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    De Niro and Pelosi Join ‘Paisans for Kamala’ Call to Raise Money for Harris

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    Every presidential election brings with it a technological innovation or two: the Bill Clinton and Bob Dole campaigns’ first-ever campaign websites, Barack Obama’s email list, Donald Trump’s candidacy-by-tweet.For the weeks-old Kamala Harris campaign, it has been a Zoom window.On Sunday night, former Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York was holding forth from one such window, swirling a glass of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo in a restaurant in Baltimore’s Little Italy, trying to draw an Italian family dinner memory out of Robert De Niro at “Paisans for Kamala,” a livestreamed online fund-raiser billed as an Italian Sunday Dinner that was hosted by the Italian American Democrats.“Tell us a story!” Mr. de Blasio implored. “Tell us a memory! Tell us a dish!”“I guess the closest thing I have is Marty Scorsese’s mother,” Mr. De Niro replied from a neighboring Zoom box. “She makes great pizza. She did. She passed away years ago.” He warned Democrats against complacency — “We know what’s coming, we see it coming”— and then excused himself to attend a Harris fund-raiser with Nancy Pelosi, who popped up in her own Zoom window later in the evening.The streamed fund-raiser was the latest of several dozen similar efforts that have raised millions of dollars on behalf of Ms. Harris since the group Win With Black Women hosted the first on July 21. Subsequent events have included “White Dudes for Harris” (featuring the actor Jeff Bridges, in character as the Dude from “The Big Lebowski”), “Cooking for Kamala” (hosted by Padma Lakshmi and featuring celebrity chefs like José Andrés and Giada de Laurentiis), “Deadheads for Kamala” (Ben and Jerry, inevitably), and many more.The events are a very post-pandemic spin on the small-donor fund-raising that powered the campaigns of Mr. Trump and Bernie Sanders in recent cycles, a sort of telethon adapted to the technologies Americans learned to know and tolerate during years of remote work and school. (On Sunday night’s stream, both Leon Panetta, the former secretary of defense and director of the C.I.A., and Steve Buscemi, the actor, struggled briefly with the mute button.)The relative ease of participating, as well as Democrats’ sense of urgency around the election, have meant that even small groups have assembled significant wattage for their calls. Besides Mr. De Niro and Mr. Buscemi, Sunday night’s stream featured Marisa Tomei, John Turturro, Mark Ruffalo and Lorraine Bracco.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cellphone Bans in Schools? NYC Is ‘Not There Yet,’ Mayor Says

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      Districts and states across the United States have supported restrictions on student usage, but New York City’s leaders are backing away from the idea because of logistical concerns.Los Angeles became the largest school district in the United States to ban cellphones in June. Entire states, such as Virginia, Ohio and Minnesota, have moved to institute broad crackdowns on phones in schools. But not New York City.At least not yet, Mayor Eric Adams said on Tuesday.Mr. Adams said at a news conference that New York City was a “unique animal” and that while there would be “some action,” the city was not yet ready for a full ban.“We’re not there yet,” he said. “We have to get it right.”Earlier in the summer, David C. Banks, the schools chancellor, suggested that new cellphone restrictions would be unveiled before the fall semester. So the mayor’s announcement — a week before the city’s first day of school — came as a surprise to many families.Mr. Adams’s comments will likely placate some parents and educators concerned about the logistics of a ban, while worrying others who argue that the devices harm students.A growing list of states, cities and school districts have curbed students’ cellphone use as concerns rise over their mental health. Officials point to the potential damage that access to social media and an “always online” culture may do to children.Mr. Adams said that while he did not want any distractions in city schools, he also wanted to be careful about the implementation of any eventual ban, so that the city wouldn’t have to backtrack on its plans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Providence Officials Approve Overdose Prevention Center

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      The facility, also known as a safe injection center, will be the first in Rhode Island and the only one in the U.S. outside New York City to operate openly.More than two years ago, Rhode Island became the first state in the nation to authorize overdose prevention centers, facilities where people would be allowed to use illicit drugs under professional supervision. On Thursday, the Providence City Council approved the establishment of what will be the state’s first so-called safe injection site.Minnesota is the only other state to approve these sites, also known as supervised injection centers and harm reduction centers, but no facility has yet opened there. While several states and cities across the country have taken steps toward approving these centers, the concept has faced resistance even in more liberal-leaning states, where officials have wrestled with the legal and moral implications. The only two sites operating openly in the country are in New York City, where Bill de Blasio, who was then mayor, announced the opening of the first center in 2021.The centers employ medical and social workers who guard against overdoses by supplying oxygen and naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug, as well as by distributing clean needles, hygiene products and tests for viruses.Supporters say these centers prevent deaths and connect people with resources. Brandon Marshall, a professor and the chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health, said studies from other countries “show that overdose prevention centers save lives, increase access to treatment, and reduce public drug use and crime in the communities in which they’re located.”Opponents of the centers, including law enforcement groups, say that the sites encourage a culture of permissiveness around illegal drugs, fail to require users to seek treatment and bring drug use into neighborhoods that are already struggling with high overdose rates.Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, said that while supervised drug consumption sites “reduce risks while people use drugs inside them,” they reach only a few people and “don’t alter the severity or character of a neighborhood’s drug problem.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Will New Yorkers Ever Have Another Mayor They Like?

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      Eric Adams — like most of his recent predecessors — hovers around a 50 percent approval rating. It’s hard to govern when only half the city is on your side.In the early 1990s, the historian Melvin Holli set out to solve a problem with a book called “America’s Big City Mayors.” Although governing a place like New York or Philadelphia was one of the most important political jobs in the country, we had no scholarly ranking of mayors, no orderly system of evaluating them as we did for presidents, thanks to the work of midcentury academics. Relying on surveys of biographers, social scientists and experts in urban policy and on an elaborate methodology, Mr. Holli concluded that Fiorello La Guardia was the best mayor in the history of the United States. No other New York mayor appeared on the “best” list; three were included among the worst.New York City is a notoriously difficult place to manage, and measuring success in real time is also complicated. On the face of it, the question of whether the current mayor is popular or not would appear to be a simple one determined by statistics, anecdote and so on, but it is knottier than that. In polling at the end of June, fewer than half of New Yorkers — 46 percent — indicated that they had a favorable opinion of Eric Adams, a decline of four points from his numbers in December.By contrast, Bill de Blasio, whose mayoralty was dominated by conversations about his irresponsible gym habits and deficits of personality, was doing a lot better at the same point in his tenure. Even as the bourgeois creative class and the business elites were coming to reject him as if he were rancid fast food, 18 months in, he was holding at a 58 percent favorability rating, with 81 percent of Black voters expressing a positive view of him.Mr. Adams’s problems occupy a wide space well outside the parameters of charisma. He has been criticized for a lack of vision or signature initiatives analogous to universal pre-K; a cronyist’s approach to staffing; a habit of petty and bizarre distortions of the truth. Some of this was predictable. During the campaign, his evasiveness led to headlines like, “Where Does Eric Adams Really Live?” because it was not obvious, a confusion that he blamed on shoddy paperwork at the hands of a homeless accountant.Last week, we learned that a picture of an old friend, a cop who died in the line of duty 36 years ago, had not in fact been held closely by the mayor in his wallet for decades as he had previously suggested. Rather, it was printed in his office last year by underlings, in response to the death of two police officers in Harlem.These shortcomings justify apprehension and may lead voters to turn toward someone new in 2025. And yet it is also true that New Yorkers hoping for a galvanizing figure, a mayor for all people, might need to adjust their expectations and make do with a mayor for half the people.Our current political landscape makes it too hard for a broad-consensus affection to emerge for anyone — it’s almost impossible to imagine how widely embraced La Guardia was, or even Ed Koch in his first term. Over the past 10 years, most mayoral approval ratings have hovered just above or below 50 percent. Although Michael Bloomberg had an approval rate of 31 percent early in his tenure, he briefly reached 75 percent during his deft handling of the financial crisis in the fall of 2008, before slipping down in the years ahead.The 50 percent benchmark is so hard to surpass now, said George Arzt, a longtime political consultant in the city, because the electorate is so fragmented. La Guardia could govern well in part because as a liberal Republican who supported the New Deal he could connect to voters across constituencies. And there were simply fewer constituencies to think about.Lacking the sharp ideological divisions that burden the party today, Northeastern Democrats were unified by a strong labor movement. La Guardia had to forge an alliance with Jews and Protestants, with immigrants from Northern Europe and Southern Europe, but he was not operating in a city of 600 spoken languages. Between 1960 and 2000, the number of Dominican immigrants to the city alone multiplied more than tenfold, reaching 1.1 million.Supporters of Eric Adams — and most people presumably — appreciate that violent crime and hate crimes are trending downward. Shootings have fallen 25 percent year to date. “I don’t think people are looking for vision; I think they’re looking not to get killed,” Alan Fishman, a banker, philanthropist and Adams backer, told me. “What you hear about cronyism and dysfunction, that doesn’t affect people day to day. It’s inside baseball.”What does touch people is the sincerity of the commitment. Whatever you thought of his policies, it was hard to doubt Michael Bloomberg’s devotion to New York. Mr. Adams and Mr. de Blasio have been cast as temperamental opposites, but they share a prominent trait, a deep investment in their own marketing. (This was evident most recently in Mr. de Blasio’s case, with the long, moody interview he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, gave The Times announcing their separation, when the alternative in situations like this is typically an aloof three-line news release.)Mr. de Blasio chased a national profile more or less from the moment he was elected mayor, and he was absent from the city for stretches when he ran for president, remaining in the race even though it had become clear his bid would go nowhere. Eager to engage the high-style factions of New York his predecessor ignored, Mr. Adams has been selling us on his “swagger” since his first week in office. History shows us that it is a very rare for the mayor of New York to move on to higher office. The goal ought to be legacy rather than fame. More

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      De Blasio Owes City $475,000 for Bringing Police on Presidential Campaign

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      New York City’s Conflicts of Interest Board said the former mayor must reimburse the city for police officers’ travel, and pay a record fine.Bill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York City, must reimburse the city nearly $320,000 and pay a $155,000 fine for bringing his security detail on trips during his failed presidential campaign, the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board ordered on Thursday.The hefty fine and repayment — both the highest penalty and the largest amount the board said it has ever issued — may be the most lasting impact to date of Mr. de Blasio’s doomed run for president.The former mayor’s campaign lasted just four months in 2019 and damaged his standing with city residents, who griped that their mayor was making an ill-considered play for national relevance at the expense of addressing problems at home.According to the Conflicts of Interest Board, the city spent $319,794.20 in travel-related costs for members of Mr. de Blasio’s security detail to accompany either him or his wife, Chirlane McCray, on 31 out-of-state trips related to the campaign. The expenses included airfare, car rentals, overnight lodging, meals and other incidentals.Shortly before Mr. de Blasio launched his campaign, the board — an independent body with five members appointed by the mayor, comptroller and public advocate — told Mr. de Blasio that the city could pay for salary and overtime for his security detail. But it advised him that paying for the officers’ travel costs would be a “misuse of city resources,” it said.But Mr. de Blasio did not heed the board’s guidance, it said. His failure to do so was one of several issues addressed in a 47-page report by the city’s Department of Investigation, which found that Mr. de Blasio misused public resources for both political and personal purposes, including having a police van and officers help move his daughter to Gracie Mansion.Jocelyn Strauber, the investigations commissioner, said in a statement that the Conflicts of Interest Board’s order backed her department’s report and showed “that public officials — including the most senior — will be held accountable when they violate the rules.”The board, which still has two members appointed by Mr. de Blasio, ordered the former mayor to repay the expenses borne by the city and fined him $5,000 for each out-of-state trip.Mr. de Blasio’s presidential campaign reported having just $1,422.76 on hand in its last filing with the Federal Election Commission, in December 2020. A political action committee associated with Mr. de Blasio, Fairness PAC, last reported having more than $32,000 in debt and less than $3,000 on hand.Mr. de Blasio, who ran New York City from 2014 through 2021, was plagued by ethics questions during his time in office. He was the subject of a number of investigations into whether his fund-raising methods violated the city’s ethics law, a ban against soliciting contributions from people who had business in front of the city.In April, the Federal Election Commission fined his presidential campaign for accepting improper contributions from two political action committees he and others had set up.Since leaving his post, Mr. de Blasio made a short-lived run for an open House seat that ended after two months on the campaign trail. (His House campaign reported having roughly $156,000 in its coffers at the end of March, but it is not clear whether he could use that money to pay expenses associated with his presidential run.)Mr. de Blasio left politics behind and moved into academia, becoming a visiting teaching fellow at Harvard University and teaching a class at New York University.He has recently become more candid about his time in office. In an uncommonly frank interview with New York Magazine published on Wednesday, Mr. de Blasio opened up about criticisms he received as mayor, including an infamous moment when he dropped a groundhog in 2014. He also expressed some regret about seeking the presidency.“It was a mistake,” he said. “I think my values were the right values, and I think I had something to offer, but it was not right on a variety of levels.”Mr. de Blasio did not respond to a message seeking comment. One of his lawyers, Andrew G. Celli Jr., said in a statement that Mr. de Blasio’s legal team had already filed a lawsuit to appeal the ruling and block the board’s order. He accused the board of breaking “decades of N.Y.P.D. policy and precedent” and violating the Constitution.“In the wake of the January 6th insurrection, the shootings of Congress members Giffords and Scalise, and almost daily threats directed at local leaders around the country, the C.O.I.B.’s action — which seeks to saddle elected officials with security costs that the city has properly borne for decades — is dangerous, beyond the scope of their powers, and illegal,” Mr. Celli said. More

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      A Times Square Hotel Was Set To Become Affordable Housing. Then the Union Stepped In.

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      At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Paramount Hotel, sitting empty in Times Square, was on the verge of turning into a residential building, offering a rare opportunity to create affordable housing in Midtown Manhattan.A nonprofit was planning to convert the hotel into apartments for people facing homelessness. But after 18 months of negotiations, the plan collapsed this year when a powerful political player intervened: the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the union representing about 35,000 hotel and casino workers in New York and New Jersey.The union blocked the conversion, which threatened the jobs of the workers waiting to return to the 597-room hotel. Under the union’s contract, the deal could not proceed without its consent.The Paramount reopened as a hotel this fall, an illustration of how the union has wielded its outsized political power to steer economic development projects at a critical juncture in New York City’s recovery.The pandemic presented a devastating crisis for the city’s hotel workers, more than 90 percent of whom were laid off. But as the union has fought harder to protect them, its political muscle has also drawn the ire of hotel operators and housing advocates, who say the group’s interests can be at odds with broader economic goals.After the conversion failed, the Paramount reopened this fall, saving about 160 hotel jobs.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesThe union’s impact ripples throughout New York. It can block or facilitate the conversion of large hotels into housing and homeless shelters, a consequential role in a year when homelessness in the city reached a record high of about 64,000 people. The union pushed for the accelerated expansion of casinos, which could transform the neighborhoods of the winning bids. And it was a driving force behind a new hotel regulation that some officials warned could cost the city billions in tax revenue.The union’s influence stems from its loyal membership and its deep pockets, both of which it puts to strategic use in local elections. Its political strength has resulted in more leverage over hotel owners, leading to stronger contracts and higher wages for workers.In this year’s New York governor’s race, the union was the first major labor group to endorse Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose winning campaign received about $440,000 from groups tied to the union. The group was also an early backer of Eric Adams, whose mayoral campaign was managed by the union’s former political director.“H.T.C. is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers,” said Chris Coffey, a Democratic political strategist, referring to the union’s more common name, the Hotel Trades Council. “They’re just operating on a higher playing field.”Origins of the union’s powerHistorically, the Hotel Trades Council avoided politics until its former president, Peter Ward, started a political operation around 2008.Mr. Ward and the union’s first political director, Neal Kwatra, built a database with information about where members lived and worshiped and the languages they spoke. This allowed the union to quickly deploy Spanish speakers, for instance, to canvass in Latino neighborhoods during campaigns.Candidates noticed when the Hotel Trades Council, a relatively small union, would send 100 members to a campaign event while larger unions would send only a handful, Mr. Kwatra said.The Aftermath of New York’s Midterms ElectionsWho’s at Fault?: As New York Democrats sought to spread blame for their dismal performance in the elections, a fair share was directed toward Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.Hochul’s New Challenges: Gov. Kathy Hochul managed to repel late momentum by Representative Lee Zeldin. Now she must govern over a fractured New York electorate.How Maloney Lost: Democrats won tough races across the country. But Sean Patrick Maloney, a party leader and a five-term congressman, lost his Hudson Valley seat. What happened?A Weak Link: If Democrats lose the House, they may have New York to blame. Republicans flipped four seats in the state, the most of any state in the country.To recruit members into political activism, the union hosted seminars explaining why success in local elections would lead to better job protections. Afterward, members voted to increase their dues to support the union’s political fights, building a robust fund for campaign contributions. Rich Maroko, the president of the Hotel Trades Council, said the union’s “first, second and third priority is our members.”Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesThe Hotel Trades Council ranked among the top independent spenders in the election cycle of 2017, when all 26 City Council candidates endorsed by the union won. Some of these officials ended up on powerful land use and zoning committees, giving the union influence over important building decisions in New York.In a huge victory before the pandemic, the union fought the expansion of Airbnb in New York, successfully pressuring local officials to curb short-term rentals, which the union saw as a threat to hotel jobs.Mr. Ward stepped down in August 2020, making way for the union’s current president and longtime general counsel, Rich Maroko, who earned about $394,000 last year in total salary, according to federal filings.The union’s sway has continued to grow. Some hotel owners, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say they are fearful of crossing the union, which has a $22 million fund that can compensate workers during strikes. In an interview, Mr. Maroko pointed out that the hotel industry is particularly vulnerable to boycotts.“The customer has to walk through that picket line,” he said, “and then they have to try to get a good night’s rest while there are people chanting in front of the building.”The Hotel Trades Council’s contract is the strongest for hotel workers nationwide, labor experts say. In New York City, where the minimum wage is $15 an hour, housekeepers in the union earn about $37 an hour. Union members pay almost nothing for health care and can get up to 45 paid days off.During the pandemic, the union negotiated health care benefits for laid-off workers, suspended their union dues and offered $1,000 payments to the landlords of workers facing eviction.Along the way, the union has become known for its take-no-prisoners approach to politics, willing to ally with progressives or conservatives, with developers or nonprofits — as long as they support the union’s goals.“There may be no union which has more discrete asks of city government on behalf of its members,” said Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, who was endorsed by the union. “You can’t placate them with nice rhetoric. To be a partner with them, you really need to produce.”Political wins during the pandemicLast year, the union scored a victory it had sought for more than a decade, successfully lobbying city officials to require a special permit for any new hotel in New York City.The new regulation allows community members, including the union, to have a bigger say over which hotels get built. The move is expected to restrict the construction of new hotels, which are often nonunion and long viewed by the Hotel Trades Council as the biggest threat to its bargaining power.Budget officials warned that the regulation could cost the city billions in future tax revenue, and some developers and city planners criticized the rule as a political payback from Mayor Bill de Blasio in the waning months of his administration after the union endorsed his short-lived presidential campaign in 2019. Mr. de Blasio, who did not return a request for comment, has previously denied that the union influenced his position.In the next mayoral race, the union made a big early bet on Mr. Adams, spending more than $1 million from its super PAC to boost his campaign. Jason Ortiz, a consultant for the union, helped to manage a separate super PAC to support Mr. Adams that spent $6.9 million.Mr. Ortiz is now a lobbyist for the super PAC’s biggest contributor, Steven Cohen, the New York Mets owner who is expected to bid for a casino in Queens.The union, which shares many of the same lobbyists and consultants with gambling companies, will play an important role in the upcoming application process for casino licenses in the New York City area. State law requires that casinos enter “labor peace” agreements, effectively ensuring that new casino workers will be part of the union.A new threatDuring the pandemic, as tourism stalled, there was growing pressure to repurpose vacant hotels. With New York rents soaring, advocates pointed to hotel conversions as a relatively fast and inexpensive way to house low-income residents.But the union’s contract, which covers about 70 percent of hotels citywide, presented an obstacle. A hotel that is sold or repurposed must maintain the contract and keep its workers — or offer a severance package that often exceeds tens of millions of dollars, a steep cost that only for-profit developers can typically afford.A plan to convert a Best Western hotel in Chinatown into a homeless drop-in center was scuttled by city officials after the effort failed to win the union’s endorsement.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesEarlier this year, Housing Works, a social services nonprofit, planned to convert a vacant Best Western hotel in Chinatown into a homeless drop-in center. There was opposition from Chinatown residents, but city officials signed off on the deal. It was set to open in May.Right before then, however, the Hotel Trades Council learned of the plan and argued that it violated the union’s contract.Soon, the same city officials withdrew their support, said Charles King, the chief executive of Housing Works. He said they told him that Mr. Adams would not approve it without the union’s endorsement. Mr. King was stunned.“Clearly they have the mayor’s ear,” Mr. King said, “and he gave them the power to veto.”A spokesman for the mayor said the city “decided to re-evaluate this shelter capacity to an area with fewer services,” declining to comment on whether the union influenced the decision.The Chinatown hotel remains empty.An obstacle to affordable housingIn the spring of 2021, state legislators rallied behind a bill that would incentivize nonprofit groups to buy distressed hotels and convert them into affordable housing. They sought the Hotel Trades Council’s input early, recognizing that the group had the clout to push then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to oppose the bill, according to people involved in the discussions.The union supported the conversions, but only if they targeted nonunion hotels outside Manhattan. Housing groups have said that, unlike large Midtown hotels, nonunion hotels are not ideal candidates for housing because they tend to be much smaller and inaccessible to public transit.As a compromise to gain the union’s support, the bill allowed the Hotel Trades Council to veto any conversions of union hotels.“While we certainly support the vision of finding shelters and supportive housing for the people that need it,” Mr. Maroko said, “our first, second and third priority is our members.”One housing advocate involved in the legislation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she warned elected officials that the veto provision would diminish the law’s effectiveness.The law, which passed last year, came with $200 million for conversions. Housing experts criticized the legislation for not sufficiently loosening zoning restrictions, prompting another law this spring that made conversions easier.Still, no hotels have been converted under the new law.Now, with tourism rebounding, housing nonprofits say the window of opportunity has largely passed.“It’s not like hotel owners are clamoring to sell the way they were two years ago,” said Paul Woody, vice president of real estate at Project Renewal, a homeless services nonprofit.How the Paramount deal endedIn the fall of 2020, the owners of the Paramount Hotel began discussing a plan to sell the property at a discount to Breaking Ground, a nonprofit developer that wanted to turn it into rent-stabilized apartments for people facing homelessness.But as the deal neared the finish line, Breaking Ground failed to anticipate pushback from the Hotel Trades Council. In a series of meetings last year, the union said its obligation was to fight for every hotel job and it proposed a range of solutions, including keeping union employees as housekeepers for residents. Breaking Ground, however, said the cost was too high.The nonprofit even asked Mr. Ward, the union’s former president, to help facilitate the conversion. Mr. Ward said he agreed to call Mr. Maroko to gauge his interest in Breaking Ground’s severance offer.This spring, lobbying records show, union representatives met with Jessica Katz, Mr. Adams’s chief housing officer, and other officials about the Paramount. Soon after, Ms. Katz called Breaking Ground and said city officials would not be able to make the conversion happen, according to a person familiar with the conversation. A spokesman for the mayor said the city “cannot choose between creating the housing the city needs and bringing back our tourism economy,” declining to comment on whether the union swayed the decision on the Paramount.The failed conversion saved about 160 hotel jobs, and the Paramount reopened to guests in September.It was a relief for workers like Sheena Jobe-Davis, who lost her job there in March 2020 as a front-desk attendant. She temporarily worked at a nonunion Manhattan hotel, making $20 less per hour than at the Paramount. She was ecstatic to get her old job back.“It is something I prayed and prayed for daily,” she said. More

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      The Queen in New York, From a Ferryboat to Bloomingdale’s

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      Queen Elizabeth II made three visits to New York City during her 70-year reign.Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at Queen Elizabeth II and New York, a city she visited three times in her long reign. We’ll also hear former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s reflections on a subject he has had time to reflect on: former Mayor Bill de Blasio. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times“A visit to New York for just a day is really a teaser,” Queen Elizabeth II said of her first trip to New York, in 1957. And she wasn’t even around for a full day — only 15 hours.Arriving on a ferryboat, she was not disappointed by the famous skyline she had seen only in pictures. “Wheeeee!” she cried in an uncharacteristically unrestrained moment.How much she saw on the way uptown is an open question. Ticker tape rained down as she waved from a limousine — “a tiny woman suspended in time,” as my colleague Robert D. McFadden later wrote. She went on to touristy places: She had asked to see the view from the Empire State Building and pronounced it “tremendous.”But the queen, who died on Thursday at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, was no ordinary tourist: At the United Nations, she gave a speech.She was 31 then. She spent more time in New York on her second visit when she was 50, in 1976 — the year of the Bicentennial, celebrating those rebellious colonists’ break with her country. She went to Bloomingdale’s. Mayor Abraham Beame proclaimed her an honorary New Yorker.Her third visit, in 2010, when she was 84, was the shortest. She and her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, arrived on a private plane from Canada. They left for Britain after only about five hours in New York.There was not a wasted moment. The queen, wearing a flowered suit and white gloves, formally opened the Queen Elizabeth II Sept. 11 Garden in Lower Manhattan. “She’d gone to the U.N., given a speech and gone to ground zero,” said Isabel Carden, the treasurer of the nonprofit British Memorial Garden Trust, which commissioned the garden as a memorial to the 67 British citizens who died in the Sept. 11 attacks.Her second speech at the United Nations, in 2010, lasted just eight minutes. Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general at the time, introduced her as “an anchor for our age,” and she used the appearance to look back. “In my lifetime,” she said, “the United Nations has moved from being a high-minded aspiration to being a real force for common good.”“Then,” Carden said on Thursday, “she came to us. She met all the families. She was never hurried. She took time to speak to everyone, and we had about 500 people there. It was so remarkable.”And, on a day when the temperature soared to 103 degrees, the queen’s face showed not a drop of sweat.Collin Mitchell, a tax specialist from Guyana who lived in Brooklyn, waited outside the garden for five hours, hoping to see her. “My mother always took her children out; she would pull her entire brood to events like these, flag in hand,” he said. She had died five years earlier, he said, adding, “I want to keep that legacy.”WeatherEnjoy a sunny day with temperatures near the low 80s. The evening will be clear, with temps around the mid-60s.ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKINGIn effect until Sept. 26 (Rosh Hashana).Andrew Kelly/ReutersTrump in the headlinesDonald Trump, who now lives in Florida, made his name in New York. And it was New York that exerted its pull on three stories related to the former president on Thursday:Steven Bannon, a former top adviser to Trump, surrendered in Manhattan to face felony charges of money laundering, conspiracy and scheming to defraud in connection with his work with We Build the Wall Inc., a nonprofit.Prosecutors say We Build the Wall defrauded donors who believed that they were helping to make Trump’s promise of a border wall with Mexico a reality. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said Bannon had “acted as the architect” of the scheme. Letitia James, the New York State attorney general, whose office worked with Bragg’s on the investigation, said Bannon had taken “advantage of his donors’ political views to secure millions of dollars which he then misappropriated.”Geoffrey Berman, the former United States attorney in Manhattan, charged in a new book that the Justice Department sought to use his office to support Trump politically and pursue Trump’s critics. Berman writes the Justice Department pressured him to open a criminal investigation of John Kerry, a former secretary of state.Trump fired Berman in 2020 after he refused to resign. Berman’s book, “Holding the Line,” is scheduled to be published on Tuesday.City Council leaders asked Mayor Eric Adams to end the Trump Organization’s contract to run a city-owned golf course in the Bronx and to cancel a women’s tournament next month.The event is part of the Aramco Team Series, which has been linked to the Saudi government’s network of businesses. Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, is the title sponsor for the series, and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, which is overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is the “presenting partner.”Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker, and Shekar Krishnan, a Council member who leads its Committee on Parks and Recreation, sent the mayor and Sue Donoghue, the parks commissioner, a letter saying that the recent guilty plea by Allen Weisselberg, a top Trump Organization executive, gave the city grounds to end the contract. The city’s agreement with the company requires its employee to comply with all federal, state and laws.The latest New York newsDakota Santiago for The New York TimesShooting in a Brooklyn park: A 15-year-old boy was shot and killed after a fistfight, the police said.First day of school: New York City’s public school students returned to class as the nation’s largest school system loosened coronavirus restrictions.Homeless shelter officer suspended: A police officer for the New York City Department of Homeless Services was suspended without pay after a video showed him hitting a shelter resident in the face.De Blasio on de BlasioCharlie Neibergall/Associated PressBill de Blasio — former mayor, former presidential candidate and former congressional candidate — is off to Harvard University as a visiting teaching fellow. Before he left New York for a semester, he looked back on his career as the first Democrat in City Hall in 20 years.“I found him to be remarkably reflective,” said my colleague Michael Gold, who interviewed de Blasio last month. “I had not thought of him as a particularly reflective guy because when you’re the mayor, you end up being defensive — there’s always something else to deal with, especially, in his case, given the pandemic.”But Michael, who also drew on a de Blasio interview with our political reporter Jeffery C. Mays, added: “He’s now been away from City Hall for nine months and out of the spotlight except when he ran for Congress, and that fizzled, so he suddenly had time to stop and look back in a way I don’t think he had had an opportunity to do.”Since leaving City Hall, de Blasio has acknowledged that he “made mistakes” as mayor. He told Michael that they included failing to stay “close to the hearts of people” and keep up “the personal bond” that had carried him into City Hall.The congressional campaign seems to have amplified de Blasio’s sense that the personal mattered more than he understood at the time. He jumped into the crowded field running for an open congressional seat in Brooklyn in the spring, only to drop out two months later, when it was clear his campaign was not gaining ground.“Humans vote emotionally,” he told Michael. “And if you’re tired of someone, you’re tired of them.”He said that without sounding bitter. “The thing that sticks in my mind was when he said he was saddened he did not get the support of his neighbors in Park Slope but appreciated the opportunity to talk to them,” Michael said. “Especially during the pandemic, he had been at such a remove as mayor.”METROPOLITAN diaryBrooklyn stop signDear Diary:After a fun July 4 barbecue with friends, my fiancé and I were driving home to Brooklyn when we came up behind a van that was pulled up at a stop sign.We waited nearly half a minute, but the van did not move. It was getting late and we had to run the puppy out, so my fiancé honked once.The van didn’t budge.We honked again.Still nothing.By now, we were impatient. We drove around the van, pulling up cautiously to the stop sign from the driver’s side.Looking in the van, we saw a man with his eyes closed. He was vigorously playing a flute.— Michael DruckmanIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B.P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.Melissa Guerrero More

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      How Many N.Y. Democrats Does It Take to Fill a House Seat? Try 15.

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      A congressman, an ex-congresswoman, an ex-mayor, a Trump prosecutor and several state and city officials are eyeing an open congressional seat in New York City.Beneath a maple tree by a red brick elementary school in Brooklyn, a lanky, recognizable figure lingered on a recent morning, hoping to catch the attention of moms, dads, the custodial worker mowing the lawn.“Registered Democrat?” asked Bill de Blasio, the former two-term mayor of New York City, as he cajoled potential voters to help him get back in the game.Mr. de Blasio, who once believed he could be elected president, has now set his sights lower, aiming to represent a newly redrawn House district in New York City. But he is far from alone.Others contesting the seat include a Levi Strauss heir who helped impeach Donald J. Trump; rising stars from the City Council and State Assembly; a Chinese American activist involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests; and a pathbreaking liberal who was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress — 50 years ago.There is also a sitting congressman currently representing a suburban region, who only recently moved into the district. Exactly when, he couldn’t say.“Time is a blur,” said the congressman, Mondaire Jones, pivoting away from questions about his new residency, “when you’re fighting to end gun violence in America.”Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do politicians. So when New York’s redistricting fiasco last month unexpectedly opened up a House seat in a safely Democratic area, stretching from Lower Manhattan through much of brownstone Brooklyn, the political floodgates opened wide.A total of 15 Democrats, representing a broad range of ages and backgrounds, have taken steps to enter a summertime primary that may prove to be one of the largest and most freewheeling in the nation.“It’s like a sweepstakes contest,” said Steven M. Cohen, a longtime government official and frequent donor from the district who said he has been inundated with fund-raising requests. “Everyone can potentially be a winner, no purchase necessary.”Bill de Blasio hopes his name recognition as the former mayor of New York City will carry him to victory in the race.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesThe candidates only have until Aug. 23 to win the sympathies of primary voters who represent some of New York’s most politically engaged and diverse neighborhoods: Greenwich Village, Wall Street, Chinatown, Park Slope, Sunset Park and even parts of Borough Park, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish stronghold.A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Gov. Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, will face off against Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi in a Democratic primary on June 28.Adams’s Endorsement: The New York City mayor gave Ms. Hochul a valuable, if belated, endorsement that could help her shore up support among Black and Latino voters.The Mapmaker: A postdoctoral fellow and former bartender redrew New York’s congressional map, reshaping several House districts and scrambling the future of the state’s political establishment.Maloney vs. Nadler: The new congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.The result is not so much a contest of ideas — almost every major candidate has condemned threats to abortion rights and bemoaned the lack of strict limits on guns — as of brute force, blunt ambition and identity politics.“Let me start by saying this: I fear no man,” said Mr. Jones, the sitting congressman who decided to try his hand in the reconstituted 10th District, rather than run for re-election in the 17th District or contest the neighboring one to the south. Either option would involve competing against a House incumbent.Mr. Jones did not have to move to Brooklyn to run for the seat; House candidates must live in the state they represent, but not the district. Mr. Jones, who grew up in Rockland County, contended that his status as a newcomer was irrelevant. He suggested that he is sufficiently tied to the district by virtue of his time living elsewhere in the city and socializing in Greenwich Village, as a young gay man of color trying to discover his “authentic self.”In any case, he said, regular voters care more about what a congressional candidate has done and whether he can fight for their interests rather than where he hails from or when he moved. (A spokesman later clarified that the move occurred June 6.)“Harping over the length of someone’s residency in a district and lines that were just drawn a few weeks ago is something that the political class, including many journalists, give outsize weight to,” Mr. Jones said.Jo Anne Simon, a former disability rights lawyer who currently represents parts of the district as a state assemblywoman in Brooklyn, adamantly disagreed as she pitched her own candidacy.State Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon’s district in Brooklyn is part of the newly redrawn 10th Congressional District.Hans Pennink/Associated Press“People vote for people that they know, that they trust and they have reason to know show up,” said Ms. Simon, referencing her decades of activism on local issues like pollution from the Gowanus Expressway. “Nobody here has voted for Mondaire Jones.”Then again, in such a crowded race, there may be no such thing as home-field advantage.Take Carlina Rivera, a city councilwoman who lives just outside of the district, and Yuh-Line Niou, another state assemblywoman. Both are up-and-coming progressive women of color representing parts of Lower Manhattan and could end up cannibalizing each other’s base of support.Ms. Niou said she had more than 600 volunteers eager to carry petitions for her. Ms. Rivera on Friday won the endorsement of Representative Nydia Velázquez, who currently represents much of the new district and is expected to wield substantial sway among voters. She is expected to win re-election in a neighboring redrawn district covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens.Carlina Rivera, a New York City councilwoman.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesYuh-Line Niou, a state assemblywoman.Elizabeth D. Herman for The New York TimesThey, in turn, will face off against a progressive rising star from another era, Elizabeth Holtzman, spurred to re-enter the arena by the threat to abortion rights.In 1972, Ms. Holtzman became the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, when she defeated a 50-year incumbent at age 31. Now, at age 80, she is trying to become the oldest non-incumbent elected to the House of Representatives in history.In between, she had a trailblazing career as the first woman elected district attorney in Brooklyn and as New York City comptroller, racking up experience that she argues positions her to make an immediate impact in Washington. Still, she has not held elected office since 1993, when several of her competitors were in elementary school.“Somebody said to me, your slogan should be something like ‘Google me,’” Ms. Holtzman said.Former Representative Elizabeth Holtzman.David Dee Delgado/Getty ImagesMs. Holtzman, in 1974, with President Gerald Ford.Bettmann Archive, via Getty ImagesThe Chinese American activist, Yan Xiong, who after his role in Tiananmen went on to become a chaplain for the U.S. Army and now believes he can attract a significant number of votes from large Asian populations in Manhattan’s Chinatown and Brooklyn’s Sunset Park.Voters can be forgiven for being overwhelmed. There was not even supposed to be a primary race in New York’s 10th District until a court-appointed expert so thoroughly scrambled New York City’s congressional map in May that the technical incumbent, Representative Jerrold Nadler, decided to run in the 12th District in Manhattan instead.That decision set him on a collision course with a longtime ally, Representative Carolyn Maloney, but it also left a rare open seat in Manhattan and Brooklyn — political gold to which no one had a rightful claim.“Anyone who tells you that they know what’s going to happen in this race, or that there is an obvious outcome, is lying to you and themselves,” said Chris Coffey, the chief executive of Tusk Strategies, who is unaffiliated in the race.Mr. de Blasio has his claim. He enters the race with near universal name recognition, years of electoral successes and some policy triumphs too — most notably, universal prekindergarten. But Mr. de Blasio does not have a fund-raising advantage. That belongs to two other candidates.As of March 31, Mr. Jones had $2.9 million on hand — a huge sum in a race so short it will make fund-raising difficult. Last week, he dropped his first in an expected deluge of television advertising, a placement of at least $169,000, according to Ad Impact, an advertising analytics firm.Daniel Goldman, the chief investigator for House Democrats in the first impeachment of Mr. Trump, and a frequent legal analyst for MSNBC, is running on his record fighting for democracy and public safety.He is also a former federal prosecutor who spent a decade working in the Southern District of New York, a lesser-known part of his résumé that may help him stand out with voters as the city confronts what Mr. Goldman called “the biggest public safety crisis in decades.”“The core experiences of my professional career, which has been devoted entirely to public service, happen to be very timely for the circumstances we are in now,” he said in an interview.Daniel Goldman served as the chief investigator for House Democrats in the first impeachment of President Donald J. Trump.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesStill, he is a relative newcomer to electoral politics and starts the abbreviated race with few of the institutional relationships other candidates will draw on. To try to make up the difference, Mr. Goldman, the Levi Strauss heir who rents a Tribeca apartment listed for sale for $22 million, said he was prepared to “put some of my own money into this to level the playing field.”But given the timing of the contest, and its brevity, the race is also widely expected to turn on get-out-the-vote efforts, which may help candidates like Ms. Niou.“Field is the most important thing,” she said. “We’re running against folks with 100 percent name recognition.”Labor unions and outside political groups could also help turn the race. The retail workers union has endorsed Mr. Jones. Aspire PAC, an outgrowth of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Members of Congress, has been reviewing candidates and will make a decision soon, according to Grace Meng, the Queens congresswoman and PAC chair. It remains unclear if other unions will engage.It is also difficult to gauge how many voters will be in the district in late August, when the city gets torrid and all those who can, leave town. Matthew Rey, a prominent Democratic consultant who is unaffiliated with any of the campaigns, estimated voter turnout could be between just 70,000 and 90,000 in a district of 776,000 residents.The other Democratic candidates are Brian Robinson, John Herron, Maud Maron, Peter J. Gleason, Quanda Francis, Laura Thomas and Jimmy Li.Given the overcrowded field and the late summer election date, the race is hard to pin down.Last week, after dropping off his two children at school in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn, Nicholas McDermott said he would absolutely consider voting for Mr. de Blasio.“I think it’s great to have someone with experience who’s from the area,” Mr. McDermott said.He was less certain if he would be around in August to vote.“That’s a good question,” he said. More

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      Bill de Blasio Knows He Isn’t Loved

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      New York’s former mayor is running for Congress in a newly drawn district, where distaste for him is epic. He’s sure he can change that.A few days after Bill de Blasio announced that he was running for Congress — a comparatively humble ambition when you think about his attempt at the presidency and his flirtation with the idea that he might govern the state of New York — I sat down for breakfast with him, mostly to ask: Why?We were in a nearly empty diner in Park Slope, where the former mayor has lived since the early 1990s and where theoretically affections for him should run high. Not too long into our conversation, a guy who appeared to be in his 30s, wearing a knit cap, walked passed a few feet away and took out his phone to get a picture. It seemed as if he was about to voice admiration or maybe ask for a photo. Instead he looked directly at Mr. de Blasio, informing him that he was “the worst mayor New York has ever had.”The moment all too perfectly distilled the problem that Mr. de Blasio faces: He seems to have little understanding of how he is perceived, even in a neighborhood he knows intimately, where he once served on the local school board and the City Council. But in fact, he has every understanding.“When it comes to being unpopular, I’m unfortunately somewhat of an expert,” he wrote in an essay earlier this month. The man who served two terms as the mayor of the nation’s biggest city, proudly indifferent to what you thought of him, now wants you to know that the bubble of City Hall was oppressive, that he found it hard to be his authentic self and that, as he put it to me, “the person you’re seeing right now is the person I am.”The person I was seeing was lighthearted and amiable. Bill de Blasio 2.0 is a rapid-response politician, a man seemingly engaged in self-reflection and comfortable with regret. Could we talk about his latest political gambit? “Sure,” he quickly wrote back, when I got in touch. We could meet in person — in fact that was his preference — and we could share a meal. Subsequent texts included exclamation points.While a journalist and a political candidate sitting down to egg-white omelets is not ordinarily noteworthy, the previous version of Bill de Blasio, the one we last checked in with at the end of the year when he was polling behind even the disgraced Andrew Cuomo, was as likely to offer himself to the press as Anna Wintour would be to mow your lawn.Despite the success of Mr. de Blasio’s major initiatives — universal prekindergarten, paid sick leave — the hallmark of his mayoralty was his talent for alienating people who were inclined to like him and largely agreed with his policymaking. His defining imperiousness bred distaste across constituencies. Almost nowhere was that distaste felt more viscerally than in brownstone Brooklyn, which, in addition to much of downtown Manhattan, makes up a large swath of the newly outlined 10th District, lending a kind of masochism to his current effort.On the way home from our breakfast, a few miles away but still within the territory he would represent, I ran into a neighbor in Brooklyn Heights who delivered a more measured appraisal than the one I witnessed two hours earlier at the diner, an evaluation that included the prospect that she would “almost vote for a Republican over Bill de Blasio.”Like so many others in the area, she had been an early supporter. We stood on a corner for about 10 minutes as she went through her grievances, beginning with Mr. de Blasio’s abandonment of a campaign promise to save Long Island College Hospital from real-estate developers and ending with his drive to incentivize Covid vaccinations in low-income neighborhoods — where resistance was a matter of entrenched distrust — with the promise of free Shake Shack French fries.Mr. de Blasio believes his last year in office was his most successful, and that his administration’s management of the pandemic, one that became a model for other cites, will matter to voters. Leaving aside that parents of schoolchildren who were stuck at home with them for much of last year may well feel differently, in the current news cycle, eight or 10 months ago can feel like a quarter-century; emotion can stick forever. “I came across as aloof,” the former mayor told me, understating things. “I needed to help people see me.”In many ways, Mr. de Blasio has spent the past five months since he left office living the creative-class Brooklynite fantasy — renovating a townhouse, writing, delivering commentary on “Morning Joe.” He thought about teaching. But none of this called to him for the long term. Then on Monday, May 16, after lunch with a friend in Greenwich Village — you don’t get to linger over a meal when you are governing eight million people — he arrived home to find emails about the newly created district, and he knew what he would do next. Little deliberation was necessary. “It was sweet to be connected to family,’’ he said of his brief reprieve from politics. “The writing was rewarding, but it pales in comparison to public service.”In the past, a seat in the House of Representatives has been a steppingstone to the mayoralty of New York and not an Act II. John Lindsay and Ed Koch both served in Congress before they managed City Hall. The precedent for going in the other direction is not glorious. Fernando Wood returned to Congress after his three-term tenure as mayor in the mid-19th century; he was known as a corrupt autocrat and Confederate sympathizer.The idea of Bill de Blasio, at 61, having held one of the most prestigious and challenging political offices available to mankind, then going to Washington as a freshman congressman, living with fellow representatives a generation younger in a three-bedroom rental in Dupont Circle, wondering whose turn it is to bring home a half-gallon of oat milk, is absurd enough to leave you wondering if a reality show isn’t the actual play. It is not. He wants to provide a voice for an urban agenda otherwise lacking in the federal government.That he believes he can build a winning coalition, which he has successfully done before, to get there overlooks certain difficult truths. In addition to all the disgruntled white professional-class voters he would represent, the new district also includes Chinatown and Sunset Park, where predominantly Asian voters, many low-income, did not take well to the former mayor’s position on ending the entrance exam for specialized high schools and his wish to phase out gifted and talented programs.When I asked him about this, he said that he did not fully realize the special place these schools and classes held in the culture. “I should have engaged leaders from the Asian community,” he told me. “I’m upset because I naïvely assumed there would be consensus.”It is hard to imagine living in New York for decades, driving past so many test-prep centers in Queens and not fully appreciating the vaunted status schools like Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech — which Mr. de Blasio’s son, Dante, attended — hold in these communities.There is also the matter of who else will be entering the race, in a constellation of neighborhoods where voter-information levels are unusually high and name recognition might not matter much. Mondaire Jones, who serves in another district, grew up in Section 8 housing and made his way to Stanford and Harvard, has also announced his candidacy. Should Daniel Goldman enter the field, he is likely to raise a lot of money based on his popularity as the House Democrats’ lead counsel during the first Trump impeachment proceedings and the fact that he lives in TriBeCa. Mr. de Blasio is energized for a summer of knocking on doors. More