A emboldened triumph seeks to fold New York City to its will

He has already overturned to the federal government and discarded global affairs. But in the first weeks of his second term, President Trump moves no less decisively to affirm his vision of a much more familiar place: New York City.

In recent days, Trump has threatened to “kill” The ambitious congestion price program of your hometown. He said he was prepared to demand to challenge his sanctuary laws of the city. The president even took the time to reflect to The New York Post on the eradication of bicycle lanes.

The most dramatic intervention until now came Monday, however, when the Department of Justice moved to dismiss federal corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. The action quickly triggered a wave of anxiety among the Democrats that the City Council, once a place of resistance to the Trump administration, was essentially co -opted by the president.

Trump had repeatedly said that Mr. Adams, a Democrat, was treated unfairly. But the Department of Justice gave a more revealing justification. TO memorandum He explained that Adams deserved a postponement to be able to devote himself to the “immigration objectives” of Mr. Trump.

Like much of the vertiginous gust of orders and dictums of Mr. Trump, it remains to be seen how big the president will leave the president in the city where he built his name and career.

However, decades after presenting his first skyscraper in Manhattan, even his critics now admit that Trump has become a complete political force that reforms some of the most important political debates in New York City.

“I think you see opportunities today in a way that was not eight years ago,” said Howard Wolfson, a democratic agent and former attached mayor under Michael R. Bloomberg.

“There is not much effective resistance at this time,” Wolfson added, saying that an “unprecedented mayor and governor” had left a “huge power emptiness.”

Trump is far from being the first president to be interested in American cities. Its predecessors established national policies that determined the course of urban housing, transport and surveillance, from Boston to Los Angeles.

He himself began his first term promising to launch a rebirth in New York, only to go to Florida and let his interest Lape.

But Mr. Trump’s second mandate represents an unmistakable change, and for some, alarming, for the leader of a party that It is proud to yield authority to state and local governments. He has proved little willing to get personally in what was once local policy, including Water management in the arid California, Municipal Immigration Practices in Illinois and Sports programs in school districts throughout the country.

And nowhere Mr. Trump is ready to play a more important role than New York City.

A Queens native who made his reputation on the Manhattan horizon and the city’s tabloids, Trump spent decades selling a vision of New York, retains a financial interest in his success and imported his Clubhouse style policy to Washington. Now, he has the power to impose that vision, or at least try.

“When I left, New York was the place you wanted to be, and now people simply do not talk about it well,” Trump said during one of his final campaign protesters, held at Madison Square Garden. “But we are going to bring it back, and we will bring it back strong.”

The city’s republican minority has enthusiastically welcomed the presidential interest. After years of democratic dominance without restrictions, come to Trump, who still speaks regularly with the old friends of New York, as among the only forces capable of curbing liberal excesses in immigration, transport policy and surveillance.

They also expect it to act on a bipartisan priority near the hearts of New York: raise the federal limit on the deduction of state and local income tax that Mr. Trump himself signed in 2017.

“New York has fallen into a Cess well,” said one of those friends, John Catsimatidis, in an interview.

A multimillionaire magnate of groceries and oil refiners, Mr. Catsimatidis meets Trump for almost half a century since they gathered at the Athletic League Board of the City Police. He said he urged the president to reconsider the legal case of Mr. Adams, and hopes not to stop there.

“Trump, don’t forget, he built the ice rink. He is New York, ”said Mr. Catsimatidis, who was having dinner with Mr. Adams on Monday night when news about dismissal fell. “The only thing that will bring New York back is Donald Trump.”

Many New Yorkers reject such a gloomy evaluation of the city, and official statistics on crime and the economy suggest a more nuanced image.

But if Mr. Trump’s message fell largely with a more liberal majority of New Yorkers in 2016 and 2020, there are signs that some residents of a city besieged by the interruption of the pandemic era are recently listening.

New York City still rejected Mr. Trump overwhelmingly in the 2024 elections, but won 95,000 votes more than in 2020, doing Notable profits in Latin and Asian working class neighborhoods. A recent university from Siena survey I discovered that Trump was more popular than it had been in the state, although his image was still underwater.

At the same time, Trump has moved with greater impudence to advance his cause, either for the Middle East or Midtown. During his first term, the president mostly threatened to retain a brightness of federal funds as a lever; This time, it has actually begun to do so and a congress controlled by Republicans seems to be willing to intervene.

New York is particularly vulnerable. Municipal and state leaders trust billions of dollars in federal subsidies to maintain public housing and subway and to balance public budgets. Trump has indicated that he is ready to stop much of that if New York leaders do not accept to help their migrant deportation plans or reduce congestion prices.

Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, seems to be taking Trump’s threat seriously, especially in congestion prices.

The toll plan only entered into force in January, after decades of preparations. The early data suggests that it has helped reduce traffic and generate the necessary income to update the New York Metro system and nearby trains. But Trump has said that he could revoke federal approval.

The two leaders have spoken at least twice on a road on the phone, and the conversations have begun to affect other policy proposals. In a remarkable example, Mrs. Hochul canceled a vote on Monday On Albany legislation that most Republicans would have effectively reduced for months, endangering Trump’s agenda. She told other Democrats that she was doing in an attempt to obtain influence with Trump in congestion prices.

Mr. Adams has been more compatible. Although he has long shared some of Mr. Trump’s political instincts, the mayor referred to an absolute ally in recent months while distressing to intervene to help solve Five federal counts of bribery conspiracy, fraud and request illegal foreign campaign donations.

The benefits for Mr. Trump are clear. Even before the Department of Justice moved to withdraw the charges, Adams had indicated that he would try to work with the president’s border tsar and iron any difference he had with Trump in private. Monday, the mayor They warned senior city officials That publicly commenting on the immigration policies of the Trump administration could endanger federal funds for public housing, schools and infrastructure.

In televised comments on Tuesday, Mr. Adams acknowledged that he had a job to do “to recover his trust” and insisted that he had always acted on the best interest of the city. But he did not mention Mr. Trump or offered any word to directly reassure the allies about their intentions.

The closeness of Mr. Adams with Trump can still cause an electoral reaction among the primary Democratic voters this year, when the mayor faces re -election. For now, however, the Democratic companions fear that it allows the president to run rough on the city.

Representative Jerold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat who helped accuse Mr. Trump twice during his first term, said he was particularly worried that the Department of Justice had moved to withdraw charges “without prejudice”, which allowed them re -evaluate the case at a later date. .

“The president has the mayor with a short strap,” he said. “If the mayor does not behave exactly as the president wants, he can make the Department of Justice restore the charges.”

One of Mr. Adams’s main rivals, Zellnor Myrie, managed Mr. Adams, “he wrote:” It is a weapon for the head of the legitimate democratic government of New York City. “

Maggie Haberman Contributed reports.