Amid a slew of challengers, Cuomo’s potential entry into the race has become a topic of speculation. In the past few months, he’s switched his voter registration address to Manhattan, has spoken with a potential campaign manager and has been floating early February as a target date for a potential announcement, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Speaking Monday during his weekly City Hall briefing, Adams compared the new numbers on Cuomo to the early edge held by Andrew Yang in 2021, calling it “deja vu” and pulling out a print-out of a 2021 headline that read “Andrew Yang opens up huge lead in race to be next New York City mayor.”

“No one is going to outwork me,” Adams said. “I am so committed authentically to New Yorkers. They connect with me. I went through some difficult hurdles. It’s amazing I’m still in it with the number of things I had to go through, but I’m still here.”

Yang, an early leader in the race to replace former Mayor de Blasio, was ultimately the first candidate to concede and later finished fourth.

The new poll, commissioned by Progressives for Democracy in America, found Cuomo came in first in the ranked-choice-style poll at 32%, and Adams at 6%. It follows polling that have shown Adams likely facing an uphill battle to re-election: A December poll found Adams’ job approval rating is at an all-time low of 28% and an October survey revealed more than two-thirds of New Yorkers thought Adams should resign.

Cuomo, who resigned as governor amid a sexual harassment scandal in 2021, has for months been floated as a possible mayoral challenger to Adams.

In the poll, Scott Stringer landed second at 10%, with Brad Lander at 8%, State Sen. Jessica Ramos at 7% and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani at 6%. State Sen. Zellnor Myrie came in at 1% — with another 18% selecting “unsure.”

The poll was first reported by Politico and conducted on 800 voters between Dec. 16 and Dec. 22.

“We just wanted to know who might be competitive against Cuomo given obvious name recognition,” Alan Minsky, executive director of the group, said on why they commissioned the poll with Hart Research Associates.

With Chris Sommerfeldt

Tiffany Raspberry, Adams’ intergovernmental affairs director, and Camille Joseph-Varlack, his chief of staff, will take on the deputy mayor roles effective immediately, Adams said at his weekly press conference Monday morning at City Hall.

Joseph-Varlack is becoming the “deputy mayor of administration,” while Raspberry’s being given the title “deputy mayor of intergovernmental affairs,” Adams told reporters. Raspberry’s deputy mayor title is new to the municipal bureaucracy, and Adams’ office said she’ll now coordinate intergovernmental affairs teams “across all city agencies,” while Varlack’s portfolio is expanding to include oversight of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services.

Joseph-Varlack, who will also retain her chief of staff role, already makes a base annual salary of $287,663, the deputy mayor level pay grade, and won’t get a raise, according to Adams.

Raspberry, a longtime Adams ally who worked on and helped raise funds for his 2021 campaign, currently makes $260,000 and will get a salary bump to the deputy mayor level, he said.

Prior to the promotion, Raspberry applied recently to become Fordham University’s new vice president of external affairs — a job she ultimately didn’t get, according to a source directly familiar with the matter. A since-closed job posting for the Fordham post says it has a minimum starting salary of $310,000.

Adams, who has pleaded not guilty in a federal corruption indictment, has seen a large number of senior advisers depart his administration in recent months, several after becoming ensnared in corruption investigations of their own.

A Fordham University spokesman declined to comment Monday. Raspberry didn’t return a request for comment, but Adams spokeswoman Amaris Cockfield said her Fordham application played no factor in her promotion.

The elevation of Joseph-Varlack and Raspberry means Adams now has eight deputy mayors, more by one than other recent mayors, according to Louis Cholden-Brown, an attorney and City Charter expert. Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Ed Koch at certain points in their tenures had seven deputies, the highest number Cholden-Brown said he could recall.

With Josephine Stratman 

Walden’s $629,736 cash pull in the latest period, which spanned between Oct. 8 and this past Saturday, is larger than what any of Mayor Adams’ other challengers have raised in a single previous reporting window. However, it won’t be clear until Wednesday’s public disclosure deadline how much money the other 2025 mayoral candidates, including Adams, raised in the most recent span.

Walden, who shared his fundraising numbers exclusively with the Daily News ahead of the deadline, said he also has about $300,000 of his own money in his independent mayoral campaign account, giving him roughly $930,000 in cash on hand as June’s primary elections loom six months away. Only ex-City Comptroller Scott Stringer and Adams had larger 2025 campaign cash balances as of the last reporting period, which ended Oct. 7.

“Friends and strangers stepped up in huge numbers to pledge their support for our campaign and an independent path forward for New York City. We achieved our goal; out-raising all the challengers in less than half the time they had before I entered the race,” said Walden, who has never before campaigned for public office. “We will be fully funded by the height of the campaign season. And we will be pounding miles of pavement to speak with voters across the five boroughs about my plan for restoring integrity and accountability to City Hall.”

Still, Walden isn’t expected to be eligible for public matching funds when the Campaign Finance Board issues its second round of payments Wednesday.

Walden’s $629,736 came from 834 individual contributors, 492 of whom are New York City residents, he said. In order to be eligible for matching funds, mayoral candidates need to raise at least $250,000 from 1,000 city residents.

Walden told The News he hasn’t decided yet whether he’s going to participate in the public matching funds program. If he opts out of it, he could accept as much as $3,850 from each donor, more than the $2,100 that candidates who participate in the program can collect.

The sizable first fundraising run from Walden, who launched his campaign Oct. 23, gives him a competitive edge as he mounts a third-party mayoral bid.

As an independent, Walden hasn’t absolutely ruled out running in the June 24 Democratic primary in which Adams already faces a sprawling field of challengers. But Walden says he may seek the Republican nomination, too, in addition to running as an independent in November’s general election.

Petitioning for the primaries begins at the end of February.

A seasoned litigator with a history of representing various New York politicians, including potential 2025 mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo, Walden has pitched himself as a government expert inspired by Michael Bloomberg.

With Adams’ federal indictment looming over the 2025 race, Walden has made rooting out corruption in city government a key plank in his campaign, recently floating a proposal to give the city Department of Investigation more power to go after crooked politicians. Walden is currently representing Joseph Jardin, a top FDNY official who alleges he was pressured by Adams to approve the opening of the Turkish consulate in Manhattan in 2021, a key episode in the mayor’s indictment, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Previously, Stringer held the distinction of drawing in the most cash in a single reporting period out of all the candidates running against Adams, raising just shy of $411,000 for his Democratic mayoral campaign between January 2024 and July 2024.

Stringer was the only candidate who received the Campaign Finance Board’s first public matching funds payment on Dec. 16, netting him $2 million for a total cash balance of $2.3 million.

Adams, whose 2025 campaign has a $3 million cash balance, was also eligible for matching funds last period. But the CFB denied him the payment, citing concerns about his indictment, which alleges he solicited illegal straw donations and bribes from Turkish government operatives in exchange for political favors. Adams is expected to stand trial in April, just weeks before the Democratic mayoral primary.

Several other 2025 candidates, including Comptroller Brad Lander, have said they expect to be eligible for matching funds Wednesday. All the candidates in the mayoral field, which also includes Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos, Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie and ex-Bronx Assemblyman Michael Blake, are expected to have their latest fundraising hauls disclosed Wednesday as well.

Speaking with a hoarse voice from the lower Manhattan courtroom, Arkan, 76, admitted to orchestrating straw donations to Adams’ mayoral campaign through workers of the construction company he partly owns, KSK, and then reimbursing them. Arkan indicated he planned to enter the plea last month — the first resulting from the ongoing probe of illicit foreign donations to the mayor’s campaign.

“When I wrote the checks, I knew the Eric Adams campaign would use the checks to apply for public matching funds,” Arkan said, referring to the system under which city political candidates get donations from local residents matched eightfold with city dollars.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Celia Cohen told the court that if Arkan had gone to trial, prosecutors would have provided testimony, photographs, video electronic records, and other evidence to establish he illegally colluded with a Turkish consular official to funnel money to the mayoral campaign that Adams personally solicited at a restaurant in April 2021. Manhattan Federal Court Judge Dale Ho accepted Arkan’s plea and set his sentencing for Aug. 15.

While it wasn’t stated that the plea deal requires Arkan to testify against the mayor, his cooperation in the feds’ ongoing corruption investigation is all but certain, with Cohen asking his sentencing to be scheduled after Adams’ April trial. It is common for federal defendants who take plea deals to agree to testify or cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for leniency at sentencing.

The plea comes as prosecutors with the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office recently said in a filing they’d uncovered “additional criminal conduct” the mayor and others engaged in and may bring more charges.

Were Arkan to testify, though, Adams’ defense team believes he would have nothing incriminating to say about the mayor.

“We know from the government’s own interviews that Mr. Arkan repeatedly said that Mayor Adams had no knowledge of his actions.” Adams’ attorney, Alex Spiro, said in a statement. “Mr. Arkan’s conduct will have no bearing on the mayor’s case whatsoever.”

Adams is accused of soliciting and accepting illegal straw donations from Arkan and others, as well as luxury travel upgrades and perks in exchange for doling out political favors for the Turkish government. He is expected to head to trial on the five counts of bribery, conspiracy and wire fraud in April — just two months before he’s up for reelection in the June primary.

He has pleaded not guilty.

Arkan appears in Adams’ indictment as “Businessman #5.” Per the indictment, he hosted a fundraiser for the soon-to-be mayor at his firm’s Brooklyn office in May 2021, a month after the dinner with the mayor mentioned in court Friday. On the day of the fundraiser, records show that Arkan and 10 employees of the firm donated nearly $14,000 cumulatively to Adams’ campaign, for which Arkan reimbursed them.

Records show that after submitting those contributions for public matching funds, the Adams campaign raked in an additional $22,000 in taxpayers’ cash off of them.

All of those donations were illegal straw contributions funded by Arkan and made “at the behest of” Reyhan Ozgur, Turkey’s consul general in New York, according to Adams’ indictment. Ozgur and Arkan allegedly agreed to make the illegal donations during the dinner with Adams in April 2021.

“We are supporting you,” Ozgur told Adams at that dinner, according to court papers.

As part of his plea, Arkan agreed to making $18,000 restitution payments and not to contest a sentence below six months. He also faces the risk of being denaturalized, deported, and denied entry to the U.S. in the future, Ho warned him.

The offense Arkan pleaded to could result in a maximum of up to five years in federal prison, three years supervised release and $250,000 in fines.

Arkan’s attorney, Jonathan Rosen, had no comment after Friday’s plea hearing.

The administration is also planning to close 13 additional migrant shelters by June, according to the Mayor’s office, including Clinton Hill’s Hall Street shelter, which has been the subject of much controversy in the area.

“The policies we implemented, and the tremendous work of the dedicated public servants who execute our mission, show how our administration continues to creatively and effectively manage an unprecedented crisis,” Adams said in a statement.

“The additional closures we are announcing today, provides yet another example of our continued progress and the success of our humanitarian efforts to care for everyone throughout our system.”

The new site, located in an industrial section of the Bronx off Bruckner Boulevard, will house 2,200 single men in the seven-story warehouse after in opens in the next couple months. It was granted a slew of temporary permits last month to convert the space into a shelter, city records show.

The space will be operated by the city’s Housing Recovery Operations office and is intended to fill the gap left by the closure of the huge tent site at Randall’s Island and others, according to City Hall.

“We should not be housing people shelters to begin with,” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. “We should be giving them the services that they need to get on their feet and actually get out of shelter and into permanent housing This circling the wagon on creating more and more shelters, is not going to help the people who are directly impacted.”

Councilmember Diana Ayala, whose district contains the shelter site, said she has concerns about the building as a potential target for federal immigration officials.

“I don’t like the idea of congregated settings specifically just for the asylum seekers, because I’m concerned about the Trump administration getting access to addresses,” she said. And it makes it easier for ICE to single out a specific location.”

The new opening comes as the city has entered into a new phase of the migrant crisis: Various shelter closures underway around the city have pushed migrants into new shelters.

Last week, single men living at a Bushwick shelter were pushed out and transferred to Randall’s to make way for adult families. At Floyd Bennett Field, which was fully vacated earlier this week, families were sent to shelters across the city, including some to the Hall Street shelter set to be closed, according to Ariana Hellerman, a volunteer with mutual aid group Floyd Bennett Field Neighbors.

Although the city has seen its migrant population in shelters consistently decreasing for 27 weeks straight, according to City Hall, there are still tens of thousands of asylum seekers in the city’s care. As of Sunday. Jan. 5, over 50,000 migrants remains in the local shelter system, according to City Hall data. The city has opened nearly 200 sites since spring of 2022. 

Adams has promised future closures and emphasized that city initiatives such as case management and 30- and 60-day notices have caused the migrant crisis to ease up.

By June, the city plans to close over a dozen more shelters, including the Clinton Hill shelter and the Watson and the Stewart hotel sites. These closures will further reduce the city’s overall capacity by 10,000 beds — not counting the beds added by the Bruckner site.

Adams has touted decreases in migrant spending as a further sign the worst of the crisis is behind the city — although members of the City Council and the city’s Independent Budget Office have said the administration inflated cost estimates for migrant expenses.

The Bronx building was purchased by developers Maddd Equities and South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, or SoBro, in 2023, city records show. Before the pandemic, the building was converted into an office building.

The resignation came after The News asked Adams’ office late Thursday for comment about the fact that Bernard, who leads the city’s largest evangelical church, maintains a residency on Long Island. Under city law, members of Charter Revision Commissions must be New York City residents.

“Reverend Bernard has informed the commission that he will be stepping down due to the time commitment that serving would require,” Frank Dwyer, a spokesman for the commission, said in response to the inquiry. “The commission is grateful for his initial offer to serve. A suitable replacement will soon be named.”

A News review of voter rolls, property documents and other records raised questions about whether Bernard met the residency requirement. He is actively registered to vote as a Republican in Suffolk County, listing a one-family, six-bedroom home in St. James as his home address in Board of Elections paperwork.

Property records show Bernard, 71, and his wife, who have six children, bought the home for $1.4 million in 2021. They took out a $1.1 million mortgage on the sprawling 2.3 acre property that they finished paying off in March 2024, records show. On his personal Facebook page, Bernard lists a PO box near the St. James home as his mailing address.

Conversely, The News found no record of Bernard or his wife owning property in the city since the mid-1990s. One of the questions The News asked Adams’ office was whether he maintained a residence within the five boroughs that was not reflected in property records, such as a rental apartment.

Bernard didn’t respond to calls and texts this week.

He and his wife have owned and sold several properties on Long Island over the past few decades, records show. A New York Times profile of Bernard from 2009 said he and his wife “live with three dogs on Long Island.”

A former-city Law Department attorney who served as a counsel on one of former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Charter Revision Commissions said the residency requirement exists with good reason.

“The charter is the city’s constitution and any amendments to it will have the force of law, so the requirements are there to make sure someone who doesn’t have a stake in the city can’t change [the charter],” said the attorney, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Bernard, who’s known as the “power pastor” for his political connections and has more than 32,000 parishioners at his Christian Cultural Center church in East New York, was among 14 people picked by Adams in December to be part of his second revision commission, which he tasked with crafting City Charter amendments that could boost housing production.

Bernard was one of only two members on Adams’ new commission absent from the panel’s first meeting this past Tuesday. At the outset of the meeting, commission members introduced themselves by stating which of the city’s five boroughs they reside in.

Bernard’s resignation comes after Adams’ first Charter Revision Commission launched last year also include the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, who sparked residency concerns over his New Jersey home. At the time, Adams’ office said Daughtry was able to serve on the commission because he’s registered to vote in the city and splits his time between Brooklyn and New Jersey.

The goal of Adams’ latest commission is to formulate referendum questions to get onto the November 2025 general election ballot. In announcing the panel last month, Adams’ office said he wants it to come up with questions that’d amend the Charter to “combat the city’s generational housing crisis.”

The launch of the mayor’s panel came after Council Speaker Adrienne Adams announced plans to roll out her own revision commission. One of her top charter revision priorities has been to give the Council more oversight of city government appointments the mayor can currently make unilaterally.

Due to a quirk in state law, the Council can’t advance referendum questions onto a ballot that includes questions crafted by a mayoral commission. Speaker Adams and her Democratic colleagues have  accused the mayor of launching his latest commission in a deliberate bid to block their effort — a charge he denies.

In spring 2024, Adams launched his first commission, which also ended up blocking the Council from advancing their own set of referendum questions onto this past November’s ballot.

That commission got several questions onto the November ballot that proposed placing more restrictions on the way the Council drafts laws, especially ones related to public safety. All of the questions except one were approved by city voters in November.

With Josephine Stratman 

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan said the only lawful sentence he could impose was an unconditional discharge, meaning no jail time, probation, or fines other than around $375 in mandatory court fees, based on the expansive legal protections afforded to the president. 

“Despite the extraordinary breadth of those protections, one power they do not provide is the power to erase a jury verdict,” the judge said, adding they also didn’t diminish or justify the severity of the crimes of which Trump was found guilty.

“Donald Trump, the ordinary citizen — Donald Trump, the criminal defendant — would not be entitled to such considerable protections.” 

The president-elect appeared remotely for the 15th-floor proceeding in lower Manhattan’s 100 Centre St. on Microsoft Teams via Florida, with two American flags as his backdrop. He wore a black suit and a red striped tie and ignored Merchan when the judge wished him a good morning.

In comments to the court, Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass said prosecutors recommended Trump receive an unconditional discharge based on his status as president-elect.

Regarding Trump’s potential remorse, Steinglass pointed to a line in the nonpublic report filed by Trump’s probation officer, who “noted that the defendant sees himself as above the law and won’t accept responsibility for his actions.”

Steinglass said Trump’s public rhetoric before and after the trial had legitimately endangered officials involved in the case and their families.

“Far from expressing any kind of remorse for his criminal conduct, the defendant has purposefully bred disdain for our judicial institutions and the rule of law. And he’s done this to serve his own ends and to encourage others to reject the jury verdict that he finds so distasteful,” Steinglass said, noting Trump had “ratcheted up” his bombast since Merchan had denied his bids to throw out the verdict. 

“He has been unrelenting in his unsubstantiated attacks upon this court and its family, individual prosecutors and their families, the witnesses, the grand jury, the trial jury and the justice system as a whole.”

The prosecutor said Trump’s threats to retaliate against prosecutors and his other “dangerous rhetoric” sought to have a chilling effect and to intimidate law enforcement “in the hopes that they will ignore the defendant’s transgressions because they fear that he is simply too powerful to be subjected to the same rule of law as the rest of us.”

Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, who accompanied him in Florida, said he disagreed with Steinglass’ characterizations. Trump has nominated Blanche to be second-in-command at the Department of Justice. 

When it was Trump’s turn to speak — a moment defendants often use to express remorse in a bid for leniency — the former president singled out prosecutors, talked about his election victory, and riffed on several other topics. He said the case was brought to destroy his reputation and lose him the election, “and, obviously, that didn’t work.”

“The fact is that I’m totally innocent. I did nothing wrong,” Trump said. “I just want to say I think it’s an embarrassment to New York, and New York has a lot of problems, but this is a great embarrassment.”

The president-elect, who incessantly sought to get his case thrown out after a grand jury indicted him in spring 2023, mounted a furious effort to dodge the sentencing, targeting delay bids at four courts. The Supreme Court had the last say in an order late Thursday, in a 5-4 ruling showing the justices were unpersuaded by his claim the hearing would unduly burden his presidential transition.

While the significance of Friday’s proceeding largely came down to symbolism and procedure, it cemented Trump’s status as the first and only U.S. president to be tried and convicted. Trump vowed on Truth Social later Friday to appeal his conviction.

The anonymous Manhattan jury who decided the case found him guilty of 34 felony counts of first-degree falsifying business records on May 30, for which he was initially supposed to be sentenced on July 11. None of the jurors have spoken publicly about their service.

The criminal case centered on Trump’s coverup of payments to Michael Cohen that reimbursed his longtime fixer for silencing porn star Stormy Daniels with $130,000 in the lead-up to the 2016 election, which Trump misclassified as payment for Cohen’s legal services. The porn actor has long claimed she had a sordid encounter with Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 2006, which he denies.

Jurors heard over the more than monthlong trial that Cohen, Trump, and tabloid publisher David Pecker devised a scheme to control what voters knew about Trump’s past in August 2015. Prosecutors argued that the “catch and kill” conspiracy violated New York election law and could be what got Trump elected in 2016.

Former Playboy model Karen McDougal and a doorman at Trump Tower also received payoffs to suppress their allegations of Trump’s sexual exploits, evidence showed, and jurors heard Trump expressed relief that the media didn’t report on Cohen’s payment to Daniels before the election.

In his courtroom remarks, Trump took aim at Cohen, saying, “This is a man who has got no standing. He has been disbarred on other matters unrelated. And he was allowed to talk as though he was George Washington, but he is not George Washington.” 

Trump was placed under a gag order at the trial, which is expected to expire Friday after he spread unfounded conspiracies about Merchan’s daughter online. The order he violated at least 10 times barred him from discussing trial participants, including prosecutors, court staff, and their families, but not the judge or Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. 

While he has repeatedly cast himself as a victim of political persecution, a weaponized justice system, and racism against white people by Black prosecutors, Trump’s experience of being found guilty of felonies without consequence is unique.

Facing the prospect of four years in prison on any one of the charges seven months ago, he will instead spend them in the White House.

Bragg’s case was the only one of four brought against Trump after his first term that went before a jury. 

Federal prosecutors recently moved to dismiss two actions accusing him of plotting to overthrow President Biden’s win in 2020 and hoarding classified documents at his country clubs after leaving office – which could have led to steep prison sentences.

Through his second term, he will be protected from the Georgia state case concerning his alleged election subversion efforts.

In his courtroom remarks, Merchan said imposing a sentence was one of a judge’s most challenging decisions. He said the extraordinary legal protections afforded to the office of the chief executive “is a factor that overrides all others” he must respect and follow. 

“I’m referring to protections that extend well beyond those afforded the average defendant who winds their way through the criminal justice system each day. No, ordinary citizens do not receive those legal protections,” Merchan said, looking at Trump. 

“It was the citizenry of this nation that recently decided that you should once again receive the benefits of those protections … It is through that lens and that reality that this court must determine a lawful sentence,” the judge added, formally imposing the sentence.

“Sir, I wish you Godspeed as you assume your second term in office.”

Adams, who’s up for reelection this year, announced he’s looking to invest $650 million in new homelessness and mental health initiatives over the coming five years and is committed to building 100,000 new homes in Manhattan.

He also used the speech to tout what he views as some of the major accomplishments of his first term, such as driving down some crime categories and getting his “City of Yes” housing plan passed by the City Council.

The speech painted a broad picture of the mayor’s priorities, but did not go into detail on a number of the initiatives, some of which would likely require support from the Council.

That may present a challenge. Adams and the Council’s Democratic leaders have sparred of late over various policy disagreements, including over questions of how much say the Council should have over mayoral appointments.

The mayor is also heading into strong legal and political headwinds, with his trial on corruption charges slated to begin in April and a packed field of Democratic opponents taking him on for the party’s mayoral nomination in June.

Adams didn’t directly address his reelection prospects during his speech — although he did acknowledge he has faced calls to step down as mayor, but repeated that he will “step up” instead.

“Despite all we have accomplished, I won’t stand here and try to tell you our work is complete,” Adams said in the roughly hour-long speech at The Apollo in Harlem.

“Now is the time for renewed dedication and continued action, because no matter what challenges we face, I promise you this: No one will fight harder for your family than I will.”

Homelessness

Adams pointed to a rise in street homelessness and a dearth of housing as being among the most pressing issues facing the city. Adams promised the city would over the next five fiscal years put $650 million in city budget funds toward getting people off subways and into housing.

According to a City Hall press release, that money will go toward funding 900 new Safe Haven shelter beds — which are tailored for unhoused individuals suffering from drug addiction and mental illness — and building a new transitional housing facility designed to provide support for those experiencing chronic homelessness. City Hall did not immediately have details available about locations or timelines.

“We must do more to help people struggling with serious mental illness,” he said. “We can’t just walk past them and act like they can take care of themselves when they can’t. We know that too many New Yorkers cycle between the hospital and homelessness.”

A rash of high profile crimes in which the accused suffers from some sort of mental illness have left New Yorkers on edge.

The $650 million Adams is proposing would need sign-off from the Council, whose speaker, Adrienne Adams, issued a statement after his speech voicing frustration with how budget negotiations have fared with the mayor’s administration over the past four years.

“Far too often, we’ve faced resistance from the administration when it comes time to negotiate the budget,” said the speaker, whose later this month set to start talks with the mayor’s team on this year’s budget. “We will continue to work with all stakeholders to achieve these priorities for our city and will also hold the Administration accountable to delivering for New Yorkers.”

As a broader goal, the mayor vowed to work toward making sure no more children in New York City are born into the shelter system. To that end, he announced a pilot program to connect expecting parents with services to help find permanent housing before their child is born.

In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, more than 1,000 kids in the city were born into shelters.

Housing, swimming, parks

The mayor also used his speech to announce a new plan, dubbed “City of Yes for Families,” intended to build more units specifically for families through zoning changes and expanding rent payment assistance programs.

“I promise you this: No one will fight harder for your family than I will,” he said.

As part of that, Adams said the city would build 100,000 new units in Manhattan — a massive 11% increase for the already densely-packed island where local residents often push back on new housing and zoning changes. City Hall did not have specific details on the plan.

The mayor also vowed to expand free swim lessons to 4,800 second graders living in underserved communities across the city each year. That’s on top of the roughly 13,000 kids who currently get free swim lessons from the Parks Department.

Adams also addressed the issue of cleanliness in the city’s parks, saying the city would add a second cleaning shift to spots at over 60 parks around the city. He also announced plans to open more schoolyards in underserved areas.

The parks push comes after Adams faced some heat last year for not reversing budget cuts to the city Parks Department that were first enacted to offset spending on the city’s migrant crisis.

In contrast to his State of the City address last year, Adams only touched briefly on the asylum seeker crisis that has cost the city billions of dollars since it started in spring 2022 shortly after he was first inaugurated as mayor.

“When Washington refused to take action on a broken immigration system; I stood up for our city and pushed back while still caring for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers,” he said. “But we know we still have more work to do and more people to help. Too many families are still facing the same struggles my family did.”

Opponents, union criticize Adams

To kick off Thursday’s speech, Adams thanked his deputy mayors and other senior officials seated in the theater’s front row. The mayor has seen many of his top advisors resign in recent months after they were ensnared in various corruption investigations of their own.

“The hardest job in politics is working for Eric Adams,” he said, nodding to his aides.

Adams also used the speech to point to his record on public safety and the adoption of the “City of Yes” plan, which is estimated to create about 80,000 new units of housing over the coming 15 years. He touted crime numbers showing Brooklyn has seen the “lowest amount of gun violence” in its history and that overall index crime dropped citywide in 2024 as compared to 2023.

His political rivals — some of whom were sitting in the audience listening to the speech — slammed the speech.

“New Yorkers know that our city is neither safer nor more affordable,” Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running against him in June’s primary, said in a statement. “New Yorkers want honest, effective leadership, not pomp and circumstance and empty promises. They want a Mayor who is focused on their problems, not his own.”

While some categories of crime are down, others, like felony and misdemeanor assault, are up. Homelessness has also increased during Adams’ term and the city has experienced spikes in poverty.

Progressive mayoral challenger Zohran Mamdani sat in the gallery and live-tweeted reactions to the speech. “Just incredible to hear a Mayor who’s raised the rent year after year on more than two million stabilized tenants talking about the ‘hard choices’ families have to make just to get by,” the Queens Assembly member wrote on X.

Advocates also called attention to budget cuts Adams made to pre-K and 3-K.

“If New York City is the best place to raise a family, that’s news to the thousands of families moving out each day due to the cost of child care,” said Rebecca Bailin, executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care, a prominent advocacy group that helped fight the early childhood cuts last year.

Ahead of the mayor’s speech, dozens of members of the NYPD sergeants union, known as SBA, gathered outside The Apollo to protest what they view as the Adams administration’s refusal to address pay disparities that leave them earning less than some of the officers they supervise.

In his speech, Adams addressed that request: “We are going to settle a contract with the SBA, trust me we will.”

Protesters from the “Close Rikers” coalition and Make the Road, an immigrant advocacy group, also rallied outside.

Adams, who is delivering the speech amid a federal corruption indictment to which he has pleaded not guilty, is likely to touch on an array of subjects that have been central themes in his 3-year-old administration suhc as crime and huiosng.

You can watch the speech live here.

Comptroller Brad Lander, who is challenging Adams in the 2025 mayoral race, issued the report over the Midtown consulate, which has come under scrutiny from federal investigators in their case against the mayor as it was allegedly fast-tracked to open ahead of a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Turkish president.

According to the indictment, Adams pressured fire department officials to cut corners in their approval process to get the 35-story building up and running, allowing the building to open in September 2021 despite unresolved safety issues, including the FDNY’s rejection of a fire protection plan.

Prosecutors say the mayor received travel perks and illegal straw donations to his campaign in exchange for carrying out this favor and others at the behest of Turkish officials. The mayor has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

“By rushing to allow the opening of Turkish House in advance of a ribbon-cutting ceremony with President Erdoğan, DOB and FDNY cut serious corners that could have compromised the safety of the occupants and neighbors of the building,” Lander said in a statement.

The consulate was the only building of its category that was allowed to open without an approved fire plan, a “troubling breach of process,” Lander wrote in the report.

The building’s fire plan was ultimately approved three years after opening on Sept. 26, coincidentally the same day Adams’ indictment was unsealed.

But on the same day, the city’s Department of Buildings denied the consulate’s application for a new temporary certificate of occupancy, citing that the building didn’t submit complete paperwork. Since then, the building has been operating without a valid certificate of occupancy.

Previously, the Turkish Consulate had been operating with the temporary occupancy certificates despite a two-year limit on the use of such permits, the Daily News previously reported.

“This building has been inspected by our Bureau of Fire Prevention on multiple occasions. It has received violations that were remedied, and a reinspection was conducted prior to any approvals being issued. The location also has adequate fire safety staff for the commercial occupants,” a spokesman for the FDNY said in a statement.

The Turkish House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The consulate is not eligible to file for a permanent certificate of occupancy, because it has standing violations of the Building Code and Environmental Control Board code, including a May 2024 violation for a 16th-floor glass facade and others related to elevator testing.

“We treat the safety of our fellow New Yorkers as a top priority, and if any member of the public has safety concerns about a building, they are strongly encouraged to file an official 311 complaint, so that we can investigate the issue,” Andrew Rudansky, a spokesman for the DOB, said in a statement.

Lander said his audit also revealed a larger issue within the DOB: Over 3,500 buildings in the city are currently operating without occupancy approval, including over 600 office buildings that haven’t had the approval for an average of 3.5 years.

Sources at the DOB said that a lapse in TCO doesn’t necessarily mean the building is unsafe, and is viewed as an administrative mishap.