Good morning. It's Wednesday. We'll look at how the busloads of migrants that Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has sent to New York are putting pressure on social services here. But first, a recap of Tuesday's primaries. |
 | | Representative Jerrold Nadler at the Arte Cafe in Manhattan on Tuesday night. He relied on his longtime base of support in the Upper West Side.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times |
|
Representative Jerrold Nadler, the influential chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, defeated his congressional neighbor and longtime ally, Representative Carolyn Maloney, in a contentious three-way race. |
Nadler, who capitalized on his popularity among Democrats after shepherding former President Donald Trump's impeachment through the Judiciary Committee, ran against Maloney after his district on the West Side and hers on the East Side were combined. He assembled endorsements from well beyond his longtime base on the Upper West Side, including one from Senator Elizabeth Warren. |
"We won with votes from the East Side and the West Side," he said at a victory celebration. "I'm humbled that so many New Yorkers found themselves moved by our shared belief in principled progressivism." He also thanked Maloney, saying they had "spent much of our adult life working together to better New York and our nation." |
Nadler was winning with over 55 percent of the vote, compared with 24 percent for Maloney, with 95 percent of the vote reported. A third candidate, Suraj Patel, who nearly beat her two years ago, had 19 percent. |
In other primary contests across the state: |
- Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the moderate responsible for protecting Democrats' House majority as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, rebuffed a challenge from Alessandra Biaggi, according to The Associated Press. She is a progressive state senator who had been endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
|
- Dan Goldman was the winner in a 13-candidate Democratic primary in the new district connecting Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, according to The Associated Press.
- Pat Ryan, the Democrat seeking the Hudson Valley House seat vacated when Antonio Delgado resigned to become lieutenant governor, defeated his Republican opponent, Marc Molinaro. Ryan was able to keep his early lead, ultimately winning 52 percent of the vote to Molinaro's 48 percent.
|
- Representative Nicole Malliotakis, a Republican, and Max Rose, a Democrat, won their primaries in a district covering Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. Malliotakis unseated Rose, a combat veteran who was wounded in Afghanistan and awarded the Bronze Star, in 2020. Malliotakis, the only Republican in the city's congressional delegation, voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and voted against the second impeachment of President Donald Trump.
|
Enjoy a sunny day near the high 80s, New York. At night, it's mostly clear and temps will be around the low 70s. |
In effect until Sept. 5 (Labor Day). |
 | | Sarah Blesener for The New York Times |
|
Buses of migrants and a city struggling to find beds in shelters |
 | | Mostafa Bassim for The New York Times |
|
New York has a reputation for welcoming newcomers — the city's economy depends on them, and in many ways, so does its spirit. But an influx of migrants from Texas is creating challenges. Gov. Greg Abbott has sent busload after busload to Washington and New York to rattle the Biden administration and pressure Democrats on border policy. I asked Andy Newman, who writes about social services and poverty in New York City, to explain. |
The first busload from Texas seemed like a stunt. Has Abbott turned this into policy? |
It is actually part of a policy that Abbott launched this spring called Operation Lone Star, to send border-crossers north to Democrat-led cities. |
Mayor Adams's office claims that Abbott has been sending buses to New York for months. Abbott's office says that is not true and that he only started sending buses to New York after Adams started accusing him of doing so. It's as if Texas said, "You think we're sending you buses of migrants? Fine, we'll send you buses of migrants!" |
Abbott's office has also refused to coordinate with officials in New York and let them know when buses are arriving or how many people will be onboard. |
I asked Abbott's office why not. A spokeswoman replied, "If the mayor wants a solution to this humanitarian crisis, he should stop complaining and call on President Biden to take immediate action to secure the border — something the President continues failing to do." |
What will the arrival of thousands of migrants on the buses from Texas mean for New York? Isn't the social safety net here already stretched uncomfortably thin? |
Yes. The migrants from Texas are arriving at a time when the city is already dealing with multiple problems around homelessness and housing. |
People are staying in homeless shelters longer because of the shortage of affordable housing, because of bureaucratic problems with housing vouchers, because a lot of landlords refuse to rent to tenants who would pay their rent with government subsidies. The expiration of the pandemic eviction moratorium in January has meant that hundreds of households are being evicted every month in a market where rents have gone up dramatically. |
Housing the migrants will be enormously difficult, but not housing them is not an option. New York is one of the few cities in the country with a "right to shelter" law, which means that the city must offer shelter to anyone who asks for it. |
This wave of immigrants is different from past waves. What additional pressure has that put on the system? |
The more typical pattern of migration is that people go where they already have family and friends who can give them jobs and places to live. |
A large number of the people in the current wave are fleeing the ongoing economic catastrophe that is Venezuela. |
New York City doesn't have much of a Venezuelan community, so there is less of a social network to tie into. |
In addition, many of the migrants did not intend to come here. Some have said they were misled into boarding a bus in Texas with promises that they would end up in some other place — a place they actually wanted to go to, and had relatives. |
Where have Mayor Eric Adams and city agencies been? What role have volunteer groups played? |
The city was caught flat-footed by the influx and has spent much of the summer playing catch-up. For weeks, advocates said the city was not helping migrants enough and was leaving volunteers to do the work of receiving the migrants and connecting them to food, shelter and legal assistance. |
Now, when an Abbott bus arrives at the Port Authority, there's a pop-up welcome center, staffed by the city and by aid groups such as Team TLC NYC, providing food, clothing, medical care and transportation to shelter intake offices. |
The city plans to open a dedicated intake center and shelter for migrant families in Midtown next month. It has also rented 1,300 hotel rooms for migrant families and put out a call for 5,000 more. |
But at the rate the migrants are arriving, 5,000 rooms will not do it. Just since mid-July, the family shelter population has increased by 8.5 percent. If that pace continues for a year, the family shelters would need to nearly double their capacity and house nearly 30,000 more people. |
It was getting late. I was perched on a sidewalk grate, waiting for the downtown bus on Fifth Avenue. |
I pulled the collar of my coat up around my neck and my knit cloche down around my ears. I was hoping to keep out the wind that was just starting to make its presence known. With no bus in sight, I adjusted my armaments against the chill again and felt a tiny tug at my earlobe. |
I reached up to determine what I had felt, and as I did, my new pearl earring slipped off, dropped through my gloved hand, bounced off my upturned collar, made a left turn at my scarf and skittered down the front of my coat and through the grate I was standing on. |
I stood there, just staring for a minute while realizing there was probably nothing I could do to raise the earring from the dark hold below my feet. |
So after another moment, I removed the other earring and dropped it through the grate, hoping that if some lucky soul ever found it, there would be a matching pair. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
| Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment