-fashioned hope-and-change nostalgia, and seemed to serve as a cheeky reminder that not all heroes wear capes. But in the last week, the facade has collapsed, revealing that those bravely trying to sound the alarm for months were right all along – and those benefiting from the media-driven fraud were attempting to evade accountability and self-servingly cover up a grotesquerie of mismanagement, corruption and abuse.Will the wrongdoers face any consequences or accountability? Or will they be treated like the purveyors of previous frauds, like the Iraq war and the financial crisis, and continue to be platformed and valorized by the press corps? And will our media overlords engage in any self-reflection about the monsters they manufactured?The details of the two tales vary, but the narrative arcs are eerily similar. That they crescendoed in the same single news cycle makes their cautionary tales all the more poignant.In Cuomo’s case, the Democratic governor’s aides were caught on tape effectively admitting that they “froze” and did not release the details of thousands of nursing home deaths from Covid-19 because they feared consequences from federal law enforcement officials.“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, and what we start saying, was going to be used against us,” Cuomo’s top aide told New York legislators on Wednesday. The comments were first reported by the New York Post.No doubt, Trump’s justice department was as highly politicized as Cuomo advisers feared – but that is hardly a legitimate justification for hiding details of thousands of deaths. And the framing of it as some innocent, unplanned, deer-in-the-headlights slip-up is absurd, considering the context.Cuomo’s administration hid the nursing home casualty data after his administration slipped provisions into the state budget that helped the governor’s largest healthcare industry donors obtain legal immunity for nursing home executives.At the time, New York legislators like Assemblyman Ron Kim were arguing that such liability shields were endangering nursing home residents by removing the threat of lawsuits against nursing home companies that tried to maximize profits by cutting corners. Kim and his allies were successful in repealing and limiting some aspects of those liability shields in August, but later that month it became clear the Cuomo administration had not been adequately disclosing details of the ongoing decimation occurring in nursing homes.As the nursing home death toll mounted, the media campaign to valorize the governor intensifiedIn effect, burying the casualty information constructed two liability shields: one for a healthcare industry that dumped millions into New York Democratic party coffers, and another for Cuomo himself. It deprived Kim and other legislators of real-time data buttressing their arguments to halt the corporate immunity law (which was being replicated by other states and by Republicans in Congress). It also shielded the governor from political blowback for both his mismanagement of the crisis and his fealty to donors.That said, Cuomo’s political liability shield could only exist because the media built it for him. As the death toll mounted in New York, whistleblowers like Kim were all but ignored by a press corps giving Cuomo largely uncritical wall-to-wall coverage, depicting him as a swashbuckling lionheart saving his state from certain doom.CNN granted Cuomo a recurring primetime segment with his own brother, which was predictably used to pump up the governor. In one particularly noxious segment weeks after Cuomo helped his hospital-industry donors insert the corporate immunity provisions into the state budget, his brother remarked on all of the governor’s fawning press coverage, declaring: “You’re feeling pretty good about yourself these days, aren’t you?”As the nursing home death toll mounted, the media campaign to valorize the governor intensified, based on Cuomo’s press conferences. “Help, I Think I’m In Love With Andrew Cuomo?” Jezebel wrote. Vogue filed a similar piece, headlined: “Why We Are Crushing on Andrew Cuomo Right Now.”“The governor of New York found himself at the center of a deadly crisis,” Rolling Stone wrote. “His response has helped guide the nation.”Ultimately, as New York racked up the nation’s highest body count, and the press ignored Cuomo’s Democratic critics in the legislature, this deification all culminated in a macabre scene: standing in the shadow of his own Mount Covid, Cuomo received a six-figure deal to write a book about his leadership, and he was awarded an Emmy for his television performances.Meanwhile, more than 13,000 nursing home residents in the state have died.While the disaster in New York was unfolding, the Lincoln Project was busy launching one of the most self-enriching political enterprises in history.Here was a group of top Republican operatives who had spent their entire careers building the arch-conservative foundations of the modern Republican party. This rogues’ gallery is led by none other than Steve Schmidt, the operative who helped lift Sarah Palin out of obscurity and turn her into the precursor of Trump himself, and who still to this day openly brags about having run the campaigns to install rightwing justices on the US supreme court.But in 2020, the group saw a lucrative opportunity to suddenly pretend to be offended by the Republican party they had built, producing cheesy anti-Trump YouTube videos designed to separate liberal cable news viewers from their money and funnel it into their political consulting firms.This gambit could not have succeeded without the national press corps. Indeed, the entire project was created by a media that granted these Republican operatives laudatory headlines and cable TV news sinecures, billing them as earnest warriors for truth, justice and the American way – and hardly ever asking them about either their own own culpability in creating the Republican party or about the merit of their new ads.As a political project, the plan bombed. Data proved the group’s spots were largely ineffective in swaying voters against Trump, and Trump won more Republican votes than he did in 2016.But in other respects, the Lincoln Project was wildly successful. In one emblematic segment, fabulist Brian Williams used his cable TV platform to pretend the group swung the entire 2020 election, and most news outlets never mentioned how lucrative it all was. The Associated Press recently reported that “of the $90m Lincoln Project has raised, more than $50m has gone to firms controlled by the group’s leaders.”Thanks to the pundits’ reputation-laundering of the Lincoln Project’s leaders, they appeared to be positioned to launch their own media outlet.Only now do we learn that while the group was vacuuming up those tens of millions dollars and its leaders were being promoted on TV, Lincoln Project team members were reportedly hearing allegations that one of its co-founders, John Weaver, had been sexually harassing young men and pitching them on job opportunities at the Lincoln Project.The Lincoln Project offered a statement late last month saying it was “shocked” by the claims against Weaver, but according to New York Magazine, “the allegations against Weaver were an open secret in the company.” The magazine spoke to one person who recalled Schmidt and consultant Rick Wilson joking with other staff over drinks about how Weaver was “twisted” and “depraved”.While struggling to contain the fallout from the Weaver story, the Lincoln Project has reverted to Republican form, deploying the same ugly, authoritarian tactics it had purported to stand against as it pitched itself to liberal donors during the 2020 election.On Thursday, the Lincoln Project sought to spike a story by a reporter talking to one of its former consultants, Jennifer Horn. The group had already tried to smear Horn as greedy on her way out and significantly escalated their attacks by posting apparent screenshots from Horn’s private Twitter messages with the journalist.The group deleted its tweets after former co-founder George Conway wrote: “This looks on its face to be a violation of federal law and should be taken down immediately.”The Cuomo and Lincoln Project debacles are about different things, but they are both examples of the pervasive culture of impunity. America likes to tell itself it is about law and order, but its political religion promotes lawlessness and chaos. That religion is supported by an entire political and media infrastructure that typically rewards perpetrators and punishes whistleblowers.With the end of the Trump presidency, we’ve been told that we are entering a new era of accountability: one of Biden’s own speechwriters has asserted that “there must be accountability for lies and lawbreaking and we must learn from our mistakes … You cannot heal wounds you choose to ignore.”Cuomo and the Lincoln Project offer an opportunity to finally make that pivot – but it isn’t clear that will happen.In the former case, New York legislators can strip Cuomo of his emergency powers and impeach him and the state’s Democratic-controlled law enforcement apparatus can fully investigate the situation – as can the Biden justice department. At the same time, the national press corps can stop genuflecting to the governor and start listening to the warnings of his critics.In the case of the Lincoln Project, the press response is even more significant. The group isn’t an elected official in a public office with inherent relevance and authority. It is instead a pure creation of the media itself – meaning that the press corps effectively gets to decide if the organization faces accountability or not.So far, it looks like “not”. The Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz alleged that MSNBC put Lincoln Project members on its airwaves 17 times after the Weaver allegations first surfaced. In fact, even as details of the scandal exploded in the last 24 hours, MSNBC today opted to continue providing a platform to the group to continue to present itself as a legitimate, forthright and credible political player in the post-Trump era.To be sure, Cuomo’s Republican critics and the Lincoln Project’s Trump-aligned critics are hardly acting in good faith without an agenda. They have axes to grind, and they don’t have much credibility themselves.But that doesn’t negate the deeper questions here.Will this be a moment of accountability?Or will it go the other way? Will it be a moment when media organizations permanently establish that infrastructure of impunity, to the point where a governor can now get away with hiding a death toll and a GOP political group can retain its megaphone amid a sordid harassment scandal?We’re about to find out. More

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      ‘Meet the governor we’ve known all along’: how Cuomo fell from grace

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      On 20 March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic was rampaging through New York, Andrew Cuomo announced new restrictions on home visits for older and vulnerable people. Unveiling the rules, named Matilda’s Law after his mother, at his televised daily briefing, the governor spoke passionately about the need for New Yorkers to care for one another.“Those three-word sentences can make all the difference,” he said. “ ‘I miss you’, ‘I love you’, ‘I’m thinking of you’, ‘I wish I were there with you’, ‘I’m sorry you’re going through this’.”It was, he later recalled, “a very emotional moment for me, and it was reported that I shed a tear. I do know that I welled up with emotion that day.”Cuomo’s Matilda’s Law moment – tears and all – was made for TV. Such displays of unrestrained emoting rapidly turned him into an American icon, the Italian American tough guy in touch with his tender side fighting for people in the heart of a dreadful pandemic.His daily briefings became obligatory viewing, pushing Cuomo to the center of the national stage as the empathetic antithesis to Donald Trump. The New York Times declared him “politician of the moment”, CNN fantasised about a “President Andrew Cuomo”, and even the far-right Fox News guru Sean Hannity heaped praise on him on his radio talk show.To cap it all, Cuomo, 63, got a book deal out of it. With characteristic hubris, he titled the work: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic.What a difference a few months make.Fast forward to today, and Cuomo is now facing calls for his resignation, an investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors, and angry state legislators from his own Democratic party who want to strip him of the emergency powers they granted him during the pandemic.As for emoting, there is still plenty of that. But it’s not of the “Matilda, I miss you” variety. One of the New York Democrats who signed a letter calling for the withdrawal of Cuomo’s emergency powers told the New York Post that last week he received an unexpected phone call from the governor.According to Ron Kim, an assemblyman from Queens, New York City, the call began with silence before Cuomo said: “Mr Kim, are you an honorable man?” He then proceeded to yell down the phone at Kim for 10 minutes, shouting: “You will be destroyed” and “You will be finished”.When the Post’s report came out, Cuomo responded by devoting a large chunk of his press briefing to an all-barrels attack on Kim, accusing him of a slew of unethical practices.The contrast between the untethered attack-machine of this week’s Cuomo, and the teary-eyed empathist he projected last March is so startling it has left many outside observers bemused. But to New York politicians who have for years been in the Cuomo orbit, it was as surprising as the spaghetti and meatballs the governor likes to cook his family every Sunday dinner.“Meet the Governor Cuomo we’ve known all along, beneath the Emmy-winning performance he put on for months,” was how Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, put it on Twitter this week.The pandemic has exposed many things, and this is one of themThe Guardian asked Williams, who acts as official watchdog for New Yorkers, to elucidate. “The pandemic has exposed many things, and this is one of them,” he said. “It’s been like a secret that up to now Cuomo’s got away with – his lack of accountability, the way he responds to political winds only when forced to.”Ironically, the area that has landed Cuomo in such hot water is precisely the same as the one that inspired his tear-laden announcement named after his mother – caring for older and vulnerable New Yorkers through the pandemic. Three days after he executed Matilda’s Law, he created a new provision shielding hospital and nursing home executives from potential liability for decisions that might lead to people’s deaths from Covid.As the journalist David Sirota has noted in the Guardian, Cuomo had received more than $2m from the Greater New York Hospital Association and its associated executives and lobbying firms – the very healthcare industry group that claims to have “drafted” the immunity clause.The immunity provision has had a detrimental impact on the ongoing investigation into Covid deaths in New York nursing homes which accounted for almost a third of the total death toll of about 46,000. In a withering report released by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, last month, she says that it has led to confusion about whether homes that failed to meet health standards for containing the pandemic could ever be held accountable.James has demanded that the new immunity rules be scrapped.That wasn’t the end of it. Two days after creating the immunity provision – five days after announcing Matilda’s Law – Cuomo released an advisory notice. It directed nursing homes to accept patients back from hospital who were infected or might be infected with coronavirus.The homes had to admit anyone who was “medically stable” – no resident was to be denied readmission “solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of Covid-19”.The motivation behind the notice was clear – there was an “urgent need” to expand hospital capacity in order to meet the surge in Covid cases. In other words, free up hospital beds by getting older patients back to their nursing homes.The rest is history. A report by the New York department of health found that between the issuing of the advisory on 25 March and 8 May more than 6,000 Covid-positive residents were allowed back into nursing homes and long-term care facilities.There has been a great deal of debate about the extent to which the governor’s March advisory was to blame for large numbers of nursing home deaths from Covid. When the Poynter Institute’s fact-checking arm, Politifact, reviewed the question it concluded that Cuomo had not forced nursing homes to take in sick patients as his Republican detractors had claimed.But Politifact did conclude that the notice give care managers the distinct impression that they had no other option than to take the residents back in.As with so many other political scandals before it, the real trouble with “Cuomo-gate” was not the arguable errors that were made but the lack of transparency about what happened next. That’s what really bugs the public advocate.“My problem with Cuomo’s leadership is not that mistakes were made – mistakes are always made. But if you can’t take accountability for them and debrief what went wrong, then mistakes get made over and over again and people are dying for it,” Williams said.The unravelling began with the attorney general’s report last month which revealed that deaths of New York nursing home residents were substantially higher than had been recorded by the Cuomo administration. Residents who had fallen sick and died after they were transferred to hospital were mysteriously left off the official count.Then the New York Post dropped a bombshell. The paper reported that Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, had admitted to Democratic leaders in a conference call that the administration had withheld the true nursing home death toll from state lawmakers.DeRosa told them in the leaked conversation that “we froze” because Donald Trump was trying to use the deaths as a “giant political football”.What began as a dispute over health guidelines and immunity quickly morphed into a fully-fledged cover-up scandal. In the wake of the Post story, the state revised its official tally from 8,500 to more than 15,000 deaths – making a mockery of Cuomo’s long-standing boast that his state had among the best records in the country with regard to nursing homes Covid fatalities.On Monday Cuomo was forced to issue an apology, of sorts. “We made a mistake,” he said, before swiftly going on to clarify that the mistake was to create a “void” that had “allowed misinformation and conspiracy” to flourish.But he continued stubbornly to deny that death numbers had been massaged and insisted that everything had been done that could have been done to save lives.The semi-apology has left many dissatisfied. “It sounds to me like the ‘I’m sorry I got caught’ kind of apology,” Williams said.On Friday Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens in Congress, added her powerful voice to calls for a full investigation into Cuomo’s handling of the nursing homes crisis. “Thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers lost their lives in nursing homes throughout the pandemic,” she said in a statement. “Their loved ones and the public deserve answers and transparency from their elected leadership.”The public advocate wants an even more thorough accounting – a full investigation into every aspect of Cuomo’s response to the health crisis. There are leadership lessons to be learnt here, he thinks – rather less rosy ones than those the governor implied in the title of his book.Williams points to the stuttering start of the pandemic when the state took several days to close schools and ban gatherings; the classification of “essential workers” who were obliged to keep on working and who were overwhelmingly drawn from black and Latino communities; and evidence of glaring racial disparities now just surfacing in the distribution of the vaccine.“From infection to injection, the governor’s decisions have been wrong at almost every step,” Williams said. “He writes a book on leadership during the pandemic while at the same time hiding data, and people are dying. The arrogance is incredible.” More

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      AOC calls for 'full investigation' into Cuomo's handling of nursing homes

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined growing calls for an investigation into New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic.“I … stand with our local officials calling for a full investigation of the Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing homes during Covid-19,” the high-profile progressive congresswoman, who represents a New York City district, said in a statement on Friday.Last week, it was revealed that a Cuomo aide told New York legislators the true picture of nursing home deaths wasn’t given last year, for fear it would be used against the governor during an investigation launched by Donald Trump’s justice department.Cuomo, who has already published a book about his handling of the crisis, has dismissed claims of wrongdoing. On Friday, he said information was not produced fast enough, which created “a void. And conspiracy theories and politics and rumors fill that void and you can’t allow inaccurate information to go unanswered.”But in January, New York state attorney general Leticia James said nursing home deaths from Covid-19 were undercounted by as much as 50%. Now, federal prosecutors in New York City and the FBI are reported to be investigating and state officials are seeking to strip Cuomo of emergency powers.The governor is under increasing pressure and Ocasio-Cortez’s intervention adds drama to a combustible mix.As a former federal housing secretary and son of former governor Mario Cuomo, the governor is a pillar of the Democratic centrist establishment. Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez has rapidly risen to become a prominent voice on the progressive wing of the party.In her statement, she said: “Thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers lost their lives in nursing homes throughout the pandemic. Their loved ones and the public deserve answers and transparency from their elected leadership, and the secretary to the governor’s remarks warrant a full investigation.”In March, at the outset of the pandemic, New York reeled from a surge in cases. While Cuomo rose to worldwide prominence as the face of efforts to tackle the problem, an administration directive said nursing homes should not deny admission or readmission to a patient because they had Covid-19.That policy was rescinded two months later. Keeping the true number of nursing home residents who died hidden would theoretically deflect any blame for a bad policy choice. Cuomo has blamed staff entering nursing homes for spreading the virus to the vulnerable population, not patients brought in with Covid-19. He has said it would be discriminatory not to let those patients into nursing homes.The scandal has spread to CNN, a network which has a major presence in New York and for which Cuomo’s younger brother, Chris Cuomo, is a primetime host.Interviews between the two brothers went viral last spring but the network has now reinstated a prohibition on Chris Cuomo interviewing or covering his brother.The last time the governor appeared on his brother’s show, in June, Chris Cuomo asked: “Nursing homes. People died there. They didn’t have to. It was mismanaged. And the operators have been given immunity. What do you have to say about that?”Andrew Cuomo replied that some of what his brother said was incorrect, adding: “But that’s OK. It’s your show. You say whatever you want to say.” More

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      Andrew Cuomo insists New York didn't cover up nursing home Covid-19 deaths

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      [embedded content]
      Under fire over his management of the coronavirus’ lethal path through New York’s nursing homes, Andrew Cuomo insisted Monday the state didn’t cover up deaths – but the governor acknowledged that officials should have moved faster to release some information sought by lawmakers, the public and the press.
      “All the deaths in the nursing homes and hospitals were always fully, publicly and accurately reported,” the Democratic governor said, weeks after the state was forced to acknowledge that its count of nursing home deaths excluded thousands of residents who perished after being taken to hospitals.
      He explained the matter Monday as a difference of “categorization”, with the state counting where deaths occurred and others seeking total deaths of nursing home residents, regardless of the location.
      “We should have done a better job of providing as much information as we could as quickly as we could,” he said. “No excuses. I accept responsibility for that.”
      Cuomo, who has seen his image as a pandemic-taming leader dented by a series of disclosures involving nursing homes in recent weeks, said he would propose reforms involving nursing homes and hospitals in the upcoming state budget, without giving details.
      But he continued to blame a “toxic political environment”, and “disinformation” for much of the criticism surrounding his administration’s handling of the issue.
      State lawmakers have been calling for investigations, stripping Cuomo of his emergency powers and even his resignation after new details emerged this week about why certain nursing home data wasn’t disclosed for months, despite requests from lawmakers and others.
      First, a report late last month from the Democratic state attorney general, Letitia James, examined the administration’s failure to tally nursing home residents’ deaths at hospitals.
      The state then acknowledged the total number of long-term care residents’ deaths is nearly 15,000, up from the 8,500 previously disclosed.
      Next, in reply to a freedom of information request from the Associated Press in May, the state health department released records this week showing that more than 9,000 recovering coronavirus patients in New York were discharged from hospitals into nursing homes in the pandemic’s early months – over 40% higher than the state had said previously, because it wasn’t counting residents who returned from hospitals to homes where they already had lived.
      Then it emerged that Melissa DeRosa, a top Cuomo aide, had told Democratic lawmakers that the tally of nursing home residents’ deaths at hospitals – data that legislators had sought since August – was delayed because officials worried that the information was “going to be used against us” by the Trump administration’s Department of Justice.
      Echoing an explanation DeRosa gave Friday, Cuomo said the state was slow to respond to the lawmakers because officials prioritized dealing with requests from the justice department and were busy dealing with the work of the pandemic: “It’s not like people were in the south of France,” he said.
      “When we didn’t provide information, it … created confusion and cynicism and pain for the families. The truth is: everybody did everything they could.” More

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      Cuomo faces calls to resign amid allegations of hiding nursing home Covid deaths

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      Andrew Cuomo – New York’s governor who was once hailed the king of the US Covid-19 response – was facing fresh calls for his removal from office on Friday after new allegations emerged that he and senior staff covered up the extent of the virus deaths in the state’s nursing homes.
      The New York Post said it obtained a leaked recording of the governor’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, admitting to Democrats in private conversations this week that the administration withheld the true data because it feared the Department of Justice would use the figures to pursue complaints of state misconduct.
      “Basically, we froze,” the newspaper said DeRosa told the lawmakers, referring to tweets from Donald Trump last August that she said turned the issue of New York’s nursing home deaths “into this giant political football”, and his calls for the justice department to investigate.
      “We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”
      On Friday, however, New York’s 14 Democratic state senators released a joint statement calling for the repeal of Cuomo’s emergency executive powers to deal with the pandemic. “While Covid-19 has tested the limits of our people and state … it is clear that the expanded emergency powers granted to the governor are no longer appropriate,” they wrote.
      It emerged earlier this week that New York’s nursing home coronavirus death toll was far higher than Cuomo’s administration had initially admitted. New figures were released following a court order in response to a freedom of information request by the Empire Center for Public Policy showed a significant rise from about 9,000 to close to 15,000 once the previously omitted deaths of nursing home residents who died in hospitals were factored in.
      “Who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died,” Cuomo said at a news conference in January after New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, released a damning report stating nursing home deaths were 50% higher than his administration had claimed.
      DeRosa’s admission added fuel to growing calls for Cuomo’s resignation, impeachment or removal from office, and on Friday the New York congressman Tom Reed said he would pursue legal action against the governor’s aide.
      “I’m going to be looking at filing a personal criminal complaint against this individual today in local law enforcement offices as well as federal offices, because she needs to be arrested today,” he said in an interview with Fox Business.
      Other Republicans were quick to attack Cuomo. “If the governor is involved, he should be immediately removed from office,” said Rob Ortt, state senator and minority leader, in a statement.
      DeRosa’s admission, he said, “was the latest in a series of disturbing acts of corruption by his administration. Instead of apologizing or providing answers to the thousands of New York families who lost loved ones, the governor’s administration made apologies to politicians behind closed doors for the ‘political inconvenience’ this scandal has caused them.”
      Nick Langworthy, the state GOP chair, said: “Andrew Cuomo has abused his power and destroyed the trust placed in the office of governor. Prosecution and impeachment discussions must begin right away,” according to Politico.
      New York Democrats are also unhappy with Cuomo, who was on Friday scheduled to be in Washington DC to join a conference with Joe Biden on the Covid-19 American Rescue Plan.
      “This is a betrayal of the public trust. There needs to be full accountability for what happened, and the legislature needs to reconsider its broad grant of emergency powers to the governor,” Andrew Gounardes, the Democratic state senator, said on Twitter.
      Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the senate majority leader, was equally scathing. “Crucial information should never be withheld from entities that are empowered to pursue oversight,” she said in a statement. “Politics should not be part of this tragic pandemic and our responses to it must be led by policy, not politics.”
      On Friday, DeRosa was attempting to downplay the situation, according to the New York Times, claiming that the administration had to temporarily shelve state legislators’ calls for greater transparency over the figures to prioritize demands from the justice department.
      “We informed the houses [of the New York legislature] of this at the time. We were comprehensive and transparent in our responses to the DoJ and then had to immediately focus our resources on the second wave and vaccine rollout,” she said in a statement.
      New York state had recorded a total Covid-19 death toll of 45,453 by Friday morning, according to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus database, second in the nation to California (46,022).
      The New York health commissioner, Howard Zucker, told lawmakers this week that the number of nursing home residents who had died was 13,297, which rose to 15,049 with the inclusion of deaths from other assisted living or adult care facilities. More

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      'I don't care what you think': Cuomo lashes out at reporters at Covid briefing

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      [embedded content]
      Watching Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus press briefings was once a household ritual for many in the US and around the world. But on Wednesday, the New York governor lost his cool.
      Things turned tense when Cuomo was pressed by a reporter about news that the New York City public school system – the largest in the US – would likely close on Thursday due to rising infections.
      Cuomo, who seemed unaware of the news, berated the reporter, who asked him to clarify whether or not New York parents should expect to send their kids to class on Thursday. “Let’s try not to be obnoxious and offensive in your tone,” he told the Wall Street Journal reporter Jimmy Vielkind.
      Covid-19 cases are spiking across the US, with deaths surpassing a quarter-million on Wednesday and hospitals throughout the country once again overwhelmed by patients.
      Cuomo declined to clarify whether the state would override city orders shutting down classrooms, and when the New York Times’ Jesse McKinley, who followed up, said “I think Jimmy’s correct in asking that question. I don’t think it’s obnoxious at all,” Cuomo retorted: “Well, I don’t really care what you think.”
      In March and April, when coronavirus cases first exploded across New York, Cuomo earned a reputation for delivering daily briefings that included not just updates on the latest case numbers, but also musings about how crisis can bring out the best in humanity, worries about how his ageing mother would fare through the pandemic and stern lectures to youngsters thinking about flouting the rules.
      Cuomo’s lively, empathetic delivery earned him fans. The comedian Chelsea Handler declared, “I’m officially attracted to Andrew Cuomo” and officials across the political spectrum praised his leadership.
      But on Wednesday, the governor’s outburst earned him no admirers. “Cuomo is offering a really embarrassing and condescending answer to a totally legitimate question about what’s happening” with schools, tweeted the Chalkbeat NY reporter Alex Zimmerman.
      “Parents are confused. Reporters are confused. Workers are confused. Kids are confused!” said Jessica Ramos, a Democratic state senator. “Cuomo? Not confused. Also, doesn’t recognize or care that you’re confused.”
      The governor’s performance also drew comparisons to Al Pacino and Martin Scorsese film characters.

      Scott Wolf
      (@scottwolf)
      Pacino is a lock for next years Oscars. His Cuomo is UNCANNY. 🙌🏻🎭 https://t.co/FqKuVtPEdx

      November 18, 2020

      Others lamented the logic of allowing bars, restaurants and gyms to remain operational while shuttering schools.

      Jessica Winter
      (@winterjessica)
      Can the kids go to school in restaurants

      November 18, 2020

      “Thinking tonight of all the New York City parents who just found out today that schools are closed starting tomorrow, even though schools have proven to be quite safe and bars and restaurants are still open,” said Dr Colleen M Farrell, a pulmonary and critical care fellow Weill Cornell Medicine. “This burden will, yet again, fall largely on women.”
      Cuomo, who has a history of clashing with Bill de Blasio, New York City’s mayor, had suggested schools could be kept open as the state ramps up testing capacity. But city officials announced school closures after New York surpassed a 3% Covid test positivity rate. Adding to the confusion: per the state’s calculations, which often diverge from the city’s numbers, the positive tests in New York City were at 2.5%.
      The hostile Wednesday press briefing came after Cuomo, who earned praise for leading New York through an initial surge of infections, published a book titled American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic.
      “Cuomo is being incredibly condescending and rude for someone who wrote a book about how well he managed the pandemic before it was over,’” wrote BuzzFeed’s David Mack. More

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      in US Politics

      American Crisis review: Andrew Cuomo on Covid, Trump … and a job with Joe Biden?

      by

      On Thursday, the US reported 65,000 new cases of Covid-19 and Donald Trump falsely told a television town hall 85% of people who wear masks contract the disease. With more than two weeks to the election and a record-shattering 17 million Americans having already voted, the rhythms and tropes of the past seven months will only intensify between now and 3 November.Early in the pandemic, Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefings emerged as must-see television, counter-programming to the campaign commercials that masqueraded as presidential press conferences. The New York governor was forthright and reassuring, even as the body count mounted.Covid-related deaths in the Empire State now exceed 25,000, the highest in the US. New York was both frontline and lab experiment. What happened there foreshadowed national tragedy. Red states were not immune. Right now, the plague rages in the heartland.Cuomo’s new book, subtitled Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic, is his effort to shape perceptions of his own performance amid the pandemic while pointing a damning finger at Trump and Bill de Blasio, New York City’s woefully inept mayor. Like the governor, American Crisis is informative and direct – but not exciting.I believe that this was on a par with the greatest failure to detect an enemy attack since Pearl HarborAndrew CuomoThe book reads like a campaign autobiography except that Cuomo, by his own admission, will never run for president. It contains its share of heroes, villains and family vignettes. Cuomo’s three daughters appear throughout.Like the governor, American Crisis is programmatic, neither poetic nor poignant. Indeed, in a final chapter tritely titled A Blueprint for Going Forward, the governor offers 28 pages of policy proposals.Covid has taken nearly 220,000 American lives. The US suffered 58,000 combat deaths in Vietnam, 116,000 in the first world war. Only the second world war, the civil war and the flu pandemic of 1918-1919 resulted in greater casualties.Not surprisingly, Cuomo saves his harshest words for the Trump administration: “New York was ambushed by Covid. I believe that this was on a par with the greatest failure to detect an enemy attack since Pearl Harbor.”On that score, Cuomo compares Trump to FDR and of course finds him wanting. The administration did deliver early warnings – to members of the financial community and Republican donors. With that in mind, Cuomo’s take is almost mild.Cuomo’s relationship with the president was already fraught. On top of Trump and congressional Republicans capping deductions for state and local taxes, the governor acknowledges fighting with the administration over “immigration policy, environmental policy, you name it”. He adds: “I found his pandering to the far right alternately disingenuous and repugnant.”American Crisis also relays a conversation with the president in which the governor urged the former resident of Queens, a borough of New York City, to invoke the Defense Production Act and mandate private industry to produce tests and personal protective equipment. Trump declined, claiming such a move would smack of “big government” – as opposed to issuing diktats to big tech, directing that companies relocate, unilaterally imposing tariffs on imports and offering private briefings to those favored by the administration.Time has passed. In the 1980s, Governor Mario Cuomo and his son Andrew were Trump allies, of a sort. Back then, Trump retained the services of twentysomething Andrew Cuomo’s law firm, in connection with commercial leases on Manhattan’s West Side. According to Trump, they were “representing us in a very significant transaction”. Not any more.The president is not the only member of the administration to come in for criticism. Mark Meadows, the latest White House chief of staff, receives a large dollop of Cuomo’s wrath. In Cuomo’s telling, Meadows conditioned assistance to New York on it conveying hospital test results for hydroxychloroquine, Trump’s one-time Covid treatment of choice.Cuomo said the state would provide the test data once it was available, not before. Meadows told him the federal government was ready to release hospital funding to states, but “strongly implied” that if the test results did not soon arrive, New York would not “receive any funding”. To Cuomo, that reeked of extortion. More