Adams has been calling out the Biden administration in increasingly harsh terms for refusing to secure the border.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we look at the Democrats’ intra-party fight over the migrant crisis, criticize a New York Times piece about the GOP and immigration, and cover more media misses.
In Progressive Circles, Eric Adams Is the New Trump
After years of insisting New York City would remain a “sanctuary city” for immigrants under his control, Mayor Eric Adams struck a different, exasperated tone last week when he warned the city could be “destroyed” by an influx of migrants.
“Let me tell you something, New Yorkers. Never in my life have I had a problem that I did not see an ending to. I don’t see an ending to this. I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City. Destroy New York City,” Adams said Wednesday during a town hall meeting. “We’re getting 10,000 migrants a month.”
“It’s going to come to your neighborhoods. All of us are going to be impacted by this. I said it last year when we had 15,000,” Adams added. “I’m telling you now with 110,000. The city we knew we’re about to lose. And we’re all in this together.”
While many Republicans lauded Adams’s better-late-than-never change-of-heart, liberal pundits quickly began comparing the mayor to former president Donald Trump.
Ja’han Jones, a writer for MSNBC’s The Reidout Blog, wrote that conservatives are applauding Adams’s “rant” because they feel they’ve made him “come around to their bigoted thinking.”
“That has led some of his critics to label him ‘Black Trump’ And he lived up to the moniker Thursday with an anti-immigrant diatribe that sounded as if it had been ripped from the former president’s social media feed,” Jones wrote.
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan called Adams a Trump “knockoff.”
“I have seen the Eric Adams clip claiming migrants will destroy New York City. It is awful. There is a reason why Republicans and far right folks are gleefully sharing it,” Hasan wrote in a post on X. “New York Dems could have had Maya Wiley as mayor but they went for the ridiculous Adams, a Trump knock-off.”
But Adams hasn’t always been so tough on immigration.
Back in October, he wrote on social media: “There is a reason that Lady Liberty sits outside of NYC’s harbor. This is the place where we ensure we live up to the expectations of what it is to be an American, an American citizen, or a country that welcomes those fleeing prosecution and persecution.”
One year before that, he wrote that the city “should protect our immigrants. Period.”
“Yes, New York City will remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration. #EriconNBC,” he added at the time.
But now the city is reaching a breaking point under the financial toll of providing for more than 100,000 illegal immigrants. Its facing declining city revenues, all while the migrant crisis could cost the Big Apple $12 billion by July 2025 if the influx continues, Adams said.
The city has opened more than 200 emergency shelters to accommodate the influx of illegal migrants and is now working to accommodate some 21,000 newly enrolled migrant children in its public schools.
“While our compassion is limitless, our resources are not,” Adams said during a recorded address on Saturday. “We have not received substantial support from the federal or state governments to handle those costs or change the course of this crisis.”
“The simple truth is that longtime New Yorkers and asylum seekers will feel these potential cuts and they will hurt,” he added.
He said budget cuts are a “direct result of inaction in Washington and in Albany.”
“But the die is not yet cast, and we can still avoid these cuts if Washington and Albany do their part by paying their fair share, and coming up with a decompression strategy that reduces the pressure on New York City, so we are not forced to manage this crisis almost entirely on our own.”
The co-hosts on The View offered a simple solution to help out New York City: Migrants “need to spread out.”
Ana Navarro said the migrant crisis is putting “tremendous stress on a city” that cannot take on the logistical crisis of mass immigration on its own.
“They need to be resettled elsewhere,” she said of the migrants.
“They need to spread out,” co-host Sara Haines said. “This is a massive country.”
But New York is not the only northeastern state struggling under the weight of the border crisis. The Democratic mayor of Woburn, Mass., called on state lawmakers to reform a 40-year-old “right-to-shelter” law that requires state officials to offer housing to any homeless families seeking shelter in the state. The law has been applied to a rising number of migrant families, though individuals are not covered under its provisions.
Woburn mayor Scott Galvin said there are around 150 families living in the city’s hotels.
“We’re going above and beyond, while some communities around us are not being impacted, and we don’t have endless capacity in our schools,” he said. “The benefits that are bestowed on migrants make the state a very attractive destination, and without some changes, this challenge is not going to abate.”
Statewide, there are nearly 6,300 families living in emergency shelters and hotels — a 50 percent increase from the year prior. The accommodations are costing the state $45 million per month.
Massachusetts governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency last month, requesting help from the federal government and later activating up to 250 state National Guard members to help the families living in the state’s shelter system.
Headline Fail of the Week
According to the New York Times, the “GOP Gets the Democratic Border Crisis It Wanted.”
The article explains that busing migrants from the southern border to blue-state sanctuary cities has created a rift among Democratic lawmakers who have varying views on how to address the problem.
“[T]he rising clamor is creating a rare convergence between the two parties, which for years have fought in seemingly parallel political universes,” the article reads. “Democrats focused on issues like abortion, the preservation of democracy and expansion of health care, while Republicans warned of a migrant “invasion” and railed against “woke” liberal ideology, socialism and expanding L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Endless Republican news conferences at the border and threats to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, were dismissed as political bluster.”
“Now, suddenly, some Democrats are sounding remarkably like Republicans,” it adds.
While the Texas governor Greg Abbott intended to draw attention to the border crisis by busing the migrants, it’s not fair to suggest Republicans wanted, or caused, any border crisis.
Media Misses
- A New York Times opinion column about Yiddish offered an unusual description of the Hebrew language: “Hebrew, which officially became the national language of the state of Israel in 1948, is spoken by about nine million people around the world. For some, the language symbolizes far-right Israeli militarism.”
- CBS News apologized for “incorrectly” editing an interview Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan did with Vice President Kamala Harris. A clip previewing the interview aired on CBS Mornings last week in which the pair discussed age as a factor in the upcoming election, given that President Biden would be 86 at the end of a potential second term. But the clip cut out a portion of the interview in which Brennan pressed Harris about criticism she’d received from GOP candidates: “You’re 58 now. If you win the second term, as you and the president are running to do, he would be 86 at the end of it. And we are seeing Republican candidates hone in on you, in particular, as the next up for that job,” Brennan told the vice president. “Nikki Haley says ‘a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for President Harris.’ Chris Christie, ‘I want to be clear that I pray every night for Joe Biden’s good health, not only because he’s our president, but because of who our vice president is.’ Ron DeSantis, ‘Harris is Biden’s impeachment insurance. People know if she were president, batter the doors. As bad as Biden did, it would get worse.’ How do you respond to all of that?””We’re delivering for the American people,” Harris responded in the exchange that was cut from the preview. “And the reality of it is that, unfortunately, very few of those who challenge our administration actually have a plan for America.””A previous version of this clip was edited incorrectly,” CBS News said on its streaming network and on social media, despite the misleading edit having been shared to an audience of millions on broadcast TV.
- MSNBC columnist Dean Obeidallah said Donald Trump “must die in prison” to send a message to the public that “you can’t do this.””I think Donald Trump must die in prison because I don’t care if he was 45 years old. You should get life in prison if you attempt a coup, and there should be no chance of parole. I don’t care who it is,” he said on The Dean Obeidallah Show.