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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. For this last day of our spring membership drive, we will do one more time what we've been doing all week, begin with the tough stuff that's in the news in this very challenging time. I have three topics in mind. You'll see what they are. Then in the second hour, we'll have one more round of our 11:00 AM to noon fundraising party. Today features a low-stakes pop quiz on some arts and culture of 2023. Remember, we don't give out grades, we do give out prizes.

We'll do another round of things to do around here this summer, and we'll have one more round of our most fun or interesting call-ins of 2023 for a second edition. Today, it's going to be your guilty pleasures. We had so many callers with more guilty pleasures than we could handle the first time around. That's all coming up.

Also, did you know that today is the 140th birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge? In about a half hour, filmmaker, Ken Burns, and New York Times architecture critic, Michael Kimmelman, will be here together to celebrate- they're both in a new Ken Burns short- to celebrate the occasion and talk about the meaning of the Brooklyn Bridge 140 years ago and today. That's coming up in a bit.

We begin here. The two big issues facing New York right now, other than the entry of Ron DeSantis into the presidential race, which we'll also talk about, are also two of the biggest issues facing the nation. How to think legally and socially about the subway death of Jordan Neely, and how to handle the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have come to New York in the last year and are still coming. Here's Mayor Adams, who is now going to court to get permission to weaken the city's right-to-shelter law to accommodate the unprecedented demand.

Mayor Adams: Our desire is not to put the children and families in dormitory settings. Our desire is to manage a humanitarian crisis.

Brian Lehrer: We'll talk about both topics now, and Ron DeSantis, and perhaps more with Christina Greer, political science professor at Fordham, co-host of the podcast FAQ NYC, host of the Blackest Questions podcast on TheGrio, and author of the book, Black Ethnics. Christina, welcome back to WNYC. Hey, there.

Christina Greer: Hi, Brian. It's always great to see you.

Brian Lehrer: Here's an NBC News headline about the emerging politics of the Daniel Penny, Jordan Neely case. 2024 GOP hopefuls rush to defend Daniel Penny after deadly New York City subway chokehold. The article says Florida Governor Ron DeSantis urged the nation to show Daniel Penny that, "America's got his back." Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley called for New York's governor to pardon Penny, and biotech entrepreneur, Vivek Ramaswamy, a name a lot of people don't know, but he's in the Republican presidential race too, Ramaswamy donated $10,000 to Penny's Legal Defense Fund.

Christina, do you see this becoming a partisan, or even can I say a culture war issue in addition to the legal question of whether Penny's actions were justified?

Christina Greer: Absolutely, Brian. Well, first things first, there's no scenario where we see these Republican candidates coming to the support of a Black man who strangled a white man on a subway. There's just no scenario that we would ever see this happening. Not only is it going to be a partisan conversation, but it will be something much larger. When we talk about Eric Adams, I think Neely is hanging in the shadow of the Adams administration right now as well. This is, sadly a football issue that Republicans are using to talk about Alvin Bragg, to talk about larger questions and fears, real and perceived about crime, and to really create this wedge issue between the two parties, saying essentially Democrats like lawlessness and homelessness and don't care about mental health issues, and now, we have to have vigilantes taking things into our own hands.

We've seen Ron DeSantis is one of those electives, who believes in vigilantism and it ties into their support of January 6th. It ties into their support of Donald Trump's draconian rhetoric in many ways. I don't think that the Jordan Neely death is going to go away because we're going to shift it away sadly from Jordan Neely's life and what he needed and how we failed as a society into the victimization of Daniel Penny as this white male who served his country and is now being wrongly prosecuted for essentially, saving New Yorkers from lawlessness.

Brian Lehrer: Again, we have a legal case where there are two tracks to watch. One is the one in which presumably a jury will look at the details of the case and try to come to an objective decision as to whether there was enough of a threat at that moment as it was perceived reasonably to say that Daniel Penny's actions were justified. That's an open question a jury will decide.

Then there are the politics with the culture war implications. I think because of the culture war implications, Penny gave an interview to the New York Post, I'm guessing that you read it, in which he tried to say he's no white supremacist. He wasn't being racist in his perception of Neely as an imminent threat. Penny talked about loving to travel as a marine and as a private citizen and meet people from different cultures. He said he reveled in having people from all different backgrounds in the Marines as his colleagues. He was inspired to go to college for architecture.

He's currently an architecture student at one of the colleges here in the city by things he saw in Guatemala. He was planning a tourist trip to Africa before this incident. How do you see that context mattering or not?

Christina Greer: It matters not. He's planning a driving trip across all 54 countries in Africa. That means nothing. Just because he wants to go on a vacation to the continent of Africa does not mean that he didn't have any racial bias when he saw a Black man walking on the subway and felt the need to strangle him for 15 minutes.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Mayor Adams on the case. Tell me what you think of his response.

Mayor Adams: No family should have to suffer a loss like this. Too many Black and brown families bear the brunt of system long overdue for reform. Our work starts with acknowledging that we must reverse the effects of decades of disinvestment in housing, healthcare, and social services.

Brian Lehrer: Adams is getting protested by some for how he's responded to the killing. Why is that? Put on your political analyst hat.

Christina Greer: Well, Brian, the frustration that many New Yorkers have is that Eric Adams' initial response is oftentimes that of a police officer and not as an elected official. We also know that many New Yorkers who are accustomed to having, I'm not going to necessarily say an outsized share of opinions in New York City politics, but they're used to being at the table, many of them did not support Eric Adams. They don't know anyone who knows Eric Adams and they're feeling a little left out in the cold. When Eric Adams initially comes out with various statements, usually related to crime and policing, it's as a former police officer of over two decades.

As we witness the shift, hopefully, a shift of him realizing that he's the mayor of New York City, and yes, he has 1 million balls in the air while he's trying to juggle certain things, there's a certain lens in which he needs to view instances like these that would behoove not just him, but the citizens of New York, to think a little more broadly about how to tackle them and what agencies and organizations he needs to utilize in order to be more effective as mayor.

Brian Lehrer: I said we're tackling the tough stuff. The asylum seeker situation is also so complicated, so many people winding up here more or less all at once. Adams is getting it from Biden for being critical of him. He's getting it from the suburbs for asking them to share the housing load. He's getting it from pro-immigration activists who think he should be doing more. How do you see the position that the mayor is in on that, and is it related to being caught in the middle of Jordan Neely Daniel Penny politics?

Christina Greer: Yes, Brian, I don't envy any city mayor, to be quite honest, because we know that the complications that Eric Adams in particular has to deal with. Every mayor has to go to their state house with their tin can, and they're also reliant on the federal government. When that money doesn't trickle down in ways that they need it to and we are seeing, yes, we definitely have an influx of immigrants right now. We are a country, we are a nation of immigrants. Obviously, New York City has always been an epicenter of immigration, but there have been times, obviously where the faucet seems to be much more robust.

This is one of those times. The constraints that a mayor has when they're thinking about the economics of issues.

Brian, we also have to be very honest, we've talked about this over the years with NIMBY issues with New Yorkers and our fellow New Yorkers, and just being very blunt, there are a lot of people who like the idea of this city as a city of immigrants and incorporating people and welcoming them in theory. However, in practice is where it gets a lot more complicated, and the mayor has to deal with the fact that many communities don't want shelters in their home, many parents don't want immigrant children in their schools. We saw this with the big fights on the Upper West Side a few years ago.

We know that there are a lot of ways that we have to integrate newly-arrived immigrants and asylum seekers into our communities, but there are a lot of communities who aren't as welcoming as they'd like to believe that they are. When we see that the rubber hits the road, that's where a lot of tension and pushback really does exist.

Brian Lehrer: Is Adams blowing it with the suburbs not by asking them to allow the City to rent hotel rooms for migrants, which you would think would be normal, but by not communicating well with them? The suburban county executives say Adams didn't prepare them to help ready their infrastructures by communicating in advance that he was renting these hotel rooms, and that's contributing to the backlash.

Christina Greer: I think that's part of it. I think it's overall a larger, I would say not just an Adam's problem, but a democratic problem with lack of communication writ large. I think that there are a lot of policies that elected officials, Democrats in particular, implement that could work if the robust communication is present. I know that folks in the suburbs don't vote for Eric Adams, or they don't vote in our elections at all, but we know that many of them work in the city, and they have strong opinions about what goes on within the five boroughs.

If you have county executives who are essentially caught flat-footed in many ways, the same way that-- you remember the old days of Andrew Cuomo doing things that would catch de Blasio off guard with lack of communication. We're seeing some remnants of that, again, with someone who has an outstretched position of power, or is making decisions that definitely affects people in neighboring communities.

Once you lose those folks and the narrative becomes you're not communicative, you actually don't have the agencies doing what you need them to do, there's a lack of organization in your strategy, or there is a lack of strategy altogether, then it is much harder to climb up that hill because now we're in a political hill, and sadly, the people that need the help the most will actually get pushed to the sidelines because the focus will be on changing the narrative not necessarily changing the policies.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, good point. Outstretched power meets an outstretched hand in the case of Eric Adams on this. All right, last topic for today with you, Chrissy, national politics, presidential politics. Ron DeSantis officially becomes a presidential candidate tonight, we are told, in a sit down via Twitter with Elon Musk. How do you see the choice of venue and host?

Christina Greer: Well, I think the choice of host lets us know everything we need to know about Ron DeSantis. However, if the rollout of his presidential campaign is anything like Elon Musk's management of Twitter, then I think Ron DeSantis should be very worried. The conversations about Elon Musk and his rightward leanings, and some would say white supremacists tendencies does track with policies of Ron DeSantis in Florida, and his book banning, his anti-trans policies, his fights with Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney. I do think that the Republican primaries are going to sadly excavate some of the worst of America in a lot of ways. I think there will be a race to the bottom to see who can talk about immigrants as problems. I think the LGBTQ+ community will be villainized in many ways. I think that larger racial or racist undertones of all the speeches will be front and center.

Then we know that even though Donald Trump is somewhat distracted by his several court cases, he's still going to try and be the ringleader of the circus. I think in the next few weeks, we'll see whether or not Ron DeSantis is ready for primetime. Obviously, Elon Musk as his venue and coming out party says a lot about Ron DeSantis and the money that he's showing his opponents that he will have seen and unseen, and the support that he'll have from a major billionaire, but we have to sadly remember, Elon Musk isn't the only billionaire. There might be other billionaires who decide to support others just to make sure Ron DeSantis isn't victorious.

Brian Lehrer: On that race to the bottom as you described it, and certainly as many New Yorkers see it, DeSantis is actually trying to run to Trump's right in some key respects. Isn't that fair to say?

Christina Greer: Absolutely. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: On LGBTQ and on abortion particularly?

Christina Greer: Right. When we look at what he's been doing with the educational system in Florida, for example, not just K through 12, but now even with the university systems, that's way to the right of Donald Trump. We also have to remember Donald Trump doesn't really have an ideological core. He just likes to throw out red meat and see if it sticks with his base, but Ron DeSantis has been pretty consistent about far-right wing policies. I think that he'll probably try and pull the primary field to the right closer to him, which is something we have not seen in political science in a previous election cycles before Donald Trump.

Obviously, if you think about a distribution curve, Brian, everyone wants to huddle towards the center. You have your George H.W. Bush's looking in the center for those votes that they could get from, say, the Bill Clinton voters, and the George W. Bush voters, and then more moderate Democrats who were Obama voters. There's always that big lump in the middle. Donald Trump was the first time in national politics where we've seen someone run super far to the right, stay there and then pull the party to him. The fact that Ron DeSantis is even farther to the right of Donald Trump makes my analysis think that we will be at a race to the bottom and really villainize so many different groups in America to satisfy his fear-based agenda.

Brian Lehrer: Last question. When you're teaching politics at Fordham, do you get any sense yet that young Floridians are beginning to move here so they have abortion rights, and free speech, and education rights? We see the NAACP is also calling for people to boycott Florida now because of DeSantis's positions on race. What I'm asking is if you're getting an early indication that young people, those who have choice, are moving here?

Christina Greer: When my students come to New York, I think the larger issues many of them are thinking of, this is not a place where I want to go to grad school, this is not a place where I want to go once I'm done with college in New York, I wouldn't want to settle there and also, it's not a place where I want to vacation and spend my money. There's so many other places where they can get sunshine. I think that there could be some economic effects, a strong term, long-term economic effects, especially with young people who--

I have students who might say, "Well, I'm not necessarily gay, but we don't have to villainize gay people. Let them live their lives," or, "If you don't like a book, don't read it. You don't have to ban a book just because you disagree with it."

I think that a lot of them are really worried that the country is just going to be ignorant if we take away history. I don't teach history, but obviously, to teach American politics you have to teach an honest understanding of our foundation, and it's not pretty. Many students feel a real sense of frustration that they were given such a shallow understanding of the foundation of this nation, and they're doing all this makeup work. This is the point of universities and liberal arts education, a plug there, but if you start taking away and watering down so much of education, what is the future of this nation? I think a lot of them are very worried about that.

Obviously, as we start to connect all the dots, it has real implications to how we think about our environment, where we move. They're obviously worried about climate change, and a woman's right to choose, and all these things that are completely interconnected, and Florida seems as though it's the very last place to go if you are concerned about issues, and building a collective and a community in American society.

Brian Lehrer: Christina Greer, political science professor at Fordham, co-host of the podcast FAQNYC, host of The Blackest Questions podcast on the Grio, and author of the book Black Ethnics. Christina, we always appreciate it when you come on. Thank you so much.

Christina Greer: Thanks, Brian.

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