Good morning. It's Tuesday. We'll look at how Mayor Eric Adams's interest in nutrition, meditation and fitness shapes the way he is running the city. We'll also look at why Huge Ma, who's better known as Vax Daddy, is no longer running for the State Assembly. |
 | | Andrew Seng for The New York Times |
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A New York media firestorm was building over whether Mayor Eric Adams's diet was as plant-based as he had said. In the basement of City Hall, Adams sat in his workout room, demonstrating how deep-breathing exercises help ward off adversity. |
"We all breathe incorrectly because we were never taught breathing," Adams declared, perched on a workout bench in his socks, a white T-shirt and yellow and brown striped drawstring pants. A stationary bike was nearby, and 25- and 30-pound weights were strewn around as he offered instruction on alternate-nostril breathing. |
We know this because my colleague Katie Glueck did breathing exercises with him. When I asked if they had been calming, she said this: "We met up at roughly 6:45 a.m., so I was too overcaffeinated to feel relaxed by such techniques in the moment." But she said the encounter had made her "more attuned" to the potential benefits. |
She told me the workout room is down a narrow flight of steps at City Hall, below Adams's kitchen, where he made a purplish-brown concoction in his blender. She did not drink it, but Adams told her his recipes typically involve "either kale, spinach, blueberries and a few superfood powders." |
He also said he is looking for a chef for Gracie Mansion who can cook plant-based meals. |
Adams is best known as a former police captain whose centrist views on battling crime helped catapult him to City Hall. But in his six weeks in office, he has also emerged as something of an unconventional wellness influencer, a nutrition and fitness enthusiast with hints of New Age tendencies. |
His reputation took a slight hit last week when Adams acknowledged that he occasionally eats fish, despite previous denials. The episode was humorously referred to as "Fishgate," but it pointed to the mayor's sometimes-casual relationship with transparency and the truth, following more serious controversies over residency and tax questions. |
Still, Adams embraced self-help language in his mea culpa — "I am perfectly imperfect" — and again demonstrated how his leadership style differs from that of his predecessors. New York City is now run by a man who at once sternly warns against "disorder in my city" and is the author of a vegan cookbook with a mouthful of a title — "Healthy at Last: A Plant-Based Approach to Preventing and Reversing Diabetes and Other Chronic Illnesses." He speaks frequently about his transformation from a heavyset police officer. Type 2 diabetes impaired his vision and threatened his health before he embraced a plant-based diet six years ago. He says it reversed the disease. |
He now spends 20 minutes each morning and evening practicing meditation, aided by beaded bracelets to facilitate focus. And he has called himself a "Zen mayor" who will "bring the calmness" to the city. |
"Don't see yourself in the crisis," he said, describing how his routine shapes his mind-set. "See yourself out of the crisis and through the crisis." |
Enjoy a sunny day with temps near the mid-30s, New York. The evening is mostly clear with temps dropping to the high 20s. |
In effect until Feb. 21 (Washington's Birthday). |
Trump's Accounting Firm Retracts Financial Statements |
Trump used the statements to secure loans. The Manhattan district attorney's office and the office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James, have been investigating whether Trump exaggerated the value of his properties to defraud his lenders into giving him the best possible terms. |
The accounting firm, Mazars, informed the Trump Organization of its decision in a letter dated Feb. 9 that was included in a filing from James, who wants to question Trump as well as Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump. |
Mazars said in the letter that the firm had not "as a whole" found material discrepancies between information the Trump Organization had provided and the actual value of Trump's assets. But given what it called "the totality of circumstances," the letter directed the Trump Organization to notify anyone who had received the statements that they should no longer be relied on. |
The Trump Organization said in a statement that it was disappointed with Mazars' decision. |
Why Vax Daddy Is No Longer Running for the State Assembly |
 | | Amir Hamja for The New York Times |
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Huge Ma, better known in New York as Vax Daddy for the website he created to help city residents schedule appointments for coronavirus vaccines, decided to build on the folk-hero status he had achieved during the pandemic. He announced that he would run for the State Assembly as a Democrat from Queens. |
He campaigned on issues he cared about, like transportation and the climate crisis. But after less than two months, he ended his campaign. |
The reason? The state's once-in-a-decade redistricting process, which has just been completed. |
It redrew the map so that his home was outside the district he was running in. |
My colleagues Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Grace Ashford write that his race was one of many shaken up by the redistricting process approved by the State Legislature, which Democrats control. Republicans — who are challenging the maps that the Legislature approved — contend the Democrats effectively engaged in partisan gerrymandering to guarantee their hold on power. |
The maps will play a pivotal role in Democratic primaries, with the new district lines benefiting some incumbents that left-wing hopefuls consider too moderate or too much a part of the party establishment. |
That appeared to explain what happened in Ma's district in western Queens. It is now represented by Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, a high-ranking Democrat first elected when Ronald Reagan was president and Edward Koch was mayor. The new lines for her district carved out parts of Long Island City that are home to some of her most likely challengers, including Ma. |
Political observers said the new district lines could have helped her in a primary. But the race was upended again last week when Nolan, who was diagnosed with cancer last year, said she would not run for another term. The seat is now up for grabs, with a number of left-leaning candidates showing interest. |
Democrats say the new maps serve to strengthen the voting power of so-called communities of interest — ethnic, racial or cultural groups with shared concerns — that they said Republicans had divided in past redistricting efforts, hoping to dilute Democrats' power in the State Senate. |
The end result this time around was changes that, taken together, benefited Democrats. |
One shift could prove fortuitous for State Senator Kevin Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat who is facing two challengers from the left. Left-leaning strips of neighborhoods like Park Slope and Windsor Terrace that are currently in his district have been replaced by sections of Brownsville and Canarsie, where the demographics more closely match his base. |
"It's a completely different district," said Samantha Adler, a housing advocate and conflict mediator who is running against Parker. "Different neighborhoods, different needs." |
Parker said the new lines returned the district to its proper size and reunited communities that Republican lawmakers had separated. |
"The districts have just been right-sized," he said. "And I think they've been drawn in a way that's contiguous with the districts in the community that I've represented." |
Back when the area in Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center went up was known as Radio Row, I went shopping there for a turntable cartridge. |
I went to a store that was typically my first stop and was quoted a price of $90. I then went to a second store, where I was quoted a price of $75 but told that the cartridges were out of stock. |
Returning to the first store, I asked the salesman if he would match his rival's price. |
"Why didn't you buy it there?" he asked. |
"They were out of stock," he said. |
"OK," he said, "so then we are out of stock too and the price is $65." |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
Melissa Guerrero, Olivia Parker and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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