“The goal is to prevent, and if we can’t prevent, then hopefully we can delay,” said Jackie Bray, the state’s homeland security and emergency services director, who’s Hochul’s point person on the preparations. “And if something happens, we then have to manage. All three scenarios have real planning behind them.”
The extent of the planning and coalition-building, which has not previously been reported, is meant to deny Trump any pretext to dispatch the National Guard or active-duty troops to the city.
New York leaders have for months been watching Trump’s deployment of the National Guard, ICE agents and uniformed military into other cities and braced for similar efforts in the president’s hometown. Hochul has developed an on-and-off rapport with Trump, who takes an intense interest in New York, but has told people she is concerned about the president using Mamdani’s election as his opening to effectively federalize the city.
Last month, the governor invited a broad range of activist and labor groups — including the ACLU, the powerhouse local SEIU and grassroots network Indivisible — to her Manhattan office.
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