New York City mayor Eric Adams is once again at the center of a political crisis. This time, it’s part of a drama that is drawing the lines of just how far Donald Trump can go in weaponizing the state to push through his agenda and how the state — and the Democratic Party — will react to these moves. The outrageous quid pro quo between Trump and Adams to ensure the President has a lackey in New York City shows the blatant alliance of the capitalist class against the interests of the working people and the oppressed. The outrage that people are feeling over the Democratic mayor’s latest scandal is best channeled into organization against the anti-worker, xenophobic, Zionist, and pro-cop agenda that Adams represents.
Adams is facing federal corruption charges for a wide variety of offenses, from accepting over $100,000 in bribes from Turkish nationals and at least one government official, to soliciting money from Turkish donors to fund his campaign and using those contributions to qualify for campaign funds from the state — in short, bribery and wire fraud. When prosecutors brought the charges against Adams back in September, the case stated that some of these dealings go all the way back to 2016, when Adams was Brooklyn borough president, through to his successful 2021 mayoral campaign.
Since his indictment, calls have gotten louder for Adams to step aside. In November, just a month after he was indicted, nearly 60 percent of New York voters said they approve of Adams being removed from office. This year the sitting mayor — whose approval ratings hovered around 28 percent even before the corruption charges — finds himself in the middle of a heated race for re-election, with several challengers from all sides of the political spectrum closing in on him.
Enter Donald Trump.
Trump and Adams’s Quid Pro Quo
On February 10, the Justice Department — headed by Trump appointees Attorney General Pam Bondi and Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove (who is also one of Trump’s personal lawyers) — ordered New York federal prosecutors to drop the charges against Adams, stating that the indictment “restricted” the mayor’s ability to aid in Trump’s crusade against “illegal immigration and violent crime” in New York City.
The quid pro quo is pretty clear: Adams supports Trump and his immigration crackdown, andTrump orders the Justice Department to drop the charges against Adams, sparing him from the possibility of jail time. The Justice Department says the charges can be brought against Adams again — the implication being that Adams’s freedom is contingent on being in Trump’s good graces. In other words, Trump has the mayor of the largest, wealthiest city in the United States in his pocket.
And if Adams’s and the Justice Department’s emphatic denials gave anyone pause, Adams and Trump’s “border czar” confirmed their agreement live on Fox & Friends on February 14. After Adams issued an executive order allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to establish operations on Rikers Island and target immigrants at the jail, Tom Homan said clearly: “If he doesn’t come through, I’ll be back in New York City, and we won’t be sitting on the couch. I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’”
The order to drop Adams’s charges has been met with indignation and turmoil from within the state apparatus, both from the courts and the Adams administration itself. The Attorney General for the Southern District of New York, Amy Sassoon, resigned rather than file the order. Seven other prosecutors followed suit, refusing to carry out the request. Shortly thereafter, on February 17, four deputy mayors resigned from Adams’s cabinet over his ties to the Trump administration. Now — as New York Governor Kathy Hochul makes a show of threatening to remove Adams from office — the scandal has been taken to the courts, with a judge ordering a hearing to ascertain whether Adams was offered a deal in exchange for supporting Trump’s anti-immigrant offensive in New York City.
Mayor Adams, the MAGA Democrat
Adams’s dealings with the Trump administration is an egregious escalation of the type of open capitalist tit-for-tat that is rapidly becoming emblematic of the second Trump administration. But it should come as no surprise that it is coming from Democratic mayor Eric Adams, who has been cozying up to Trump for years, especially in the months following the mayor’s indictment. Adams visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, appeared on Fox News, and skipped MLK Day ceremonies in New York City to attend Trump’s inauguration.
And while this MAGA Democrat has the establishment and the media clutching their pearls, Adams has been “Trump’s guy” for quite some time, imposing his xenophobic, anti-worker, Zionist, and pro-cop agenda for the entirety of his time in office, often coming into conflict with former president Joe Biden. Adams, a former cop, came to office on the wave of a reactionary backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement that shook the country, especially New York City. At the height of nation-wide calls to defund the police he has, in tandem with Governor Kathy Hochul, given the cops more money and carte blanche to terrorize Black and Brown New Yorkers, particularly working class and unhoused people. Meanwhile, he cut spending for libraries, schools, and social programs.
Adams is also a staunch Zionist who has long been an enemy of the pro-Palestine movement and protests against the genocide. He repeatedly sent the NYPD to brutalize protesters, and even used the police to spy on campus organizers. — in part at the behest of some of New York’s wealthiest capitalists, who offered to donate to Adams’s reelection campaign.
Further, Adams has been a loyal crusader in the criminalization of immigrants, using Trump’s playbook to weaponize the threat of a “migrant crisis” to divide working-class New Yorkers and distract them from the harm Adams’s pro-business policies create. He blames undocumented people for high rent, “high crime,” and virtually every societal ill confronting New Yorkers at the end of their ropes. Since Trump’s inauguration, Adams has sent ICE and NYPD to round up and arrest immigrants, targeting people in apartment buildings and workplaces; Adams has found a way to get around New York’s designation as a sanctuary city, which supposedly prevents local law enforcement from being used for federal immigration crackdowns. These attacks on immigrants are what has allowed Adams to win Trump’s favor and support.
A Limit to Trump’s Power?
In essence, Adams has long pushed the boundaries of just how much of Trump’s agenda the Democratic Party can take up as they struggle to win back an electorate exhausted by the status quo that the Democrats represent. In a context where Trump and the Republican Party made significant inroads in New York during the 2024 elections, Adams has steadily shifted to the right since 2021. And in Trump’s second term, Adams shows one possibility for how Democrats may respond to Trump, particularly at the state and local levels: working with him. Adams may be an extreme case, but he is not an exception when it comes to the role the Democrats play in taking up aspects of the Far Right’s program in order to quell social unrest, as we saw very clearly during the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.
On the other hand, the Adams scandal reveals that the political establishment is not at all comfortable with Trump’s efforts to force his agenda and enhance his executive power using the mechanisms of the state. Rather than issue the order to drop the charges against Adams, the relevant prosecutors resigned in protest. Far from the mandate that the Trump administration celebrates, it shows that there are limits even within the state to Trump’s attempts to reshape it.
In other words, the case presents certain contradictions for how the courts will react, which have become increasingly key in how much of this agenda can actually be carried through and how much of it will be “checked” by the judiciary. But while Adams’s case has certainly made waves, resignations alone aren’t enough to stop Trump from dropping the mayor’s charges. Ultimately, the Justice Department found someone who would file the order to drop them. Even the judge presiding over the hearing regarding the order intimated that there was little to be gained from dragging out a decision.
For the Democrats, having an open Trumpist among their ranks would look bad for the image — however distorted — they are trying to project as the “resistance” to Trump’s attacks on democratic norms While Governor Hochul has decided not to remove Adams from office, calls are rising nationally from Democratic politicians for Adams to step down, putting a lot of weight on November’s mayoral elections.
But we can’t wait for the next election to stand up to the anti-immigrant and anti-worker policies being enforced by Adams in New York or by Trump nationally. Adams is not the first Democrat to take up these policies and he won’t be the last. This scandal shows clearly that the politicians and capitalists — whether they have a D or an R by their name — ultimately represent the interests of the ruling class, not of working people and the oppressed.
Adams hobnobs with war criminals and celebrities at the Met Gala while most New Yorkers live paycheck to paycheck with salaries that don’t meet inflation in the most expensive city in the world. From Musk to Adams to the Trump family, they help each other out so that capital keeps flowing and the working class stays subdued to be exploited. They keep each other out of jail while they throw thousands into prisons and detention centers simply for crossing the border.
In response, we need to forge our own bonds, founded on our common interests as the diverse working class. The best way to kick Adams out of office is to fight against his xenophobic, Zionist, and anti-worker agenda with a single fist. This enemy of unions, tenants, retirees, students and teachers, those who oppose the genocide, and of the whole working class has to be fought collectively. That means standing up to ICE raids in our workplaces and schools, fighting for trans rights, and against the police and the repression of the Palestine movement and all our movements.