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Trump receives widespread backlash to social post calling himself ‘king’
Donald Trump is receiving widespread backlash after he likened himself to a “king” on social media following his administration’s decision to rescind New York City’s congestion pricing program.On Wednesday, following a letter issued by his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, to the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, that ended the transportation department’s agreement with New York over a new congestion pricing program for Manhattan, Trump wrote on Truth Social:“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”The White House then proceeded to share Trump’s quote on social media, accompanied with a computer-generated image of Trump grinning on a fake Time magazine cover while donning a golden crown, behind him the skyline of New York City.In response to Trump’s comments, Hochul issued a statement, saying: “We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king.” She added: “Public transit is the lifeblood of New York City and critical to our economic future – as a New Yorker, like president Trump, knows very well.”She went on to add that the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority has initiated legal proceedings in the southern district of New York to preserve the program.In a separate address to reporters on Wednesday, Hochul said: “New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years. We sure as hell are not going to start now … In case you don’t know New Yorkers, we’re going to fight. We do not back down, not now, not ever.”Justin Brannan, a New York City council member, also condemned Trump’s statement, and referred to the Trump-appointed justice department that ordered prosecutors to drop their federal corruption case against the city’s mayor, Eric Adams.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Doesn’t matter what [yo]u think of congestion pricing, federal government doesn’t get to make this decision. NY State passed a law, USDOT approved it. No matter what corrupt deal Donald Trump made with the Mayor, he isn’t king. Only fools concede to false power. It’s an illusion,” Brannan said.Similarly, Don Beyer, a Democratic representative of Virginia, wrote on X: “We don’t have kings in the USA.”Meanwhile, David Hogg, vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee, wrote: “Republicans: Stop overreacting and calling Trump a king. Literally the White House twitter account:” as he reposted a picture of the computer-generated magazine of Trump with the crown.Additionally, as the White House shared the photo of Trump, Illinois’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, delivered a State of the State address in which he said: “As governor of Illinois, my oath is to the constitution of our state and our nation. We don’t have kings in America, and I won’t bend the knee to one.” More
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Trump administration rescinds congestion pricing for New York City
The Trump administration announced on Wednesday it intends to rescind approval of New York City’s congestion pricing program that is designed to reduce traffic in the heart of busy Manhattan and, in the process, raise billions to upgrade New York’s subway train and bus systems.The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the public-private entity that provides public transportation services in the New York metro area, immediately sued the government in an effort to block its move.The system – the first of its kind in a US city – has only been in operation for a few weeks, starting on 5 January after previously being blocked last year. But Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, said the federal government’s move will now halt the program. Donald Trump pledged on the campaign trail to use federal power to revoke approval for the program that was approved in the final months of the Biden administration.On Wednesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”Kathy Hochul, the New York governor and a Democrat, who has been strongly behind the scheme, said earlier that the money raised from charging tolls to drivers would underpin $15bn in debt financing for mass transit capital improvements.But in a letter addressed to Hochul on Wednesday, Duffy said: “I share the president’s concerns about the impact to working class Americans who now have an additional financial burden to account for in their daily lives. Users of the highway network within the CBD [central business district] tolling area have already financed the construction and improvement of these highways through the payment of gas taxes and other taxes.”He added: “The recent imposition of this [congestion pricing program] upon residents, businesses, and commuters left highway users without any free highway alternative on which to travel within the relevant area. Moreover, the revenues generated under this pilot program are directed toward the transit system as opposed to the highways. I do not believe that this is a fair deal.”Duffy also cited concerns expressed by New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, also a Democrat, and the state’s transportation commissioner, Francis O’Connor.On 20 January, the day of Trump’s inauguration, Murphy sent a letter to Trump in which he asked him to re-examine New York’s congestion pricing program. “The resulting congestion pricing plan is a disaster for working and middle-class New Jersey commuters and residents,” Murphy wrote.In Wednesday’s letter, Duffy also said that he believes the “imposition of tolls under the [congestion pricing program] appears to be driven primarily by the need to raise revenue for the Metropolitan Transit Authority system as opposed to the need to reduce congestion”.“I recognize that preliminary project data published by the MTA reports a congestion reduction benefit, but the toll rate that is set … should not be driven primarily by revenue targets, particularly revenue targets that have nothing to do with the highway infrastructure,” he continued.The US transportation department’s decision to rescind approval of the program will put a halt to the city initiative, which imposes a $9 fee on drivers who enter Manhattan below 60th Street between 5am and 9pm on weekdays and 9am to 9pm on weekends.Last May, Trump vowed to end the program, writing on his Truth Social platform: “I will TERMINATE Congestion Pricing in my FIRST WEEK back in Office!!!”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Guardian has reached out to Hochul’s office for comment.In response to the transportation department’s decision, Jerry Nadler, the US representative of New York, said that the arguments are “utterly baseless and frankly, laughable”.“The notion of revoking approval for a federal initiative of this magnitude is nearly without precedent. I firmly believe that there is no legal basis for the President to unilaterally halt this program,” he wrote, adding: “Mr President, we’ll see you in court.”Duffy gave no date to end the program, and his announcement could bring other legal challenges. New Yorkers had mixed views about the scheme, but proponents of public transport and a cleaner environment were behind it and in the early days there were indications from MTA data that street congestion had eased in central Manhattan, the New York Times reported.The MTA and a New York bridge authority filed a lawsuit in Manhattan against Duffy, saying the department’s decision to withdraw approval of the program is “for blatantly political reasons” to uphold Trump’s campaign promise.“The administration’s efforts to summarily and unilaterally overturn the considered determinations of the political branches – federal, state, and city – are unlawful, and the court should declare that they are null and void,” the suit said.Reuters contributed reporting More
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Eric Adams, Trump and a New York story that’s stress-testing the rule of law
In both real life and on film, New York City has often been a city linked with public scandals, corruption and high drama.But even Hollywood scriptwriters, so often keen on using the Big Apple as a backdrop, would have been hard-pushed to describe the astonishing events that have played out around the mayor, Eric Adams, in recent days.Last week, the US Department of Justice moved to drop criminal charges against Adams, in what many see as a blatant quid pro quo for getting Adams onboard as a political ally to a Donald Trump administration seemingly intent on launching a radical remaking of American government.It was a move that raised alarm among many residents of the city and legal experts about what many see as Trump – and Adams – undermining the integrity of the US judicial system and American democracy.Earlier this week, a top official at the justice department ordered the acting US attorney in the southern district of New York to stop prosecuting Adams for allegedly accepting bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources.The move was the latest stop in a dramatic term for America’s highest-profile mayor, which has seen the former cop elected as a Democrat but then drift rightwards, especially after Trump was elected and Adams faced prosecution. In heavily Democratic New York, Adams is now seen as an ally to Trump and has even reportedly flirted with the idea of becoming a Republican.Since being indicted in September, Adams has made regular overtures to Trump, including visiting him at his resort in Florida and skipping scheduled Martin Luther King Jr Day events in the city to attend Trump’s inauguration.Some observers said Adams was trying to obtain a pardon from Trump and ignoring his responsibilities as mayor. Adams claimed he has not discussed his legal case with Trump and that he had been talking with the president to help the city.Whatever Adams’s intentions were, Trump now appears to have helped him and, in doing so, added to the perception he will ignore the rule of law when it benefits him politically.“We have an administration that is willing to use its power to benefit favorite people, to the extent it’s able to do so without controversy – or even with controversy,” said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law. “It’s a truly aggressive decision on the part of DoJ and an indefensible decision.”Adams was elected mayor in November 2021. Before the indictment, he already faced criticism because of the criminal histories of people in his inner circle, his frequent participation in the city’s nightlife and allegations that he did not actually live in the city, among other complaints from residents.“You would see him partying at clubs that my peers were at, and he seemed to fit there very well, more so than the office he was holding,” said Maedot Yidenk, a 27-year-old neuroscientist from Seattle who now lives in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn.After his indictment, Adams said the Biden administration had targeted him for prosecution because he had criticized its immigration policies. Prosecutors countered that the investigation had begun before Adams started attacking the federal government over its response to the number of immigrants entering the country.However, Trump agreed with Adams’s assessment and said he would consider pardoning the Democrat.But the justice department instead now wants to dismiss the charges. According to the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, federal prosecutors behind the case “threatened the integrity of the proceedings, including by increasing prejudicial pretrial publicity” and “unduly restricted” the mayor’s ability to “devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that has escalated under the policies of the prior Administration”.View image in fullscreenBove’s justification – that the prosecutor had been keeping Adams from doing his job – is “ridiculous”, according to Gillers.“It would immunize office holders, certainly mayors and governors, from criminal investigation and criminal charges, so long as they were named in that position,” Gillers said. “The real explanation, I think, is that Trump wanted to dismiss the indictment as a favor to Adams, for whatever reason, but to do it in the most neutral way.”Still, Bove has encountered resistance from prosecutors, which has plunged the city’s legal community into turmoil.On Thursday, the interim US attorney for the southern district, Danielle Sassoon, a Republican, resigned and accused the justice department of letting the defendant off in exchange for his help with Trump’s immigration policy. Five other officials in the justice department also resigned.“I remain baffled by the rushed and superficial process by which this decision was reached, in seeming collaboration with Adams’s counsel and without my direct input on the ultimate stated rationales for dismissal,” Sassoon wrote to the attorney general, Pam Bondi.Bove responded in a letter to Sassoon, stating that she had been “pursuing a politically motivated prosecution despite an express instruction to dismiss the case. You lost sight of the oath that you took when you started at the Department of Justice.”Trump said he had not asked prosecutors to drop the case. But in his letter, Bove wrote that Sassoon was “disobeying direct orders implementing the policy of a duly elected President”.But the scandal did not stop there. Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the New York city council, on Monday called on the mayor to resign. Her demand came just hours after four of Adams’s eight deputy mayors announced they would leave his administration – another crippling blow to his ever more disastrous reputation.Trump could have avoided the legal wrangling by just pardoning Adams, as some predicted he would.“If he does go that route, I think it raises the question why he wouldn’t have done it in the first place,” said Thomas Frampton, an associate law professor at the University of Virginia. “I think the answer is because he wanted to test to see how compliant the [southern district] would be.”Even in a liberal city like New York, there are people who both don’t like Trump – or his efforts to exert control over the justice department – and aren’t sure prosecutors should have filed charges against Adams.Stanley Brezenoff, who once chaired the city’s housing authority and board of correction, argued that the allegations that Adams pressured the fire department to open the Turkish consulate despite safety concerns were “not pretty, but I’m not sure that in and of itself warranted the extent of the criminal justice response”.“I can understand him trying to figure out ways to avoid the retribution,” said Brezenoff, who did not vote for Adams in the last election and has not decided who he will support in the Democratic primary in June: “I may not like that, but you wouldn’t say: ‘Impeach Adams’ because he’s currying favor with Washington, with Trump.”View image in fullscreenKelly Johnson, a mechanical engineer and marine veteran, used to encounter Adams, then a police officer, walking around Brooklyn and through mutual friends. Johnson said he felt that Adams “worked a lot with the community … I didn’t necessarily have anything really bad to say about him”.Johnson, who is Black, appreciates that Adams filled his administration with people of color and thinks that serving as only the city’s second Black mayor is especially difficult.“Everyone is going to make sure that if you’re not all the way clean, the slightest of things that you may do wrong – hell, you could buy a pack of cigarettes off of some government funding – you’ll get impeached,” said Johnson, 52, who lives in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and would consider voting for Adams.There is a long list of candidates in the Democratic primary, and the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is reportedly considering entering the race. Meanwhile, Adams has recently explored running in the Republican primary, the New York Times reported.In the 2021 election, Laurie Levinson, a retiree who lives in the East Village of Manhattan, voted for Maya Wiley, a former lawyer for Mayor Bill de Blasio who has not entered the new race.“There were people who were really, really qualified, like Maya Wiley,” said Levinson, who has not decided whom she will support this time. Like Trump, she said, “Adams is another moron … I can’t wait till the next mayoral races.”Patrick Canfield, a 31-year-old who works in publishing, sees Adams as corrupt and also dislikes his policies, such as increasing the police presence on the city’s subways.“I think we’re witnessing the crumbling of American institutions,” said Canfield, who also lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant. “Adams is just a microcosm of that.” More
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Four deputies to New York mayor resign in fallout over dropped corruption charges
Four deputies to New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, resigned on Monday as the growing chaos following a justice department request to drop corruption charges against him, widely seen as a reward for his help with Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, engulfs his three-year-old administration.According to reports, four of Adams’ deputies – first deputy mayor Maria Torres Springer, deputy mayor for operations Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for health and human services Anne Williams-Isom, and deputy mayor for public safety Chauncey Parker – said they were stepping down.“I am disappointed to see them go, but given the current challenges, I understand their decision and wish them nothing but success in the future,” Adams said in a statement.Torres-Springer, Williams-Isom and Joshi issued a joint statement, citing “the extraordinary events of the last few weeks” and “oaths we swore to New Yorkers and our families” as what led them to the “difficult decision” to leave.Parker said the role was an “honor of a lifetime”.The deputies’ likely departure was first reported by WNBC and the New York Times on Monday, both citing sources within Adams’ administration.A justice department request to drop charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions against Adams last week led to a mutiny by prosecutors in New York who brought the case. At least seven prosecutors have resigned rather than comply with the request.According to WNBC, Adams held a Zoom call on Sunday with at least three of his deputies who expressed their intention to resign. The Democratic mayor is facing mounting calls for his own resignation, first over corruption charges filed last summer, and now over their resignations.Adams has pleaded not guilty, denied any wrongdoing and rejected calls for his resignation. He has also indicated he believes the charges were brought in retaliation for criticizing the Biden administration’s immigration policies, blaming them for the city’s struggles with absorbing tens of thousands of new arrivals.Adams has reportedly agreed to some cooperation with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) immigration agents, including allowing federal authorities to restart operations on Rikers Island, which holds the city’s largest jail.The mayor has also rejected accusations that dropping the federal charges against him would amount to making him a political prisoner of the Trump administration.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“No matter what they write, no matter all those who are tripping over themselves to state who I am and who I am going to be beholden to and how I am no longer independent, I know who I am,” Adams said on Sunday.Adams said that he is “going nowhere” despite protests calling for his removal by the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul.“And I want you to be clear, you’re going to hear so many rumors and so many things, you’re going to read so much,” Adams told a church congregation on Sunday. “I am going nowhere. Nowhere.” More
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How a faded New York hotel became a lethal political battleground
Manhattan’s Roosevelt hotel, with its faded Renaissance revival facade, last week became the focal point of a fast-moving political battle enveloping New York City’s mayor, the state governor and the department of justice in the service of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.Trump’s new head of homeland security, Kristi Noem, claims the formerly luxurious 1,025-room hotel, now a shelter for mostly Central and South American immigrants, is a “base of operations” for Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan prison gang.Noem’s head of immigration enforcement, Tom Homan, wants Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to be able to enter the hotel, but New York’s sanctuary city laws prevent New York police from cooperating.The Trump administration, under Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Doge team, claimed that $80m had recently been transferred to New York to house migrants, including in the Roosevelt, and clawed it back.The Roosevelt is a grimy backdrop to an extraordinary battle that has pitted the city’s Democrat mayor, Eric Adams, seeking re-election this year, against Governor Kathy Hochul, and has had career federal prosecutors, Democrat and Republican, at each other’s throats over claims of bias and corruption.Late Friday, the justice department moved to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Adams, the latest move in a legal saga that led over two days to the resignation of seven career prosecutors and left a justice department in chaos.View image in fullscreenDuring his campaign Trump vowed to “save” New York, claiming that businesses were fleeing hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who were sucking up public resources. Last year, the city estimated that the migration crisis has cost New York $5bn in two years, and costs are expected to double in 2025.Last week, the justice department in Washington sent a proposal to New York’s southern district to shelve an indictment against Adams on corruption charges of accepting illegal campaign donations in exchange for political favours, arguing that it would interfere with his ability to help the administration tackle illegal immigration.Democrats claimed the move amounted to using the law to influence an elected politician. It was characterised by one of Adams’ prosecutors as a “dismissal-with-leverage” proposal, a corrupt exchange for allowing federal agents to deport tens of thousands of migrants in the city against sanctuary city laws.Danielle Sassoon, acting US attorney in New York, said she could not “agree to seek a dismissal driven by improper considerations”, and resigned. Emil Bove, acting deputy US attorney general, accepted her resignation, alleging that she was “incapable of fairly and impartially” reviewing the case.Hochul said she was considering removing Adams as mayor over the alleged deal and claims Trump’s department of justice “is already showing they’re corrupt”. Homan called Hochul an “embarrassment” who “needs to be removed”. Progressive Bronx Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said: “This corruption poses a real threat to the people of the city.”View image in fullscreenThe escalating drama kicked off last month when Damian Williams, the former Democrat prosecutor who brought corruption charges against Adams, wrote that New York was “being led with a broken ethical compass” – seemingly a reference to Adams.That was a red flag to the incoming administration, whose chief executive is still smarting over a state conviction on a scheme to obscure hush-money payments to a porn actor and an $83m civil judgment for defaming writer E Jean Carroll and has seemingly found an ally in the Democrat mayor.“We are living in an era where political favoritism overrides the legal process in pursuit of political gains. This marks a dangerous new phase where selective law enforcement, applied at whim, is a weapon,” said Mike Quinn, a lawyer involved in the drive to hold Sackler family members accountable for the opioid crisis.Adams, like Trump, claims the criminal actions brought against him are politically motivated. The two are growing closer, with Adams visiting Trump at his Florida estate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe impact on Adam’s re-election prospects are hard to read. A recent poll ahead of the Democrat primary in April had the mayor in third or fourth place, behind Trump’s arch enemy Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor who resigned in 2021 amid a sexual harassment scandal. Cuomo has not yet officially declared. In the running also is Zohran Mamdani, a progressive Democrat, who has vowed to lower the cost of living for working-class New Yorkers.A poll last month found that 73% of likely primary voters held an “unfavorable” view of Adams, with fears about subway crime, highlighted in December when a homeless woman was fatally set on fire in a subway car, among the factors behind their dissatisfaction.“New Yorkers have the idea that the mayor turns on the lights in the morning and turns them off at night,” says Democrat consultant Hank Sheinkopf. “They instil in him tremendous values and powers. When he fails to meet them on either side of the aisle, people lose their minds, and that’s what’s happening in New York right now.”But Adams has scored some wins, including reducing a post-Covid rat infestation by introducing plastic rubbish bins. “Everybody wants the city to function, and if it doesn’t function it doesn’t really matter what your ideological bent is,” says Sheinkopf. “It’s about how the garbage gets picked up, how you don’t feel threatened by homeless people and how your life functions.”But the left also dislikes Adams as a matter of reflex. “It’s a natural response, because anything Trump touches is right by definition,” Sheinkopf points out.If Adams loses the Democrat nomination, he could run as a Republican, much as three-term mayor Mike Bloomberg did in 2002. New York has only had four Republican mayors in a century, each one elected after a crisis.The crisis this time, says Sheinkopf, “is that New York is out of control. Corruption, crime and the sense that things have broken down.” But he doubts Adams is the one to fix it. “He created it, so it’s a hard sell”.One scenario, hinted at by City Hall insiders, is that under a deal to drop the Adams corruption charges, the mayor could then switch party in a bid to stop Trump’s arch enemy, Cuomo.Trump and Cuomo have fought bitterly over the years, including in 2019, when Trump called his brother Chris, a former CNN host, Fredo after the hapless brother in The Godfather. “If I wasn’t governor of New York, I would have decked him. Period,” Cuomo said. More
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Under-pressure prosecutors ask to drop Eric Adams charges after seven resign
Under immense pressure from Donald Trump’s justice department leadership, prosecutors in Washington have asked a federal judge to dismiss the criminal corruption case against Eric Adams, the New York mayor, rather than see the entire public integrity office be fired.The prosecutors, Edward Sullivan and Antoinette Bacon, filed the request on Friday night to withdraw the charges against Adams that included bribery, fraud and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions.The move capped a week of turmoil at the department where seven prosecutors – including the acting US attorney in southern district of New York, the head of the criminal division and the head of the public integrity section – resigned in protest rather than dismiss the case for political reasons.And it followed an extraordinary showdown after the acting deputy attorney general Bove, facing opposition from prosecutors in New York and pushing to bring the justice department to heel, forced the public integrity section to find someone to put their name on the dismissal or be fired themselves.The roughly hour-long meeting, where the public integrity section weighed whether to resign en masse after agreeing that the dismissal of the Adams case was improper, culminated with Sullivan, a veteran career prosecutor, agreeing to take the fall for his colleagues, according to two people familiar with the matter.The decision gave the justice department what it needed to seek the end of the Adams case. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, said in an appearance on Fox News afterwards that the mayor’s case “is being dismissed today”, although that power rests with the presiding US district judge, Dale Ho, in New York.Ho has limited ability to deny the request but could still order an evidentiary hearing into why the department was ordering the end of the corruption case against Adams, which threatens to unearth deeper revelations into the fraught background behind a decision castigated by the lead prosecutor as a quid pro quo deal.The department’s rationale to dismiss the case was necessarily political: Bove had argued that it was impeding Adams from fully cooperating with Trump’s immigration crackdown – and was notably not making the decision based on the strength of the evidence or legal theory underpinning the case.The saga started on Monday. After Bove ordered the charges against Adams to be withdrawn, Danielle Sassoon, the acting US attorney for the southern district of New York, sent a remarkable letter to the attorney general that said Bove’s directive was “inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor”.Sassoon also made a startling accusation in her letter, writing that the mayor’s lawyers had “repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo, indicating that Adams would be in a position to assist with the department’s enforcement priorities only if the indictment were dismissed”.A lawyer for Adams, Alex Spiro, denied the accusation, saying: “The idea that there was a quid pro quo is a total lie. We offered nothing and the department asked nothing of us. We were asked if the case had any bearing on national security and immigration enforcement and we truthfully answered it did.”On Friday, Adams himself said in a statement: “I never offered – nor did anyone offer on my behalf – any trade of my authority as your mayor for an end to my case. Never.”Sassoon, a conservative career prosecutor, also revealed in her letter that her team had intended in recent weeks to add a further obstruction of justice charge against Adams. For good measure, she castigated Bove for scolding a member of her team for taking notes at the meeting and ordering that the notes be confiscated.Apparently realizing that Sassoon would not agree to drop the case, two people familiar with the matter said, Bove attempted to end-run the situation by having the public integrity section at justice department headquarters in Washington take over the case and request its dismissal.The move prompted a wave of resignations from career prosecutors. On Thursday, Bove wrote back to Sassoon criticizing her for insubordination and placing her two lieutenants, Hagan Scotten and Derek Wikstrom, on administrative leave.Meanwhile, in Washington, Kevin Driscoll, the acting head of the criminal division which oversees public integrity, tendered his resignation with John Keller, the acting head of the integrity section itself, rather than go along with the dismissal.After Keller’s departure,Marco Palmieri became the third of four deputy chiefs of the public integrity section to resign, leaving the team without a clear leadership aside from three senior litigation counsels who served under the deputy chiefs.By Friday, Scotten resigned while on administrative leave. In a scathing rebuke of Bove, he wrote: “If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.” More
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‘Melt Ice’: protesters in New York rally against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies
Crowds of demonstrators including undocumented people took to the streets of downtown Manhattan on Thursday in a fierce show of resistance against Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies.The rally, which started at Foley Square and in front of the field office of the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice), came amid the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdowns.Speaking to the Guardian, Sergio Uzurin, a spokesperson for the grassroots movement NYC Ice Watch, said: “We’re helping to … escort undocumented folks so that they are not afraid.”“As much as the administration is trying to spread an atmosphere of fear, today is proving that some people are undocumented and unafraid to speak out about the social catastrophe that these deportations are causing,” Uzurin added.A 31-year-old undocumented man from Nicaragua who identified himself as Begea said: “We just need an opportunity to show what we could do … We are not criminals. We are just people coming to this country, looking for an opportunity, the opportunity we [lost] in our countries.”View image in fullscreen“It’s negative and really hard, what’s happening to us right now … We need the space to try to be better, to help our families, to support [and do] something good for this country,” Begea added.Echoing similar sentiments, an undocumented man from Oaxaca, Mexico, who identified himself as Alfredo Gayta said through a translator: “I am here to raise our voices against what is happening in New York. We have been treated as criminals and we are not criminals.”Wearing a white T-shirt with the Spanish words “Mis organ y mi sangre no tienen frontera” or “My organs and my blood have no borders”, Gayta said: “When we go out on the streets and are just walking, people would shout for us to leave the country, for us to go back to where we came from. We don’t really take it personally, it doesn’t really bother us. We just leave it in the hand of God.”Gayta went on to add: “The message that I want to give Trump is to give us an opportunity. We are here to work. He can see that we are not bad people. If he just gives us an opportunity, we can showcase that.”Throughout Foley Square, protesters, with some donning green bandanas around their faces, held handwritten signs that read “Melt Ice” as well as: “To get our neighbors, you have to get through us!”View image in fullscreenDave Schmauch, a member of the Freedom Socialist party, held a sign with a message to New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, who has in recent months taken a hardened stance against immigration. “Immigrants are not your get out of jail card!” the sign read, in reference to Adams’s own federal corruption charges, which the newest Trump-appointed justice department has ordered prosecutors to drop.“Today’s protest is just the beginning of what is starting to coalesce into a large, spirited, New York City immigrant solidarity movement,” said Shmauch, adding: “I want everybody to know that we say immigrants are welcome here. New York is an immigrant town and we are going to support and defend our neighbors.”Following several chants including: “Deny, defend, depose, all Nazis got to go!” and: “Every gender, every race, punch a Nazi in the face,” at least 100 protesters, with some beating drums, marched from downtown through the city’s upscale SoHo district, flanked by a heavy police presence that appeared to be twice their numbers.At least six arrests were made, with at least a dozen police appearing to surround one of the protesters as he was pinned to the ground. Around him, other protesters yelled: “Let him go!”Thursday’s rally came as Adams, a moderate Democrat, announced he would reopen an Ice office at the city’s Rikers Island jail. In 2015, an Ice office closed at the jail under the city’s sanctuary laws that impose limitations on the city’s ability to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.Also on Thursday, the newly appointed attorney general, Pam Bondi, announced that the federal government was suing New York over its immigration policies, accusing state officials of having “chosen to prioritize illegal aliens over American citizens”.At one point during the march, Begea stopped in front of the Jacob K Javits federal office building with a crowd of protesters, journalists and police looking on.Accompanied by a fellow protester who repeated after Begea in a call-and-response chant, Begea introduced himself to the crowd, at first quietly before his voice grew louder upon hearing the echoes of the protesters.“My name is Begea. I am a Nicaraguan citizen and I came to this country looking for an opportunity and freedom that I didn’t have in my country,” he said as he became visibly emotional.“We are only asking for the opportunity to be able to express our talent, our ability, to contribute to this country a grain of our help. We do not want to be treated like criminals. We want them to treat us like human beings,” he added.At the end of his chant, Begea raised his fist in the air.“La libertad,” he yelled.“La libertad,” the protesters yelled back. More
