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      New York Mayoral Candidates Weigh How Hard to Hit Cuomo

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the Race5 TakeawaysAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNew York Mayoral Candidates Weigh How Hard to Hit CuomoThe feud between Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo has hurt New York City, but Mr. Cuomo’s recent troubles may alter the dynamic for the next mayor.Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing inquiries into sexual harassment claims and how his administration handled virus-related deaths in nursing homes.Credit…Hans Pennink/Associated PressMarch 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETGov. Andrew M. Cuomo was having one of the worst weeks of his administration, and he tried to divert attention to the New York City mayor’s race.In one of his famed slide show presentations, Mr. Cuomo listed the many challenges facing the city — a rising murder rate, a homelessness crisis, people deciding to move away — and questioned if the candidates were up to the task.“What have you managed before? What have you accomplished before?” Mr. Cuomo said in late February. “This is not about rhetoric. This is not about slogans.”Mr. Cuomo failed to mention another top challenge for the next mayor: Figuring out how to get along with him.Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat in his third term, has been significantly weakened by a growing crisis over allegations of sexual harassment and his handling of coronavirus-related nursing home deaths. But if Mr. Cuomo remains in office, the next mayor will have to work with him to help the city recover from the pandemic.Now the candidates must decide how strongly to criticize Mr. Cuomo; several candidates are calling for Mr. Cuomo to face impeachment proceedings or to resign if the harassment allegations are confirmed.But the governor is unlikely to forget those who attacked him, and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tenure has shown how a troubled relationship with Mr. Cuomo can thwart a mayor’s agenda. Mr. de Blasio never mastered how to work with the governor, even during the darkest days of the pandemic when the leaders fought over shutting down the city.Over the last seven years, the feud between Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio has had real implications for the city when they failed to work together on the vaccine rollout, reopening schools, a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak, and fixing the subway and public housing.The candidates running to succeed Mr. de Blasio had been talking about how they would have a better relationship with Mr. Cuomo, but the tone drastically changed in recent days, after three women detailed accusations of sexual harassment against the governor.On Monday, after a woman told The New York Times that Mr. Cuomo tried to kiss her at a wedding in 2019, Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, said she had heard enough and Mr. Cuomo “should do the right thing and step aside.”Andrew Yang, the former presidential hopeful, and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, have called for an independent investigation. Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, criticized Mr. Cuomo for disappearing from public appearances while the state was still facing a health crisis.“No one should throw around words like impeachment or resignation lightly,” she said. “But as a state, we must see immediate action to address the disgusting behavior” described by two female accusers of Mr. Cuomo.Maya Wiley called for “immediate action” to address Mr. Cuomo’s alleged behavior, but cautioned against using “words like impeachment or resignation lightly.”Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesScott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, said on Saturday that he believed in a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment.“I continue to support a thorough and truly independent investigation of the governor’s conduct, and if it supports these serious and credible allegations, Governor Cuomo must resign,” Mr. Stringer said.Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, and Carlos Menchaca, a City Council member in Brooklyn, have called for impeachment proceedings to begin.The condemnations are unlikely to affect Mr. Cuomo’s involvement in the June 22 Democratic primary for mayor, which is likely to determine the winner in the general election. The governor seems unlikely to endorse a candidate; even in the presidential race, he waited until very late to endorse his friend Joseph R. Biden Jr.Mr. Cuomo knows two leading candidates well: Mr. Stringer, a former state assemblyman, and Mr. Adams, a former state senator. Mr. Stringer has found ways to work with the governor, leading Carl Heastie, the State Assembly speaker, to call Mr. Stringer a “rubber stamp” for Mr. Cuomo in 2018 during a battle over pay raises for state lawmakers.But Mr. Adams has openly criticized Mr. Cuomo, over his management of the subway and his feud with the mayor. In April, when Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio fought over closing the city’s schools, Mr. Adams told them to “cut the crap.” This past week, after the sexual harassment claims were lodged, he said that when powerful men prey on women, “swift action must be taken against them.”Mr. Yang and Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, have said they had an in with the governor — pointing to their relationship with his brother, Chris Cuomo, the CNN host. Mr. Yang, however, voted in 2018 for Cynthia Nixon, the actress and a fierce critic of Mr. Cuomo in the Democratic primary that year — a choice that he publicized on Twitter.Another guilt-by-association relationship could stem from one of Mr. Yang’s first endorsers: Ron Kim, the state assemblyman who has gone to war with Mr. Cuomo over virus-related deaths in nursing homes. In the 2018 Democratic primary for governor, Andrew Yang, left, voted for Cynthia Nixon, the actress who ran and lost against Mr. Cuomo in a bitterly fought contest.Credit…Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesHaving a relationship with Mr. Cuomo is not necessarily predictive of how the next mayor might get along with the governor. Mr. Cuomo and Mr. de Blasio had known each other well: Mr. Cuomo, as the secretary of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, hired Mr. de Blasio to oversee the New York region during the Clinton administration.When Michael R. Bloomberg was mayor, he seemingly got along better with Mr. Cuomo. But behind the scenes, the leaders also had a tense relationship, jockeying for credit on issues like the state’s passage of a same-sex marriage law in 2011.The stakes have never been higher. Besides dealing with the coronavirus recovery, plenty of other key issues will be decided in Albany: raising taxes on the wealthy, schools funding, fixing the subway and desegregating specialized high schools.Democrats who have wrangled with Mr. Cuomo in the past believe that direct confrontation is the best approach. Monica Klein, a political consultant who worked for Mr. de Blasio and has organized protests outside the governor’s office, said Mr. Cuomo only responds to sustained political pressure and bad headlines.“You can’t cede ground to a bully,” she said.Some political consultants contend that Mr. Cuomo might prefer a candidate who has little experience in city government.“Even a weakened Governor Cuomo would run circles around Andrew Yang,” said Eric Phillips, a former press secretary for Mr. de Blasio.Mr. Stringer may have had an edge — at least before he brought up Mr. Cuomo’s resignation. In December, Mr. Stringer joined more than two dozen of Mr. Cuomo’s top allies in Albany, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. No other mayoral candidate was there for the historic moment: to cast the state’s official elector ballots to elect Mr. Biden as president.Scott Stringer, the city comptroller and a former state lawmaker, has found ways to work with the governor.Credit…Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesMr. de Blasio was not invited, even though the mayors of smaller cities like Buffalo and Rochester attended. Mr. de Blasio was left off the list because he ran in the Democratic primary against Mr. Biden, organizers said.The friendly gesture did not stop Mr. Cuomo from attacking Mr. Stringer a short time later.“The comptroller is an incumbent — where have you been?” Mr. Cuomo said to reporters in February, criticizing Mr. Stringer on police reform after huge protests in the city last summer. “What have you done? Where were you when Rome was burning?”Mr. Stringer may also face a difficult tightrope, trying to work with the governor while answering to progressive allies who are at odds with Mr. Cuomo, including State Senators Jessica Ramos and Alessandra Biaggi — both of whom endorsed Mr. Stringer.Mr. Stringer has made clear that he would try to be a stronger voice for the city than Mr. de Blasio.“I’m not going to have my lunch money stolen from Albany,” he said. “You can be sure of that.”Mr. Cuomo likely would have preferred Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, or Christine Quinn, the former City Council speaker, two allies who decided against running for mayor. At a recent news conference, Mr. Cuomo said he had been asked about an endorsement and wanted to know more about candidates’ plans.“You need a real manager with a real vision who can really get things done,” Mr. Cuomo said.Jay Jacobs, an ally of Mr. Cuomo’s and chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee, said he had given no thought to picking a favorite in the mayoral field.Still, he added: “It doesn’t help anybody’s chances to get something from the governor, or anyone for that matter, if they’ve been spending several years banging him over the head — that’s just common sense.”Katie Glueck and Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Supreme Court Seems Ready to Sustain Arizona Voting Limits

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySupreme Court Seems Ready to Sustain Arizona Voting LimitsThe court also signaled that it could tighten the standards for using the Voting Rights Act to challenge all kinds of voting restrictions.Election workers counting ballots in Phoenix in November. The case before the Supreme Court could determine the fate of scores if not hundreds of laws addressing election rules in the coming years.Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesMarch 2, 2021Updated 6:35 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed ready on Tuesday to uphold two election restrictions in Arizona and to make it harder to challenge all sorts of limits on voting around the nation.In its most important voting rights case in almost a decade, the court for the first time considered how a crucial part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 applies to voting restrictions that have a disproportionate impact on members of minority groups. The court heard the case as disputes over voting rights have again become a flash point in American politics.The immediate question for the justices was whether two Arizona measures ran afoul of the 1965 law. One of the measures requires election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct. The other makes it a crime for campaign workers, community activists and most other people to collect ballots for delivery to polling places, a practice critics call “ballot harvesting.”Several members of the court’s conservative majority said the restrictions were sensible, commonplace and at least partly endorsed by a bipartisan consensus reflected in a 2005 report signed by former President Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III, who served as secretary of state under President George Bush.The Biden administration, too, told the justices in an unusual letter two weeks ago that the Arizona measures appeared to be lawful. But the letter disavowed the Trump administration’s position that the relevant section of the Voting Rights Act should not be widely used to keep states from enacting more restrictive voting procedures.Much of the argument on Tuesday centered on that larger issue in the case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, No. 19-1257, of what standard courts should apply to challenges under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The court’s answer to that question could determine the fate of scores if not hundreds of laws addressing election rules in the coming years.As Republican-controlled state legislatures increasingly seek to impose restrictive new voting rules, Democrats and civil rights groups are turning to the courts to argue that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote, thwart the will of the majority and deny equal access to minority voters and others who have been underrepresented at the polls.“More voting restrictions have been enacted over the last decade than at any point since the end of Jim Crow,” Bruce V. Spiva, a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, which is challenging the two Arizona measures, told the justices. “The last three months have seen an even greater uptick in proposed voting restrictions, many aimed squarely at the minority groups whose participation Congress intended to protect.”Though the Voting Rights Act seeks to protect minority voting rights, as a practical matter litigation under it tends to proceed on partisan lines. When Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked a lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party why his client cared about whether votes cast at the wrong precinct should be counted, he gave a candid answer.“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” said the lawyer, Michael A. Carvin. “Politics is a zero-sum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us.”Jessica R. Amunson, a lawyer for Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s secretary of state, a Democrat, said electoral contests should not turn on voting procedures.“Candidates and parties should be trying to win over voters on the basis of their ideas,” Ms. Amunson said, “not trying to remove voters from the electorate by imposing unjustified and discriminatory burdens.”Section 2 took on additional prominence after the Supreme Court in 2013 effectively struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act, its Section 5, which required prior federal approval of changes to voting procedures in parts of the country with a history of racial and other discrimination.Until then, Section 2, which allows after-the-fact challenges, had mostly been used in redistricting cases, where the question was whether voting maps had unlawfully diluted minority voting power. Its role in addressing the denial of the right to vote itself has been subject to much less attention.Over two hours of arguments by telephone, the justices struggled to identify a standard that would allow courts to distinguish lawful restrictions from improper ones.The court did not seem receptive to a rigorous test proposed by Mr. Carvin, the lawyer for the Arizona Republican Party, who said that ordinary election regulations are not subject to challenges under Section 2. Most justices appeared to accept that regulations that place substantial burdens on minority voters could run afoul of the law.But there was some dispute about what counted as substantial and what justifications states could offer for their restrictions. The court’s more conservative members seemed inclined to require significant disparities unconnected to socioeconomic conditions and to accept the need to combat even potential election fraud as a sufficient reason to impose restrictions on voting.Justice Elena Kagan tested the limits of Mr. Carvin’s argument, asking whether much longer lines at polling places in minority neighborhoods could be challenged under the law. He said yes. He gave the same answer when asked about locating all polling places at country clubs far from minority neighborhoods.But he said cutting back on Sunday voting, even if heavily relied on by Black voters, was lawful, as was restricting voting to business hours on Election Day.Mark Brnovich, Arizona’s attorney general, a Republican, proposed a vaguer standard, saying that the disparate effect on minority voters must be substantial and caused by the challenged practice rather than some other factor.Asked by Justice Kagan whether the four hypothetical restrictions she had posed to Mr. Carvin would survive under that test, Mr. Brnovich did not give a direct answer.He did say that the number of ballots disqualified for having been cast in the wrong district was very small and that Arizona’s overall election system makes it easy to vote.Ms. Amunson, the lawyer for Arizona’s secretary of state, urged the justices to strike down the challenged restrictions.“Arizona already has a law prohibiting fraudulent ballot collection,” she said by way of example. “What this law does is it criminalizes neighbors helping neighbors deliver ballots with up to two years in jail.”Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked her a series of hypothetical questions about early voting, ballot forms and deadlines for mailed ballots. Ms. Amunson gave a general answer.“You have to take a functional view of the political process and look to a holistic view of how it is actually affecting the voter on the ground,” she said.Justice Alito appeared unsatisfied. “Well, those are a lot of words,” he said. “I really don’t understand what they mean.”Several justices suggested that most of the standards proposed by the lawyers before them were quite similar. “The longer this argument goes on,” Justice Kagan said, “the less clear I am as to how the parties’ standards differ.”Justice Stephen G. Breyer echoed the point. “Lots of the parties on both sides are pretty close on the standards,” he said.Justices Kagan and Breyer, both members of the court’s liberal wing, may have been playing defense, hoping the court’s decision, expected by July, would leave Section 2 more or less unscathed.But Justice Alito said he was wary of making “every voting rule vulnerable to attack under Section 2.”“People who are poor and less well educated on balance probably will find it more difficult to comply with just about every voting rule than do people who are more affluent and have had the benefit of more education,” he said.Justice Barrett appeared to agree. “All election rules,” she said, “are going to make it easier for some to vote than others.”But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said he could think of two workable standards for applying the law. “One factor would be if you’re changing to a new rule that puts minorities in a worse position than they were under the old rule,” he said, “and a second factor would be whether a rule is commonplace in other states that do not have a similar history of racial discrimination.”Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that both Arizona restrictions violated Section 2 because they disproportionately disadvantaged minority voters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Why These 2 N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Are on a Collision Course

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }N.Y.C. Mayoral RaceWho’s Running?11 Candidates’ N.Y.C. MomentsAn Overview of the Race5 TakeawaysAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy These 2 N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Are on a Collision CourseEric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Ray McGuire, a former Citi executive, have become fast rivals in the New York City mayoral race.Ever since Ray McGuire, right, entered New York’s mayoral race, he has vied with Eric Adams, left, to capture Black political influencers and voters.Credit…Jose A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York TimesMarch 2, 2021, 3:00 a.m. ETJust a few days after Raymond J. McGuire officially joined the New York City mayor’s race in December, a courtesy call came in from one of his Democratic rivals, Eric Adams.Mr. Adams, who, like Mr. McGuire, is Black, offered some provocative words of wisdom.“Being in politics is just like being in a prison yard,” Mr. Adams said, according to several people familiar with the video call. “You need to put a wall around your family because you might get shanked.”Mr. Adams’s campaign described the sentiment as “friendly advice.” Several people in Mr. McGuire’s campaign saw it differently, characterizing it as a “veiled threat” from a front-runner trying to intimidate a new challenger.For two years, Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, had been regarded as one of the favorites in the 2021 mayor’s race.He was a former police officer who had nuanced views of how social justice demands could coexist with policing needs. He had broad support in Brooklyn, and had raised more than $8 million to fuel his campaign — more than anyone else in the field.In a field of progressive rivals, he had appeared to be the leading Black moderate, representing a key city constituency. But now his stature in the race is suddenly being challenged.Mr. McGuire, a former global head of corporate and investment banking at Citi, quickly began making inroads among political power brokers in the Black community. He hired Basil Smikle, a former executive director of the State Democratic Party, to be his campaign manager; other Black political operatives who have strong connections to Representative Gregory W. Meeks, chairman of the Queens Democratic Party, and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, also signed on.The filmmaker Spike Lee, whose brand is the borough of Brooklyn, narrated Mr. McGuire’s campaign announcement. Mr. McGuire raised $5 million in just three months, and landed the endorsement of Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man whose death in 2014 after being placed in a police chokehold became a flash point for the Black Lives Matter movement.“Eric came into this race believing that he would run a race of inevitability, not just as the borough president of Brooklyn, but the senior Black candidate in the race,” Mr. Smikle said. “Now, that’s not the case.”Mr. McGuire, talking with Councilman Rafael Salamanca in the Bronx, has raised $5 million in three months.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York TimesMr. McGuire and Mr. Adams have quickly become rivals, and their interactions as well as several interviews with people familiar with their relationship reveal a complicated story born at the intersection of race and class.It’s a natural rivalry between two successful Black men from humble beginnings who took different paths — Mr. McGuire through the Ivy League and the upper echelons of Wall Street, Mr. Adams through night school and the upper ranks of the New York Police Department — to become candidates for mayor.For Mr. Adams, the comparison is slightly irksome, adding to a perception that he might lack the polish to lead the city. He does not have the white-shoe law firm experience of Mr. Jeffries, the power broker and No. 5 House Democrat who The Washington Post once suggested was “Brooklyn’s Barack Obama,” or Mr. McGuire’s experience managing multibillion-dollar transactions.“Coming where I come from, I think people didn’t think I’d put it together, but now I have more money to spend on a campaign than any Black person running for office in New York City’s history,” Mr. Adams said.Four Black and Afro-Latino candidates sit among the Democratic mayoral primary’s top echelon, the most in recent memory. All talk extensively about how being Black and brown in America has affected their lives and will affect how they govern.Initial polls suggest that Mr. Adams is running second to Andrew Yang, the former 2020 presidential candidate; Maya Wiley, a civil rights lawyer who served as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s legal counsel, is roughly in fourth place; Mr. McGuire trails behind, along with Dianne Morales, an Afro-Latina who led a nonprofit in the Bronx dedicated to eradicating poverty.Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales are also further behind in fund-raising; neither has yet qualified for the city’s generous matching-funds program. But while the two are competing for the progressive vote, they have largely stayed out of each other’s way, even naming the other as their second choice for mayor.Mr. Adams and Mr. McGuire, on the other hand, seem destined for a collision course.“I can’t remember a time where you had this many strong African-American candidates, because what normally occurs is one will emerge out of a group of several with everybody else standing down,” said Mr. Jeffries, who has not decided if he will endorse anyone in the race. “There’s no expectation that will happen in this particular instance.”Evan Thies, a spokesman for Mr. Adams, described the prison yard remarks during the video call as “nothing more than friendly advice about the intense world of city politics.”“To infer otherwise,” he continued, “is an example of the kind of bias that Eric has been fighting his entire life.”But Mr. Adams’s video call in December was not the only time he had directed criticism at Mr. McGuire. At a forum in January, Mr. Adams said that he “didn’t go to the Hamptons” when the pandemic struck New York City — an apparent jab at Mr. McGuire, who said he had spent a total of three weeks in the Hamptons with his family last summer.The remarks were similar to ones Mr. Adams made at a virtual meeting with the Fred Wilson Democratic Club in Queens in December, when he said that he didn’t attend Harvard and didn’t need to introduce himself to voters.Mr. McGuire, who left his job at Citigroupto run for mayor, has also sought to draw a contrast with his rivals, often saying that he has not been “termed out” and isn’t “looking for a promotion” — a likely reference to Mr. Adams and Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, who are both barred by city law from running for third consecutive terms.As moderate Democrats, Mr. Adams and McGuire share several policy positions. Both are in favor of revamping Police Department protocols, but have not called for defunding the police. Mr. Adams was originally in favor of a plan from Mr. de Blasio to scrap the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, but changed his position and now believes — as Mr. McGuire does — that the test should not be the only criteria for admission.One area where they differ is on taxing the wealthy. Mr. Adams wants to increase taxes on those who earn more than $5 million per year for two years, and use the money to help the city recover from the pandemic. Mr. McGuire, who has business community support, has said that wealthy New Yorkers such as himself should pay their fair share but also believes that the city has to grow itself out of its financial deficit.Mr. Adams has tried to accentuate his working-class background, telling voters that he washed dishes before becoming a police officer.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe Black electorate in New York City is diverse, made up of Caribbean-Americans and African-Americans; of native New Yorkers, immigrants and transplants from other states. In the 2013 mayoral race, Mr. de Blasio won partly because of his enormous popularity among Black voters: Ninety-six percent of Black New Yorkers voted for him, according to exit polls, a higher percentage than David N. Dinkins captured in 1989 when he was elected as the city’s first Black mayor.In the 2013 Democratic primary, Mr. de Blasio garnered 18,000 more votes in predominantly African-American neighborhoods than a Black rival, the former city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., largely based on how they proposed handling the policing tactic of stop and frisk.Given the financial difficulty wrought by the pandemic, Mr. McGuire’s financial pedigree may help with voters in places like central Brooklyn and southeast Queens, said Anthony D. Andrews Jr., the leader of the Fred Wilson Democratic Club in Southeast Queens. He said that residents there are concerned about the city’s unequal property tax system and whether government jobs will be eliminated.“Some people will say the complexity of the city requires someone with a certain kind of education to be able to manage a $100 billion enterprise,” said Marc H. Morial, the former mayor of New Orleans and current president of the National Urban League, who knows both men. “But there may be other people who say, ‘Is that guy in touch with me? Does he know my pain?’”Mr. McGuire, who was urged by business leaders to run for mayor, has tried to accentuate his rise from a modest upbringing in his stump speeches. He was so poor growing up, he has said, that he washed and reused aluminum foil, and pressed scraps of soap together until they formed a bar.Having never met his father, Mr. McGuire was raised by his mother and his grandparents in a house full of foster siblings on the “wrong side of the tracks” in Dayton, Ohio. He found his way to a prestigious private school, went on to earn three degrees at Harvard, and became one of the highest-ranking Black executives on Wall Street, a mentor to young people of color and a behind-the-scenes patron of Black causes.“A Black man who grew up the way I grew up, I know exactly what they are going through,” Mr. McGuire said. “I know about the struggle.”Mr. Adams has touched on similar hardships of his youth, recalling at mayoral forums that neighbors used to leave food and clothes outside his family’s home. He said he first took an interest in becoming an officer after he was beaten by the police as a teenager.Mr. Adams worked his way up the ranks of the Police Department and founded 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, an advocacy group to confront institutional racism in the profession. He attended night school to attain a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, and has taken to saying that he will be a “blue-collar” mayor.“I’m not fancy,” Mr. Adams said at a recent Queens County Democratic Party forum. “I was a dishwasher. I worked in a mailroom.”“Acknowledging the problems Black people face,” Mr. Adams said, “is different from understanding the problems.”Mr. Adams was recently endorsed by four wrongfully convicted men, dozens of ministers and leaders from the city’s African community. Four Black City Council members, including I. Daneek Miller, co-chairman of the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, have also endorsed Mr. Adams.Of Mr. Adams’s supporters on the Council, another caucus member, Laurie A. Cumbo, the majority leader, has been among the most forceful in her criticism of Mr. McGuire.At a mayoral forum, Ms. Cumbo, who represents a Brooklyn district, questioned whether Mr. McGuire had made a “visible commitment to the community” before deciding to run for mayor. She criticized his charitable work in the art world as too “highbrow,” and said that he should make sure that his campaign was “more in alignment with the people.”Not long after, Mr. Adams and Mr. McGuire appeared at a Martin Luther King’s Birthday celebration in Harlem. Hoping to keep the peace, Mr. Adams pulled Mr. McGuire aside and told him that Ms. Cumbo’s comments were not coordinated with his campaign.Ms. Cumbo was not interested in peacemaking.“Ray McGuire is running a ‘Hello, my name is Ray McGuire’ kind of campaign,” she said. “Eric is running a ‘Hey sis, I just saw your mom yesterday getting the vaccine’ kind of campaign.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trump 2.0 Looks an Awful Lot Like Trump 2020

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyThe conversationTrump 2.0 Looks an Awful Lot Like Trump 2020Are we really going to do this again?Gail Collins and Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are opinion columnists. They converse every week.March 1, 2021Credit…Mark Peterson for The New York TimesBret Stephens: I don’t know about you, Gail, but watching Donald Trump’s speech at the CPAC conference in Orlando brought to mind that Michael Corleone line: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” Here we were, barely a month into the Biden presidency, thinking we could finally put one American disaster behind us and have normal arguments about normal subjects, and now we may be staring at the worst sequel of all time.The idea of another Trump presidential run is worse than “The Godfather Part III.” It’s “Dumb and Dumberer” meets “Friday the 13th Part VIII.”Gail Collins: Well, he made it very clear he’s planning on a “triumphant return to the White House.” If you folks want to save the Republican Party, you’re going to have to take him on.Bret: I’ve always wanted to write a musical called “The Mitt and I.”Gail: Seeing Trump so clearly gearing up for another presidential run brought me back to an ongoing argument we’ve been having. Third parties. Am I to understand you’re a fan?Bret: I’m not a fan of third parties that have no hope of winning elections and mainly serve as vanity projects for the likes of Ross Perot or Ralph Nader. And I’m obviously not a fan of extremist parties, whether they are of the George Wallace or Henry Wallace varieties.On the other hand, I’d be a fan of a right-of-center party that can replace the current Republican Party, one that believes in the virtues of small government and personal responsibility without being nativist and nasty.Gail: A lovely idea, but it’s not going to work. Nobody’s ever made it work. We’ve already seen an exodus of moderates and sane conservatives from the Republican Party, leaving it even loopier. And Trump is threatening to start a third party of his own, or at least he was, which would split things even more.Feel free to daydream about the perfect, sane, moderate alternative Republican Party, Bret, but no chance.Bret: Well, Abe Lincoln made it work by building a party on the wreckage of the Whigs.Gail: Not going to interject that it took a civil war …Bret: And there’s a political moment here. Gallup released a poll two weeks ago showing that 62 percent of Americans believe that “parties do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed.” Among self-identified Republicans, the number was a notch higher: 63 percent. I think you are underestimating the number of people who feel they’ve been abandoned by a Republican Party that became a whacked-out cult of personality under Trump. What’s missing isn’t an agenda; it’s a galvanizing personality to lead a new movement.Gail: Which galvanizing personality do you have in mind — Mitt Romney?Bret: Given what happened to the G.O.P., I bet you sometimes wish he’d won back in 2012.Gail: Um, no. But let’s look at now. Reforming the current Republican Party would mean a million grass-roots battles to retake the base. Understandable that people would just prefer to start a new movement — much less nasty infighting. Just sincere get-togethers of like-minded people, holding barbecues and giving interviews to folks like us who are desperate to think this could work.But you could never create a massive 50-state party structure, with enough voters willing to make the very large decision of abandoning the party they’ve identified with forever. More

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      Cuomo in Crisis, Republicans Emerging: Updates From New York’s Mayoral Race

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Harassment Claims Against CuomoWhat We KnowCuomo’s ApologySecond AccusationFirst AccusationMayoral Candidates ReactAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCuomo in Crisis, Republicans Emerging: Updates From New York’s Mayoral RaceSeveral major candidates called for an investigation into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, as two Republicans vied for key endorsements.At least two Democratic mayoral candidates have called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign if a series of sex harassment allegations are substantiated.Credit…Gabby Jones for The New York TimesEmma G. Fitzsimmons, Jeffery C. Mays and March 1, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETThe big political story in New York City is the growing crisis surrounding Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who faced new allegations of sexual harassment over the weekend.Several Democratic mayoral candidates responded with calls for an independent investigation, and some said Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, should resign if the allegations are substantiated.And as the Republican field begins to take shape, and many candidates are holding more in-person events, the contest — with the primaries now just four months away — is starting to feel a lot like a normal election, even with the coronavirus still a concern.Here’s what you need to know about the race:A rebuke for CuomoMaya Wiley was among a slew of mayoral candidates who expressed disgust over the allegations against the governor, saying that she believed the accuser’s account.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMany candidates responded to a New York Times article disclosing that a second woman had accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment by calling for an independent investigation, expressing disgust and demanding his resignation if the allegations were further substantiated.Charlotte Bennett, 25, a former executive assistant and health policy adviser for the governor, said he asked questions about her sex life, including whether she had ever had sex with older men. The charges come after Lindsey Boylan, a former state economic development official, accused Mr. Cuomo of giving her an unwanted kiss.Mr. Cuomo called Ms. Boylan’s allegations untrue and said he was sorry that some of the things he had said to Ms. Bennett “have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation.” The governor is also facing questions over how he handled the state’s nursing homes during the pandemic and over charges of bullying behavior.Among the candidates, Scott M. Stringer and Raymond J. McGuire went the furthest, calling for Mr. Cuomo to resign if an independent investigation substantiated the sexual harassment allegations.Mr. McGuire called the allegations “deeply disturbing” and said the accused conduct was “abhorrent.” He said the governor “should resign” if they were further substantiated.Mr. Stringer said the governor “must resign” if an investigation “supports these serious and credible allegations.”Dianne Morales had already called for impeachment proceedings to begin against Mr. Cuomo because of allegations of bullying and the way he had handled nursing homes.“It’s time to address the complete abuses of power that Cuomo has exercised for far too long,” Ms. Morales said in a statement.Kathryn Garcia, Andrew Yang and Shaun Donovan called for independent investigations into the allegations.Mr. Yang said that victims of sexual harassment should “feel empowered” to share their stories “without fear or retaliation” and that “Albany must show they take all allegations seriously through action.”Ms. Wiley registered her disgust in a statement on Saturday, saying, “I believe Charlotte Bennett.” She followed up with a statement on Sunday that had at least 20 or so questions about the situation.Republicans jockey for endorsementsCurtis Sliwa, best known as the founder of the Guardian Angels, has entered the Republican mayoral primary race.Credit…Peter Foley/EPA, via ShutterstockAnother Republican has entered the mayoral race: Curtis Sliwa, the red beret-wearing founder of the Guardian Angels, who is running on a law-and-order message.Mr. Sliwa registered with the city Campaign Finance Board recently and was endorsed by Republican leaders on Staten Island. That prompted Fernando Mateo to announce endorsements from the Republican Party in Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens. The two are expected to be top contenders for the Republican nomination, though either would be an extreme long shot in the general election, given that the vast majority of voters in the city are Democrats.“The reason I’m running for mayor is our city is a ghost town,” Mr. Sliwa said in an interview on Newsmax, criticizing rising crime and homelessness.Mr. Sliwa knocked Mr. Yang, the former presidential candidate, saying he wants to “give out money that we don’t have” — a reference to universal basic income — and he argued that the Democratic field wants to defund the police. (Most of the Democrats have been reluctant to embrace the defund movement, but they do want to change department policies.)Mr. Sliwa said the Police Department had been “neutered” since George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis last year, and he promised to restore police funding and boost morale by visiting every precinct as mayor.“I’ll pat these cops on the back so hard they’ll have to go for a chiropractic adjustment,” he said.Mr. Mateo, who was born in the Dominican Republic, has highlighted his appeal to Hispanic voters. The Bronx Republican Party said in a statement that Republicans had made “significant inroads” in minority communities, especially with Hispanics.“With Mateo at the top of the Republican ticket in 2021, we can replicate that success citywide and continue to expand the Republican coalition,” the group said.Ditching the video campaign, if only for an afternoonAndrew Yang made far more in-person campaign appearances than his rivals, but all of the leading mayoral candidates made campaign stops across the city last week.Credit…Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThere are walking tours and outdoor lunches, policy rollouts and church visits.As the weather begins to warm and the primary election nears, the Democratic mayoral candidates are slowly getting back out onto the campaign trail, appearing increasingly willing to balance the risks of campaigning in a pandemic with the need to engage and excite more voters beyond Zoom.In the last week, all of the leading mayoral candidates made campaign stops across the city, in some cases several stops in one day. Ms. Wiley spent Friday afternoon in the Bronx; Mr. Stringer offered his housing plan outdoors; Mr. McGuire spent Saturday campaigning in southeast Queens.Mr. Yang, who had to quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus last month, has from the beginning of his campaign shown more comfort with in-person events, and he was the pacesetter again last week, taking a five-day tour through the five boroughs.The strategy can pay off. Mr. Yang rode the Staten Island Ferry and made positive headlines for helping defend a photographer from an attack.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Carlos Menchaca, a Brooklyn city councilman, even held an unusual joint campaign event in front of the Phoenix Hotel in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to call for converting empty hotels into affordable housing.Mr. Adams said in an interview that his long days usually start with meditation at 6 a.m., and a recent evening ended with a dinner with South Asian leaders at 9 p.m.“Every second is utilized,” he said. “From the time I wake up to the time I hit my pillow.”A campaign of (stolen) ideasOne candidate accusing another candidate of appropriating their campaign’s ideas: It’s a time-honored complaint on the trail. The Democratic primary for mayor is no different. Several candidates for mayor are proponents of some version of universal basic income, one of Mr. Yang’s campaign platforms from his run for president. Now, some candidates are accusing Mr. Yang of pilfering their campaign ideas.Mr. Adams’s campaign faults Mr. Yang’s campaign for stealing ideas to provide pregnant women with doulas and use shuttered storefronts as vaccine distribution centers.Stu Loeser, an adviser on Mr. McGuire’s campaign, accused the Yang campaign of appropriating their idea to allow small businesses to keep their sales tax receipts for a year to help recover from the pandemic, and to create a teachers’ corps to tutor students.Mr. McGuire’s campaign grew so annoyed that they decided to do a bit of internet trolling: Anyone who heads to yangpolicy.com is automatically redirected to Mr. McGuire’s campaign website. The official registration for the web address is anonymous, but Mr. McGuire’s campaign claimed credit.“Lots of candidates say they will take on wasteful duplication. We set up yangpolicy.com to actually do something about it,” said Lupe Todd-Medina, a spokeswoman for Mr. McGuire.Mr. Yang’s campaign ridiculed the accusations, suggesting that Mr. McGuire’s campaign and others have used ideas they first proposed.“You know what’s not a new idea? Last-place candidate going after first-place candidate to get attention,” said Alyssa Cass, Mr. Yang’s communications director.As for Mr. Adams’s idea about doulas, Ms. Cass said Mr. Yang agreed with Mr. Adams and had spoken with others about the idea.“Eric has had 15-plus years as an elected official and never gotten it done,” Ms. Cass said. “We’ll make it a Year 1 priority.”Who will save Broadway?Kathryn Garcia said that she would serve as the city’s cheerleader as mayor, visiting museums and Broadway shows to get New Yorkers excited about returning to them.Credit…Brendan Mcdermid/ReutersOne central issue in the race is how to bring back Broadway and the city’s struggling cultural institutions.Ms. Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, released her plan last week called “Reopen to Stay Open,” which calls for removing red tape for small businesses and working with streaming services to broadcast Broadway shows.Ms. Garcia said she will be the city’s cheerleader, visiting museums and Broadway shows to get New Yorkers excited about returning to them. She held a recent Broadway-themed fund-raiser with Will Roland, an actor from the musical “Dear Evan Hansen.”Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, has talked about rebuilding the arts and proposed spending $1 billion on a recovery plan for artists and culture workers as part of her “New Deal New York” proposal.Ms. Wiley also said she wants to be a cheerleader for the city and would not run away from the job, referring to Mr. de Blasio’s penchant for spending time outside the city during a failed presidential run in 2019.“You don’t have to worry about me going to Iowa,” Ms. Wiley said at a candidate forum. “I’d much rather be on Broadway celebrating its survival.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Voter Suppression Is Grand Larceny

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyVoter Suppression Is Grand LarcenyWe are watching another theft of power.Opinion ColumnistFeb. 28, 2021, 7:20 p.m. ETCredit…Charles Krupa/Associated PressIn 1890, Mississippi became one of the first states in the country to call a constitutional convention for the express purpose of writing white supremacy into the DNA of the state.At the time, a majority of the registered voters in the state were Black men.The lone Black delegate to the convention, Isaiah Montgomery, participated in openly suppressing the voting eligibility of most of those Black men, in the hope that this would reduce the terror, intimidation and hostility that white supremacists aimed at Black people.The committee on which he sat went even further. As he said at the convention:“As a further precaution to secure unquestioned white supremacy the committee have fixed an arbitrary appointment of the state, which fixes the legislative branch of the government at 130 members and the senatorial branch at 45 members.” The majority of the seats in both branches were “from white constituencies.”Speaking to the Black people he was disenfranchising, Montgomery said:“I wish to tell them that the sacrifice has been made to restore confidence, the great missing link between the two races, to restore honesty and purity to the ballot-box and to confer the great boon of political liberty upon the Commonwealth of Mississippi.”That sacrifice backfired horribly, as states across the South followed the Mississippi example, suppressing the Black vote, and Jim Crow reigned.That same sort of language is being used today to prevent people from voting, because when it comes to voter suppression, ignoble intentions are always draped in noble language. Those who seek to impede others from voting, in some cases to strip them of the right, often say that they are doing so to ensure the sanctity, integrity or purity of the vote.However, when the truth is laid bare, the defilement against which they rail is the voting power of the racial minority, the young — in their eyes, naïve and liberally indoctrinated — and the dyed-in-the-wool Democrats.In early February, a Brennan Center for Justice report detailed:“Thus far this year, thirty-three states have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 bills to restrict voting access. These proposals primarily seek to: (1) limit mail voting access; (2) impose stricter voter ID requirements; (3) slash voter registration opportunities; and (4) enable more aggressive voter roll purges. These bills are an unmistakable response to the unfounded and dangerous lies about fraud that followed the 2020 election.”On Feb. 24, the center updated its account to reveal that “as of February 19, 2021, state lawmakers have carried over, prefiled, or introduced 253 bills with provisions that restrict voting access in 43 states.”But it is the coded language that harkens to the post-Reconstruction era racism that strikes me.In Georgia, which went for a Democrat for the first time since Bill Clinton in 1992 and just elected two Democratic senators — one Black and one Jewish — there have been a raft of proposed voter restrictions. As State Representative Barry Fleming, a Republican and chair of the newly formed Special Committee on Election Integrity, put it recently, according to The Washington Post, “Our due diligence in this legislature [is] to constantly update our laws to try to protect the sanctity of the vote.”Kelly Loeffler, who lost her Senate bid in the state, has launched a voter organization because, as she said, “for too many in our state, the importance — and even the sanctity of their vote — is in question.” She continued, “That’s why we’re rolling up our sleeves to register conservative-leaning voters who have been overlooked, to regularly engage more communities, and to strengthen election integrity across our state.”Senator Rick Scott and other Republicans on Feb. 25 introduced the Save Democracy Act in what they said was an effort to “restore confidence in our elections.”Jessica Anderson of the conservative lobbying organization Heritage Action for America said of the legislation: “I applaud Senator Scott for putting forward common-sense, targeted reforms to help protect the integrity of our federal elections and the sanctity of the vote. The Save Democracy Act will protect against fraud and restore American’s confidence in our election systems while respecting the state’s sovereignty.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is pushing a slate of restrictive voter laws that would make it harder for Democrats to win in the state. On his website, the announcement read this way: “Today, Governor Ron DeSantis proposed new measures to safeguard the sanctity of Florida elections. The Governor’s announcement reaffirms his commitment to the integrity of every vote and the importance of transparency in Florida elections.”They can use all manner of euphemism to make it sound honorable, but it is not. This is an electoral fleecing in plain sight, one targeting people of color. We are watching another of history’s racist robberies. It’s grand larceny and, as usual, what is being stolen is power.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Republicans Grapple With Raising the Minimum Wage

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRepublicans Grapple With Raising the Minimum WageThe politics of a $15 minimum wage are increasingly muddled, but some Republicans are gravitating toward a higher base pay, citing the economic needs of working-class Americans.A grocery store cashier in Charlottesville, Va., on Friday. The state is among those with the highest share of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum wage.Credit…Eze Amos for The New York TimesAlan Rappeport and Feb. 26, 2021Updated 7:44 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — The policy debate over raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour is the latest fault line between Democrats, who largely support the idea, and Republicans, who generally oppose such a sharp increase as bad for business.But it is also revealing new fissures in the Republican Party, which is straining to appeal to its corporate backers, some of whom believe that more than doubling the minimum wage would cut deeply into their profits, and the working-class wing, which fueled President Donald J. Trump’s rise and would stand to gain from a pay increase.After decades of either calling for the abolishment of a federal minimum wage or arguing that it should not be raised, Republicans are beginning to bow to the realities facing the party’s populist base with proposals that acknowledge the wage floor must rise. President Biden is likely to try to capitalize on that shift as he tries to deliver on his promise to raise the minimum wage, even if it does not make it into the $1.9 trillion aid package because of a ruling Thursday evening by the Senate parliamentarian.For years, Republicans have embraced the economic arguments that were laid out in a letter this month to Congress by Americans for Tax Reform, the Club for Growth and other conservative groups that promote free enterprise. They point to studies that assert mandated wage increases would lead to job losses, small-business closures and higher prices for consumers. And they make the case that the economic trade-offs are not worth it, saying that more jobs would be lost than the number of people pulled from poverty and that those in states with a lower cost of living — often conservative-leaning states — would bear the brunt of the fallout.In 2016, as Republicans moved further to the right, moderate candidates such as Jeb Bush, a former Florida governor, and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, argued forcefully that the federal minimum wage did not need to be raised above $7.25, which is where it still stands today. Mr. Bush said the matter of wages should be left to the private sector, while Mr. Rubio warned about the risk of making workers more costly than machines.But Republicans have at times grappled with the challenging politics of a position that so clearly sides with business interests. In the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, said that he believed that the federal minimum wage should rise in step with inflation, as measured by the national Consumer Price Index.And after arguing early on in his 2016 campaign that wages were already too high, Mr. Trump later said he could support a $10 minimum wage.That is the number that Mr. Romney, now a Republican senator from Utah, and Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, introduced in a plan that would gradually raise the minimum wage to $10 over four years and then index it to inflation every two years.On Friday, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, went a step further by matching the proposal that Democrats have made for a $15 minimum wage. His plan comes with a big caveat, however, and would apply only to businesses with annual revenue of more than $1 billion.“Megacorporations can afford to pay their workers $15 an hour, and it’s long past time they do so, but this should not come at the expense of small businesses already struggling to make it,” Mr. Hawley said.The proposal drew a sharp rebuke from David McIntosh, the president of the Club for Growth, who suggested that Mr. Hawley was adopting bad policies in a bid to appeal to Mr. Trump’s voters. He said that his organization would not support Republicans who promoted minimum wage increases and said that they should be pushing for payroll tax cuts to give workers more take-home pay.“This is another example of his ambition driving him to these populist positions that completely violate any principles he has about free markets,” Mr. McIntosh said in an interview.While the talking points surrounding the minimum wage have remained largely the same over the years, the politics are shifting partly because the federal wage floor has stagnated for so long — and a growing economic literature has suggested that the costs of higher wage floors may not be as significant as analysts once worried they might be.After rising gradually over the decades, the minimum has held steady at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Prices have gradually increased since then, so the hourly pay rate goes a shorter distance toward paying the bills these days: Today’s $7.25 is equivalent to $5.85 in 2009 buying power, adjusted by consumer price inflation.Given how low it is set, a relatively small share of American workers actually make minimum wage. About 1.1 million — 1.5 percent of hourly paid workers and about 0.8 percent of all workers — earned at or below the $7.25 floor in 2020.A restaurant worker last week in Brooklyn. The politics of the minimum wage are shifting partly because the federal wage floor has stagnated for so long.Credit…Jordan Gale for The New York TimesStates with the highest share of hourly paid workers earning at or below the federal minimum are often Southern — like South Carolina and Louisiana — and skew conservative. About seven in 10 states that have an above-average share of workers earning at or below the minimum wage voted Republican in the 2020 presidential election.While only a slice of the work force earns at or below the minimum, lifting the federal base wage to $15 would bolster pay more broadly. The $15 minimum wage would lift pay for some 17 million workers who earn less than $15 and could increase pay for another 10 million who earn just slightly more, based on a recent Congressional Budget Office analysis.Still, raising wages for as many as 27 million Americans is likely to come at some cost. The budget office, drawing on results from 11 studies and adjustments from a broader literature, estimated that perhaps 1.4 million fewer people would have jobs in 2025 given a $15 minimum wage.Some economists who lean toward the left have questioned the budget office’s conclusion.In research that summarized 55 different academic studies of episodes where a minimum wage was introduced or raised — 36 in the United States, 11 in other developed countries — Arindrajit Dube at the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that even looking at very narrow slices of workers who were directly affected, a 10 percent increase in minimum wage might lead to a 2 percent loss in employment. Looking at the effects for low-wage workers more broadly, the cost to jobs was “minute.”More recent work from Mr. Dube has found next to no employment impact from state and local minimum wage increases.Yet many Republicans have seized on the budget office’s job loss figure.In a column titled “How Many Jobs Will the ‘Stimulus’ Kill?” Stephen Moore, an adviser and ally of Mr. Trump’s, and the conservative economist Casey B. Mulligan suggest that the $15 federal minimum wage will cost a million jobs or more. Mr. Moore said in an email that they were relying on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate.Still, a variety of economic officials emphasize that the cost to jobs of a higher minimum wage are not as large as once believed, and that the federal minimum wage has not kept up with inflation.“Higher minimum wages clearly do help the workers who are affected,” John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said during a virtual speech on Thursday. “There are some job losses,” but recent evidence suggests that it is not as many as once expected.There is precedent for raising the minimum wage toward $15, because as the federal base pay requirement has stagnated, states and localities have been increasing their own pay floors. Twenty states and 32 cities and counties raised their minimum wages just at the start of 2021, based on an analysis by the National Employment Law Project, and in 27 of those places, the pay floor has now reached or exceeded $15 an hour.The drive toward $15 started in 2012 with protests by fast-food workers and was initially treated as something of a fringe idea, but it has gained momentum even in states that are heavily Republican. Florida — which Mr. Trump won in November 2020 — voted for a ballot measure mandating a $15 minimum wage by 2026.Like in many of those local cases, Democrats are proposing a gradual increase that would phase in over time. Janet L. Yellen, the Biden administration’s Treasury secretary and former Fed chair, suggested in response to lawmaker questions after her confirmation hearing that the long runway could help mitigate any costs.“It matters how it’s implemented, and the president’s minimum wage will be phased in over time, giving small businesses plenty of time to adapt,” Ms. Yellen wrote.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Lawmakers Clash Over Call for Special Panel to Investigate Capitol Assault

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLawmakers Clash Over Call for Special Panel to Investigate Capitol AssaultThe disputes are reminiscent of the fight surrounding the creation of the independent commission that conducted an inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.Speaker Nancy Pelosi was an early proponent of a special commission to fully investigate the Sept. 11 attacks and has called for a special panel to scrutinize the Capitol riot.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 7:12 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — Republicans were leery of the prospect of an independent commission to investigate an assault that had shaken the nation and exposed dangerous threats, fearful that Democrats would use it to unfairly cast blame and a political shadow on them.Congress was already conducting its own inquiry, some of them argued, and another investigation was not needed. The commission could be a distraction at a vulnerable time, prompt the disclosure of national secrets or complicate the prosecution of those responsible.The year was 2001, but the clash 20 years ago over the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks bears unmistakable parallels to the one that is now raging in Congress over forming a similar panel to look into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.To most Americans, the idea of a blue-ribbon commission to dig into the causes of the Capitol riot and the security and intelligence failures that led to the seat of government being ransacked would probably seem straightforward. But in recent days, it has become clear that, as in the past, devising the legislative and legal framework for such a panel is fraught with political difficulty, particularly in this case, when members of Congress experienced the attack themselves, and some now blame their colleagues for encouraging it.And this time, given the nature of the breach — an event inspired by President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, which were trumpeted by many Republicans — the findings of a deep investigation could carry heavy political consequences.The tensions intensified this week, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi floated a proposal for the creation of a special panel. Republican leaders denounced her initial plan, which envisioned a commission made up of seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans.Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, called her idea “partisan by design,” and compared it unfavorably with the Sept. 11 commission, which was evenly divided. He also predicted that Democrats would use their influence on the panel to focus mainly on violent acts by Mr. Trump’s supporters — who planned and perpetrated the assault — suggesting that its mandate should be broadened to examine left-wing extremists.“If Congress is going to attempt some broader analysis of toxic political violence across this country, then in that case, we cannot have artificial cherry-picking of which terrible behavior does and does not deserve scrutiny,” Mr. McConnell said.Ms. Pelosi fired back on Thursday, saying she was disappointed in Mr. McConnell, who she said had earlier indicated his support for a commission similar to the one established after the Sept. 11 attacks.She accused Republicans of following the lead of Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, who suggested this week that the pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6 had actually been a mostly peaceful crowd seeded with a few “provocateurs,” including members of a loosely affiliated group of far-left anti-fascism activists, known as “antifa.” (The F.B.I. has said there is no evidence that antifa supporters had participated in the Capitol rampage.)“He was taking a page out of the book of Senator Johnson,” Ms. Pelosi said of Mr. McConnell. She added that the crucial aspect of devising the commission was to determine the scope of its work, dismissing the exact makeup of the panel as an “easily negotiated” detail.“I will do anything to have it be bipartisan,” Ms. Pelosi said.The independent, bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States was eventually formed and lauded for its incisive report published in July 2004. But first, there were myriad obstacles to its creation.“It was hard,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee at the time who backed the independent panel over objections from the George W. Bush administration. He wanted a deeper look even though his own committee had conducted a revealing joint review with its House counterpart. “I thought it needed to be broader,” Mr. Shelby said.Ms. Pelosi, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee at the time, was an early proponent of a special commission to fully investigate the attack. She argued that any congressional review would almost certainly be too narrow and that an inquiry by the same government that had failed to prevent the attack would lack public credibility. Her proposal was rejected by the Republican-led House under pressure from the Bush administration, which feared disclosures of intelligence lapses and other shortcomings that could cost their party politically.Instead, Congress moved ahead with the joint inquiry by the House and Senate intelligence panels, which revealed a failure by the White House to heed warnings about a looming strike on the United States. But even those leading the inquiry believed an independent commission was needed to break free of congressional constraints.“One of the benefits of a subsequent round of hearings is that you can avoid those interferences,” said Bob Graham, a Democratic senator from Florida and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee at the time.Senator Mitch McConnell denounced the initial Democratic proposal for a commission made up of seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans as “partisan by design.”Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesSenators Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, responding to calls from the families of those killed on Sept. 11, pushed forward with a proposal for an independent panel. They built on a long tradition of the United States taking such steps after shattering events like the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination. But the plan encountered stiff resistance from the Bush administration, which finally agreed to its creation in late 2002 after one last round of foot dragging.As the commission began public hearings in the spring of 2003, Ms. Pelosi lamented that it had taken so long but lauded the determination required to make it a reality.“Through the persistence of a member of this commission, former Congressman Tim Roemer, as well as that of Senators McCain and Lieberman, this body was established and has begun its critical work,” she said then.In the case of the Jan. 6 assault, Congress this week began its own set of hearings into what went wrong. Some lawmakers privately suggested that their work could be sufficient and that an independent panel would be redundant. And at his confirmation hearing on Monday to be attorney general, Judge Merrick B. Garland warned that he supported the idea of an independent inquiry only as long as it would not derail the prosecution of any of those charged in the assault.The current Congress is much more polarized than it was in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the creation of the commission is complicated by the fact that Democrats are highly skeptical of the motives of Republicans. Democrats see some of them as complicit in fueling the attack by spreading falsehoods about the presidential election being stolen and then challenging the electoral vote count on Jan. 6.On Wednesday, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the No. 5 Democrat, accused top Republicans of not acting in good faith and setting a “bad tone” by joining the unsuccessful effort to overturn the election results.“All of that said, Speaker Pelosi still presented the framework to the Republicans, which then, of course, instead of leading to some kind of good-faith conversation from them, they immediately launched into a partisan political attack,” Mr. Jeffries said.But Republicans have suspicions of their own. Even those who have backed the idea of a commission say they will not accept a proposal they see as giving Democrats the upper hand in determining the course of the commission’s work.“It has to be independent,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. “This can’t be the Nancy Pelosi commission.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More