Trump signs and NYC candidates opine on cash bail, a flashpoint in response to antisemitism

This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, our daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 70 days to the election.

💰 Trump puts cash bail policy in the spotlight

• The candidates are reacting to Trump’s executive order on Monday that could cut federal funding to New York. The order threatened states that limit the use of cash bail in lower-level criminal cases.

• The White House is likely to target New York, citing cases in the city when suspects were released without bail and subsequently accused of committing another crime.

• If Trump decides to revoke federal grants, the NYPD could lose $200 million. Jessica Tisch, the Jewish NYPD Commissioner who has won praise from across the political spectrum, met with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday afternoon. She reportedly told Bondi that violent crimes in New York are at a record low and the city does not need National Guard troops, which Trump sent into Washington, D.C. and is threatening to send to other cities.

• As governor, Andrew Cuomo eliminated cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies in 2019. While many progressive Jewish groups have stood by bail reform, we covered debates over the law among New York Jews after a suspect in a series of synagogue attacks was released without bail in 2021.

• Gov. Kathy Hochul made several changes to Cuomo’s original law, and his opponents in the mayoral race are jumping on his record. Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa said Cuomo’s bail reform “has been a disaster for New York,” while Mayor Eric Adams said “the former governor made a terrible mistake.”

• Meanwhile, frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, whose party opposes cash bail, continues to insist that he is the only candidate who will stand up to Trump. “We have seen that the best way to fight Donald Trump is to do exactly that. It’s to fight him. It’s not to cower, it’s not to collaborate, it’s not to call him,” he said, taking a shot at reports that Adams has cooperated with Trump and Cuomo has talked to him on the phone.

🚲 Bike lanes in the spotlight

• One surprising flashpoint in the mayor’s race? Bike lanes. A bike lane on McGuiness Boulevard in Greenpoint took the stage in Adams’ latest corruption scandal, after his former chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin allegedly took $12,500 in bribes and other favors to suppress the street’s redesign.

• The alleged bribes came from the owners of Broadway Stages, a production company that wanted to keep traffic lanes they used for film shoots.

• Adams previously ordered the removal of a protected bike lane on Bedford Avenue in a predominantly Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood, a move seen by many as a bid for Hasidic Orthodox voters who have protested cycling infrastructure.

• Not all Jews in the area are anti-cycling — Baruch Herzfeld and his son Rafe, who bikes to his after-school activities, sued the city to keep the protected lane. Herzfeld, who operates a company aiming to cut down on e-bike fires in the city, recently told the Forward that he hoped “a new mayor will be able to restore the bike lane” on Bedford Avenue.