New Yorkers, despite our reputation for being cantankerous, agree on many things—primarily things we dislike: rats; subway crime; our mayor, Eric Adams.
Adams’s polling was dismal well before he was indicted on federal corruption charges. A 2023 Quinnipiac University poll put his approval rating at 28 percent—the lowest result for a mayor since Quinnipiac began polling New York voters, in 1996. Adams got negative marks on every measure: the city’s handling of homelessness, education, crime, migrants, and the budget. But perhaps most notable were respondents’ views of Adams, the man. More than half of New Yorkers felt that he had poor leadership qualities, didn’t understand people like them, and wasn’t honest or trustworthy. (Less scientific, but equally telling: For the past couple of years, a meme has circulated of a “Club Promoter” Halloween-costume pack featuring a photo of Mayor Adams and the words Includes: Nothing helpful.)
Mayor Adams’s low popularity had as much to do with the chaos and swirl of corruption around his administration as it did with residents’ dissatisfaction with his management of the city. Much like our president, Adams favored putting friends and relatives in positions of power. He installed one friend as chancellor of education and made another his senior adviser on public safety and recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. After the charges against Adams were announced, a number of his associates were indicted too. Many others have since resigned. (Adams pleaded not guilty and maintained that the case was politically motivated.)
Reading the Southern District’s indictment was, for many New Yorkers, simply confirmation of what we’d long suspected: Our mayor was an arrogant egoist using his position to enhance his and his cronies’ lifestyle. It was also embarrassing. Adams’s charges—for conspiracy, bribery, wire fraud, and solicitation of illegal campaign contributions from foreign businesspeople—center on allegations that he did real-estate favors for the Turkish government in return for free travel and perks on Turkish Airlines. I can’t help but feel that a city as great as this one deserves, at the very least, corruption more sophisticated and ambitious than Adams’s alleged attempts to score flight upgrades.
Maybe the crimes go deeper. But now we may never know, because Donald Trump’s administration has ordered prosecutors to dismiss the charges against Adams. Emil Bove III, a Trump appointee in the Justice Department, has argued that the charges were politically motivated and the dismissal necessary because the prosecution interfered with the mayor’s ability to govern. It was, he wrote, a threat to “public safety, national security, and related federal immigration initiatives and policies.”
To anyone who believes Bove’s claims that the investigation into Adams was a “weaponization” of the federal government: I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. Immigration initiatives is the key phrase here—Adams has met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and in December hosted Trump’s border czar at Gracie Mansion. After that meeting, Adams said he might consider an executive order to “unravel” immigration rules that he sees as restrictive. The impression is that he has pledged to cooperate with Trump’s deportation agenda in return for his protection.
The Trump administration’s meddling is a perversion of the principles of the Department of Justice, and at least six prosecutors in New York and Washington have resigned in protest. But more than that, it is an insult to the intelligence and common sense of New Yorkers. Today, a judge will hear from Justice Department lawyers and decide whether to grant the administration’s request. If the case is dropped, the mayor’s constituents will be deprived of the opportunity to see him held accountable, and they will be saddled with a mayor who is beholden not to the will of the people but to Trump.
Trump won 30 percent of New York City voters. His national “mandate” is debatable, but in the city it doesn’t exist, in part because so many people reject Trump’s dangerous belief that a president is above the law. Now the Trump administration is telling New Yorkers to apply that logic not just to their president but to their mayor as well.
One thing the Trump administration gets right is that Adams’s legal troubles are a distraction from doing his job. Back in 2023, when a number of his personal aides had their phones seized, Adams bailed on an important meeting with the White House and congressional leaders about New York’s migrant population. Last week, Kathryn Wylde, from the business advocacy group Partnership for New York, said that the controversies had “derailed” the execution of many policy goals.
After the indictment became public, nearly 70 percent of New Yorkers said Adams should resign. A true public servant would do that, but Adams is a mayor for our times, and seems to care less about serving the public than about serving himself. One of the protesting officials described succinctly in her own resignation letter what she saw as a “quid pro quo”: “an improper offer of immigration enforcement assistance in exchange for a dismissal of his case.” (Bove and Adams denied any improper quid pro quo.) Adams has not just agreed to be Trump’s puppet: He went to the administration and brought his own strings.
Regardless of what the judge decides, there is someone who can do something: Governor Kathy Hochul, who could—and should—just fire the mayor already.
To many non–New Yorkers, this scandal might seem an abstraction—the way the Los Angeles fires might feel if you’re in Nebraska, or how a Texas school shooting might feel when you’re all the way in Maine. But what’s happening in New York should matter to all Americans, because it is yet another example of the president imposing his own agenda over the law and public consensus. He pardoned the January 6 rioters, renamed Mount McKinley, turned an astonishing proportion of the government over to Elon Musk—and now there’s Eric Adams. In each instance, Trump is sending a message: I’m in charge, whether you like it or not
The post New York Belongs to Trump Now appeared first on The Atlantic.
