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    9 Mayoral Candidates Unite to Attack Cuomo on Nursing Home Deaths

    Nearly all the people running for New York City mayor appeared at a Covid memorial event with a shared message: Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s pandemic response is a reason not to support him.Nearly all the men and women running to be New York City’s next mayor came together on Sunday to urge voters not to support the candidates’ shared opponent, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.The group — which ranged in ideology from Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, to Curtis Sliwa, a Republican — gathered to mark the fifth anniversary of a New York State Department of Health order, issued while Mr. Cuomo was governor, that directed nursing homes to readmit hospital patients who had tested positive for the coronavirus. The order, patients’ families and lawmakers have said, contributed to thousands of Covid-related deaths among nursing home residents in the state.For Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who resigned in 2021 amid a sexual harassment scandal, continued scrutiny of his pandemic response and his administration’s efforts to conceal the true death toll in nursing homes was a political millstone even before he entered the mayor’s race. He has sharply defended his handling of the crisis and has called the criticism politically motivated.On Sunday, nine mayoral candidates stood on a street in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood in front of a memorial wall that displayed photos of nursing home residents who died during the Covid crisis. Each candidate said that they were not attending for political reasons, while taking the opportunity to criticize the former governor, who is leading in the polls. The event was organized by families who have long called for Mr. Cuomo to apologize and take responsibility for their relatives’ deaths.“This is not about partisan politics, but it is about accountability,” said Brad Lander, the city comptroller who is running in the Democratic primary in June. “It is not too much to ask Andrew Cuomo to meet with families.”Relatives of those who died have called on former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to meet with their families.Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Why Period Products Aren’t Widely Provided in Schools

    A lawsuit against the New York City Department of Education alleges that not providing free products amounts to discrimination.Alisa Nudar was in the middle of her math exam when she realized she had unexpectedly started her period.Nudar raised her hand and asked for permission to go to the bathroom. When she got there, she found that she had bled through her underwear. She didn’t have any period products with her, and there were none in the bathroom. “I kept asking people who were coming in and they were, like, Oh, I’m so sorry, I don’t have any,” Nudar said. “And already 10 minutes had passed.”She walked out of the bathroom looking for a better solution and bumped into a friend who ran back to her classroom to get one of her own pads.All of that searching took about 15 minutes, Nudar said — wasted time that she could have put into her exam. Back then, in 2021, Nudar was a freshman at Bard High School Early College in New York City. And legally there should have been tampons and pads in the school bathroom, provided for free by the New York City Department of Education.Now a nonprofit organization called Period Law and an anonymous student are suing the Education Department for not providing those products in schools, a failure that, according to the legal complaint, effectively amounts to discrimination against menstruating people.In 2016, New York City became the first jurisdiction in the country to pass a law mandating every school to be stocked with free period products. The law paved the way for other legislators to pass their own versions of a similar law. Today, 28 states and the District of Columbia have laws on free period products in schools.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Adams’s Associates Under Federal Investigation Over Ties to China

    The Justice Department is pushing to drop corruption charges against Eric Adams in Manhattan while federal authorities in Brooklyn have been investigating his top fund-raisers.The Trump administration appears likely to succeed in having federal corruption charges dropped against Mayor Eric Adams in Manhattan.But in Brooklyn, a separate group of prosecutors has been conducting a long-running investigation involving Mr. Adams’s most prominent fund-raiser — and at one point searched her homes and office for evidence of a possible Chinese government scheme to influence Mr. Adams’s election, according to a copy of a search warrant, portions of which were read to The New York Times.Mr. Adams has known the fund-raiser, Winnie Greco, for more than a decade, and he appointed her to be his Asian affairs adviser after he became mayor in 2022. She has been a close collaborator with people and groups linked to the Chinese government over the years, and she has showed a willingness to steer politicians toward pro-Beijing narratives, The Times reported in October.The searches of her homes in the Bronx and office in Queens occurred early last year and were overseen by prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. The agents conducting the searches were also seeking evidence of solicitation of illegal contributions from foreign nationals, wire fraud and conspiracy, the warrant said.On the day Ms. Greco’s homes were searched, and as part of the same investigation, agents also searched the mansion of another prominent fund-raiser for the Adams campaign, Lian Wu Shao, on Long Island, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The search of Mr. Shao’s home has not been previously reported.A wealthy Chinese businessman, Mr. Shao is the operator of the New World Mall in Flushing, Queens, which housed Ms. Greco’s office. Records show that hundreds of donors associated with his companies boosted Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What Is Tren de Aragua?

    A gang with roots in a Venezuelan prison, the criminal group was at the center of President Trump’s order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.President Trump’s executive order on Saturday invoking the Alien Enemies Act targeted Venezuelan citizens 14 years and older with ties to the transnational gang Tren de Aragua, saying they “are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”Mr. Trump’s order was quickly challenged in court, but the gang has been a growing source of concern for U.S. officials over the last year. The Biden administration labeled Tren de Aragua a transnational criminal organization in 2024, the New York Police Department has highlighted its activity on the East Coast, and the Trump White House began the process of designating it a foreign terrorist organization in January.Here is what we know about the gang:A rising force out of VenezuelaTren de Aragua (Train of Aragua, or Aragua Train) has roots in Tocorón prison in Venezuela’s northern Aragua state, which the group’s leaders had transformed into a mini-city with a pool, restaurants and a zoo. They reportedly recorded executions and torture there to maintain control over other prisoners.As Venezuela’s economy collapsed and its government under President Nicolás Maduro became more repressive, the group began exploiting vulnerable migrants. Tren de Aragua’s influence soon stretched into other parts of Latin America, and it developed into one of the region’s most violent and notorious criminal organizations, focusing on sex trafficking, human smuggling and drugs.Colombian officials in 2022 accused the gang of at least 23 murders after the police began to find body parts in bags. Alleged members have also been apprehended in Chile and in Brazil, where the gang aligned itself with Primeiro Comando da Capital, one of that country’s biggest organized crime rings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Book Review: ‘When the Going Was Good,’ by Graydon Carter

    The former Vanity Fair editor reflects on an era’s power moves and expense-account adventures in a new memoir.WHEN THE GOING WAS GOOD: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines, by Graydon Carter, with James FoxLorne. Graydon. Keith. Three abiding kings of New York City’s cultural life are the subjects of new books. Lorne is Lorne Michaels, the creator of “Saturday Night Live,” who is examined under the stereo microscope that is Susan Morrison’s biography, “Lorne.” Graydon is Graydon Carter, a co-founder of the stinging magazine Spy in the 1980s and the editor of Vanity Fair during its plumpest and happiest decades, whose memoir is our topic today. Keith is Keith McNally, the proprietor of that consummate French bistro Balthazar — which is so well run, so well lit and so well victualed that surely one idea of a good death is to deliquesce in one of its red leather banquettes — who has a memoir out soon.Lorne is 80; Graydon, 75; Keith, 73. Each is still very much in the game. But to have these books in a clump on my coffee table has given me an Auld Lang Syne-ish feeling. An era is approaching its end.Carter’s memoir, “When the Going Was Good,” runs on two overlapping tracks. It’s the story of an underdog — the hockey-playing, Canadian-born son of an air force pilot — who morphs into a crisply dressed and flamboyantly maned overdog. It is, figuratively, the story of a young man who walks into Gotham barefoot and leaves, whistling, owning the keys to one of its castles.A class journey is described as well. The consumption grows conspicuous and conspicuouser. Thorstein Veblen’s eyes would pinwheel. By the second half, Carter can’t seem to get out of a paragraph without mentioning his possession of the perfect apartment, or vintage car, or bespoke suit, or excursion, or hotel suite, or weekend house, or restaurant table, or friend (Fran Lebowitz), or pajamas or fishing camp.D.H. Lawrence held a class animus against the Bloomsbury group; Pauline Kael distrusted the high-living Joan Didion. Paul Theroux called luxury the enemy of observation. This is another way of saying that Carter’s book will make some readers itchy. I quickly and (mostly) happily consumed it anyway. The journalism stories and the character analysis, as Elizabeth Hardwick liked to call gossip, are first-rate.Let us get three drawbacks out of the way. 1) Although Carter wrote “When the Going Was Good” with James Fox, a co-author of Keith Richards’s electric memoir, the prose is basic. Anyone who comes in hoping for a tincture of the old Spy style — ironic, wised-up, dense with intellect and allusion — will be disappointed. 2) Carter is not one for introspection. There are no “Rosebud” moments. 3) He doesn’t talk about his signature, wide-winged, George Washington-esque hair, with its Nike whoosh up the center.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A 150-Mile Commute Complicates 3 New York City Mayoral Campaigns

    Zohran Mamdani, Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos are ping-ponging between New York City and Albany as they divide their time between legislating and campaigning.From left, Zellnor Myrie, Zohran Mamdani and Jessica Ramos, all of whom are running for New York City mayor while juggling their responsibilities in Albany.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAs a forum for New York City’s mayoral candidates kicked off last month, a seat onstage remained empty.The vacant chair was not a passive-aggressive protest against the incumbent, Mayor Eric Adams, who at the last minute skipped the event, citing his defense lawyer’s advice.It was meant for another candidate, State Senator Jessica Ramos, who was late. A budget hearing in Albany had run long, and the train back to Manhattan was slow. About 45 minutes into the forum, which was sponsored by a powerful union, she sat down beside her fellow candidates. A lingering cold and a desire to see her children only added to her stress.But she had been needed in Albany, too.“When you have budget hearings, and you know how important this budget is to your district, you can’t miss that,” Ms. Ramos, who represents several neighborhoods in Queens, said in an interview.It is rare for state lawmakers to run for New York City mayor. But this year, the crowded field of candidates in the Democratic primary includes three: Ms. Ramos, State Senator Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn and State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani of Queens.The roughly 150-mile commute to the State Capitol can be a slog for any downstate member, and complaints about delayed trains, shifting schedules and competing priorities are common. Adding a high-stakes mayoral campaign to that workload compounds the challenge.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    New Yorkers Protest as White House Defends Arrest of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia

    Hundreds of demonstrators marched downtown while a spokeswoman for President Trump said the president had the authority to detain Mahmoud Khalil.As hundreds of demonstrators made their way through Lower Manhattan on Tuesday to protest the detention of a prominent pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University, the White House defended the arrest and rebuked the school for what it called lack of cooperation.The activist, Mahmoud Khalil, was a leader of student protests on Columbia’s campus and often served as a negotiator and spokesman. Mr. Khalil, 30, who is Palestinian and was born and raised in Syria, is a legal permanent resident of the United States and is married to an American citizen.He was arrested on Saturday and transferred to detention in Louisiana.A spokeswoman for President Trump, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters on Tuesday that the government had the authority to revoke Mr. Khalil’s green card under the Immigration and Nationality Act.“This is an individual who organized group protests that not only disrupted college campus classes and harassed Jewish American students and made them feel unsafe on their own college campus, but also distributed pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas,” she said.Her remarks came a day after Mr. Trump vowed that the apprehension of Mr. Khalil was “the first arrest of many to come.”Some free speech groups and civil rights activists have questioned the legality of Mr. Khalil’s detention, which his lawyers have challenged in court. On Tuesday, some New York Democrats expressed concern about the arrest. But Mayor Eric Adams shrugged off questions about it at a City Hall news conference, saying that the federal government, not the city, had authority over the matter.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    For Black Women, Adrienne Adams Is More Than Just Another Candidate

    The New York City Council speaker, who officially launched her mayoral campaign on Saturday, would be the first woman to lead City Hall.As Adrienne Adams officially kicked off her mayoral campaign on Saturday, she urged potential voters at a rally in Jamaica, Queens, to view her as an alternative to the city’s two most recognizable candidates, Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.But many of her supporters see her candidacy as something else: an opportunity for Democrats to elect a qualified Black woman to lead the country’s largest city, less than a year after the bruising loss of Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to lead a major party presidential ticket.Wearing a pink pantsuit, Ms. Adams entered to cheers at the Rochdale Village Shopping Center in southeast Queens and danced with supporters as “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross played.“No drama, no scandal, no nonsense, just competence and integrity,” Ms. Adams said at the rally, summing up her candidacy.Ms. Adams, the City Council speaker and a Queens native, faces a tough path to the mayor’s office amid a crowded primary field and her own considerable fund-raising lag. But to the city’s most steadfast Democratic voting bloc, Black women, Ms. Adams’s candidacy represents more than a litany of messaging and policy promises.Ms. Adams presenting the city budget alongside Mayor Eric Adams, left, in 2022.Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More