de Blasio, Bill

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      How the Candidates for N.Y.C. Mayor Would Tackle Homelessness

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      In the Democratic primary’s last days, and with New York’s economy starting to regain its footing, a chronic problem gains new urgency.Random slashings on the subways. Groups of men clustered outside Midtown Manhattan hotels serving as homeless shelters. Anti-Asian attacks on the streets.In the closing days of New York’s Democratic primary for mayor, the city’s chronic struggle with homelessness has taken on increasing urgency. As the city moves to reopen for business and tourism, public concern — and the candidates’ attention — has focused on a small number of people who are mentally ill and potentially violent.The issue is complicated. Homeless people are not involved in every unsettling incident, and they also have been targeted in vicious killings and other attacks. Their advocates warn against demonizing a large group of people who are struggling just to survive. Most of the 48,000 people in the main shelter system are families with children, not single men.Before the pandemic hit, the shelter population had increased since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office, even as he doubled spending on homeless services to more than $3 billion. The number of families in shelters has dropped sharply since early last year, largely because of an eviction moratorium that has been extended through August. If it expires then, hundreds of thousands of tenants who collectively owe over $1 billion in back rent could lose their homes.Now, a spate of attacks on the streets and in the subway, combined with an increase in gun violence, have fed a perception in many quarters that the city is in danger of sliding into chaos. The candidates seem to be split, seeing the issue through two different lenses: the plight of people with an illness that can last their whole lives, and the safety and quality of life of everyone else.At the final debate on Wednesday, Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, left no doubt where he stood.“Yes, mentally ill people have rights,” the Democratic candidate Andrew Yang said at a mayoral debate this week. “But you know who else have rights? We do.” Andrew Seng for The New York Times“Mentally ill homeless men are changing the character of our neighborhoods,” Mr. Yang said. “We need to get them off of our streets and subways and into a better environment.” Later, he added: “Yes, mentally ill people have rights. But you know who else have rights? We do: the people and families of the city. We have the right to walk the street and not fear for our safety.”Candidates with more progressive agendas took a softer stance. Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, described his plan to build 30,000 units of so-called supportive housing, where people with mental illness would get a range of services. Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, lamented that the Rikers Island jail complex had effectively become the city’s biggest psychiatric facility.Unlike some of Democratic rivals, Maya Wiley does not favor assigning more police officers to the subway system.Jonah Markowitz for The New York TimesThe causes of the apparent increase in the number of homeless people on the streets and in the subway of pandemic-era New York are many.When the lockdown hit last year, the city moved thousands of people from barrackslike group shelters across the city into unused hotels — many of them in densely populated middle-class and wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods — to stop the spread of Covid-19. Many people living under precarious conditions lost their jobs and, thus, their homes. With workers doing their jobs remotely, far fewer people were in the main business districts, leaving those who live on the streets to stand out. Some hospitals used inpatient psychiatric beds for Covid patients. Many libraries and other places where homeless people typically spend their days closed.The city is accelerating its efforts to move homeless people off the Manhattan streets. On Wednesday, Mr. de Blasio said that 8,000 people would be moved from 60 hotels back to group, or congregate, shelters by the end of July. Starting next week, the police will begin sweeps along 125th Street in Harlem to clear it of homeless people and those using drugs, according to a senior city official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan has not been publicly announced. A spokeswoman for the mayor said the effort was focused on “helping people with substance abuse issues access harm-reduction resources” and that offer would be on hand to “assist as needed.”The leading Democratic candidates have proposed many plans to address the homelessness problem. Here are some of them. More details can be found in voter guides produced by RxHome and the Family Homelessness Coalition and City Limits.Reduce or end reliance on congregate shelters.Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner who calls shelters “a band-aid solution to a long-term problem,” says she would cut the shelter population in half. Shaun Donovan, a former city housing commissioner under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said he would end the use of congregate shelters entirely in his first term. (Mr. Donovan’s tenure was the only time during Mr. Bloomberg administration that homelessness fell). Ms. Wiley cites “real concern” that people who stayed in hotels during the pandemic “will be unwilling to come to shelter if we shift back to congregate settings.”Build more “deeply affordable” housing — a lot more.All of the candidates say they will do this. Mr. Stringer says that Mr. de Blasio, despite highlighting his record on creating affordable housing, “has built more housing for people who make over $150,000 a year than for people who make $40,000 or $30,000.” He says he would require most new residential buildings financed with city subsidies to house people with very low incomes.Expand the use of shelters that offer more privacy and have fewer rules.So-called safe haven and stabilization shelters offer single-occupancy rooms and fewer rules and restrictions as to who qualifies for them than group shelters do. Many of the candidates want to build more of such shelters, including Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, and Mr. Yang, who said, “It’s a sign of the city’s broken politics when the choice is either temporary hotels or overcrowded shelters.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Get more people into psychiatric treatment.Mr. McGuire, Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia all say they would press for wider use of Kendra’s Law, which allows courts to require treatment for people with mentally illness.Add psychiatric beds.Mr. Yang said that the number of psychiatric beds in city hospitals had decreased 14 percent and that he would double the current number, although he did not say how he would pay for it. Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Mr. Yang both favor adding psychiatric “respite beds” for people with mental illness who are not deemed sick enough to be admitted to a hospital but are too sick to return to a shelter or to the streets.Focus more on providing mental health services to people in the streets and less on arresting people.“We cannot continue criminalizing being Black and brown, criminalizing mental illness, criminalizing having substance abuse issues,” Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, said at the debate. “That is not the answer for creating a safe city.” Ms. Garcia supports sending “crisis teams” into the subway that include mental-health professionals “who will make a determination and get people the treatment that they need.” Ms. Wiley says Mr. de Blasio’s approach, which she called overpolicing, “never tried to solve homelessness and merely led to displacement, for example, moving those experiencing homelessness from the subways to the streets.”Close the prison-to-shelter pipeline.Mr. Donovan notes that more than half of the people released from state prisons to New York City go directly to homeless shelters, a cycle he pledged to break by providing housing vouchers to people leaving jail.Increase pressure on shelter operators to find permanent housing for clients.Mr. McGuire says he would shorten shelter stays by holding operators responsible for moving people into permanent housing and by “shifting contracts and investment to the most successful operators.”Build more domestic violence shelters.Mr. Yang has noted that domestic violence is one of the main reasons that families seek shelter and that only 23 percent of domestic-violence victims in shelters are in ones that are designed for them. He says he would build more of those.More police in the subway.Mr. Adams, a former transit police officer, says, “We should have a police officer on every train.” Ms. Garcia wants officers “walking the platforms and riding the actual trains, not just standing around.” Mr. Yang, Mr. McGuire and Mr. Donovan also want more police in the subway. Ms. Morales, Mr. Stringer and Ms. Wiley do not.Help tenants and landlords alike in order to prevent evictions.Mr. Donovan favors a “holistic approach” that would “provide direct rent payments for hard-hit tenants” and “offer stabilizing funds to landlords” who agree not to evict.Joseph Goldstein contributed reporting. More

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      Is Bill de Blasio Secretly Backing Eric Adams for Mayor?

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      The mayor is not making a public endorsement in the primary race, but he is believed to favor Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president.It was one of the more memorable moments in the New York City mayor’s race: Eight Democratic candidates were asked at a debate earlier this month if they would accept an endorsement from Mayor Bill de Blasio.Only one, Andrew Yang, raised his hand.When the candidates each gave the mayor a letter grade, their consensus was that Mr. de Blasio had failed on a variety of subjects, including solving the city’s homelessness crisis and his handling of protests against police brutality last year.After eight tumultuous years in office, Mr. de Blasio is indeed loathed in many corners of the city. But some of his policies like universal prekindergarten are popular, and he has maintained support among Black voters — a critical constituency that helped him capture the mayoralty in 2013.With a week before the June 22 primary, Mr. de Blasio has not made an endorsement and has no apparent plans to do so.But several people close to the mayor say that he favors Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and has worked behind the scenes to persuade others to endorse him.In February, Mr. de Blasio held a meeting at Gracie Mansion with leaders of three unions to discuss the mayor’s race and told them that he preferred Mr. Adams, according to two people who were familiar with the conversations.All the unions at the meeting — the Hotel Trades Council, District Council 37 and 32BJ SEIU — endorsed Mr. Adams a short time later in March.An official from one of those unions who asked for anonymity to protect his relationship with the mayor said that Mr. de Blasio had not only later lobbied his union to support Mr. Adams, but that he had witnessed the mayor try to persuade others to back him. The Gracie Mansion gathering was reported by Politico New York.“We’ve had many conversations. He is supporting Eric, and he’s pushing for Eric,” the union official said.The mayor and Mr. Adams have been allies over their long political careers, rose in the same Brooklyn political circles and share many of the same supporters. People close to the mayor said that Mr. de Blasio also believes that Mr. Adams shares his passion for reducing poverty and is best positioned to protect his progressive legacy.When Mr. Adams was criticized for his support of the Police Department’s limited use of the stop-and-frisk tactic, and questioned whether he was being truthful about where he lived, Mr. de Blasio defended him.“Here’s a guy who, you know, born and raised in New York City,” the mayor said last week. “We know his personal story. He overcame adversity, became a police officer, served for 20-plus years, became an elected official, has served Brooklyn for a long time. I just don’t see an issue here. Clearly a New Yorker, clearly a Brooklynite.”The mayor also asserted last month that Mr. Adams had been “a strong voice for police reform and against police brutality for decades.”Bill Neidhardt, the mayor’s press secretary, insisted that Mr. de Blasio has not made a final choice for mayor.“The mayor has spoken favorably about multiple candidates to unions and political leaders across the city,” Mr. Neidhardt said on Monday. “The mayor views this as an incredibly fluid race, and has not decided who he will rank first on his ballot, let alone whether he will endorse in the race.”Mr. de Blasio has been sparing in his praise of Maya Wiley, his former counsel, and Kathryn Garcia, his former sanitation commissioner.Ms. Wiley, in particular, would seem more philosophically aligned with Mr. de Blasio than Mr. Adams or Ms. Garcia, who are more moderate in many of their stances. But Ms. Wiley and Ms. Garcia have tried to distance themselves from Mr. de Blasio, criticizing his tenure at almost every opportunity.“He gets an F when it comes to what happened this past summer with police accountability,” Ms. Wiley, who also led the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which reviews police misconduct, said of the mayor at a recent debate.Maya Wiley has served Mr. de Blasio as his legal counsel and as the head of the Civilian Complaint Review Board.Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesThose close to the mayor said he could live with Ms. Wiley or Ms. Garcia as mayor, even though he has been annoyed by a few of the attacks, including criticism from Ms. Garcia over the ThriveNYC program, the mental health initiative that Mr. de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, has overseen.Stacy R. Lynch, a City Council candidate in West Harlem and the mayor’s former deputy director of intergovernmental affairs, said she suspected that Mr. de Blasio was hurt by criticism from the candidates.“He loves being mayor, but he may love politics more than being mayor,” Ms. Lynch said. “When you are the kid on the bench that nobody wants to select to be on their team, that has to be painful.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}To be sure, Mr. de Blasio is accustomed to criticism. He watched the second Democratic debate — where the candidates rejected his endorsement — at Gracie Mansion with Ms. McCray, over a meal of chicken parmigiana and ziti with red wine. He sent observations to friends, comparing the event to a student government debate, according to an aide.Mr. de Blasio recently told an aide that other incumbents were unpopular after years in office, including Ed Koch, who ran for a fourth term in 1989 and lost in the Democratic primary to David N. Dinkins; Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose approval rating sagged before the Sept. 11 attacks; and Michael R. Bloomberg, whose record Mr. de Blasio ran against in 2013.Given his unpopularity, Mr. de Blasio might understandably be somewhat reluctant to issue a hearty endorsement, for fear it could backfire.Even Mr. Adams would not necessarily rank Mr. de Blasio very highly. When he was asked about the best mayor in his lifetime, he named Mr. Dinkins and Mr. Bloomberg. Mr. Adams said in an interview that he liked Mr. Bloomberg’s practical approach of using technology in policing, but criticized his abuse of stop and frisk.He insisted that he was indifferent to whether he had the mayor’s support.“I have not sought his endorsement,” Mr. Adams said at a campaign stop last week, distancing himself from the mayor when asked about their relationship. “I speak with him about issues that impact the city: public safety, education, housing.”Still, some people argue that Mr. Adams should be viewed as a natural successor to Mr. de Blasio.Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, a state assemblywoman and the chairwoman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, was one of two elected officials in the city to endorse Mr. de Blasio when he ran for president in 2019. She endorsed Mr. Adams for mayor and sees many similarities between the two men.“He’s the natural successor,” she said of Mr. Adams. “Both of them fought for Black people. Both of them fought for Latino people. They are both fighting for people who are suffering in New York.”Of the leading contenders in the race, the mayor is perhaps most opposed to Mr. Yang, even though he was the only candidate who said he would welcome Mr. de Blasio’s endorsement. The union official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the mayor was “clearly and strictly against Yang.”Mr. de Blasio has emphasized that the next mayor should have experience in government.The day after the recent debate, Mr. Yang, a 2020 presidential candidate, tried to criticize the mayor outside of the Y.M.C.A. in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where Mr. de Blasio has held his late-morning workouts to great ridicule. But Mr. Yang, a centrist whose campaign is led by veterans of the Bloomberg administration, was furiously heckled and had to abandon the stunt.Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner under Mr. de Blasio, also filled a variety of roles in the administration.Todd Heisler/The New York Times“That’s just a politician being a politician,” Mr. de Blasio said when asked about Mr. Yang’s failed attempt at trolling him. “I’d much rather people talk about what they’re going to do for New Yorkers and show they actually have some knowledge of this city and how it works.”Mr. Yang’s campaign has argued that Mr. de Blasio is working behind the scenes to help Mr. Adams, who is considered the race’s front-runner. The mayor has denied the accusation.Mr. de Blasio has discussed the race with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who considered whether to back one of three leading Black candidates — Mr. Adams, Ms. Wiley or Raymond J. McGuire, a Wall Street executive — and ultimately decided not to make an endorsement and to focus instead on voter turnout. Mr. Sharpton said he and Mr. de Blasio had talked about the importance of the city electing its second Black mayor.“We’ve discussed that and we both share that view, particularly since he worked for David Dinkins,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview.Sean Piccoli contributed reporting. More

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      Candidates’ Blueprints for Easing the Housing Crisis

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      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Monday. Weather: Watch out for showers and thunderstorms. High around 70. Alternate-side parking: In effect until Saturday (Juneteenth). Karsten Moran for The New York TimesWhen Bill de Blasio ran for mayor in 2013, he made addressing New York’s affordable-housing shortage a central part of his campaign.More than seven years later, despite significant investments under Mr. de Blasio, the Democratic candidates vying to succeed him confront a problem that may have worsened during the pandemic.“The housing crisis facing the next mayor is really one of unprecedented proportions,” said Rachel Fee, executive director of the New York Housing Conference, a policy and advocacy nonprofit.She said the next mayor will be the “driver of housing policy in New York City, and whatever they are doing in this first housing plan is really going to set the course for the next decade at least.”[The plans and proposals from the Democratic candidates for mayor have a lot of overlap, but they differ in some of the solutions that they emphasize the most.]The contextEven before the pandemic, about half of the city’s households spent more than 30 percent of their income on rent, according to an analysis by New York University’s Furman Center.The pandemic has made the situation even more dire. Renters’ arrears have risen to hundreds of millions of dollars, putting them at risk of losing their homes once a moratorium on evictions ends.Housing advocates and experts have pushed for the candidates to adopt robust plans to address the crisis.The plansThe candidates’ plans overlap in many ways: nearly every candidate expressed support for legalizing basement apartments, which the city has already begun to explore, and building housing on the remaining parcels of vacant city-owned land.But they also differ in some of the solutions they emphasize.Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, have made the creation of tens of thousands of new homes for the poorest New Yorkers a top objective. Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer and former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, and Shaun Donovan, who was housing secretary under President Barack Obama and also has served as a city housing commissioner, say they would steer hundreds of millions of dollars to struggling renters.Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, is calling for a hefty increase in the number of affordable units the city requires in big new residential buildings. Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, wants wealthy neighborhoods to make way for more affordable units. Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate, and Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, have keyed in on converting hotels to housing.More on the mayor’s race:Early Voting Begins in Wide-Open Race for New York MayorGarcia Rakes in Donations: 5 Takeaways From the N.Y.C. Mayor’s RaceFrom The TimesWith Cuomo Weakened, N.Y. Lawmakers End Session With Flex of PowerWestminster Dog Show 2021: Wasabi the Pekingese Wins Best in ShowWhy The New Yorker’s Stars Didn’t Join Its UnionThey Fought to Make ‘In the Heights’ Both Dreamlike and AuthenticWant more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingAt least two people were killed and 19 others wounded in shootings across New York City this weekend, police said. [N.Y. Post]Fire marshals arrested four people and seized more than $8,000 worth of illegal fireworks, officials said. [ABC 7]Less than 1 percent of the independent venues, like clubs and theaters, that applied for a special federal pandemic aid program have received it. [Gothamist].css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}And finally: A march for Black trans youthThe Times’s Michael Gold writes:When thousands gathered in Brooklyn last summer to take part in a march for Black trans lives, Shéár Avory was at home, helping take care of her family in the middle of the pandemic. But Mx. Avory, who is transgender and nonbinary, was heartened by what she saw online: images and videos of thousands of people in a sea of white, rallying for their community.“I remember being so connected to community, even virtually,” Mx. Avory, 22, said. “And just feeling this overwhelming sense of ‘Well, we did that.’”On Sunday, a crowd gathered on the grounds of the Brooklyn Museum for the Brooklyn Liberation March. This time, Mx. Avory was speaking in front of them, at a rally meant specifically to center the concerns of Black trans and gender-nonconforming youth.The thousands who convened in white garb and marched en masse were drawn together to show support for transgender youth at a particularly tumultuous moment for them. In state legislatures across the United States, Republican lawmakers have introduced bills to limit the participation of transgender children in sports and hinder their access to gender-affirming or transition-related medical care.At the same time, the pandemic has exacerbated inequities that put people of color and trans people at severe economic disadvantages. And persistent violence against transgender people has not abated. At least 28 transgender or gender-nonconforming people have been fatally shot or killed this year.Organizers said they wanted to give this year’s spotlight to younger voices, those who would be the next generation of activists and leaders, and whose formative experiences were different from theirs. “We are ready for this new generation of youth who are coming up and defining themselves by things that are much more complex and much more deep,” said Ianne Fields Stewart, an activist and performer.It’s Monday — speak up.Metropolitan Diary: Small bouquet Dear Diary:I had a social work internship in Queens near the City Clerk’s office. Every morning, I would pass photographers and merchants loaded with flowers and balloons, waiting for a newly wed couple to come out after getting married there.One day, I was walking to the subway after work and I found myself alongside a middle-age man who was holding a small bouquet of roses. He had on a worn blue hoodie and jeans. I can only describe the expression on his face as a combination of wonder, disbelief and joy.He glanced at me. I smiled.“I bought her flowers,” he said, half to me and half to himself. “I’m about to meet up with her and I’ve never bought her flowers before, but today I bought her flowers!” He shook his head in amazement.“I’m sure she’ll love them,” I said.We took one more step together before he turned and went into a McDonald’s.— Audrey ChaoNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com.What would you like to see more (or less) of? Email us: nytoday@nytimes.com. More

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      How the Candidates for N.Y.C. Mayor Plan to Improve Transit

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      Eight leading mayoral candidates share their ideas and plans for public transit.When the pandemic engulfed New York, it highlighted the vital role public transit plays in a city where essential workers — many of whom are poor and people of color — count on the subway and buses to get around.Although the subway is the city’s lifeblood, the mayor of New York has little say over the subway because it is operated by an agency controlled by the governor. But as the city slowly recovers, public transit is central to its efforts to bring back daily life and has become a key focus in the race to become the next mayor. And New York’s next leader does have far more influence over buses by virtue of controlling the streets they run on. Buses are a key cog of the vast public transit system, even if they are often overshadowed by the subway. Carrying well over two million riders daily before the outbreak, the city’s bus network by itself is bigger than many of the country’s largest urban transit systems. The sprawling bus network links many neighborhoods, especially outside Manhattan, that are not well served by the subway and transports a ridership that is more diverse and makes less money than commuters who use the trains. Bus riders tend to be service workers, from hourly employees at fast food restaurants and clothing stores to a vast army of home health aides, many of whom travel across different boroughs and do not need to be taken to Manhattan, which is the subway’s main purpose. “By far the mayor’s most significant power over transit is the control of the streets,” said Ben Fried, a spokesman for TransitCenter, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. “There’s a huge opportunity awaiting the next mayor to improve the bus system.”Mayor Bill de Blasio, who did little to significantly enhance bus service until late in his eight-year tenure, has accelerated projects during the pandemic. The city built 16 miles of new bus lanes last year, and expanded a successful busway that cleared cars off a major crosstown street in Manhattan to three other streets around the city. Another three busways are planned by year’s end for a total of seven.But before the pandemic, clogged streets had reduced bus speeds to a crawl and New York lagged far behind other cities in building dedicated bus lanes. Now, the eight leading Democratic candidates for mayor have pledged to make buses a centerpiece of their transportation agendas.Their plans, shared in response to written questions from The New York Times, range from more bus lanes to a rapid transit network that would operate more like a subway.The proposals could make New York a national model — but would also require reclaiming vast chunks of the city’s limited street space and exacerbating an already pitched battle with drivers and some community leaders. “For a truly equitable New York City, we must improve our bus system, with a focus on improving speed, reliability and safety,” said Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, who wants to expand a city program that provides half-price fares to low-income riders by reallocating funds from policing for fare evasion.Scott Stringer, the city comptroller, said he would be the city’s “bus mayor.” “I’m going to harness the power of our streets to revolutionize our transportation system for all New Yorkers and be the streets and bus mayor we need,” he said.Kathryn Garcia, a former city sanitation commissioner, added, “Public transportation is a driver of economic growth that will, in turn, generate new housing and new jobs.” The biggest hurdle for any mayor, of course, is that day-to-day bus and subway service is operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, wants to take control of the buses and subways from the M.T.A. But experts say a municipal takeover is unlikely because of the bureaucratic and financial hurdles of restructuring a mammoth state agency. “The politics of wrestling something of enormous value from Governor Cuomo don’t look very good,” said Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “There’s almost no practical chance of it happening.”Even before the pandemic, the bus system had steadily lost riders as buses trapped in traffic became unreliable. Average weekday bus ridership fell to under 2.2 million riders in 2019 from nearly 2.5 million in 2015. Though ridership on buses plunged less than on the subway during the pandemic, it remains about half of what it was before, with 1.1 million bus riders on a recent weekday.Bus speeds, which rose at the height of the pandemic as traffic disappeared, dropped to 8.2 miles per hour in April as cars returned.Though New York has significantly expanded bus lanes in recent years to 138 miles, that is still lower than in other major cities, including London, which has about 180 miles of bus lanes.Here is what the candidates said they would do to improve bus service:Lanes just for buses is a key step. The city’s sprawling bus network links many neighborhoods, especially outside Manhattan, that are not well served by the subway.Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesAll the candidates said they would build more bus lanes. Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, said he would add 150 miles of new bus lanes and busways in four years, while Mr. Stringer said he would build 35 miles of new bus lanes and busways every year and Ms. Wiley 30 miles every year. Dianne Morales said she supported a call by a coalition of community, environmental and business groups to create 500 miles of new protected bus lanes by 2025 to ensure every New Yorker lives within a quarter-mile of a bus lane. Ms. Morales, a former nonprofit executive, said she would start with more bus lanes in underserved neighborhoods outside Manhattan.“When you look at transportation investments and where transit deserts are in New York City, the patterns are all designed to benefit wealthy neighborhoods,” Ms. Morales said. “The reality is that Black and brown communities have less access to transit.”Use cameras and tech to speed up service. To help keep bus lanes clear, the city has installed 372 enforcement cameras to catch drivers who travel in the lanes, with fines starting at $50. The M.T.A. also has 123 buses with cameras that help ticket drivers for blocking bus lanes. Ms. Wiley, Mr. Stringer and Shaun Donovan, a former federal housing secretary, said they would install more bus lane cameras, with Mr. Stringer also calling for heavier fines. “But in a way that is fair and does not unjustly target any one particular community,” Mr. Donovan added.Five candidates — Mr. Donovan, Mr. Stringer, Ms. Wiley, Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia — said they would also expand signal technology that gives buses priority at traffic lights. .css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Currently, there are 1,569 intersections with signal priority for buses, or about 19 percent of such intersections where buses cross.Make the fleet more green. New York has 138 miles of bus lanes, far less than other major cities across the world. All the leading mayoral candidates pledged to vastly increase the number of lanes. Jonah Markowitz for The New York TimesThe M.T.A. has more than 5,700 buses, including 25 all-electric buses, with plans to buy another 500 and build charging stations. The agency has committed to a zero-emission fleet by 2040.Four candidates — Mr. Yang, Mr. Adams, Ms. Garcia and Raymond McGuire, a former Wall Street executive — said they would push the agency to get more electric buses on the roads faster to reduce pollution. Mr. Yang wants to see an all-electric bus fleet by 2030.Ms. Garcia has also proposed converting 10,000 city school buses to electric “to protect our youngest lungs.”Mr. Adams, who would prioritize communities facing environmental health risks, added that electric buses were also “an investment that will save the city money on fuel and maintenance.” Increase service to improve commutes. Though M.T.A. officials oversee bus routes and service, four candidates — Ms. Garcia, Mr. Adams, Ms. Morales and Mr. McGuire — said they would push to expand express and select bus service. Express bus service carries commuters from the city’s edges to Manhattan with limited stops and higher fares. Select bus service speeds up buses in congested areas with bus lanes, curbside ticket machines and boarding through all doors. Mr. McGuire said he would work with the M.T.A. to add 20 more select bus service routes and dedicated bus lanes to accelerate travel times, as well as to eliminate transit deserts and reduce reliance on cars.Ms. Wiley and Mr. Stringer have called for increasing off-peak and weekend bus service, particularly outside Manhattan. Mr. Yang would count on gaining control of the bus system from the M.T.A. to increase bus service in transit deserts as part of his plan to build more affordable housing. “I will be expanding bus routes to these neighborhoods so we can support denser housing without further exacerbating car traffic,” he said.Build a rapid system for buses.Some candidates said they would expand signal technology that gives buses priority to proceed first at traffic lights.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesFour candidates — Mr. Adams, Mr. Donovan, Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales — envision creating a full-fledged Bus Rapid Transit network, in which buses go faster because they travel in full-time, protected bus lanes often set off by barriers. In New York, some bus lanes only operate during certain hours.Ms. Morales and Mr. Donovan said they would prioritize rapid transit in key corridors, and Ms. Wiley said it would especially benefit underserved areas with poor subway connections such as Fordham Road in the Bronx.Mr. Adams said rapid transit would “help revolutionize how New York City residents move around” on arteries like Linden Boulevard and Third Avenue in Brooklyn and support economic development around transit hubs.“B.R.T. is cost-effective, high quality, and will do the most in the shortest amount of time to build out our transit network without depending solely on New York State,” he said. Some advocates said they welcomed the candidates’ ambitions to improve service since it is easier, quicker and cheaper to expand and speed up buses than it is to lay down subway tracks and build new stations. “We like to see the acknowledgment that there are certain routes in the city that could take advantage of wider streets and bring in much faster transit service for communities that lack good subway access,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, an advocacy group. More

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      The End of Online Classes

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      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Tuesday. Weather: It should get sunnier as the day goes on. High in the low to mid-70s. Alternate-side parking: In effect until Monday (Memorial Day). Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesThis September, New York City’s public school students will no longer sit in front of a computer screen for class. Parents won’t have to juggle working from home and helping their children through technical difficulties. Teachers won’t have to remind students to mute themselves on Zoom.Schools will fully reopen this fall, and remote learning will be eliminated, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced yesterday. The complete return to in-person classes is a major indicator of the city’s economic recovery.“It’s time to do things the way they were meant to be done,” Mr. de Blasio said during a news conference. “All the kids in the classroom together.”[New York is one of the first big cities to remove remote learning this fall.]Here’s what you need to know:The detailsSchools will fully reopen, without a remote-learning option but with safety precautions. Masks will still be required, and schools will follow social-distancing guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The city is not yet requiring staff members and students to be vaccinated before returning.Parents will be able to tour schools during open-house events in June.The contextMr. de Blasio said the school reopening was possible thanks the city’s low positivity numbers and availability of vaccinations.On Monday, he said the city’s positivity rate was 1.13 percent, the lowest it had been since last September. Over 7.9 million vaccine doses have been administered in the city, he said, and 50 percent of adults have been fully vaccinated.Several coronavirus restrictions were lifted throughout the state earlier this month.“Covid is being run out of New York City,” the mayor said.The reactionParents on Monday had mixed reactions.For Jenn Adams, who is a tutor and has a 5-year-old who attends Public School 319, the announcement was welcome news to both her and her son. She has balanced tutoring students over video calls, scheduling in-person visits and making sure her son was learning in his online classes. It has been exhausting.“I’ll have more time to work,” she told Nate Schweber as he reported for The Times. “He will learn better. It’s exciting.”Juan Gomez and his wife, Elvia Gonell, who are parents of two children, said they felt conflicted about the end of online learning. Ms. Gonell said she worries about virus variants spreading in schools, especially since her 9-year-old child has not been vaccinated.“It’s good, but I don’t feel safe,” she said.From The TimesMeet the 12 High Schoolers Who Won a New York Times Scholarship This YearHow to Vote in the New York City Primary in JuneWho’s Winning the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race? Even Pollsters Are Confused.Whales Sing in New York WatersTo Find New York’s Best Jerk, Follow the SmokeWant more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingThe police were searching for someone who they said had spray-painted over 60 cars in a Queens neighborhood. [NBC New York]Local leaders are calling for stronger safety measures after a 24-year-old woman fell to her death during a rooftop party in Manhattan. [ABC 7]A man pulled a knife on a security guard at the Times Square M&M store after shoplifting, law enforcement said. [New York Post].css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}And finally: Did you see Andrew Yang on ‘Ziwe’? The Times’s James Poniewozik writes:Years from now, when we look back on the history of pop-political interviewing, we may find it quaint that Sacha Baron Cohen had to disguise himself as Borat and Ali G in order to get public figures into uncomfortable situations.Turns out all you have to do is ask.At least that was the case with the New York mayoral candidate and media omnipresence Andrew Yang, who accepted a dangerous offer from the comedian Ziwe to appear on her self-named Showtime program.The invitation (announced in a tweet that appeared to include a still from an already completed interview) would give many political handlers heartburn. The three-week old “Ziwe,” based on the comedian’s online show “Baited With Ziwe,” is a crucible of cringe.But cringe, in many ways, has been what the Yang campaign runs on.In her interviews, Ziwe uses the persona of an extremely online interviewer fond of influencer-speak (everything, and everyone, is “iconic”) to set up productively uncomfortable questions about politics and culture. Her signature is to take a softball-question template (“Your favorite ____”), soak it in acid and surround it with mousetraps. She asked the author and celebrated New York grouch Fran Lebowitz, “What bothers you more: slow walkers or racism?”[Read more about Mr. Yang’s cringeworthy — yet “iconic” — interview with Ziwe.]Sunday’s interview delivered. After a cheerful introduction by teleconference — Mr. Yang was, of course, an “icon” — Ziwe asked the candidate to name his four favorite billionaires. (His answer included Michael Bloomberg, whom the Democratic base considers less than iconic; Oprah; Michael Jordan; and a tie for fourth between the possible/potential billionaires LeBron James and the Rock.) His favorite subway stop? The punitive Times Square station.When Mr. Yang said he was a fan of hip-hop, Ziwe asked his favorite Jay-Z song, a loaded question about a New York rapper for a candidate whose local cred has repeatedly been challenged.There was a pause.It’s Tuesday — be iconic.Metropolitan Diary: Friendship testDear Diary:I was at the dry cleaner. A woman came in with an ungainly heavy bundle, which she dumped onto the counter. It was a patterned comforter completely covered with stains.“My friend’s cat threw up all over my bed,” she said. “Can you clean this?”“That will be $50,” the woman behind the counter said.“She must be a very good friend,” I said.“She is not a friend anymore,” the woman replied.— Patricia RichNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com.What would you like to see more (or less) of? Email us: nytoday@nytimes.com. More

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      N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Keep Focus on Crime After a Feisty Debate

      by

      Back on the campaign trail, the leading Democrats traded barbs over their competing visions for public safety.On the day after the leading Democratic candidates for mayor faced off in the first major debate of the election season, Andrew Yang attended a conference on the future of the waterfront. Scott M. Stringer went to a vacant lot in Brooklyn to talk about affordable housing. Maya Wiley toured a Puerto Rican cultural center on the Lower East Side. Eric Adams attended fund-raisers, and Raymond J. McGuire greeted business owners on Staten Island.But whatever the candidates’ ostensible agendas, public safety — which spurred some of the hottest exchanges during the debate — remained the topic of the day, after yet another rash of attacks in the subway kept the city’s focus on its shaken sense of order.And so there was Mr. Adams, a retired police captain, reminding New Yorkers in a statement Friday morning that he stood with transit workers in their demands for more officers in the subway. There was Mr. Yang on “Good Morning New York,” opining that the police “are going to drive our ability to improve what’s going on our streets, in the subway.”There, on the other side of the divide, was Ms. Wiley, at the Clemente Cultural and Educational Center in Manhattan, urging that more social service workers for people with mental illness, not more police officers, be sent underground.And there was Mr. Stringer, the city comptroller, sounding a similar note in front of the vacant lot in Brownsville, saying that without a comprehensive prescription that included social services and supportive housing, “We will be cycling people from the subways to Rikers,” the city’s jail complex, “back and forth and at a tremendous financial cost.”With less than six weeks left before the June 22 primary and a crowded field of contenders struggling to define themselves to a distracted electorate, crime, and how to stop it, has emerged as both a dominant public concern and a way for the candidates to score points against each other.Each day seems to bring a fresh cause for alarm. On Friday, a group of men slashed or punched commuters aboard a moving subway train. The attacks came at the end of a one-week stretch that included the shooting of three bystanders in Times Square, a police officer being shot three times while responding to another shooting and at least a half-dozen other seemingly random subway attacks.The candidates have clearly felt pressure to address the violence. After the Times Square shooting last Saturday, Mr. Yang, Mr. Adams and Mr. McGuire held news conferences there, even as the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, stayed away.At the debate, Mr. Adams took Mr. Yang, a former presidential candidate, to task for holding a news conference “blocks from your home” in Times Square but not responding to recent shootings in neighborhoods with large Black populations, like Brownsville. Two other candidates, Shaun Donovan and Kathryn Garcia, responded to the Times Square shooting with plans to get guns off the streets.In many ways, the campaigning on Friday was a continuation of the previous night’s debate, where the candidates leaned into their sharply different approaches to law enforcement and to the question of whether the city can police its way out of a spike in gun violence.Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio and civil-rights lawyer, said at the debate that she would take $1 billion from the Police Department and use the money “to create trauma-informed care in our schools, because when we do that violence goes down and graduation rates go up.”Another candidate, Dianne Morales, who has called for cutting the $6 billion police budget in half, said that “safety is not synonymous with police.” Mr. Stringer and Mr. Donovan have also called for shifting at least $1 billion from the police budget to social services.Ms. Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, staked out a middle ground on Thursday, saying, “We do need to respond when the M.T.A. says we need more cops in the subway. That does not mean we’re not sending mental health professionals into the subway as well.”Mr. Adams and Mr. Yang have opposed “defunding” the police, and on Thursday night Mr. Adams repeated his call for a reinstituted unit of plainclothes police officers to target gang activity in the city.“​We have to deal with intervention,” he said, “and stop the flow of guns into the city,” adding, “We have to deal with this real, pervasive handgun problem.”In one of the debate’s fiercer exchanges, Ms. Wiley called Mr. Adams an apologist for stop-and-frisk policing. That prompted him to counter that he was actually a “leading voice against the abuse of stop-and-frisk” and that Ms. Wiley had showed a “failure of understanding law enforcement.”Ms. Wiley retorted that as the former head of the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, “I certainly understand misconduct.” Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, hit back, saying that under her, the board was “a failure.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Ms. Wiley picked up the thread on Friday, reminding a reporter at her tour outside the Clemente Center that Mr. Adams had called stop-and-frisk a “great tool” just last year. (She called the policy “lazy,” “ineffective” and “traumatizing.”)Mr. Adams also took flak from Mr. Donovan at the debate for having said that as mayor he would carry a gun.“As a New Yorker but also as a parent, I’m deeply concerned about the idea of a mayor who carries a gun at a time where gun violence is spiking,” Mr. Donovan, a former city and federal housing official, said.Mr. Adams replied that he would do so only if the police’s threat assessment unit found that he was the target of “a credible threat.”On Friday, Ms. Wiley spoke about there being a “false choice between either being safe from crime and being safe from police violence” and promised, “We can have both.”In an ad released on Friday by a political action committee that supports Mr. Adams, Strong Leadership NYC, Mr. Adams used similar words.“We can have justice and public safety at the same time,” he says in the ad, adding that after being assaulted by the police as a young man, he became an officer with the goal of reforming the department from within. In his statement on Friday, Mr. Adams called not only for more officers in the subway but for “serious mental health resources.”Still, there was no question where his emphasis lay: He also called for better monitoring of security cameras and closer coordination between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subway, and the police.“Progress cannot be derailed by crime,” Mr. Adams wrote. “If New Yorkers themselves cannot rely on our public transportation to keep them safe, then tourists will not return and not the businesses that depend on them.” More

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      in Elections

      Help, We Can’t Stop Writing About Andrew Yang

      by

      The outsider brings provocative ideas and good vibes. But can an “empty vessel” really make it through New York’s shark-infested media waters?In January of last year, as the Iowa caucuses neared and before I’d heard of Covid-19, I asked Andrew Yang if running for mayor of New York wouldn’t make more sense than his improbable presidential campaign.“After eight years as president, we’ll see if I have an appetite for mayor,” he replied.I found him surprisingly impressive and hard to dismiss, and wrote a column saying the news media should take his presidential bid more seriously.Then I went to a caucus in West Des Moines, where the only Yang supporter I found was a teenager who had been dragged to the event by her Elizabeth Warren-supporting mother, and was lodging a familial protest vote. Still, I reminded him of the exchange when we spoke on Friday. “It turns out I never became president!” he said brightly. “And I’m full of energy.”This time, the media is taking him seriously — and indeed, is trying, with mixed results, to avoid some of what journalists see as the mistakes in covering Donald Trump.Those post-mortems were endless: In 2016, the media covered an outsider, celebrity candidate by a different set of standards, and simultaneously allowed him to suck all the energy out of the race.In New York in 2021, even a depleted local press corps has covered Mr. Yang skeptically, each outlet in its own way. The Daily News put his “rabid” and “unruly” supporters on its front page. The New York Post roasted his eagerness to hire his rivals to actually run the city. Politico documented his courtship of conservative media. And this weekend, Brian Rosenthal and Katie Glueck of The New York Times exposed a wide gap between the promise and reality of the nonprofit he founded. Now, aides to other candidates said, he has become the central target as they scramble to take him down in the six weeks that remain before the primary election.Still, the local media is wrestling with how to avoid allowing coverage of one candidate to eclipse the rest of the field, even if Mr. Yang is “not in the same ideological universe as Donald Trump,” said Jere Hester, the editor in chief of the nonprofit news organization The City.“There’s a residual wariness among the media about being careful not to uncritically help elevate someone who’s more celebrity than proven public servant,” he said.The rise of Mr. Yang, like an optimistic helium balloon, has been disconcerting to the denizens of New York’s once-savage media-political scene. The New York mayoralty used to be one of the great prizes in American politics, won by candidates tough enough to survive the second-fiercest press corps in the country, after the White House. But local news here, as everywhere, has been in decline for years, and Michael Bloomberg’s billions showed that a candidate could sidestep the historically hostile gaggle of reporters and reach city voters through expensive television ads instead. Mayor Bill de Blasio, too, has brushed off fierce and unrelenting opposition from The Post, which despite being still lively and well-funded, has lost some of its killing power.And while the coverage of Mr. Yang has been mixed, there is no question he is dominating, getting about twice as much written coverage as his nearest rival, according to the magazine City Limits, and regularly leading broadcast news outlets.“I’m excited because it means I’m contending,” Mr. Yang said in a Zoom interview on Friday. “When I ran for president, we were the scrappy underdog, so most of the coverage was like, ‘What’s going on here? Who is this?’ So I’ll take it. Generally speaking being covered is a good thing.”“A lot of New Yorkers are excited about someone who will come in and just try to figure out, like what the best approach to a particular problem is,” Mr. Yang said.Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe next month will determine whether he’s right, and whether he can continue to float through a campaign that, in this strange moment near the end of a pandemic, has been oddly muffled, lacking the kind of crescendo of the media echo chamber that demolished more experienced candidates before him.Mr. Yang’s good cheer and good vibes — at a cultural moment when vibes, as The New Yorker’s Kyle Chayka wrote recently, are standing in for more concrete judgment — may be what some weary voters crave now. His breeziness certainly stands out among the more sober candidacies of his rivals, like the Brooklyn borough president, Eric Adams, who has campaigned against gun violence, and the former de Blasio aide Maya Wiley, who is promising to take on the hard challenges of changing the city’s police and schools, while her aides rage at Mr. Yang’s airy ascent.Another candidate who was trying to offer a solid and steady alternative to Mr. Yang, Comptroller Scott Stringer, faltered last week as his key supporters abandoned him after a lobbyist said Mr. Stringer sexually assaulted her 20 years ago. That accusation, which he denies, ricocheted through the media and political world despite a lack of journalistic corroboration.The one constant in this strange campaign has been the directness of Mr. Yang’s approach. When I saw him outside the Mermaid Inn in the East Village last Wednesday, he was holding a news conference to demand, in part, that the state drop the Covid-era requirement that bars serve snacks with drinks. It was the sort of populist issue that draws broadcast cameras, and a smaller version of his willingness to press the city’s powerful teachers’ union on reopening schools. It hit the note of post-pandemic optimism his opponents have struggled to strike. An aide noted with satisfaction that two of the three main local networks were there.“The media has a bias toward celebrity and novelty and energy,” said U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres of the Bronx, who has endorsed Mr. Yang.The candidate’s version of Trumpian provocation is a series of Twitter controversies over mildly misguided enthusiasm for bodegas and subways. “The Daily Show” last week launched a parody Twitter account featuring a wide-eyed Mr. Yang excitedly declaring gems like “Real New Yorkers want to get back to Times Square.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Mr. Yang was less amused than usual by that effort. “It seems like an odd time to utilize Asian tourist tropes,” he told me acidly. “I wish it were funnier.”The joke is also probably on his critics. He has, like Mr. Trump, appeared simply to benefit from the attention. When his campaign asked the fairly narrow slice of Democratic primary voters who get their news from Twitter how they would characterize what they were seeing about the candidate, 79 percent said it was positive.While Mr. Yang isn’t new to the city, he’s new to its civic life. He has never even voted in a mayoral election. The provocative heart of his presidential campaign, a promise to palliate dystopian, robot-driven social collapse by handing out $1,000 a month to a displaced citizenry, doesn’t make sense in city budgeting, and so he replaced it with a program of cash supplements targeted, more traditionally, at the poor. It’s unclear how many people still think he’s the free-money candidate.His campaign’s top staffers work for a consulting firm headed by Bradley Tusk, a former aide to Mayor Bloomberg and the disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Mr. Tusk, who also advised Uber, has steered Mr. Yang toward a broad-strokes, pro-business centrism and kept him out of the other candidates’ competition for the left wing of the primary electorate.Mr. Tusk told me in an unguarded moment in March that Mr. Yang’s great advantage was that he came to local politics as an “empty vessel,” free of fixed views on city policy or set alliances. When I asked the candidate what he made of that remark, Mr. Yang took no offense. “A lot of New Yorkers are excited about someone who will come in and just try to figure out, like what the best approach to a particular problem is, like free of a series of obligations to existing special interests,” he said.Will that be enough for voters? The one group especially hostile to Mr. Yang is the city’s liberal political establishment, whose admirable civic devotion is matched only by their preference for familiar faces, and who find it particularly annoying that Mr. Yang hasn’t bothered voting in local elections. The most consequential voice of that group is this newspaper’s editorial board, which is trying to live down its own 2020 debacle, when it squandered its power in Democratic primary politics by endorsing two rival candidates, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, at the same time. (Kathleen Kingsbury, the paper’s opinion editor, said she did not view that decision as a mistake, and wouldn’t say whether The Times would be endorsing more than one candidate this time around.)Nobody expects Mr. Yang to win that endorsement, which his foes hope will solidify Democrats around a “stop Yang” alternative.Mr. Yang with Representative Ritchie Torres, who has endorsed him.James Estrin/The New York TimesBut Mr. Yang’s surprising popularity may also reflect how the city’s establishment left, and its echo chamber on Twitter, are pulling the campaign away from the concerns of some voters, leaving Mr. Yang as the sole candidate speaking to them. New York, it should be noted, is a city where Democratic voters put coming back from Covid-19 as their top issue, and they consistently say they’re more worried about crime than racial injustice. And while other candidates are offering dour competence as an answer to Mayor de Blasio’s perceived inattention, Mr. Yang is offering joyful enthusiasm.Mr. Yang’s sunny optimism is authentically appealing. Who wouldn’t vote for his vibe? But it can also sometimes feel a little … empty. When I asked him if he had a plan for saving the city’s ailing media, he gamely offered that he supports federal legislation to help the news industry and said he would see whether he could use the city’s own resources to help out. “We even have a printing press, apparently. So I don’t know if anyone needs a printing press?” he said. I’m not sure if he was joking.And Mr. Yang is a man of the internet, not a big consumer of print, he said. He once had a vision of himself, he recalled, as the sort of classic cultured West Sider, who subscribed to the Sunday New York Times. He imagined spreading it out with coffee after a trip to the gym to luxuriate in all its sections, and even did that a few times. But as his New York life got busy, he found, to the degree he picked up a paper at all, it was the The Post’s sports section and, in particular, the old print edition of The Onion. More