NYC NOW - January 5, 2024: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

New Jersey will fund $10 million in aid to homeowners impacted by flooding in December. Plus, New York City’s Department of Correction is investigating the first death of the year at Rikers Island. And finally, WNYC’s David Furst and Brigid Bergin discuss President Biden's plans to address immigration, the economy and more in the year ahead.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. I'm Jeney. Governor Phil Murphy says New Jersey will fund $10 million in aid to homeowners impacted by flooding in December. Murphy says the funds will be dedicated to buying out flood-insured properties in the most heavily impacted areas, particularly in Essex, Pasek, and Morris counties. damage is also being assessed to determine if properties impacted by the storm are eligible for federal funds from the Biden administration. A man detained on Rikers Island died this week, according to officials at New York City's Department of Correction. WMIC's Jesse Edwards has the details.

The man is the first person to die at the city's jail complex in 2024. City officials say Chima Williams was playing basketball with a group of detainees for about an hour when he suddenly. collapsed. They say staff immediately provided medical assistance, but Williams was pronounced dead. He was 43 years old. The Department of Correction is investigating the incident. The death is the first on Rikers to happen under the new department commissioner, Linell McGinley-Liddy. She started in December. Last year, nine people died in DOC custody, and in 2022, 19 people died, the highest detainee death rate in a quarter of a century. There's more after the break.

As President Biden's administration ramps up outreach ahead of a crucial re-election year, many of the topics they're focusing on are critical to New Yorkers' lives. WNYC's Bridget Bergen caught up with two officials this week who have Biden's ear, the head of the White House Office of Public Engagement and a senior official in the Department of Homeland Security. They discussed the president's plans to address immigration, the economy, in the year ahead. For a recap of their conversation, Bridget talked with my colleague, David First. Let's start with the basics. Who did you speak with? And what did they want to talk about? So I spoke with members of the Biden administration. We'll stress that. These were not campaign officials.

They were administration officials. I spoke with both Stephen Benjamin. He's a senior advisor to the president and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. He's also the former mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, but originally from right here in Jamaica, Queens, our conversation focused primarily on the economy, what they're calling Bidenomics. I also spoke with Blas Nunez-NATO. He's the Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. As you might imagine, that was largely a conversation about immigration policy, and specifically, of course, the administration's plans in terms of the ongoing migrant crisis right here in New York City. Well, let's talk about immigration. It's been

issue in border states for years, but we're all seeing the impact here in New York and New Jersey. How does the Biden administration plan to address it? Yeah, David. And to add even more context to that question, you know, this is an issue many of us are experiencing every day, whether we're out on the subways or in Midtown or for anyone driving past those enormous tents out in Floyd Bennett Field. So I asked Assistant Secretary Nunez-NATO, you know, what the administration plan to do about it? And the results of the latest Monmouth University, poll that found that 69% of respondents disapproved of President Biden's handling of immigration. And what he stressed was this was a longstanding issue that stretched back over multiple administrations,

but then he said this. We have tried to address this challenge using our executive authorities. We've taken a series of steps to strengthen consequences at the border, and we are removing record numbers of people today. But he went on to say that ultimately, it's up to the U.S. Congress to come up with some meaningful solutions to address both the policy and very real funding concerns. Well, it's been decades since any substantial immigration reform has come from Congress. How does the administration hope to change that? The Assistant Secretary repeatedly was

calling for a bipartisan solution, and you and I know that can feel increasingly out of reach when there are such incredible deep partisan divides. In terms of the direct impact, on a place like New York, you know, we know that the federal government has sent about $140 million here. The assistant secretary acknowledged that's far short of the billions of officials in the Adams and Hockel administration say is needed. Nunez-Nes-Nes-Nes-Nes-o did say that the administration has requested much more in their emergency supplemental funding request. But David, remember all that talk about a government shutdown last year? I do. Yeah. Well, it's a groundhogs day all over again in about two weeks when another partial government

shutdown is looming. Now, throughout the holidays, leaders in the Senate were working on a bipartisan deal on immigration, but House Republicans are not looking to do anything that helps this administration. And that includes some members from swing districts right here in New York, like Congress members Michael Lawler from the Hudson Valley and Anthony D. Esposito of Long Island, who were among a delegation that went to the border this week with Speaker Mike Johnson. Nunez-NATO says that playing politics just does not fix these issues. This is a shared challenge that is the direct result of our broken immigration and asylum system. What you're seeing in New York is the cost of that broken system.

And for your constituents, for anyone who's listening, I would just encourage you to reach out to your members of Congress and demand that they work together to solve this. It's too easy to play politics with immigration. What we really need here are solutions. So really a direct call to action from the administration to try to move the needle in the House. Yeah, well, Bridget, you also spoke about the economy. Tell us about that. What is Bidenomics? Well, David, that was my question to Stephen Benjamin, the White House Public Engagement Director, and this is what he told me. Most people can truly identify what the president means, because he said it probably tens of thousands of times since he's been in office the last three years. But he truly believes in advocating every single day for working families, making sure that we're building an economy.

from the bottom up and the middle out. And his policies since day one have been focused on just that. Now, of course, we'll stress Bidenomics, very different from something you and I have heard about Reaganomics, trickle-down economic theories. These are economic policies that are intended

to help, as he said, support the economy from the bottom up. And what they want to point to is some of the results of that job growth, nearly 40,000 new infrastructure projects that are starting and underway, even in some areas, to declining inflation, and he even went on to underscore the message like this.

Bidenomics means that we're focusing on the strategy that that marshals all of our better instincts to put people to work in this country and build the American economy, and we're seeing the fruits of those labors. But David, again, the challenge for the administration is not unlike immigration. The way voters feel about something, an issue like the economy, doesn't always align with what the data tells us in terms of what's really going on here. Well, New York is often referred to as a blue state, maybe not the kind of place where an incumbent Democrat president needs to worry about his message. So what does all of this say about the start of the 2024 campaign? There's no secret here that President Biden's poll numbers are not great. If you look at the results from Monmouth in Quinnipiac University last month both showed stinking approval numbers. But we also know polls don't tell the whole story. And it's clear that members of the administration want their message about what they think the administration's accomplishments and priorities are out there. They don't feel like those accomplishments are necessarily getting the attention that some of these other fights over issues like immigration are getting. But as I said, there's a real tension.

When people say they feel an experience that something different from what the polls tell us, that's a challenge for this administration. And we can expect to see a real push from both the White House and, of course, the Biden campaign to make the stakes of this election when it comes to the health of our government, our system of government, the ability to work across the aisle to promote faith in our institutions. from Congress to the courts, very central to what they talk about in the months ahead. That's WNYC's Bridget Bergen talking with my colleague, David First. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. Shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Bowdage, Amber Bruce, Ave Carreou, Audrey Cooper, Leora Noam Kravitz, Jared Marcel, Wayne Schilmeister, and Gina Volste with help from the entire WMyC newsroom.

Our show art was designed by the people at Buck and our music. That jam was composed by Alexis Quadrado. I'm Jenae Pierre. We'll be back Monday.