New York City Mayor Eric Adams is continuing to resist calls to resign after being indicted on federal corruption charges. In recent weeks, at least seven senior city officials have resigned, leaving the city government in a state of crisis. This comes a year before New Yorkers will vote to pick the city’s next mayor. Adams has vowed to run for reelection, but opponents, including fellow Democrats, are lining up to run against him.
We are joined now by New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, who has just announced he will join the race. Mamdani is a Ugandan-born Democratic Socialist who was elected to the New York State Assembly four years ago.
He is running on a platform centered on the needs of working-class New Yorkers and easing the cost-of-living crisis. He shares a number of his policy proposals and also discusses his pro-Palestine advocacy in the State Assembly, where earlier this year he introduced the Not on Our Dime Act, which would prevent New York charities from providing financial support for Israeli settlement activity.
I think there is just a general feeling of frustration for how the law is being used. The theory being the laws are there to protect innocent people from accusations from corrupt actors, but the reality is that the ones that are caught red handed are taking advantage of those protections to continue to get away with things, dispose of evidence, etc while slowing the wheels of justice for years. See Trump, Ken Paxton, Bob Menendez, and so on.
While not a violation of the literal law, it is a violation of the supposed purpose of those laws.