Evening Roundup: American-born Cardinal Elected as Pope, Adams’ Budget Invests in Cleaner Parks, NYC Students’ Xenophobic Border Patrol Prank, NJ Mayor Riled...

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Janae Pierre: An American-born Cardinal elected as Pope. Mayor Adams' Budget to invest in cleaner parks. Some high school seniors' xenophobic Border Patrol prank. Newark Mayor riled up over an uninspected detention center, and New Jersey GOP governor hopefuls clash in a forum. From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Janae Pierre. New Yorkers gathered at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan as a new Pope was elected. Cardinal Robert Prevost has taken the name Pope Leo XIV. He's the first pope from the United States in the 2000-year history of the Catholic Church.

The 69-year-old Chicago native spent his career ministering in Peru and as the head of the Vatican's office of bishops. 133 cardinals gathered at the Sistine Chapel for several rounds of voting before making their announcement. Mayor Eric Adams is promoting his new budget proposal to restore cleaning crews to some of New York City's busiest green spaces. The mayor says the funding would also pay for park bathrooms to be open longer.

Mayor Eric Adams: Everyone knows when you got to go, you got to go, and you don't want to be looking for a place to go, and so we're going to allow our restrooms to be open and allow people to enjoy the restrooms and families to enjoy the restrooms without frustration.

Janae Pierre: Adams says bathrooms would be open two hours longer on average for five days out of the week. The Parks Department has faced repeated budget cuts during his administration. The mayor blamed the influx of new immigrants to the city for putting that money out of reach. The budget would also add additional sanitation crews to clean up neglected green spaces around the city. Mayor Adams is negotiating the budget with the City Council. A prestigious all-boys school on the Upper West Side is wrestling with how to discipline seniors who staged an elaborate prank some teachers described as xenophobic. WNYC's Jessica Gould has more.

Jessica Gould: Sources say the prank involved a cardboard Border Patrol checkpoint set up in the lobby. Participants told students to fill out fake naturalization papers. Caution tape was put on the desks of some teachers of color. President Trump's book, The Art of the Deal, was also left on display. Sources say some students were called un-American, and some put in zip ties. Seniors who participated in the prank are banned from going on trips to a bowling alley and go-kart course with classmates.

Teachers tell WNYC that's not nearly enough. Some teachers say universities accepting the seniors most involved should be alerted to the incident. Administrators told staff they're making the pranksters work on a letter of apology.

Janae Pierre: Collegiate did not respond to requests for comment. A New Jersey Mayor is heated after ICE opened an immigrant detention center in Newark without it being fully inspected. More on that after the break.

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Janae Pierre: A new ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey, has the mayor of the state's largest city riled up. Mayor Ras Baraka joined a protest Wednesday outside Delaney Hall in Newark's East Ward. He says the site hasn't been fully inspected by the city and says any occupation of the facility without required permits would be violating city law.

Mayor Ras Baraka: This is blatant disregard for the courts, blatant disregard for laws.

Janae Pierre: Baraka says he'll join protesters every day until city inspectors are allowed access to the site. WNYC's Arya Sundaram has been covering the story. She says this isn't the first time that Mayor Baraka has been denied access to the site.

Arya Sundaram: It all started, this whole thing, at the end of March when city fire inspectors tried to access the site and they were turned away then. The city took the GEO Group to court, that's the private contractor that runs the facility, and they were eventually able to schedule the inspections, and there were about a dozen things wrong. It's unclear how serious they were. Mind you, the GEO Group has a totally different story for what happened. They still say that they denied the city from coming in, but their line is all you need to do is schedule a time.

Janae Pierre: Arya says officials attempted to do just that, but it's been weeks of back and forth. In spite of that, the site officially opened on May 1, and as of this recording, fire inspectors and Mayor Baraka still haven't been granted access to Delaney Hall.

Arya Sundaram: Of course, Mayor Baraka is mad and outraged because he feels like the state still needs the required inspections. He's been a pretty vocal advocate against the site coming to the city in the first place.

Janae Pierre: You may remember New Jersey banned ICE detention in the state back in 2021, but Arya says part of that law was struck down by a state supreme court judge.

Arya Sundaram: As per the law, public institutions can't contract with ICE anymore. That's like city jails, for example. Private companies still can, which is why a place like Delaney Hall can still operate in the first place. Actually, that ruling is being contested in federal court. The New Jersey attorney general appealed the ruling, and just last week, a panel of judges for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia heard oral arguments in the case.

Janae Pierre: Meanwhile, Arya says Mayor Baraka will have to continue his fight for Delaney Hall through the courts as well.

Arya Sundaram: It's still playing out. We'll see what will happen next. The city has requested a preliminary injunction so like a judicial order to keep the facility from operating until the inspections are complete. The judge hasn't made any decisions just quite yet.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's Arya Sundaram. More In New Jersey, three Republican candidates vying to be the next governor of the Garden State made their case to voters at a forum Wednesday night hosted by WNYC and NJ Spotlight News. WNYC's David Brand reports on a frequently contentious conversation.

Jack Ciattarelli: This guy will check any box to get any vote--

David Brand: The race for New Jersey's Republican nomination for governor is getting testy.

Bill Spadea: That's coming from somebody without character.

Jack Ciattarelli: I grew up playing--

David Brand: The three candidates do agree on one thing. New Jersey needs to scrap rules requiring individual towns to build more affordable housing. Radio host Bill Spadea says the suburbs are no place for new homes.

Bill Spadea: We're going to take those units out of the suburbs and shove them into the cities.

David Brand: Former state assembly member Jack Ciattarelli says he'd appoint more conservatives to the state Supreme Court to undo a decades-old ruling that imposed the housing requirements.

Jack Ciattarelli: We're overdeveloping suburbs where there's no mass transit, no infrastructure, no jobs.

David Brand: State Senator Jon Bramnick says he supports mandates, but not on a town-by-town basis.

Jon Bramnick: Right now, the Democrats have passed a law that says each town has to have a certain number of affordable housing units, instead of doing it by region.

David Brand: The Garden State is still blue in terms of voter registration. Democrats outnumber Republicans by about 900,000 people. The GOP is gaining ground, and President Trump looms large over the contest. A nod from Trump could tip the scales, and Ciattarelli and Spadea are both trying to win the president's endorsement while Bramnick's been distancing himself from the president. Spadea says he even supports Trump's effort to fast-track deportations without due process.

Bill Spadea: As a Supreme Court justice said back in the 1940s, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. If we have criminal aliens coming over the border, and many are connected to MS-13, many are cartels, that is an invasion. Invaders do not get due process.

David Brand: Bramnick cautioned that campaigning on tough talk and sound bites could backfire in the general election. He says his anti-Trump "traditional Republican candidacy" is the only one Democrats would truly fear in November.

Jon Bramnick: If you guys don't show a heart and you don't show some warmth to other human beings and just a cold, calculated soundbite campaign, we're going to lose again.

David Brand: The election is June 10th.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's David Brand. Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC, I'm Janae Pierre. We'll be back tomorrow.

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