Mayor Eric Adams has used a spreadsheet to flag agency statements that may cause potential problems with the Trump administration.
The New York Times – By Emma G. Fitzsimmons | March 24, 2025
On the day after President Trump’s inauguration, Mayor Eric Adams’s deputy mayor for communications assembled officials from across city government to let them know that change was coming.
The deputy mayor, Fabien Levy, instructed agencies to highlight their work in a positive way, but signaled that they should not criticize Mr. Trump’s policies, according to three people who participated in the meeting in January.
Since then, Mr. Adams and city agencies have been unusually quiet on the flurry of Trump administration actions that have raised concern among many New Yorkers.
Mr. Levy created a “federal response tracker,” a spreadsheet to log statements and social media requests from agencies so that he and the mayor’s office could vet each request, according to two people familiar with the tracker. The spreadsheet has columns listing the agency, the federal issue in question, proposed language and whether it has been approved.
The mayor’s office has avoided making public statements about “Know Your Rights” guidance on how immigrants should respond to federal immigration officials and gender-affirming health care for transgender people, according to one of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
The tracker is consistent with Mr. Adams’s stance since Mr. Trump took office. The mayor said in January that he would not publicly criticize the president and told top aides in February to also refrain from doing so over fear that such criticism could provoke Mr. Trump to withhold federal funding for the city’s priorities.
Many institutions have already faced threats or actions from the Trump administration that jeopardized funding; Mr. Trump canceled $400 million in federal funds for Columbia University, prompting the university to make remarkable concessions to his administration, and has threatened major cuts for the subway.
But Mr. Adams may have more personal motivation. He has been accused of agreeing to a quid pro quo with the Trump administration: With the Justice Department moving to drop his five-count federal indictment, Mr. Adams would be free to help the president enforce his immigration policies. The mayor denies the corruption allegations and the assertions that he engaged in a quid pro quo.
Mr. Adams has argued that adopting a more pragmatic approach to dealing with Mr. Trump is wiser than risking antagonizing him, a stance others are beginning to adopt. Lawyers for NYU Langone Health, a leading hospital system in Manhattan, proposed removing references to “diverse students” and “systemic racism” from the hospital’s website last month to avoid funding cuts.
Kayla Mamelak Altus, a spokeswoman for Mr. Adams, acknowledged that the mayor’s office uses a federal tracker as part of an organizational strategy to streamline media requests for the administration’s responses.
But she asserted that Mr. Levy “never said anything about not criticizing Trump” or his policies during the meeting in January and insisted that the mayor would “continue to be the first and loudest to advocate for New Yorkers.”
“Everyday New Yorkers aren’t tuning in to hear City Hall’s hot takes on Washington politics,” she said in a statement. “They want to know if their trash will be collected, if their kids will get a good education and if their neighborhood is safe.”
Mr. Adams said at his weekly news conference on Monday that the city had distributed materials about “Know Your Rights” immigration guidance, adding that the outreach would include LinkNYC kiosks in April. He also defended his approach of not warring with Mr. Trump.
“We want to get stuff done,” he said. “We don’t want to get caught up in all of this name calling.”
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Some city officials and advocates want the mayor to do more to support the 400,000 undocumented immigrants who live in the city and are anxious about mass deportations.
Instead, the mayor’s social media accounts have not posted about “Know Your Rights” information, and there have been few posts from city accounts.
Other elected officials, including the City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, and Representative Adriano Espaillat, have posted “Know Your Rights” videos and held town hall meetings to raise awareness.
The mayor’s shifting tone has placed Manuel Castro, the commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, in a difficult position. Mr. Castro, a former undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was part of a group of young immigrants, known as Dreamers, who were brought to the United States as children.
When Mr. Castro testified at a recent City Council budget hearing, a council member asked him if Mr. Adams or senior officials had instructed him not to criticize Mr. Trump and his policies. He did not answer directly and signaled that his marching orders came from Mr. Levy.
“We continue to follow the instructions of our communications deputy mayor and the teams that are providing what we can and cannot share publicly,” Mr. Castro said.
Ms. Mamelak Altus called the questioning of Mr. Castro “shameful” and said that he “continues to stand up for immigrants in New York City, regardless of who is president, and the Adams administration intends to do the same.”
