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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, as usual on Wednesdays, our lead Eric Adams reporter Elizabeth Kim with excerpts from, analysis of, and to take your calls about Mayor Adams' weekly Tuesday news conference. Among other things, the mayor was non-committal yesterday when asked if he supports President-elect Trump's plan to begin a mass deportation program.

We'll play that clip, but by way of historical contrast and historical context, first, here's a clip of Mayor Rudy Giuliani in a speech in 1997, when Giuliani was in office, talking about the effects as he saw them of large-scale immigration to the city. He cites the number 100,000 immigrants a year.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani: Let me see if I can give you just a few facts about the city of New York. Immigrants who come to the city of New York, all the new people that you're talking about, work about 10% more often than people who are citizens of the United States and citizens of the city. They start businesses 2% to 3% more often. They are net contributors in fairly significant amounts to the economy of the city.

When I see immigrants coming in, it used to be Ellis Island and now it's Kennedy Airport, but when I see them coming in, of course, I see some that are problems, create difficulties, some that commit crimes, but by and large, what I see are people who are going to work, people who are going to establish jobs for other people, people who are going to increase our tax revenues, and people who are going to rejuvenate neighborhoods that maybe previously were falling apart. If you think about it, they come in with an emotion that unifies them.

With my grandparents, it's really the same emotion, the same feeling. The feeling is to create a better life for themselves and their families. Most of the people that come to the United States come here to work and to work in order to produce more opportunity, a better situation for themselves and for their families. When you multiply that by 100 people, 1,000 people, 100,000 people per year, you get a city that is one of the most successful cities in the world.

Brian Lehrer: Rudy Giuliani as mayor in 1997. Now, here's a key exchange from yesterday's news conference. This is a two-minute exchange with the New York Times City Hall reporter Dana Rubinstein.

Mayor Eric Adams: How are you?

Dana Rubinstein: I'm all right. How are you? Two questions. First, you've predicted that mass deportations won't happen in New York City.

Mayor Eric Adams: You said-- I'm sorry.

Dana Rubinstein: You have predicted that mass deportations won't happen in New York City.

Mayor Eric Adams: I predicted that?

Dana Rubinstein: Yes. You've said that they won't happen here.

Mayor Eric Adams: Okay. I don't know about predicting, but go ahead.

Dana Rubinstein: Well, do you think that they will happen here?

Mayor Eric Adams: We're going to do everything possible to make sure that people are treated in the dignity and humane way that we've done for these last few years.

Dana Rubinstein: Okay. Then my question is, how can migrant New Yorkers be sure that that won't happen here, given that ICE can make arrests in New York City without police cooperation? Then the second question is, why should New Yorkers, including migrant New Yorkers, trust that you will advocate for them with the new Trump administration, given that you have a personal stake in winning the president's favor?

Mayor Eric Adams: Okay, a couple of things. Do you think every New Yorker believes there should not or should be mass deportation? Do you believe every New Yorker believes that?

Dana Rubinstein: No, but you have said you don't think there should be.

Mayor Eric Adams: Yes, but you said, how can I advocate for New Yorkers? I should only advocate for one type of New Yorker or all New Yorkers?

Dana Rubinstein: Well, that's tough. I don't think you can advocate for all New Yorkers.

Mayor Eric Adams: Oh, really? Okay, so which New Yorker I shouldn't advocate for? The ones that agree with you or disagree with you?

Dana Rubinstein: Well, if you believe there should be no mass deportations, how can people believe that you will advocate for that with the incoming Trump administration?

Mayor Eric Adams: But you set up a question. This is very interesting, the question you set up. There's certain New Yorkers I shouldn't advocate for?

Dana Rubinstein: I'm not sure that was my question. My question was, why should New Yorkers trust that you will advocate for them with the administration?

Mayor Eric Adams: Let's go back again. There's some New Yorkers, there are people who stop me on the street and says, "I voted for the president and I believe there should be mass deportation." There are people who stop me on the street and say, "I believe there shouldn't be mass deportation." What one needs to do is have the ability to sit people in a room and come up with real solutions. That's what I've been doing for three years.

Brian Lehrer: Mayor Adams and Dana Rubinstein from the New York Times at the mayor's Tuesday news conference, obviously, yesterday. Our own lead Eric Adams reporter Liz Kim joins us now. Hi, Liz. Happy Wednesday.

Elizabeth Kim: Hi, Brian. Happy Wednesday.

Brian Lehrer: That was quite an exchange. Did the mayor ever say whether or not he still opposes mass deportation from New York City, which I think was in the premise of Dana's question?

Elizabeth Kim: He didn't. Dana asked him two very important questions. One, what would he do as mayor if there is a federal crackdown on undocumented New Yorkers? Then the second question she asks him is a real underlying concern about the mayor, which is how will he govern under Trump? As we know, the mayor, he's facing criminal charges, and the president-elect, once he is in office, Trump, would have the power to pardon the mayor. He would have the power to pardon the mayor.

He could have the power to drop the charges, to order the Justice Department to drop the charges. He could stop the ongoing investigations. The question for the mayor, and I think that a lot of New Yorkers should be thinking about is, how does a mayor govern according to the interests of New Yorkers, when in fact he's beholden to the president in such a significant way when his own personal liberty is at stake? One of the charges, bribery, that potentially comes with prison time.

Brian Lehrer: Certainly, there are two ways that Trump could let Mayor Adams off the hook. He could call off the dogs at the Justice Department, or if the mayor is tried and convicted, he could pardon the mayor. I don't know if you can pardon somebody in advance of charges.

Elizabeth Kim: You can.

Brian Lehrer: You can?

Elizabeth Kim: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Even that might happen. Is the mayor wrong when he says-- and we were just talking with Congressman Espaillat in the last segment about a relatively large percentage shift toward Donald Trump in New York City. It's still only 30% of the vote, but that's a lot more than he got either of his other two elections. When the mayor says, well, there are some New Yorkers who voted for mass deportation, and there are some New Yorkers who didn't, and he has to represent all those people.

Elizabeth Kim: The mayor's not wrong about that, but I think this is an issue that comes up with the mayor again and again. It's about on tough and high-stakes policy issues, where does he stand, and can he articulate a clear vision of what he wants to see happen in this city? What are his convictions on protecting undocumented immigrants? He gets slippery about things like this. We've seen it with immigration.

We often see it with something like congestion pricing, where he seems reluctant to take a side. He seems reluctant to offend either people who are pro-congestion pricing and those who are anti-congestion pricing. I think this is a very fair and important question in this moment, and the mayor has--

Brian Lehrer: She was just asking the mayor, "Where do you stand?"

Elizabeth Kim: Correct. That was not the first time the mayor was asked about this, and he often dodges the question in some way. He tries to slip his way out of it. In that moment, it seemed like he was playing some kind of rhetorical game with Dana, like coming back at her and asking her, "Well, do you think I should be advocating for all New Yorkers," when what she's really asking for is, "Where are you on this policy issue, Mr. Mayor?" He didn't give her an answer.

What he's trying to argue is that he's not currying favor with Trump because what he's doing is he is representing the interests of all New Yorkers because there were some New Yorkers in this election who suggested that they were not entirely supportive of having undocumented immigrants in the city.

Brian Lehrer: By way of contrast, and we'll talk in a few minutes about whatever contrast there may be today between Eric Adams on large-scale immigration and what we heard from Mayor Giuliani in that clip from the '90s, but by way of contrast, on this issue that we're talking about now, the governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, said this in an apparent reference to mass deportation efforts that might come to his state.

Governor Phil Murphy: If there is any attack on the Garden State or on any of its communities from Washington, I will fight back with every fiber of my being.

Brian Lehrer: Did the mayor ever say anything like that yesterday or any time since the election about any proposed Trump policies if he thinks they may hurt the city?

Elizabeth Kim: He did not. If you listen to what he told Dana when Dana asked him point blank what he would do, he doesn't say that he's going to oppose any efforts by ICE agents to come into either workplaces or shelters, you name it. What he says is, "We're going to make sure that people are treated in a humane and dignified way." That's not exactly saying, "We are going--" It's not in the same spirit of what the clip you just played of Governor Murphy.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor has previously, before the election, opposed the city's current sanctuary city policy as enacted in the De Blasio administration, which he says protects too many, and I'm putting words in his mouth, you can tell me how close this is to exactly what he says, protects too many people charged or convicted of violent crimes from being turned over to ICE for possible deportation proceedings.

I know there was a bill in City Council by some of the more conservative members earlier this year, or maybe it was last year, that cited a dramatic drop in the so-called detainer requests from early in the De Blasio administration to right after they enacted that policy. They were trying to reverse it in City Council. They didn't have the votes, but they apparently had the mayor's support. Maybe a lot of New Yorkers would say, no, the line is too low for who gets protected when they're indicted for or convicted of a crime, including some violent crimes in New York City. Can you explain the mayor's position on this and where he thinks the line should be?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. Just to start out, what happened under De Blasio, and this was an effect of the first Trump administration, was De Blasio and the Council decided that they wanted to raise the bar in terms of when the city would cooperate with federal immigration agents. They came up with a list of roughly 170 serious crimes, and it was when someone was convicted, not accused, convicted. The idea was that there are cases where someone could be falsely accused. It was also this principle that everyone deserved the presumption of innocence, everyone deserved to go through a fair trial.

They wanted to treat undocumented immigrants the same way they would treat a citizen. Flash forward to Mayor Adams. Now, he's actually-- I have heard him move a little bit on this. Originally, in the midst of the height of the migrant crisis when the NYPD was singling out crimes by migrants, falsely characterizing it as a migrant crime wave, the mayor came out and he said he thought it was more sensible to be able to turn over undocumented immigrants who were accused of a crime. That's a big difference, and that's kind of going back to pre-De Blasio days.

More recently, though, I have heard him say people who have been sentenced, people who have completed their sentence. He has not said what kind of crime that would be, whether the bar is a serious crime or something more minor, but he has said that he feels that people who have finished their sentence that the city should be able to turn them over. The other point that I think, to be fair to the mayor, but this is also a criticism of him as well, is he has in many ways himself been all over the place on the issue of immigration.

I ask listeners to remember in the early moments of the migrant crisis in 2022 to remember and think back. The mayor actually met a busload of migrants that were coming from Texas that Governor Abbott had sent. He made this huge gesture of welcoming them to the city. There have been other moments where the mayor has staged rallies asking the federal government to expedite work permits. I think most immigration advocates would agree with him. He was not wrong on this issue. It should not take them so long to be able to work legally.

He staged a rally and he spoke very movingly about how the city is a city of immigrants and how they contribute to our society, much like Mayor Giuliani is, but lately, I think he has for sure shifted to the right on this issue.

Brian Lehrer: I was struck in the Giuliani clip, and frankly, I was listening back to some old Giuliani stuff, looking for something else unrelated to our conversation today. I stumbled upon that clip and I thought, "Wow," and, well, largely because of the number that Giuliani cited that we included in the clip when he said, "Yes, about 100,000 immigrants come to New York every year." He said, "Oh, by the way, about 100,000 people move out of New York every year," and he said this is why New York continues to replenish itself as a vital center of the country and of the world economically.

He also cited in another part of the clip, I didn't want to go on and on with it, that he thinks immigration keeps crime down in New York City because these people are coming largely to work and try to make a better living for themselves and their children, a better life. He cited that number 100,000. Well, that's about what we've had in this wave over the last two years. About 100,000 New Yorkers from mid-'22 to mid-2023, and then another 100,000 from then until around now.

Tell me if you think I'm off with that estimate, but it only generally gets discussed as a problem, not a long-term investment in the city, even at a time when a lot of other New Yorkers did move out during the pandemic.

Elizabeth Kim: Well, starting from the spring of 2020 until now, the city estimates that it's been over 200,000, Brian. I think what the administration would argue is the difference between now and then is what were the share of migrants who were living in shelters and the pace at which they were coming. There was a moment during the height of the crisis where we were seeing migrants, like 1,000 in a week.

It was this idea that the city had to respond very, very quickly and try to mobilize both the staffing resources and also the physical shelters to take care of migrants. It was a cost that ballooned into the billions. I think what the mayor would say was it wasn't quite the same because it wasn't this rapid, sudden influx of migrants who many of them did not have a friend or a family member to stay with. They had learned about the city as having the right shelter and they were using that right.

Brian Lehrer: In fairness, here's the mayor yesterday on that.

Mayor Eric Adams: We really are not aware of what that failed policy has done to this city. Those billions of dollars that we had to spend on a national problem, only getting about $200 million from Washington, the long-term impact of that, those are billions of dollars we were not spending on much-needed services. I wasn't going to Washington for vindication. This hurt our city, it hurt working-class, low-income New Yorkers, and that is problematic to me. That's troubling to me, and I'm angry about it.

Brian Lehrer: You know, Liz, the other thing that I heard him elaborate on, and we don't have this clip, but more than I've ever heard him before is something you and I have discussed. The mayor has called during this migrant wave for a decompression strategy, his term, from Washington. Yesterday, in the news conference, he really elaborated on it. He says if we have a lot of migrants coming in, the federal government shouldn't allow them to go wherever they want.

They should say, "Okay, some of you are going to go to this city, some of you are going to go to that city, and you'll have to stay there for three years and then you can go wherever you want," so we don't have the crush of so many people all at once to a few places, including like New York. Had you ever heard him get so specific about that? Because I'll tell you one thing, I never heard the Biden administration respond to it directly.

Elizabeth Kim: That's right, Brian. Yesterday was the most detailed he's ever been. He has spoken about the so-called decompression strategy where he wanted migrants to be sent to different places so that they weren't all coming to New York, but the thrust of his argument I think is compelling, this idea that there are certain parts of the country where there is a labor shortage. His question is, why not just divvy it up and ask them for a certain period of time? That's something I hadn't heard him talk about.

It's this idea almost of like, this is the service you perform, and in return, you're getting a legal permit to work. We're also helping you with your asylum application, and in that duration, you're assigned to work in a certain town or city. Then after that time is up, you're free to go wherever you are. Yes, you are right. That is the most detailed the mayor has ever gotten in articulating what he means by decompression strategy.

Brian Lehrer: It would have been really interesting if he had gotten that detailed a year ago and really pushed it and made Kamala Harris respond to it and adopted for her platform or not, and made President Biden respond to it and say, "No, this is a bad idea. We can't do this. We can't tell people where to go," or whatever the response would have been, or embrace it. Now, we're talking about it in retrospect after the Biden administration is leaving and the Harris administration will not be incoming.

Listeners, we'll continue with our lead Eric Adams reporter Elizabeth Kim with more clips on other things from the mayor's Tuesday news conference this week in a minute. We can take your phone calls on the migration issues we've been talking about in the election or anything else relevant to the mayor's news conference yesterday. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, as we continue as usual on Wednesdays with our lead Eric Adams reporter Elizabeth Kim with excerpts from, analysis of, and to take your calls about Mayor Adams' weekly Tuesday news conference. Before we go on to some other topics, let's take a couple of calls on the one we've been talking about, Adams and the incoming Trump administration, and immigration policy in particular. Scott in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Scott.

Scott: Hey, good morning. Give me a second. I might stumble over my words. Great segment. I am a lifelong Democrat here speaking, but I don't know why there can't just be a compromise in terms of settling current people that are here, migrants, or whether they're refugees, or whatever is going on, and then harden the borders and call the thing, call it a wash because I agree with everything that migrants are useful, and they're going to do a lot of jobs that other Americans don't want to do and get integrated into society, everything, all the bonuses you talked about earlier.

Brian Lehrer: You know what you've just reinvented, Scott?

Scott: What [unintelligible 00:24:08]?

Brian Lehrer: What they call comprehensive immigration reform, which George W. Bush was for, John McCain was for, Marco Rubio was for, now he's going to be secretary of state, and every time a Democratic and Republican coalition for doing basically what you just said, legalize the people who've been here and working and then harden the border and let's go forward. Every time they tried to get a version of that, there was a hard right flank in Congress that said, "No, we're not going to legalize the people who've been here, even if they've been hardworking and law-abiding."

Scott: Glad you could reiterate that.

Brian Lehrer: You just beautifully articulated the essence, and who knows, maybe it can come back in some form at some time of what they call comprehensive immigration reform. Go ahead. You had another point?

Scott: All right. Can I ask one more thing?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Scott: I did. I wanted to, and I've already forgotten the word that you were talking about before where--for like having people move to other areas of the country. What was that word?

Brian Lehrer: Decompression strategy. Adams called it.

Scott: Decompression strategy. I was thinking, as I was walking down the sidewalk listening to the segment, why Adams is saying, rightly or not, that how many billions we spent, take a portion of that, it would go a long ways towards helping people out to our city but help share the burden on other places in the States. That's all I got to say. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Scott, thank you. Thank you very much for your call. A little bit to his last point, Liz, we're getting a number of texts from listeners who say, and we kind of addressed it, that-- Here's a representative one. "The difference between Giuliani's time, immigration then and now is that Giuliani's immigrants were working on day one. They didn't occupy hotels and shelters. They were contributing to the city economy right away. The new ones are a burden for the city budget."

It also recalls the other big thing that you mentioned that the mayor has asked from the Biden administration a zillion times and never gotten. I don't know that Biden had the authority to wave his hand and make it happen, but that was a very quick work authorization for all these people because, remember, they weren't just sneaking across the border. These people are coming and registering and saying, "We're seeking asylum from dramatically horrible conditions in our countries of origin."

These people are largely from Venezuela, from some of the other countries around there on the record as here, seeking asylum, but they couldn't work legally. They didn't have any money, and Mayor Adams was saying to Washington, "Give them work permits so we don't have to tax our taxpayers to put them in shelters and give them debit cards for food and things like that."

Elizabeth Kim: That's right, Brian. The mayor was quite exasperated with this. He would say this at many press conferences. Like I said, he held a rally just on this issue, which he made the argument that the migrants do want to work, they do not want to languish in shelters, but I need the federal government to help me expedite these work permits. Why does it need to take 180 days?

One point I would like to make on the decompression strategy, and it's something I did think about when the mayor was envisioning this grand plan of why can't we just send them to Rust Belt cities that need people to work in manufacturing and stuff, in the state of New York, the mayor was trying to do something similar like that and work with both the governor and other electees in parts of the state.

He encountered resistance because not all communities want migrants. Even communities that could use the extra labor do not want migrants. There is that political consideration too that I'm sure that President Biden considered, and that even came into play with Governor Kathy Hochul.

Brian Lehrer: That's a good point. There's at least one more issue I want to get to before we run out of time because the mayor did talk about other things in the news conference yesterday. You briefly referenced congestion pricing, which he's been mealy-mouthed about. Now, Hochul is going to try to revive congestion pricing because Trump got elected and she didn't, I guess, intend for it to go away forever. Maybe she was, as the theory goes, trying to help the suburban Democrats running to take back congressional seats from the five that were flipped from the Democrats in 2022.

The Democrats have now gotten four of those five seats back, including three last Tuesday. Maybe congestion pricing is going to come back. She's not saying exactly how. Maybe with a lesser fee than $15. The mayor was like, "Yes, I support the governor. Whatever she needs." He didn't take a position on that. Here's another one. There's a bill, as you know, in City Council that may ban broker's fees for people about to rent apartments from being paid by the renters. That is, the landlords would have to pay the broker's fees.

So many of our listeners have been through this. I've been through it. You're looking to rent an apartment, and in addition to having to cough up the first month's rent and maybe the last month's rent as a security deposit, there's this big broker's fee. City Council is thinking of putting that fee only on the landlords. The mayor didn't quite say whether he would veto it, but he was very skeptical. Here he says why.

Mayor Eric Adams: I don't want what we think is a good idea to turn into a long-term course. I was a real estate agent. If you have to pay that fee of $800 one time to get a place and then you change it and the owner of the property, particularly small property owners, decide that they're going to spread it out to $50 a month, now you're paying that for the life of your rental.

Brian Lehrer: Now you're paying that for the life of your rental. It's an interesting argument, Liz. Right? It doesn't sound like he's just trying to be pro-landlord there. Sometimes he is pro-landlord. He says that, as a former small landlord and maybe a current small landlord himself. Maybe it is a case of good intentions that have the ability to backfire if the broker's fee is baked into the rent, not just for the first year to pay off that broker's fee that the landlord had to pay, but forever, however many years you live in that apartment. What would City Council say to that argument? Do you happen to know?

Elizabeth Kim: I didn't see any good responses to that. I was thinking about this issue a lot, and the mayor makes the same argument that the real estate industry makes in opposition to the bill. His argument is that, essentially, what a landlord would do is he would bake that into the rent. If you think about it, the hurdle with the broker's fee is not just the amount of the broker's fee. The mayor gives the example of $800. It's not the fact that it's $800, it's the fact that a renter has to pay it upfront all at once. I'm sure listeners will know it's usually not $800. It's usually thousands of dollars.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, thank you. [laughs]

Elizabeth Kim: Not everyone has that kind of instant liquidity that they can just put that upfront. If you were to say to someone, "You're not going to pay it all at once. We're going to smooth out those payments over the terms of your lease," I think a lot of people would be more receptive to that idea. Now, there is the problem that the mayor brings up that-- Let's say once your lease comes to an end and your landlord is looking to increase your rent, he's going to be working off an amount that is inflated because he has baked into your rent the cost of hiring a broker.

All of that is true, but you also have to start thinking about the scenario in which once we don't have broker's fees, it may be a little easier for renters to decide that, "Well, you know what? I don't think I do want to stay here. I think I could find a better deal across the street or in another neighborhood. You know what? Now I don't have to pay that upfront thousands of dollars for a broker, so I think I can just absorb the moving cost and move."

You might think that in that situation, the renter has a little bit of leverage and he might be able to say to the landlord, "Listen, do you really want this unit to go vacant? It's going to cost you some money. You're going to have to hire the broker again. Let's say we split the difference and instead of $50 increase a month, you make it $25 and I'll stay."

It's going to be really interesting if the bill passes to see the kinds of negotiations that start happening, not just between renters and landlords, but also landlords and those brokers because you got to believe that now that the landlords know they have to pay out money for these brokers, they're going to make them work a lot harder for that money.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take one more call before we run out of time, and it's going to go back to the immigration in New York City issue. It's Troy in Brooklyn. Troy, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Troy: Hi, good morning. My point was that I'm a city worker. We're not allowed to assist in any form of-- like giving up information. We're prohibited from doing that with the federal government, and the mayor has no power in confronting federal agents. We don't have any power, and we're not going to have a law enforcement standoff for this issue, so there's really not much [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: This is on sanctuary city and-

Troy: Sanctuary city and all that stuff.

Brian Lehrer: -if the Trump administration tries to ramp up a mass deportation program here?

Troy: Yes. This is also in regards to Mr. Espaillat. There is the thing where, again, Democrats are not listening to working-class people. Again, this issue of immigrants and migration is-- I'm an immigrant. I know people that came here illegally and got their legal status. I recognize the work that immigrants do. We can look around the city at the construction sites, they're predominantly Hispanic.

They come ready to work and they're willing to work, but then there are some people here that are committing and abusing our citizens. They're doing heinous crimes, financial crimes, and they're taking money from our citizens. On top of everything, it's draining resources from the city and [unintelligible 00:36:20] things that are hurting [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: Do you trust the Trump administration to cherry-pick in that way and take out the ones that you're describing are hurting the city and leave everybody else alone?

Troy: I would assume that they would use wisdom, and I'm hoping that they would. I'm one of those Democrats that did vote for Trump, only because we are going in the wrong direction, and it's hurting everyone. There's some people that it doesn't hurt because they're financially able not to feel it and they want to feel good about being nice to everyone, but the reality is it's hurting, and it's hurting everyone.

I deal with it on the law enforcement side, so I see the criminality and the abuse. People are just being let go. It's just an open door, and it hurts regular citizens. I'm dealing with them, and I'm [unintelligible 00:37:15] I apologize. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do to get your funds back or whatever was taken or whatever harm that was done to you. This is one problem that--

Brian Lehrer: This is what you're seeing on the front lines of your work?

Troy: Yes, and we need to be a little more sensitive to the regular folks that are working. The congestion pricing is another problem. The MTA is a horrible manager of funds, and we're going to think that we're going to give them more funds. The system is disgusting, it's dirty, and it's always been that way. No matter how much money we pour into the MTA, they use it up. I worked for the MTA for many years prior to going into what I'm doing now. It needs to be audited, and it needs to be fiscally responsible for what it does.

People are blatantly just jumping over the turnstiles helping each other. It's become a community of fare evasion because they'll help each other not pay the fare. These are the same people that we are paying for with congestion pricing that are not using the system. Then we have Citi Bike. We have all kind of issues that people are not using the system as they used to. We have to rethink and reassess.

Brian Lehrer: Troy, thank you. Thank you for your call. Troy articulates, Liz, why Donald Trump-- He wasn't talking about Donald Trump, but a lot of that vibe is why Trump's share of the vote went up in New York City.

Elizabeth Kim: That's right, Brian. There is this perception in certain communities that the care for migrants is coming at the cost of citizen New Yorkers. The mayor himself has said that. What I would point out is that the mayor, he is blaming the migrant crisis as hurting working-class New Yorkers, but I think what he's leaving out is some self-scrutiny, his management of the crisis which resulted in these inflated emergency contracts. He has to look at that.

What could he have done to bring some of those costs down? The budget cuts that he implemented that overestimated the cost of the crisis and wound up affecting key services like schools, libraries, parks, social programs. Then there is his rhetoric that is contributing to the feeling among people like Troy and others that this is costing us, that this is us versus them. He's been criticized on this very issue for fanning those flames.

Brian Lehrer: Liz Kim, Elizabeth Kim as usual on Wednesdays, our lead Eric Adams reporter joining us with excerpts from, analysis of, and to take your calls about Mayor Adams' weekly Tuesday news conference. Thanks as always, Liz.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

 

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