Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Our lead Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim, is our first guest today. Usually, the mayor holds his weekly news conference on Tuesdays and Liz joins us on Wednesdays with clips and analysis, but this week, the mayor switched it to Monday for schedule reasons. He's going to the governor's State of the State address today, so Liz joins us today on topics the mayor was asked about yesterday, including the city's new lawsuits against bus companies bringing asylum seekers from Texas. You've heard about that. Some migrant families with children hitting their 60-day stay limit in the city shelter system today.

Even the mayor denying something about his childhood that came up at the news conference yesterday. That was in a book that he wrote about a time the book says he fired a gun as a kid. Now the mayor says, "No, believe me, don't believe your lying eyes if you read my book." Liz, always good to have you. Never a shortage of things to talk about after these news conferences. Welcome back to the show.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian. Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with a clip on what might be happening right this minute, as far as we know, as many migrant families hit their 60-day shelter stay limit today. Here is Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom at the news conference acknowledging that this is scheduled to happen.

Deputy Mayor Anne Williams-Isom: I think that these children and families have been through so much, and so we're not talking about destabilizing them, and I just want to flip that premise. What we are trying to do is actually stabilize them and make sure that they have what they need and make sure that those families that are just coming to us at the front door also has an opportunity. We are managing the best, and people can disagree with the way that we're doing it. We are sitting in these seats, and we have to do it. We have to make the tough decisions. There are no good decisions right now, but we have a clear objective, which is to keep families and children safe and to make sure that they need as they go along.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, can you elaborate on that clip from the deputy mayor about the choices the city is facing with apparently more families arriving than beds to take all of those who need shelter in?

Elizabeth Kim: Just to set that up, the families that are leaving this week are doing so because the city established what's known as a 60-day rule for families with children. That means that after 60 days at their assigned shelter, they have to leave. Now, they have choices. They can simply find another place to live, or they could return to the city's intake center at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, and they could reapply for a new assignment.

Now, why this particular policy has gotten a lot of criticism? Now there's a similar policy, a 30-day policy for adult migrants, but this one that involves families has gotten a lot of scrutiny from homeless advocates. What it means is that families that have had children who are enrolled in school will possibly see their children have to either travel long or longer distances to get to their school or maybe face the decision of having to pull their child out of that particular school, they're in a different borough, and perhaps it's just too far for their children to travel. This presents potentially a lot of disruption for families and children.

While that press conference was going on, there was a rally outside City Hall in which homeless advocates and elected officials, including City Comptroller Brad Lander, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, were protesting the mayor's decision. They really want him to back off of this plan. You heard the frustration in the deputy mayor's voice because basically, critics are accusing them of destabilizing families. What they have said with this rule is that what they wanted to do was implement something in which they could start getting families to start thinking about what is their plan here in New York. That is something that they refer to as case management.

Now, I will say that critics of the mayor have said from the very beginning that they should have had a lot of case managers in place from the beginning, talking to migrants about applying for-- Do you want to apply for asylum? Do you want to get an application for work authorization? There is a whole level of bureaucracy and thinking about the future that migrants need help with. They instituted this idea, in some ways, it gets migrants thinking about it a little faster if they know that they have 60 days, and you're up.

Now, people who do not like this plan accused the mayor of basically, this is just another way of making migrants feel uncomfortable and increasing their discomfort level so that they'll move out of shelter. There is the reality, though, that the city is running out of space so another thing that this policy does is it frees up space for the thousands of migrants that are coming weekly and that's something that you heard the deputy mayor, that's what she's alluding to there is that they need to think long term. They need to provide something for everybody, so that's the challenge.

Brian Lehrer: Hardly anybody elsewhere in the metropolitan area is willing to take in the migrants, and so it falls on the city and falls on the city again. How many families, or let me ask you it this way, the mayor has said no family has yet had to sleep on the street. Do you have reason to believe with today's deadline for a number of families that this will begin to be the case during tonight's predicted rain and windstorm?

Elizabeth Kim: What the mayor said yesterday is that they're expecting roughly 40 families to show up at the Roosevelt Hotel and ask for a new assignment. The city officials sounded as if they were fairly confident that they would be able to accommodate them. Basically, most of these families will probably be assigned to a new shelter in the form of a new hotel.

They even said that those with children in elementary school would be placed in Manhattan, meaning that they would stay because they're coming from a shelter known as the Row Hotel. That's also in Midtown Manhattan. That means that families with young children, their children would likely still be located in a school in the borough. They could conceivably make that trip.

The concern, though, is it's not just about 40 families today. They've sent out notices to around 4,800 families that their time limit is expiring, so that means with each day, this number is going to snowball. We're going to see more and more families having to leave their shelter, and if they don't find another place, they're going to show up at the Roosevelt Hotel, ask for another room. This is on top of, like I said, the hundreds of families that are still coming in that are new arrivals. How does the city handle this? We will see.

I asked the deputy mayor at the end of that press conference, how many families she expects to be seeking new shelter assignments per week, and she thought it might be as many as 500.

Brian Lehrer: That's a lot because it's in the news because today is 60 days since the mayor first announced the 60-day policy or first implemented it and so that means a first group of families today, another group of families tomorrow, 60 days for them, if they came in on day two, another group the next day, and et cetera, permanently now. Here is Mayor Adams himself on the 60-day limit and a phrase that prompted some discussion at the news conference, what he calls "The front door." I think we have this [unintelligible 00:08:56].

Mayor Adams: The closing of front doors is everything, is the unjust action from Governor Abbott, is the national government of Adams decompression strategy. It is what we're looking at in court right now as we talk about the right to shelter was not really meant for a humanitarian crisis of this nature. It is the constant flow of thousands of people coming in each week. We can't stop that flow, and there are many rivers that feeding that sea of that flow, as I use that analogy often.

We have to dam each one of those rivers because if you dam just the river of the right to shelter, but you still have them coming in and flowing through the other rivers, it doesn't solve the problem. There's not a one size or one answer to the closing of the front door. We need to close each one of those doors that's creating this crisis that we're facing.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about the front door.

Elizabeth Kim: That was his response to me, actually, when I-- He at first used that phrase, shutting or closing the front door, which to my ear and I imagine a lot of people's ears, sounds a lot like closing the border. I had just wanted him to elaborate. What exactly do you mean, when you talk about the city has been unable to close the front door? There he lays it out. It's multiple factors. It's the fact that Governor Abbott continues to send busloads of migrants to New York City. It's the fact that the city has something known as the right to shelter which obligates the city to provide a bed to anyone who requests one.

That's something that the city and also the state have been trying to unwind in the face of what they say is a humanitarian crisis. He's just talking about the flow. I think it speaks to the predicament that the mayor finds himself in, but also how his rhetoric does start to veer towards the right. He was asked at that press conference, "Are you in favor of closing the border?" He walked finally away from it, and he said this is an issue that the federal government should solve.

Brian Lehrer: This relates to the lawsuit against the bus companies. Maybe you could go over what the rules are. I know we talked about it last week, but a lot of people don't know it. New rules that the mayor was trying to impose on the bus companies who were bringing asylum seekers from Texas. They're now trying to get around those rules for what time of day and with how much notice. They're allowed to come into the city by dropping people off in New Jersey. Just give us a quick refresher on that.

Since we spoke last week, there's now this lawsuit, and one thing I'm curious about is, why is he suing bus companies instead of Governor Abbott.

Elizabeth Kim: Just to give everyone context, we're more than a year into the crisis. There is not a lot of indication that the city is going to get any more federal money to help care for the migrants. The city is starting to think more, you could say, creatively about what can they do to as the mayor say, not shut the front door but slow or manage the flow of new arrivals.

A few weeks ago, the city decided to issue an executive order. Like you said, that imposes certain rules. It tries to impose certain rules on bus companies saying they need to give 32 hours advance notice. They'd like the bus companies to inform the city of who's exactly on the bus terms of, are these single adult migrants. How many of these are families with children? Will they need shelter? What happened was, the order didn't really have much teeth.

What the bus companies wound up doing was they ended up circumventing the order by dropping migrants off in New Jersey. Some of them just simply ignored the order altogether and continued to bring migrants to the city, and that was something that the city itself acknowledged that they were not abiding by it.

Then what happened was last week, the city decided to file a kind of interesting lawsuit. They are claiming that the bus companies are at fault because they are essentially implementing what they call a bad faith plan by Governor Abbott. They also said it's a plan that has evil intentions, which is basically foisting the care of migrants onto New York City. They're basing the lawsuit on a little-known social services law that says that anyone who knowingly brings someone into the state who will primarily need government assistance, must either pay for their expenses or transport them out of the state.

The city did some math, and they calculated roughly how many tens of thousands of migrants have come on these buses. They've estimated that as a result, they've spent over $700 million to care for these migrants and that's what they're suing the bus companies for.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, there's a law on the books that says you may not bring someone into New York for the purpose of getting them social services on the government's dime.

Elizabeth Kim: There is. There is. The city links to the law and it's an old law. The city even goes as far as to cite a 19th-century case that it says, establishes precedent for this kind of legal action.

Brian Lehrer: Really old law. Then why the bus companies and not Governor Abbott, if he's the one who's sending them? I saw the part of the news conference where one of the mayor's aides, a lawyer, I guess, described Abbott targeting just New York, Chicago, and Denver, or primarily just those three cities, for political reasons allegedly, not sending migrants to many different places, because it might make sense to do with the mayor calls have a decompression strategy, not overload any one place.

It seems like Governor Abbott, at least according to Adams, is trying to target Mayor Adams, Mayor Johnson in Chicago, and the mayor of Denver, all Democrats who talk about welcoming migrants generally, trying to make them look bad and get to the lawsuit as against the bus companies. Can you explain it?

Elizabeth Kim: I don't really know, Brian. I think one possibility is that they're trying to find a way to discourage these charter bus companies from taking on migrants by making it seem that they could be liable for a certain amount of money. One interesting detail that they bring up in that lawsuit to try to make their argument that these bus companies are part of this bad faith plan is they point out that the bus companies are profiting in huge amounts from taking on the migrants. The bus tickets are costing the state of Texas a lot more than what would normally be charged for a one-way ticket.

Now, I don't know, perhaps you can argue that maybe there's some justification for a hike, but it was quite a large differential. That's the one scenario I could see. If you scare the bus, these are 17 bus companies that they're suing, and they're not just in Texas, they're located across the Midwest.

Brian Lehrer: That makes a lot of sense to me. Like the governor of Texas, because he's a politician, he's in that position. He's part of the partisan combat that's going on in our country these days. He wouldn't back down because of a lawsuit or wouldn't likely to back down. Private companies that are concerned really only about their bottom lines, might be more scalable, as you say, to start behaving in accordance with the New York City policy that the mayor announced because they don't want to have to pay a lot of lawyers or potentially lose these lawsuits even. That's all really interesting.

Elizabeth Kim: Exactly. It's like let's make this more complicated for these bus companies. We issue the executive order. Now we have this lawsuit against you. Perhaps it's not worth their while to take on these passengers.

Brian Lehrer: You also report on a new HarrisX poll on the city's right-to-shelter policy. You have a new story up on Gothamist about that this morning. It turns out at least as a concept, the right-to-shelter policy is overwhelmingly popular. Here's a clip you brought, a former City Council speaker who now runs homeless shelters, Christine Quinn.

Christine Quinn: 61% of Republicans support the right-to-shelter, and when asked specifically about asylum seekers, a clear majority of 58% support the right-to-shelter, because again, the right-to-shelter is part of who we are as New Yorkers. This poll, yet again, shows that and I hope Mayor Adams will look at these results, and heed their message.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, tell us more about this poll.

Elizabeth Kim: I thought the results were rather surprising in terms of the level of support for the right-to-shelter. My first question, when they brought this survey to me was, "Well, how are you explaining the right-to-shelter because I don't know that every New Yorker understands exactly what the right-to-shelter is?"

Brian Lehrer: It was like 80%. The top line was 80% say, "Yes, right-to-shelter. Good thing."

Elizabeth Kim: That's right. Now, I will say that 80% represents half of the respondents, 50% said they strongly support the right to shelter. Then you're adding another 29% that say they somewhat support the requirement, but that wasn't the only time that the survey asked that question. They repeated the question, they rephrased the question in other ways like, "Are you in support of a policy that basically entitles everyone to a bed? Even migrants, even someone who is a non-citizen." In multiple scenarios, the findings was that people were largely in support of this general idea.

I will say this is a 40-year-old policy in New York. I think even if people aren't in the weeds of this kind of homeless shelter policy, I think what New Yorkers may have come to appreciate, especially when they visit other cities, is the fact that New York does not have the same level of street homelessness as other cities.

In fact, a week ago, the mayor, when he was giving a presentation on the year-end crime statistics, he held up a picture of another city to illustrate what he said was the lawlessness or what he would call chaos that's happening in other cities. It's interesting that the picture he held up was one of LA. It was one of Skid Row, and he was holding up a picture of a homeless encampment.

Now, what's ironic about that is LA is a very large city and it does have homeless people, but they don't have a right to shelter. That's precisely the argument that advocates have made for the right to shelter overall these years, is that this is a law that is beneficial not only to homeless people but also to New Yorkers at large. This is a quality-of-life issue. We don't, for the most part, walkthrough homeless encampments throughout the city.

Brian Lehrer: Right. To that follow-up question that you said you asked, could it be that the right to shelter sounds pure and good when it's just asked that way, but many respondents would also support the mayor in imposing some limits because the demand keeps overwhelming the system?

Elizabeth Kim: Possibly. That is certainly the argument that the mayor is saying. It could also be that as a concept, New Yorkers fully approve of this, but what happens when there's a cost to it? When I say cost, not just the general cost, but I mean a personal cost. We saw an uproar, for example, when last year the mayor was talking about temporarily putting some migrants in school buildings. We saw a lot of communities and communities that you would be considered very liberal communities in New York City come out, like in Brooklyn, and say, "This is not what we want." I don't think that the mayor is not without an argument there that perhaps in theory everybody supports this longstanding policy. What does it mean when New Yorkers are pushed against the wall and say like, "You're going to lose this as a result of this."

Brian Lehrer: Nobody wants them. It's like if they ask the questions in a certain order, maybe they would wind up with 80% of New Yorkers support a right-to-shelter policy. 90% of New Yorkers say no right to shelter in my neighborhood.

Elizabeth Kim: Yes. It's nimbyism.

Brian Lehrer: Here's an interesting remark from a listener who wrote us a text message about that law that you were talking about. The law that dates back to the 19th century that the mayor is using as a basis for the lawsuit against the bus companies. That you can't bring somebody into the city specifically for the purpose of getting them city services, making them award of the state. Listener writes, "Does that social service law apply to women seeking abortions?" I wonder if people on the right who oppose legal abortion could look at New York State's policy, which now welcomes people into New York from abortion illegal states, and I think allows them to access New York State Medicaid if they're poor or some other funding mechanism, if that law may be now used for right-wing purpose.

Elizabeth Kim: I will say, I do not know Brian, but one thing about that law is, it's the idea that the term they use is you're making an individual a public charge and that individual is staying in New York for a prolonged period of time in which they would need things like shelter, food.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Public charge. Sounds like it's more general than helping them pay for one particular service-

Elizabeth Kim: Correct.

Brian Lehrer: -other than going home. All right. Good. We're going to take a break. We have more clips from Mayor Adams's weekly news conference yesterday with our lead Eric Adams, reporter, Liz Kim. We can take your phone calls too on the right-to-shelter policy and the lawsuit against the bus companies that we've been talking about so far or anything else relevant to what the mayor may have been discussing yesterday. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692 calls or text messages. We will also get into new conversations about budget cuts to libraries, which could potentially close the libraries for both weekend days going forward.

Also, the mayor on the pro-Palestinian protests blocking three bridges yesterday between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Of course, the larger issues implied there. That clip I mentioned at the beginning about the mayor saying something that was in his own book from 15 years ago about him firing a gun as a kid wasn't true. 212-433-WNYC. We continue in a minute.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with our WNYC and Gothamist city hall reporter, Elizabeth Kim look for her byline on Gothamist today on the poll showing widespread support among New Yorkers for the right to shelter law. We'll go on to some other things that the mayor talked about at his news conference yesterday. Before we get to new business, let's take some phone calls on old business, what we've just been talking about in the first part of the show. Robbie in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi Robbie.

Robbie: Good morning, Brian. Nice to talk to you. New listener to your show. Just a little background. I'm a registered independent so I'm not left or right. I'm just trying to figure out why it's okay for one governor to migrants out of his state. He's called every name in the book. Then when another governor does the same thing, he gets a pass meeting Murphy and Abbott. It's not a Texas problem, what we're going through right now. It's not a governor's problem. This is a federal problem, but nobody wants to hold them accountable. As far as the bus companies go, they're just doing their job. They're getting hired to do something, and they're getting sued. It's in the middle. I think it definitely has to come from the Fed. I don't know what the silence is about.

A little bit background more than me. What you would call Caucasian, white male. My inner circle is predominantly Black and Hispanic. They're not on board with this. I think that's the mistake. Those on the left are making thinking that, "Well, if we allow this to happen because it's predominantly Black and Hispanic coming in, that this is going to get the vote, but it's backfired because it's affecting their neighborhoods now. We're not just talking about housing, we're talking about crime.

Brian Lehrer: You raised a couple of really interesting issues. Let me talk them over with Liz. Robbie, glad you found us and please call us again. Don't make it last time. Thank you.

Robbie: Will do. Will do.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take both of the things that he mentioned, federal government and racial breakdown of reaction to what's going on around all this. The mayor is in an interesting political position as a Democrat and mayor of a very immigrant city. He wants to be pro-immigrant and support the migrants in various ways. He's already alienated President Biden because he is asked for more federal help, at least funding or helping the migrants figure out other places to go. Of course, what the Republicans say is just close the border.

I think Liz, to my ear, the mayor doesn't want to go there. He doesn't want to sound like Donald Trump, even though he wants the federal government to do more to help with this problem as he sees it that the city is facing. How would you describe, as somebody who covers the mayor every day, his position with respect to the federal government and the border.

Elizabeth Kim: I would say that, like you said, part of the mayor's base is actually immigrants and he often speaks very eloquently about how New York City has to live up to its reputation as this place that welcomes immigrants and allows them to pursue their American dream. That's why he has focused so much on asking Biden, let it help us expedite the work permits. That actually solves a lot of problems. It's the idea that you can help migrants become more financially independent so that the city doesn't need to take care of them as much anymore. They can move out of shelters. It's good for the city's economy too, and it's also good for the migrants themselves. By talking to migrants themselves, that's actually what they say is something that they want.

The mayor has been very clear on that, but he's also very worried that it is affecting his popularity, that he is being forced now to do budget cuts. There's some argument about the scale, whether he needs to do budget cuts on the scale that he has ordered, but he does face a deficit now. It is a costly crisis. As he gets more frustrated and as he goes to language like we need to shut the front door, we need to close the front door, like I said, it does make him open to this criticism that he is echoing. There are overtones of sort of Trump-like language here, and is he in fact scapegoating the migrants?

I think it is a fair concern. I've been to at least two town halls with the mayor, and in places where these are people that would be considered the mayor's base, they're Black and Latino, middle-class New Yorkers, and even there you will hear them express concern. One of the concerns is, like we talked about before, "Is this costing me something? Why is the city spending so much of its resources on migrants when I'm driving down my street and I see potholes, or I'm seeing budget cuts at my children's school?"

That's basically the predicament that the mayor finds himself in. How does he walk this fine line between not using language or asking, basically demanding that the federal government close the border, but also keeping him in mind? His own popularity is affected by this issue.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, he is pushing back against the federal government, but maybe the other half of Robbie's question is more a national politics one when he raises, well, how popular is this? What opponents would call open borders, or at least the number of asylum seekers who are coming in now, how popular is that among Black and Latino voters?

We see the polls showing rising Latino support for Donald Trump beyond what he got in the last two elections. If the early polls are an indication, we know they're not always of what might happen this November, even though Trump is running again on build that wall and deportation like you've never seen before, keeps talking about that. We know we get some Black collars here African Americans whose families are not recent migrants saying, "Come on, we got to serve the people who are already here. "I don't know that that's a majority possession among African Americans, but there's at least some.

Elizabeth Kim: That's correct, Brian. I've spoken to immigrants myself who make the argument, "Well, this wasn't there for me when I first came here." You hear the stories. "I came here with $20 in my pocket. I had to sleep on the couches of relatives until I got myself set up." I would say it's still in the minority, but there is this kind of simmering resentment of why is this policy happening now? In fact, that's not true. The policy has always existed, but it's just never been there to meet such a surge in demand like this before.

Brian Lehrer: One more call on this, Jan on Staten Island. You're on WNYC. Hi, Jan.

Jan: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I have a question. I looked on Google and saw that there are 60 immigration courts in this country. Now, it seems to me that every immigrant is going to need an immigration court. Why is the governor of Texas being allowed to dump people on cities that he just doesn't like, rather than having the immigrants sent to every place where there's an immigration court? That make sense?

Brian Lehrer: Well, it makes a certain logical sense. I think as we touched on before, Governor Abbott is apparently pursuing a political strategy, not kind of a logical decompression strategy. He's trying to make New York, Chicago, and Denver in particular look bad right now.

Beyond that, Liz, just very briefly, that's a huge issue, is the shortage of immigration courts, right? President Biden talks about that. Mayor Adams talks about that. Asylum seekers come in and register and say, "Hey I'm not sneaking into the country. Hello, I want to register with you. I'm seeking asylum because it's not safe for me where I came from." Then they're waiting three to four years before they get their day in court. Congress won't fund that kind of expansion in the asylum or the immigration court system.

Elizabeth Kim: That's correct. Part of the irony of this is yes, the courts there are a scarce resource for migrants. Part of what these democratic-led cities are now facing is that as a result of the surge in migrants, the federal government has delivered aid in the form of federal immigration officials. For example, there is now an intake center in Manhattan where there are federal immigration officials who are helping migrants walk through both the asylum application, but also the work authorization application. That is actually a very little-- it's below the radar. There hasn't been a lot of talk about that, but they've done a similar initiative also in Massachusetts.

What has happened is, recently Governor Murphy was asked, he was criticized about why is he in fact just putting migrants on trains to New York City. I think one of the callers alluded to that, that the two governors are doing this. His response was, "Well, that's where the federal resources are." In a strange way, that as a result of Governor Abbott doing this, he has created this additional federal resources to be put in these cities.

Brian Lehrer: All right. I want to go through our remaining three clips from the news conference yesterday real fast. We have spent most of our available time on this particular issue. We'll just close up this part of the conversation by saying, I think anyway, we had to do this today because this is the day the 60-day limit is up for the first time for families in the shelter system. It is tonight that we could see families with children sleeping on the street in New York City for the first time. I know the Adams administration is trying to find a way around that, despite some families likely to lose their shelter spots today under the new policy. That is certainly topic one in New York City today.

Now, the mayor talks about the migrant surge putting pressure on the city budget. People in city council push back and say, that's not the biggest reason or the only reason you could be doing things differently. Yet we have these budget cuts that have already closed libraries across the city one day per weekend. It could expand to all weekend. Here's the mayor on the budget cuts as they affect libraries, police academy classes, and trash pickup.

Mayor Adams: We want our libraries to be open. We want our police classes to continue. We want to continue our trash pickup. We want to continue to make sure our parks are clean. That's the budget that we would like to pass. Jacques has a very challenging and difficult task, and he has been briefing us, and actually, we have a meeting this afternoon to look at what we could save as much as possible. When it's time to formally announce it, we're going to make sure that we let everyone know.

Brian Lehrer: Just focus on the libraries in our limited time for that what's new here?

Elizabeth Kim: The reporter was trying to get the mayor to say whether or not there was going to be another cut to libraries because the libraries have said that they cannot endure another cut. What that would ultimately mean, it would mean the elimination of universal six-day service. That is something that they fought and fought to have. They've had it since 2015.

They see this as a very, very perilous moment for them. When the mayor, the question was put to him, he made basically no guarantees. He referred to Jacques, which is Jacques Shiha, his budget director. He says he's having conversations with him and they're going to try their best. He wouldn't say whether or not certain agencies would be spared.

I want to circle back to something that you brought up though a few weeks ago, Brian, about the libraries. Because it was an interesting question. Your question was, why is it that whenever there are these budget cuts, the decision is to close libraries on Sundays? I reached out to the New York Public Library and they said, yes, the weekends are really popular with patrons, but Sundays are the most expensive day of service. They're also the most difficult to staff. Costs are 50% higher and the libraries have to recruit staff to volunteer to work the shifts. That's the reason on why the weekend gets hit.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for following up on that. Briefly, the mayor asked about yesterday's pro-Palestinian protests, which closed the three spans between Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. The Williamsburg Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Manhattan Bridge, and one of the tunnels. Here's 40 seconds of the mayor on that.

Mayor Adams: As the council stated a few weeks ago the right to protest does not give one the right to block bridges and tunnels. As we saw this morning Williamsburg Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, one or two of the tunnels from my observations. We had our drones up, and it gave me a real bird's eye view of what was taking place. The goal is to peacefully protest without doing major disruption to the city. Some people are not just driving to and from crossing our bridges to go to their place of employment. Some of them are dealing with some real emergency-type issues.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor didn't mention the Manhattan Bridge, did I get that wrong, or was it all three bridges?

Elizabeth Kim: That's correct. Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, and also the Holland Tunnel.

Brian Lehrer: There were hundreds of arrests yesterday morning. I guess the question is, at what point, as the mayor was suggesting, does the right to protest and if emergency vehicles can't get through, if there's no other way really to get from Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan, and all the means are being blocked and regardless of the cause. I guess also when do they arrest people for peacefully protesting? Maybe it's the kind of old-fashioned civil disobedience action where people know they're going to get arrested and they're making their point. That's civil disobedience,

Elizabeth Kim: That's right, Brian. The protests have become a facet of everyday life now in New York City. On any given day, there is a protest. I think the mayor is making the argument that the protestors shouldn't be disrupting traffic in this way. I think the protesters would probably say that's the point. They want to disrupt everyday life in New York City because they are trying to make a point about the war and about how they feel about the war.

We'll see, should the war continue, should the casualties continue. This is a movement. Not just in New York City, but across the country. I expect we'll see more of these protests to come and we'll have more of these kinds of questions of, at what point are the protests going too far? How does the NYPD respond? Is it responding fairly? Should there be so many arrests? There were roughly 300 yesterday.

Brian Lehrer: Finally, a book that the mayor wrote 15 years ago included an anecdote in which he describes shooting a gun. He didn't know it was a real gun if I've got it right. I think he thought it was a toy gun. He fired it, and it turned out to be loaded and very real, luckily, he said in the book, it didn't hit anybody. He was fooling around with his friends. Nobody got hurt. This got asked about at yesterday's news conference for some reason. He said, "No, it never happened." Listen

Mayor Adams: I never fired a gun in school.

News Reporter: You wrote that you pointed "what I thought was a toy gun at my group of friends and pulled the trigger around discharged, and only by the grace of God, that my poor aim did the bullet miss my friends."

Mayor Adams: You said they fired in school.

News Reporter:: I believe this was in a school.

Mayor Adams: I think the co-author of the book may have misunderstood the exact someone. There was an incident in school with someone pointed a, they thought was a toy gun. They may have misunderstood. That book never got into print because we never went through the proofreading aspect of it.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that book never got released, Liz.

Elizabeth Kim: It did get released and you can buy it on Amazon.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, it's a book interview that I think we missed in 2009.

Elizabeth Kim: Yes, it's 2009. It was self-published. It's called Don't Let It Happen.

Brian Lehrer: Why is anybody asking about this now?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, there was an article about it last week in which someone rediscovered that book or discovered that book and went through it. What all of this is about, it's this larger question about whether the mayor lies or has exaggerated his aspects of his life story. It goes back to the question of where does the mayor live? That was something that came up during the campaign.

He does have a condominium in New Jersey that he shares with his partner, and there were questions about how much time he was spending there. Is he strictly a vegan? It was discovered that the mayor on occasion does eat fish. What it's getting at is how much of the mayor's life is in a way exaggerated or invented. That goes to how trustworthy New Yorkers find him. We talked about one of the recent polls that came out.

He had very dismal numbers, but one of the questions that the poll spoke to is, do they trust Mayor Adams? Again, this is another instance in which it's been raised. Now, he had an explanation for that. He said that the book had not been fact-checked and he had never said that. Again, reporters are going to continue to press him on these types of stories that he has told because there have been holes in some of them.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth Kim covering Mayor Adams for WNYC and Gothamist shall continue to come on weekly on the day after the Mayor's weekly news conference. We expect the news conference to go back to Tuesday next week, which means Liz will probably be on Wednesday next week. Liz, talk to you then, if not before.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

 

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