| | | | |  | | By Anna Gronewold and Zachary Schermele | Presented by Ørsted and Eversource | | 
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg leaves the District Attorney's office in New York, Thursday, March 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura) | AP | Donald Trump. A Queens native. The 45th president of the United States. And now, the first ex-president to face criminal charges in American history. A grand jury indicted him last night for his alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to a porn actress during the 2016 presidential campaign. Need an explainer on this particular legal battle? We did it in two minutes. There’s a certain poetry to it, our Jonathan Lemire writes: “Donald Trump’s story was curated by the New York City tabloids, the newspapers that magnified his wealth and his tawdry exploits while catapulting him to a type of celebrity that he eventually wielded to capture the highest office in the land. But on Thursday, March 30, those same forces that turned Trump into a mix of caricature and fame resulted in him becoming the first ex-president in the history of the United States to be charged with a crime.” What’s next? Trump’s lawyers on Thursday maintained his innocence and vowed to continue fighting in court: “President Trump has been indicted. He did not commit any crime,” the attorneys Joe Tacopina and Susan Necheles said. | 
News photographers stand on scaffolding to get a photo of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as he leaves his office on March 30, 2023, in New York. | AP Photo/Mary Altaffer |
Trump, as expected, called the indictment a “witch-hunt,” and lashed out at “radical left monsters” he said were attempting to interfere with his 2024 election bid. He said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was “doing Joe Biden’s dirty work,” and called on his followers to protest and “take back our nation.”
Trump is expected to surrender to the DA’s office, but there’s no precise date set. That’ll need to be coordinated among the Secret Service, court officials and the New York Police Department. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential Trump rival for the GOP nomination next year, called the indictment “un-American” and said he would not assist in any extradition request from the state Trump now calls home. IT’S FRIDAY. Got tips, suggestions or thoughts? Let us know ... By email: agronewold@politico.com or on Twitter: @annagronewold WHERE’S KATHY? In Albany with no announced public schedule. WHERE’S ERIC? In Brooklyn, delivering remarks at the opening celebration for the New York University Langone Joseph S. and Diane H. Steinberg Multispecialty Care Center, and in New York City attending the “Battle of the Badges” charity boxing night, where members of the Fire Department of New York’s "Bravest Boxing" compete against the New York City Police Department’s "Finest Boxing."
| | | | A message from Ørsted and Eversource: In Long Island where environmental protection has long been a winning issue for electeds from both sides of the aisle, Suffolk County and Brookhaven Town leaders stood together last week with environmental advocates, labor leaders and the local community to champion the clean energy, jobs and local investment that will result from Sunrise Wind. The offshore wind project being developed by Ørsted and Eversource will power more than 600,000 homes annually, create hundreds of jobs and fund local programming. | | | |  | What City Hall's reading | | “NYC Mayor Adams Urges Wall Street Cooperation to Get Workers Back to Offices,” by Bloomberg’s Laura Nahmias: “Exasperated, New York’s mayor wants JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and other major employers to come together and agree on ways to force more to return to the office as the city’s economy struggles to recover from the pandemic and new challenges. ‘All of our corporate leaders need to get in the room and say, let’s come up with a minimum,’ Adams said in an interview with Bloomberg on Thursday, referring to how many days a week employees should be in the office. ‘If it’s four days a week, it’s four days a week.’” “Adams Inks Deal with Aetna, Paving Way for Switch to Medicare Advantage,” by THE CITY’s Claudia Irizarry Aponte: “City officials on Thursday inked a five-year contract with the insurance giant Aetna that paves the way to switch the city’s 250,000 retired employees to a privately run Medicare Advantage plan. The Aetna deal is key to locking in an estimated $600 million in annual savings agreed to by municipal unions to help pay for wage boosts and benefits. It’s been met with opposition from retirees, who vow to challenge the switch in court.” “Behind a Surge in Teenage Killings: Grief, Anger and Online Grudges,” by The New York Times’ Hurubie Meko: “Violence breaks out more quickly and more often now than it did before the pandemic, law enforcement and education officials say. Conflicts that were born online, and that festered as threats were exchanged behind screens, have increasingly spilled into the real world. Children’s tempers explode as they pile on to the subway, when words are exchanged on a Brooklyn park bench and outside schools as they let out for the day. Young people ‘came out of quarantine with scores to settle,’ said Patrice O’Shaughnessy, communications director for the Bronx district attorney, whose office charged 26 adolescents with murder last year.” LISTEN: “Mayor Adams fights rat ticket in NYC administrative court,” by WNYC’s Bahar Ostadan “Manhattan’s population rebound leads nation, driven largely by immigration,” by City and State’s Sahalie Donaldson: “The majority of Manhattan’s population growth from 2021 to 2022 came from immigrants – a trend that may continue in part given the sweeping number of asylum-seekers who’ve arrived in the city since spring.”
| | | | JOIN POLITICO ON 4/5 FOR THE 2023 RECAST POWER LIST: America’s demographics and power dynamics are changing — and POLITICO is recasting how it covers the intersection of race, identity, politics and policy. Join us for a conversation on the themes of the 2023 Recast Power List that will examine America’s decision-making tables, who gets to sit at them, and the challenges that still need to be addressed. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | WHAT ALBANY'S READING | | “The New York state budget will be late (again), Gov. Hochul says,” by WNYC’s Jon Campbell: “It will mark the second consecutive year that Hochul and lawmakers missed the April 1 deadline. ‘It’s becoming clear that the budget will not be meeting the April 1 deadline, but as I have said all along, it's not about a race to a deadline, it's about a race to getting the right results,’ Hochul said Thursday in an interview with New York State Public Radio’s Karen DeWitt.” — THE ONLY THING the Assembly, Senate and governor have a finalized agreement on, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said Thursday, is an intention to pass the debt services appropriations bill today, typically the least controversial piece of legislation because it’s aimed at keeping the state itself from going bankrupt. Both she and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, in separate briefings, blamed this year’s particularly slow pace on Hochul’s executive proposal, which includes wading through a number of large policy items such as changes to the state’s bail laws and a broad housing plan meant to span the next decade. Those have been “taking up just about all the oxygen in the room” and created a backlog for the hundreds of other items that need to be discussed, Heastie said. “I’ll say it again,” Heastie said, when asked about a laundry list of policy items such as charter schools, environmental issues and higher taxes on millionaires. “Nothing other than bail and the housing compact has gotten any real discussion.” — Anna “Hochul Quietly Bets on Police to Battle Fentanyl,” by New York Focus’ Spencer Norris: “For months, she has publicly showcased an anti-opioid campaign with a soft approach: harm reduction, drug treatment, alternatives to incarceration. She has been far quieter about a strategy she is pushing alongside those investments, that relies heavily on an emboldened criminal justice system. Nestled in her multi-thousand page budget proposal is a measure to permanently add numerous fentanyl analogs — slightly chemically different substances that have been expanding rapidly in the drug supply, and that can be far more potent — to the state’s schedules of controlled substances. If enacted, the change would allow law enforcement to go after people in possession of the synthetic opioid’s lethal cousins.” IN THE FINAL DAYS of state budget negotiations, Uber sent out the call to both drivers and customers to make noise about measures in the one-house proposals aimed at raising money for the MTA. One is a 50-cent surcharge on ride-hail trips in New York City and another is a 25-cent fee to delivery transactions. More expensive trips “may mean less demand for rides, which may result in lower earnings for you,” the letter to drivers reads. “While Albany contemplates tax breaks for Hollywood, they want to nickel and dime working New Yorkers like you with more taxes and fees,” says the one to riders and delivery customers. Since about 10 a.m. Wednesday, about 13,700 drivers signed a petition in opposition and since 1pm Thursday, about 10,900 riders and delivery customers emailed Albany leadership, representatives for Uber said. — Anna #UpstateAmerica: You know Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLauglin? His son Sean is on the new season of “The Bachelorette.”
| | | | A message from Ørsted and Eversource:   | | | | | AROUND NEW YORK | | — One of the women accusing Juan Ardila, a state assemblymember who represents Queens, of sexual assault told the New York Post she has participated in a criminal probe of the lawmaker. — Staten Island Ferry engineers are entitled to a big salary boost and at least six figures apiece in back pay, city Comptroller Brad Lander said. — FDNY firefighters want the state to give them pension credit for the time they were EMS workers. — Acting health commissioner Dr. James McDonald added his voice to Hochul’s push to ban flavored tobacco products. — Buffalo’s notoriously dysfunctional school board is striving for unity after a ”perspective-altering and energizing” retreat. | | SPOTLIGHT | | POLITICO's The Recast is back with our annual Power List: 40 power players who shaped the intersection of race, culture, politics and policy in 2022. There are Republicans and Democrats whose 2022 wins helped their party secure footholds in key battlegrounds. There are advocates driving major court cases — or shaping the public's reaction to them. There are celebrities who used their platform to challenge government. The Power List spans party affiliations, racial identities and ideologies. Some might ask how we can include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the same list as Vice President Kamala Harris. Our answer? Whether you love them or hate them, their impact over the last year cannot be denied. And New York is in the house. Attorney General Tish James, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, activist Chris Smalls made the list.
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| | | | | GO INSIDE THE 2023 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO is proud to partner with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Global Insider" newsletter featuring exclusive coverage, insider nuggets and unparalleled insights from the 2023 Global Conference, which will convene leaders in health, finance, politics, philanthropy and entertainment from April 30-May 3. This year’s theme, Advancing a Thriving World, will challenge and inspire attendees to lean into building an optimistic coalition capable of tackling the issues and inequities we collectively face. Don’t miss a thing — subscribe today for a front row seat. | | | | | | | SOCIAL DATA BY DANIEL LIPPMAN | | HAPPY BIRTHDAY: MSNBC’s Ari Melber … NYT’s Astead Herndon … POLITICO’s Ben White … CNN’s Sara Murray … former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) … Bloomberg’s Emily Knapp … Luke McGeeney … Alan Zibel … Wellesley Daniels … Marina Lopes MAKING MOVES — Actum LLC acquired Kirtzman Strategies, and its founder, Andrew Kirtzman, will join Actum’s leadership as a managing director. … John Simons has joined Brunswick Group as a partner. He was most recently executive editor at Time Magazine. … Laura Vallis has been named head of communications at JLL. She most recently was chief communications officer at Manulife and is an alum of Barclays, Dow Jones and AB Inbev. … … Jacob Castermans is now a research associate at Kasirer. He has a MA from NYU in political science and government and received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and MA in philosophical perspective on politics and the economy from Leiden University.
| | | | A message from Ørsted and Eversource: In Long Island where environmental protection has long been a winning issue for electeds from both sides of the aisle, Suffolk County and Brookhaven Town leaders stood together last week with environmental advocates, labor leaders and the local community to champion the clean energy, jobs and local investment that will result from Sunrise Wind. The offshore wind project being developed by Ørsted and Eversource will power more than 600,000 homes annually, create hundreds of jobs and fund local programming. | | | | | Real Estate | |
“Landlords Demand Major Rent Increase After Dismal Housing Report,” by THE CITY’s Greg David: “The annual report begins the New York City spring ritual of reports and often raucous public hearings that ends each June with the mayor-appointed RGB setting maximum permitted rent increases on new leases in the coming year. Landlord groups seized on the report to call for a large, possibly double-digit, increase in rents. Tenant groups disputed its significance since the biggest decline occurred in Manhattan buildings in highly desirable neighborhoods, while pointing to new census data that showed Manhattan’s population rebounding.”
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