Are Mayor Eric Adams’s days actually numbered?
Last night, in an appearance on Rachel Maddow’s show, Kathy Hochul didn’t rule out removing the still-indicted mayor from office. “I’m consulting with other leaders in government at this time,” she said. “I need some time to process this and figure out the right approach.”
This is the most direct Hochul has ever been about dragging Adams from City Hall — a power she holds as the governor, and one none of her modern predecessors has ever wielded. (Her lieutenant governor, Antonio Delgado, already called on Adams to resign, though Hochul’s office made clear that he was not speaking for them.) Her new stance comes on the heels of a seismic development in New York and national politics. On Thursday, Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, sent shock waves across the state and Washington when she stepped down rather than obey an order from the Trump Justice Department to drop the corruption case against Adams. When Justice Department officials moved the case to the public-integrity section in Washington, which oversees corruption prosecutions, the two men who led that unit also resigned.
The decision to drop the corruption case against Adams was blatantly political. Emil Bove, the No. 2 official in Trump’s DOJ, argued the investigation would prevent Adams from fully cooperating with Donald Trump’s deportation regime. Bove said explicitly that D.C. officials had not weighed the strength of the evidence or the legal theory of the case against Adams. In a stinging letter addressed to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Sassoon said Bove’s order to dismiss the case was “inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes” and claimed that Adams’s legal team offered a “quid pro quo” in hopes of seeing his federal charges dismissed.
Before Thursday, Adams had something to celebrate. His strategy of cozying up to Trump over the last year — decrying Joe Biden’s immigration policies, traveling to Mar-a-Lago, and refraining from any criticism of the 45th and 47th president — seemed to pay enormous dividends. For months, many politicos had speculated that Trump, upon winning the election, would pardon Adams. Forcing the Justice Department to drop the case seemed to be an even better outcome for both men: Trump would dodge the optics of bailing out a big-city Democrat, and Adams could claim, against all available evidence, that he was exonerated.
Adams is probably not going to win another term — his poll numbers are historically dreadful, and if Andrew Cuomo doesn’t drive him out of office, another Democrat likely will — but he could, until last night, breathe a bit easier about the next ten months. With the corruption charges gone, he could run and win or run and lose. In the latter case, he could then find a soft landing spot in Trump’s federal government or on Fox News as an anti-Democratic attack dog, potentially joining Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard in the stable of ex-Democrats who now pledge their fealty to the president.
But there’s a chance he might not get that much more time in Gracie Mansion, because Adams is fast becoming a national embarrassment for Hochul. The Trump administration currently commands remarkable leverage over New York City; Bondi can essentially hold Adams hostage, threatening to revive the charges if the flailing mayor does not comply with every last policy demand. Not that Adams would feel that way; he seems to revel in his status as a favorite MAGA son and has giddily met with Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, and even appeared with him on Fox News. He’s ready to bring ICE everywhere possible and endanger New York’s status as a sanctuary city. And this week, the federal government clawed back $80 million meant to house migrants, with Adams uttering not a word in protest.
Hochul has quietly made the municipal government functional again; she effectively ordered Adams to hire Jessica Tisch as police commissioner and elevate Maria Torres-Springer, a capable bureaucrat, to first deputy mayor. Hochul is also believed to have ordered the purging of several high-level Adams officials who were tainted by various corruption probes. For several months, that seemed sufficient. Hochul, a white woman from Buffalo, did not want to be seen as the politician who forced Adams, a Black man from Brooklyn, out of City Hall — not when she had to sweat the support of Black voters in the five boroughs in a 2026 statewide primary. Black civil rights and clergy leaders were certainly uncomfortable with the duly elected Adams, yet to be convicted of any corruption charges, being marched from Gracie Mansion.
Now the calculus shifts. Hochul will feel renewed pressure, especially from her left flank, to act. But it is certainly not easy to decide to unilaterally remove a sitting mayor in an election year. Hochul is already in the midst of trying to negotiate personally with Trump to save congestion pricing while straining to beat back Bondi’s lawsuit against the state’s policy of granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants — a local law that also prevents federal law enforcement officials from accessing motor-vehicle records.
If Hochul does remove Adams before March 26, Jumaane Williams, the public advocate, becomes the acting mayor. A nonpartisan special election would then be held several months after to elect the mayor to a full term. Williams, a progressive Democrat who has held citywide office since 2019, is expected to compete in that election, along with most of the Democrats already running for mayor. Cuomo would certainly be motivated to run in a special election that will favor someone like him with enormous name recognition. Other prominent Democrats, like Attorney General Letitia James, could be coaxed into the race.
All will now hinge on Hochul and what she decides to do with the strangest and most beleaguered mayor any living New Yorker has ever seen.
