Adams' standing plummets in NYC in latest Marist poll amid federal probe

ALBANY, New York, — New Yorkers have soured on the state's two top Democratic leaders, a Marist College poll on Tuesday found.

Among New York City voters, 37 percent approved of the job Eric Adams has done as mayor while 54 percent disapproved. That's a long way from a Marist survey in March 2022, just a few months into his term, when he polled favorably 61 percent to 24 percent.

On Adams’ interactions with Turkey that are part of a federal campaign-finance investigation, more than seven in ten New York City residents thought he did something wrong during his 2021 campaign.

With Adams, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, 33 percent of New York City voters said they thought he “has done something illegal”; 39 percent said he “has done something unethical, but not illegal"; while 18 percent said he “has done nothing wrong.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul also struggled in the poll. Only 43 percent of registered voters approved of the job she is doing as governor, while 44 percent disapproved.

"There’s no good news for New York’s major officials," Lee Miringoff, the poll's director, said in a statement. "Governor Hochul’s standing has deteriorated in the state; Mayor Adams faces a more negative constituency."

For Adams, he was most popular with Black voters and older voters who were surveyed.

As for Hochul, only 39 percent of respondents said she is “changing the way things work in Albany for the better,” while 56 percent said she is not. She scored favorably on that question by a margin of 46 percent to 39 when Marist last asked it in October 2021, two months into her tenure.

A total of 59 percent of respondents said “the overall quality of life” in New York has “gotten worse” over the past year, while 11 percent said it has “gotten better.”

The Siena College Research Institute had been the only major independent pollster to release numbers on New York’s state government in 2023. The new Marist numbers help confirm months of conclusions by Siena that Hochul is in the polling doldrums — one Siena survey released on Monday found she was viewed favorably by 40 percent of registered voters and unfavorably by 43 percent.

Siena had a similar finding on Adams last month in a statewide poll: His job approval rating was 30 percent positive and 46 percent negative as he expects to run for a second term in 2025.

Marist also asked voters’ thoughts on Hochul’s political ideology.

Among Democrats, 19 percent said she was “too liberal,” 18 percent said “too conservative,” and 60 percent said “about right.” A total of 69 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of unaffiliated voters said she is “too liberal.”

The poll found that 48 percent of registered voters said Sen. Chuck Schumer is doing an “excellent” or “good” job in office, while 51 percent said his performance is “fair” or “poor.” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand landed at 40 percent to 55 percent on that question as she plans to run for reelection next year.

Only 44 percent of New Yorkers approved of President Joe Biden’s job performance, while 53 percent disapproved.

Pollsters surveyed 1,556 registered voters from Nov. 13-15. The statewide numbers have a margin of error of 3.2 points, while the New York City numbers have a margin of error of 5.3 points.

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Feds probe $10B deal for Subway sandwich chain

Amid its high-profile assaults on Amazon and Microsoft, the FTC isn't too busy to worry about people’s lunch.

The Federal Trade Commission is investigating if the $10 billion purchase of Subway creates a sandwich shop monopoly with Jimmy John's and Arby's. The latter two, in addition to McAlister’s Deli and Schlotzky’s, are owned by private equity firm Roark Capital, which inked a deal to buy Subway in August. The government is focused in part on whether the addition of Subway gives Roark too much control of a lucrative segment of the fast food industry, the people said.

Roark paid around $10 billion for Subway, according to a third person with knowledge of the deal.

The Atlanta-based Roark focuses on consumer chains with franchise models, and which also include Dunkin’, Buffalo Wild Wings and Baskin-Robbins.

The investigation is emblematic of the agency’s increased focus under FTC Chair Lina Khan on both deal-making by private equity firms and prices of consumer staples. The FTC in September sued a group of anesthesia practices in Texas and its private equity owner for a series of acquisitions that it says illegally consolidated the market. The agency is also investigating the pending merger of grocery store chains Kroger and Albertsons, and a decision on whether to challenge the deal is expected in the coming months.

Spokespeople for the FTC and Roark declined to comment. A spokesperson for Subway did not respond to a request for comment.

The FTC’s investigation began earlier this month, according to one of the people. Most mergers valued over $111.4 million must undergo a mandatory 30-day review period by either the FTC or Justice Department. Any investigation beyond that time period is discretionary. The companies unsuccessfully sought to stave off a prolonged probe through a procedural move that extended the initial period by another 30 days, according to the third person.

The investigation is in the early stages, and any resolution is likely months away. Merger reviews by antitrust regulators can often take a year or more. The FTC can either sue to block the merger, reach an agreement with the companies that alleviates its concerns, or take no action at all.

In any merger review, regulators must first determine the market where they believe competition is harmed. The companies are arguing the FTC should widen its focus beyond sandwiches, saying consumers are choosing between a wider array of options when deciding what to eat, and that Roark owns only a small fraction of the total U.S. fast food market, according to two of the people.

According to August 2023 rankings from QSR Magazine, which tracks the quick-service restaurant industry, Subway is the largest U.S. sandwich chain based on 2022 sales, with Arby’s, Jimmy John’s and McAlister’s Deli also in the top seven.

Subway’s franchise agreement notes the chain considers McAlister’s Deli and Schlotzky’s as key competitors, in addition to Jimmy John’s, according to the New York Post. It does not mention restaurants selling burgers and burritos, according to the Post, suggesting that Subway may not view those offerings as its primary competition.

The resource-constrained FTC is investigating many high-profile mergers and will ultimately have to make tough choices on which cases to pursue.

In addition to the Kroger-Albertsons tie-up, the FTC is also considering whether to challenge Amazon’s $1.8 billion takeover of robot vacuum maker iRobot and investigating Pfizer’s $43 billion purchase of cancer drugmaker Seagen. It also recently opened a probe of luxury brand owners Tapestry and Capri, and is expected to investigate a pair of megadeals by oil and gas giants Exxon and Chevron.

And while the FTC has succeeded in blocking deals by companies including Lockheed Martin and Nvidia, it has yet to win a merger challenge in court during Khan’s tenure, upping the pressure to bring home a litigation win. High-profile losses include an attempt to block Microsoft’s takeover of Activision Blizzard (which is on appeal), and Meta’s purchase of a virtual reality game developer.

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Why are politicians acting like influencers?

Donald Trump was the Twitter president.

Joe Biden is slinging Dark Brandon merch.

And now, candidates in the 2024 GOP field are adopting many of the same marketing tactics that voters are more used to seeing from social media influencers such as Jake Paul, Tinx and Dave Portnoy.

Is this because American politics has hit a new bottom? Or is the pivot toward influencer marketing on the campaign trail a clever solution?

This election cycle candidates are struggling to fundraise and to penetrate the increasingly fragmented media ecosystem. Watch this video to see what POLITICO’s Alex Keeney finds as he explores whether emulating influencers is delivering results.

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New York House GOP sees fundraising void without McCarthy cash

NEW YORK — Kevin McCarthy made the campaign cash flow as House speaker. His successor Mike Johnson will be playing catch-up for a while.

And for vulnerable New York Republicans with tough reelection battles, the difference is stark.

More than $1.8 million had been raised by McCarthy-associated committees versus just $12,000 by Johnson-affiliated ones for Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, Mike Lawler, Marc Molinaro, Brandon Williams and Nick LaLota, according to federal filings reviewed by POLITICO.

The former speaker was a prodigious fundraiser. Overall, McCarthy’s campaign raised more than 20 times what Johnson’s did for the 2022 cycle and the 2024 one thus far.

And his prowess was especially beneficial to his blue-state colleagues who were critical in the GOP winning the House last year.

Freshman House Republicans in New York acknowledged the void created when McCarthy was ousted from the speakership, but said they had faith that others will pick up the slack.

“Losing McCarthy is obviously a setback for our fundraising; it’s like losing a hall of famer in that category,” LaLota of Long Island said in an interview. “But there are multiple all-stars looking to step up.”

Seven New York incumbents face competitive races in 2024, per Cook Political Report ratings, and New York could decide which party has the House majority in 2025. LaLota is projected to be the safest among the seven, but his GOP colleagues D’Esposito, Lawler, Molinaro and Williams will need robust campaign war chests as they seek second terms.

Republicans are buoyed by the local election gains earlier this month, especially on Long Island, but they’re also fighting association with indicted GOP Rep. George Santos and pushing back on Democrats tying them to Johnson’s extremist views.

Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman described the new speaker in an interview as “someone for a national abortion ban with no exceptions, an architect of election denying, efforts to overturn the 2020 election and virulently anti-LGBTQ.”

Goldman predicted Republicans won’t be able to replicate McCarthy’s fundraising, saying Johnson “has to build an entire donor network from scratch because he’s effectively unknown.” (A Siena Research Institute poll released Monday found 53 percent of New York voters have never heard of Johnson or have no opinion of him.)

LaLota said Johnson’s first weeks as speaker-cum-fundraiser showed promise and cited additional progress by Reps. Steve Scalise and Tom Emmer in GOP leadership as well as Rep. August Pfluger of Texas.

The Congressional Leadership Fund and American Action Network said last week that they had raised $16 million in the 10 days since Johnson endorsed them, noting that the speaker was aggressively working to introduce himself to donors.

D’Esposito, also of Long Island, has stressed he doesn’t share Johnson’s stance on abortion. He also said he believes McCarthy retains considerable clout — even without the speaker’s gavel.

“He’s still going to be supportive of candidates that were supportive of him, especially in seats that he helped deliver,” D’Esposito said in an interview.

D’Esposito and Molinaro, whose district stretches across the Hudson Valley and into central New York, were the biggest recipients of McCarthy-steered cash to the five swing-district Republicans in the state. Molinaro’s campaign declined to comment.

The campaign of Lawler, a Hudson Valley Republican, also declined to comment.

A spokesperson for Williams’ campaign said the Syracuse-area representative is confident in his fundraising as well as Johnson’s.

“In 2024, the majority-makers from New York will once again prove that ‘the people’ have had enough of the ‘progressive fantasies’ of cashless bail, sanctuary cities, open borders and reckless government spending,” Taylor Weyeneth added in a statement.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Savannah Viar listed similar issues as detrimental to Democrats, saying, “Republicans’ strong fundraising effort is beside the main point: no amount of Democrats’ money will make voters forget their terrible policies.”

Daniel Lippman contributed to this report.

A version of this story first appeared in Monday’s New York Playbook. Subscribe here.

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Biden talks turkey — then pardons them

Joe Biden spent his 81st birthday the only way a president would want to, really: pardoning turkeys and telling jokes.

“By the way, it’s my birthday today. I just want you to know, it’s difficult turning 60,” Biden said Monday at the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardon.

He chuckled at his own joke. The crowd gobbled it up. But the turkeys didn’t laugh.

Which is odd, because they should have been in a good mood. After all, they were the lucky ones this year, spared from a fate that involved basting and roasting, or a deep fryer, or being lined with smaller birds and consumed alongside a heap of stuffing.

This year’s presidentially spared birds hail from Minnesota — a perhaps telling biographical tidbit, as it’s not quite a swing state but could be one if Biden truly plummets in the polls. In classic Biden fashion, however, there was a Pennsylvania connection, too. This year’s flock of turkeys were named Liberty and Bell. Get it?

“These birds have a new appreciation of the words, let freedom ring,” Biden said, speaking from the White House Rose Garden.

Monday’s annual event marked the 76th anniversary of the White House turkey pardon, which dates back to 1947, when the National Turkey Federation first presented the national Thanksgiving Turkey to President Harry Truman. Biden, in another age reference, quipped that he was not present at Truman’s event. But he was alive; he was a mere 5 years old at the time — old enough, for certain, to eat turkey.

While the Thanksgiving bird used to be for the first family’s consumption, that is no longer the case. Beginning in the late 1980s, the event evolved into an oftentimes funny ceremony (minus the occasional snap at the pardoner’s hand) in which the turkeys are given a second chance at life. Liberty and Bell will make the trek back to live out their lives at the University of Minnesota.

There were a few jokes throughout Biden’s short ceremony on Monday. But let’s just say it was, like the cooked variety, relatively dry.

But like all Thanksgiving festivities, there was also some awkwardness around the table. Biden bungled one joke referencing the challenging nature of getting a ticket to Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour or Taylor Swift’s Eras concert — appearing to confuse Swift with Britney Spears.

“Just to get here, Liberty and Bell had to beat some tough odds and competition. They had to work hard to show patience and be willing to travel over 1,000 miles,” Biden said. “You could say even it’s harder than getting a ticket to the Renaissance tour or, or, for Brittney’s tour. She’s down in — it’s kind of warm in Brazil right now.”

Oops, he did it again. Gobble gobble.

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For one group of trans women, the pope and his message of inclusivity are a welcome change

TORVAIANICA, Italy — Pope Francis’ recent gesture of welcome for transgender Catholics has resonated strongly in this working class, seaside town south of Rome, where a community of trans women has found help and hope through a remarkable relationship with the pontiff forged during the darkest times of the pandemic.

Thanks to the local parish priest, these women now make monthly visits to Francis’ Wednesday general audiences, where they are given VIP seats. On any given day, they receive handouts of medicine, cash and shampoo. When Covid-19 struck, the Vatican bussed them into its health facility so they could be vaccinated ahead of most Italians.

On Sunday, the women — many of whom are Latin American migrants and work as prostitutes — joined over 1,000 other poor and homeless people in the Vatican auditorium as Francis’ guests for lunch to mark the Catholic Church’s World Day of the Poor.

The menu was evidence of Francis’ belief that those most on the margins must be treated with utmost dignity: cannelloni pasta filled with spinach and ricotta to start; meatballs in a tomato-basil sauce and cauliflower puree, and tiramisu with petit fours for dessert.

For the marginalized trans community of Torvaianica, it was just the latest gesture of inclusion from a pope who has made reaching out to the LGBTQ+ community a hallmark of his papacy, in word and deed.

“Before, the church was closed to us. They didn’t see us as normal people, they saw us as the devil,” said Andrea Paola Torres Lopez, a Colombian transgender woman known as Consuelo, whose kitchen is decorated with pictures of Jesus. “Then Pope Francis arrived and the doors of the church opened for us.”

Francis’ latest initiative was a document from the Vatican’s doctrine office asserting that, under some circumstances, transgender people can be baptized and can serve as godparents and witnesses in weddings. It followed another recent statement from the pope himself that suggested same-sex couples could receive church blessings.

In both cases, the new pronouncements reversed the absolute bans on transgender people serving as godparents issued by the Vatican doctrine office in 2015, and on same-sex blessings announced in 2021.

Prominent LGBTQ+ organizations have welcomed Francis’ message of inclusivity, given gay and transgender people have long felt ostracized and discriminated against by a church that officially teaches that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

Starting from his famous “Who am I to judge” comment in 2013 about a purportedly gay priest, to his assertion in January that “being homosexual is not a crime,” Francis has evolved his position to increasingly make clear that everyone — “todos, todos, todos” — is a child of God, is loved by God and welcome in the church.

That judgment-free position is not necessarily shared by the rest of the Catholic Church. The recent Vatican gathering of bishops and laypeople, known as a synod, backed off language explicitly calling for welcoming LGBTQ+ Catholics. Conservative Catholics, including cardinals, have strongly questioned his approach.

After his latest statement about trans participation in church sacraments, GLAAD and DignityUSA said Francis’ tone of inclusion would send a message to political and cultural leaders to end their persecution, exclusion and discrimination against transgender people.

For the trans community in Torvaianica, it was a more personal message, a concrete sign that the pope knew them, had heard their stories and wanted to let them know that they were part of his church.

Carla Segovia, a 46-year-old Argentine sex worker, said for transgender women like herself, being a godparent is the closest thing she will ever get to having a child of her own. She said that the new norms made her feel more comfortable about maybe one day returning fully to the faith that she was baptized in but fell away from after coming out as trans.

“This norm from Pope Francis brings me closer to finding that absolute serenity,” she said, which she feels is necessary to be fully reconciled with the faith.

Claudia Vittoria Salas, a 55-year-old transgender tailor and house cleaner, said she had already served as a godparent to three of her nieces and nephews back home in Jujuy, in northern Argentina. She choked up as she recalled that her earnings from her former work as a prostitute put her godchildren through school.

“Being a godparent is a big responsibility, it’s taking the place of the mother or father, it’s not a game,” she said as her voice broke. “You have to choose the right people who will be responsible and capable, when the parents aren’t around, to send the kids to school and provide them with food and clothes.”

Francis’ unusual friendship with the Torvaianica trans community began during Italy’s strict Covid-19 lockdown, when one, then two, and then more sex workers showed up at the Rev. Andrea Conocchia’s church on the main piazza of town asking for food, because they had lost all sources of income.

Over time, Conocchia got to know the women and as the pandemic and economic hardships continued, he encouraged them to write to Francis to ask for what they needed. One night they sat around a table and composed their letters.

“The pages of the letters of the first four were bathed in tears,” he recalled. “Why? Because they told me ‘Father, I’m ashamed, I can’t tell the pope what I have done, how I have lived.’”

But they did, and the first assistance arrived from the pope’s chief almsgiver, who then accompanied the women for their Covid-19 vaccines a year later. At the time of the pandemic, many of the women weren’t legally allowed to live in Italy and had no access to the vaccine.

Eventually, Francis asked to meet them.

Salas was among those who received the jab at the Vatican and then joined a group from Torvaianica to thank Francis at his general audience on April 27, 2022. She brought the Argentine pope a platter of homemade chicken empanadas, a traditional comfort food from their shared homeland.

Showing the photo of the exchange on her phone, Salas remembered what Francis did next: “He told the gentleman who receives the gifts to leave them with him, saying ‘I’m taking them with me for lunch,’” she said. “At that point, I started to cry.”

On Sunday, Salas was seated at Francis’ table in the Vatican auditorium. She said she had woken up at 3 a.m. to make him more chicken empanadas for his dinner. “They’re still hot,” she said.

For Canocchia, Francis’ response to Salas and the others has changed him profoundly as a priest, teaching him the value of listening and being attentive to the lives and hardships of his flock, especially those most on the margins.

For the women, it is simply an acknowledgement that they matter.

“At least they remember us, that we’re on Earth and we haven’t been abandoned and left to the mercy of the wind,” said Torres Lopez.

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Yemen’s Houthi rebels hijack Israeli-linked ship in Red Sea, take 25 crew members hostage

JERUSALEM — Yemen’s Houthi rebels seized an Israeli-linked cargo ship in a crucial Red Sea shipping route on Sunday, officials said, taking over two dozen crew members hostage and raising fears that regional tensions heightened over the Israel-Hamas war were playing out on a new maritime front.

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they hijacked the ship over its connection to Israel and took the crew as hostages. The group warned that it would continue to target ships in international waters that were linked to or owned by Israelis until the end of Israel’s campaign against Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

“All ships belonging to the Israeli enemy or that deal with it will become legitimate targets,” the Houthis said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office had blamed the Houthis for the attack on the Bahamas-flagged Galaxy Leader, a vehicle carrier affiliated with an Israeli billionaire. It said the 25 crew members had a range of nationalities, including Bulgarian, Filipino, Mexican and Ukrainian, but that no Israelis had been on board.

The Houthis said they were treating the crew members “in accordance with their Islamic values,” but did not elaborate on what that meant.

Netanyahu’s office condemned the seizure as an “Iranian act of terror.” The Israeli military called the hijacking a “very grave incident of global consequence.”

Israeli officials insisted the ship was British-owned and Japanese-operated. However, ownership details in public shipping databases associated the ship’s owners with Ray Car Carriers, which was founded by Abraham “Rami” Ungar, who is known as one of the richest men in Israel.

Ungar told The Associated Press he was aware of the incident but couldn’t comment as he awaited details. A ship linked to him experienced an explosion in 2021 in the Gulf of Oman. Israeli media blamed it on Iran at the time.

The complex world of international shipping often involves a series of management companies, flags and owners stretching across the globe in a single vessel.

Two U.S. defense officials confirmed that Houthi rebels seized the Galaxy Leader in the Red Sea on Sunday afternoon local time. The rebels descended on the cargo ship by repelling down from a helicopter, the officials said, confirming details first reported by NBC News. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

Twice in the last month, U.S. warships have intercepted missiles or drones from Yemen that were believed to be headed toward Israel or posing a threat to the American vessels. The USS Carney, a Navy destroyer, intercepted three land attack cruise missiles and several drones that were launched by Houthi forces toward the northern Red Sea last month.

On Nov. 15 the USS Thomas Hudner, another destroyer, was sailing toward the Bab-el-Mandeb strait when the crew saw a drone, reported to have originated in Yemen. The ship shot down the drone over the water. The officials said the crew took action to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel, and there were no casualties or damage to the ship.

Satellite tracking data from MarineTraffic.com analyzed by the AP showed the Galaxy Leader traveling in the Red Sea southwest of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, more than a day ago. The vessel had been in Korfez, Turkey, and was on its way to Pipavav, India, at the time of the seizure reported by Israel.

It had its Automatic Identification System tracker, or AIS, switched off, the data showed. Ships are supposed to keep their AIS active for safety reasons, but crews will turn them off if it appears they might be targeted or to smuggle contraband, which there was no immediate evidence to suggest was the case with the Galaxy Leader.

The British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which provides warnings to sailors in the Persian Gulf and the wider region, put the hijacking as having occurred some 150 kilometers (90 miles) off the coast of Yemen’s port city of Hodeida, near the coast of Eritrea.

The Red Sea, stretching from Egypt’s Suez Canal to the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait separating the Arabian Peninsula from Africa, remains a key trade route for global shipping and energy supplies. That’s why the U.S. Navy has stationed multiple ships in the sea since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7.

Since 2019, a series of ships have come under attack at sea as Iran began breaking all the limits of its tattered nuclear deal with world powers. As Israel expands its devastating campaign against Hamas in the besieged Gaza Strip following the militant group’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel, fears have grown that the military operations could escalate into a wider regional conflict.

The Houthis have repeatedly threatened to target Israeli ships in the waters off Yemen.

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