NYC NOW - Midday News: No Cuts to 9/11 Health Program, NYC’s First Racial Equity Plan, Yankees End Facial Hair Ban, Gov. Hochul Refuses to Oust Mayor Adams, and Malcolm X’s Legacy in Queens

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Correction: The story in this episode about Malcolm X’s legacy in Queens has been edited to clarify a statement by Najha Zigbi-Johnson. New York Congress members say the Trump administration will not move forward with cuts to the federal health program for 9/11 survivors after intense public backlash. Meanwhile, New York City’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice is set to release its first-ever citywide racial equity plan next month. Also, the Yankees are lifting their ban on facial hair, allowing players to have well-groomed beards for the first time in 50 years. Plus, Governor Kathy Hochul held a press conference Thursday explaining her decision on whether to remove Mayor Eric Adams from office. Finally, 60 years after Malcolm X’s assassination, WNYC's Ryan Kailath explores his lesser-known history in Queens.

Welcome to NYC now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Friday, February 21st. Here's the midday news for Michael Hill. New York Congress members say the Trump administration will not make cuts to a federal health program for 9-11 survivors after significant public backlash. This week, Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand said the administration was cutting staff and funding for the CDC's World Trade Center Health Program, which provides medical treatment and research, the cuts drew bipartisan outcry with program supporters warning about first responders not getting

essential care. Now several Republicans, including Congressmember Nicole Malia Taka, says the cuts are not going to happen. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Will a city government office tasked with improving racial equity in New York be able to get the job done? Sedaia Sherman posed that question in a city council hearing yesterday. She heads the Office of Equity and Racial Justice. That office is preparing the first citywide racial equity plan

expected out in March. We've been clear from the start of this process that this is not just a compliance exercise, right? If it were, we would have put out a plan months ago. The plan will outline a series of goals to reduce racial disparities in a number of areas. Voters supported it in a series of ballot questions. from 2022. It's the end of an era in New York baseball for the first time in half a century.

The Yankees say they will allow players to have facial hair. The team is reversing a half century of precedent. The team will permit players to have well-groomed beards moving forward. 31 and partly sunny right now. Sunny in a high of 32 today, but feeling colder than that, as cold as 10 degrees because of the wind, and then this weekend we start to thaw. Stay close. There's more after the break. Here on WNYC, I'm Tiffany Hanson, glad you're with us. Governor Kathy Hokel has decided against removing Mayor Adams from office. Joining us to talk about all of this is WNYC's Albany reporter, John Campbell.

Hi, John. Hi, Tiffany. Let's start with the news out of the governor's office. What did Hokel have to say? Well, Tiffany, I mean, the governor says that ousting Mayor Adams would be undemocratic, state and state. city law give the governor the ability to remove the mayor from office, but the governor doesn't want to do it at this time. We know the governor held meetings with a number of city leaders this week to talk it over. She was troubled by accusations from prosecutors that the mayor traded

cooperation with President Trump's immigration crackdown for the pending dismissal of his criminal charges, but ultimately she decided against removal at least for now. That said, the governor is doing something. She wants state and city lawmakers to pass bills that would rein in the mayor's power and give the state and some other city officials more oversight over the mayor during this very tumultuous time. Well, let's talk about those oversight measures, John. What do we know about them and how they might curtail the mayor's power? Some of the things the governor laid out where she wants to create a new position in the state inspector general's office that would have oversight of the mayor. The state inspector general is kind of the internal watchdog. This would give

the inspector general some oversight over New York City. And that would basically give the state more power over the mayor's office. She also wants to make it easier for other city officials to hire outside counsel to sue the Trump administration over any sort of different actions. If the Adams administration does not, that would require some money to do. that and the governor wants to make money available for that as well. Well, the legislature, the state legislature and the city council would have to approve any of these measures, right? So what are the chances that this would actually happen? That really remains to be seeing legislative leaders in Albany have been critical of Eric Adams

in recent weeks. That includes the Senate leader, Andrea Stewart Cousins, who called on him to resign, but it's really unclear where they're going to come down on these legislative proposals. they were waiting to hear from the governor this evening before they wait in. Our colleague Jimmy Vilkine did speak to Amanda Septimo, a state assembly member from the Bronx earlier today. She says she wants Adams to go, but she expressed some caution about the new oversight measures and wanted to talk with her fellow lawmakers first. WNYC's Albany reporter, John Campbell, talking about the news that Governor Hokel has decided against removing Mayor Adams from office. John, thanks so much for your time today and keeping track of all of this.

Thanks, Tiffany. 60 years ago today, Malcolm X was assassinated on stage a few blocks from Harlem. The neighborhood and the civil rights activists are deeply linked in public memory. But at the time, Malcolm lived in Elmhurst, Queens. As WNMIC's Ryan Kyloth reports, his house there is a piece of history that's a little less remembered. Some would say deliberately. If you head east from Harlem, take Grand Central Parkway to the LaGuardia exit, but turn right instead of left,

you'll find yourself in a quiet corner of detached houses in East Elmhurst. Malcolm X lived in a little brick home here. Sixty years ago, he'd just come back from Europe, had a speech in Detroit, but he wanted to spend one night at home with his wife Betty and their four daughters, plus twins on the way. In the middle of the night, he and Betty were in bed,

and he heard glass breaking, and then the smell of smoke, Molotop cocktails had been thrown through the windows and the furniture was on fire. Mark Whitaker is author of The Fourth Coming Afterlife of Malcolm X, about Malcolm's posthumous legacy. They had to rush to wake their daughters and get them out into the backyard. Malcolm assumed that it was done by members of the Nation of Islam. A little context, the Nation of Islam is a black separatist group founded in Detroit in 1930, replacing slave names with the letter X was one of their traditions.

Malcolm was a prominent leader, but fell out with the nation in later years, stopped preaching separatism and violent revolution, and this little house in Queens became a major point of contention. The house really mattered to Malcolm because he was not a wealthy man. He lived on whatever the nation of Islam gave him in terms of a salary, which wasn't much. The nation of Islam owned the house, And once Malcolm was out, they wanted it back. He had almost no money in the bank.

And for him, the house stood for the one thing that he could do for his family to give them a sense of security. The attack on his family was the last straw. Malcolm asked for an advance on his autobiography so he could buy a place on Long Island. But a few days later, he was killed at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. There's never been an official ruling on who attacked the house. Today, it's a private home, completely unmarked. No plaque, no historic marker, or landmark status. Efforts to commemorate the house have failed over the years.

In 2007, the then city council member secured some funds for a bust of Malcolm outside. Never happened. There's been talk of landmarking the house, but its current residents don't want to, according to the office of the local council member. This is part of the United States' state-sanctioned project to forget Black Freedom Struggles. Najah Zigby Johnson is editor of Mapping Malcolm, a scholarly essay collection that explores his legacy in physical places.

She says the same kind of thing happened at the Audubon Ballroom. Columbia University wanted to tear it down, but after community protest, they preserved a small space and built labs around and on top of it. The Audubon Ballroom reflects this larger national trend to forget Malcolm X. Malcolm X experienced two deaths, if you will, this physical death on February 21st, and then also the metaphysical death in the mischaracrachratureing of his politics. Zigby Johnson says Malcolm's caricatured as divisive and hateful, antithetical to Martin Luther King's Gandhian nonviolence.

He was a far more complex person than he's often remembered. Malcolm had a butterfly collection. He carried a love sonnet in his pocket and wrote poetry to his wife before he would go on trips overseas. In a speech at the Audubon in 1964, Malcolm said that history is a people's memory. 60 years after his death, history remembers him selectively, reduced to famous quotes and photos, his face on T-shirts. But the physical places that shaped his life, like this quiet house in Queens,

remain unmarked and largely forgotten. For some people, that's not because they don't matter, but perhaps because they do. Ryan Kailoff, WNYC News. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WMYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives

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