Jessica Tarlov of Fox News’ “The Five” admitted cable news can enrage viewers. John Lamparski/Getty

Dear Commons Community,

Jessica Tarlov, one of Fox News’ few (maybe only) credible news personalities, acknowledged how toxic cable news has become—and admitted she’s part of the problem.

Tarlov, the progresive panelist on Fox’s top show, The Five, asked Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics founder and director, what issue enraged him the most.

“I watch more TV news than I ever have before,” he said on the Prof G podcast, which Tarlov co-hosts. “TV funnels what’s selling on social media, I think, more than the reverse. That makes me rage.”

Tarlov said she is part of the problem.

“It does,” she said. “As someone who’s on cable news, I apologize to the entire world for what we export.”

Sabato laughed at Tarlov’s remark, saying during the Friday interview that the main issue is social media’s dominance of political discourse. “There’s nothing we can do about social media,” he said.

“The one thing I’ve been waiting for that I was promised as a young person was a time machine,” he added. “We still don’t have one, cause I’d love to go back and make it impossible to create social media. I don’t know how I do it, but I would try to do that.”

Sabato told the Daily Beast in further remarks that he was disappointed by the “sane-washing” of Trump from multiple media outlets, who he said underestimated Trump’s penchant for retribution.

“I’ve personally seen the effects of Trump’s intimidation of media companies, law firms, and yes, universities,” he said in an email. “The solution they’ve adopted seems to be, ‘Let’s keep our heads down, stick to a lot of both-sides coverage, and then Trump will target others.’ It hasn’t dawned on some that Trump will eventually get around to slamming them too, as well as misusing the power of government to exact revenge.”

Several other cable news hosts have rebuked the sector in recent years.

Chuck Todd, the former NBC News anchor who hosted Meet the Press before leaving the network earlier this year, told Mediaite last month that he had grown demoralized by cable news’ content.

“I had it on in my office all the time,” Todd said. “But most cable news felt like a whole bunch of people trying to game an algorithm. It stopped being informational.”

Former Fox News and NBC star Megyn Kelly said on podcast The Megyn Kelly Show last year that, after watching cable news during the election, she was sad to see that “nothing’s changed.”

“The people don’t look as good—that’s changed,” she said. “But they’ve changed nothing. They’re having the same stilted, guarded, fake conversations that last four minutes long with, like, the stupid panels. It’s amazing how out of date they are.”

The three major cable news channels Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC have become embarrassments to the news profession.  They are indeed “toxic” with Fox News being the worst.

Tony  

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading, The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary,  by Simon Winchester.  It is an historical account of the development of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).   I decided to read it as a follow-up to the historical novel The Dictionary of Lost Words  by Pip Williams that I read a few weeks ago.   

Winchester has done a fine job of tracing the development of the OED.  He is masterful in chronicling  the individuals who took on this monumental task. James Murray, the main editor, receives a good deal of attention and rightfully so for steering the OED development for most of its 70-year development.  Winchester also does an excellent job of describing the tensions between Oxford University Press and the editors much of which related to the cost and length of time it took to produce the OED.  Originally, it was estimated to cost £9,000. and take ten years to complete. It actually ended up costing £375,000.  and seven decades to complete.

Lastly, Winchester also includes a number of photos and images that are fascinating to examine.

In sum, I highly recommend The Meaning of Everything for anyone interested in how the OED came to be.

Below is a brief review of The Meaning of Everything… that appeared in Publishers Weekly.

Tony

Publishers Weekly

THE MEANING OF EVERYTHING: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary

Simon Winchester, . . Oxford Univ., $25 (260pp) ISBN 978-0-19-860702-1

We thank our military men and women past and present for their service to our country. We especially honor and remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Kermit the Frog Gave University of Maryland Commencement Address.  Allison Robbert/For The Washington Post via Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

Kermit the Frog’s dream has always been to spread joy and happiness — and that’s exactly what he did with a recent visit to a graduation ceremony.

The beloved green amphibian delivered a commencement speech to the University of Maryland’s class of 2025 on Thursday, where he was met with resounding applause. Draped in what the Muppet himself described as “a very tiny cap and gown,” he delivered words of encouragement and inspiration, along with a forecast with a “100% chance of frog.”

“I am honored to share some words of wisdom about three things that are close to my heart: finding your people, taking the leap, and making connections,” Kermit said.

The green legend noted that Muppets creator Jim Henson, who died in 1990, attended the institution.

The school’s campus boasts a statue of the man and frog sitting on a bench, apparently deep in conversation.

Kermit said Henson taught him about “finding your people” and taught him that “what’s unique about you should always be shared.”

“There is no guarantee that the show is always good or that it’ll go off without a hitch, or it doesn’t have its, uh, hecklers,” he said. “But the show must go on. And if you’re with your people, then you won’t have to do it alone, because life is not a solo act.”

Kermit went on to discuss the importance of friendship and community, and reminded graduates to “always be on the lookout for old friends you’ve just met.”

The character then hopped into his second theme — “taking the leap” — and continued to offer more sage words of wisdom to anyone who was willing to “take advice from a frog.”

“Rather than jumping over someone to get what you want, consider reaching out your hand, and taking the leap side by side,” he advised. “Life is better when we leap together.”

Finally, the Muppet spoke about the importance of staying connected — to your people, your values and your purpose.

“If I know a thing, it’s important to stay connected to your loved ones, stay connected to your friends and most of all, stay connected to your dreams,” the amphibian concluded.

As good a commencement message as I have ever heard!

Tony

MacKenzie Scott and Warren Buffet. Courtesy of The India Today Group / Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett ushered in a new Gilded Era of philanthropic giving, likened in influence to the Rockefellers and Carnegies. But charity work is about to look a whole lot different as higher taxes are threatened on liberal institutions, and new methods of giving are popularized by women mega-donors. As reported by Fortune.

“We’re likely to see more women come out of the shadows.”

How philanthropy will look in a new era

Many billionaires have started foundations as a way to channel their philanthropic efforts, but a recent decision from the U.S. House of Representatives may upend that practice. Just this week, a budget reconciliation package was approved, which stipulated a tax of 10% on foundations with more than $5 billion in assets.

“The reason this is insidious is that it’s going to really hit the big liberal foundations like Gates, Ford, and Soros,” Kathleen McCarthy, director for the center on philanthropy at CUNY, tells Fortune. “Whereas the conservative foundations are much smaller and they will pay a much lower rate.”

Thousands of liberal foundations led by billionaires including Gates, Scott, George Soros, and Mark Zuckerberg could be hit hard by these tax hikes. This could entirely change how billionaires approach philanthropy. 

“[Billionaires] will start looking at alternative mechanisms once they realize that they’re going to be forced to sunset foundations,” McCarthy says. “That’s what’s being jeopardized right now.”

But some ultra-wealthy donors are already rewriting the rules; MacKenzie Scott’s “stealth giving” practice entails anonymously giving money directly to non-profits, trusting them to handle the funds as they see fit, with no expectations. 

According to McCarthy, as billionaires are driven away from the foundation-based model, they are pulled towards alternative ways of giving. This includes being inspired by Scott’s inconspicuous, direct giving strategy as a way to get around the new taxes.

“I think she’s a trendsetter and sort of moral ballast to the way that Gates has been,” Bella DeVaan, associate director of the charity reform initiative at the Institute for Policy Studies, tells Fortune. “I do see that being not just a trend, but shifting common sense towards trust-based philanthropy.”

Scott donates through her Yield Giving foundation, which has given over $19.25 billion to date across 2,450 non-profits, and experts say billionaires could be inspired to donate directly to organizations to ease the tax hit. DeVaan also predicts that Melinda French Gates will be a pioneer of the philanthropic LLC, an alternative to traditional foundations.

Experts have pulled on a common thread between who is innovating philanthropy, and how the general make-up of mega-donors is changing: women are in the spotlight. With more than 200 new billionaires minted in 2024 alone, nearly four every week, more players are entering the field and women are stepping into wealth. Women being the face of philanthropy may become the status quo. 

Women are becoming the new philanthropic frontrunners 

When tasked with naming the rising stars of philanthropy to fill the big shoes of Gates and Buffett, experts are already noticing a few frontrunners. The one person on everyone’s mind: charitable vagabond MacKenzie Scott.

“This is a woman making a pretty bold statement about how she’s going to give her money away: by trusting the recipients, and not asking for any reporting back…She’s in contrast to the very technocratic way that Bill Gates has approached matters.”

And in 2025—when U.S. women have even more access to wealth and power than ever before—this group will only be supercharged. Not only have they come into stable, high-paying executive positions, but many women have also grown to be financially savvy as they’ve gained control over their money and careers. 

“You’ll see women becoming much more prominent mega donors,” McCarthy says. “They’re very comfortable handling money. They’re very comfortable doing research, and they’re looking for ways to change the system.”

If they are like MacKenzie Scott, the world will be a better place.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Allison Burroughs, a U.S. judge yesterday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from revoking Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students, a policy the Ivy League school called part of Trump’s broader effort to retaliate against it for refusing to “surrender its academic independence.”  As reported by Reuters.

The order provides temporary relief to thousands of international students who were faced with being forced to transfer under a policy that the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based university called a “blatant violation” of the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws, and said would have an “immediate and devastating effect” on the university and more than 7,000 visa holders. 

“Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” the 389-year-old school said in its lawsuit, filed earlier on Friday in Boston federal court. Harvard enrolled nearly 6,800 international students in its current school year, equal to 27% of total enrollment.

The move was the latest escalation in a broader battle between Harvard and the White House, as Trump seeks to compel universities, law firms, news media, courts and other institutions that value independence from partisan politics to align with his agenda. Trump and fellow Republicans have long accused elite universities of left-wing bias.

Harvard has pushed back hard against Trump, having previously sued to restore nearly $3 billion in federal grants that had been frozen or canceled. In recent weeks, the administration has proposed ending Harvard’s tax-exempt status and hiking taxes on its endowment, and opened an investigation into whether it violated civil rights laws.

Leo Gerden, a Swedish student set to graduate Harvard with an undergraduate degree in economics and government this month, called the judge’s ruling a “great first step” but said international students were bracing for a long legal fight that would keep them in limbo.

“There is no single decision by Trump or by Harvard or by a judge that is going to put an end to this tyranny of what Trump is doing,” Gerden said.

In its complaint, Harvard said the revocation would force it to retract admissions for thousands of people, and has thrown “countless” academic programs, clinics, courses and research laboratories into disarray, just a few days before graduation. It said the revocation was a punishment for Harvard’s “perceived viewpoint,” which it called a violation of the right to free speech as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

The Trump administration may appeal U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs’ ruling. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said, “unelected judges have no right to stop the Trump Administration from exercising their rightful control over immigration policy and national security policy.”

Since Trump’s inauguration on January 20, his administration has accused several universities of indifference toward the welfare of Jewish students during widespread campus protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

Harvard’s court challenges over the administration’s policies stand in contrast to its New York-based peer Columbia University’s concessions to similar pressure. Columbia agreed to reform disciplinary processes and review curricula for courses on the Middle East, after Trump pulled $400 million in funding over allegations the Ivy League school had not done enough to combat antisemitism.

In announcing on Thursday the termination of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, effective starting in the 2025-2026 academic year, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, without providing evidence, accused the university of “fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party.”

Harvard says a fifth of its foreign students in 2024 were from China. U.S. lawmakers from both parties have expressed concerns about the influence of the Chinese government on U.S. college campuses, including efforts by Beijing-directed Chinese student associations to monitor political activities and stifle academic speech.

The university says it is committed to combating antisemitism and investigating credible allegations of civil rights violations.

HARVARD DEFENDS ‘REFUSAL TO SURRENDER’

In her brief order blocking the policy for two weeks, Burroughs said Harvard had shown it could be harmed before there was an opportunity to hear the case in full. The judge, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, scheduled hearings for May 27 and May 29 to consider next steps in the case. Burroughs is also overseeing Harvard’s lawsuit over the grant funds.

Harvard University President Alan Garber said the administration was illegally seeking to assert control over the private university’s curriculum, faculty and student body.

“The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard for our refusal to surrender our academic independence,” Garber wrote in a letter on Friday to the Harvard community.

The revocation could also weigh on Harvard’s finances. At many U.S. universities, international students are more likely to pay full tuition, essentially subsidizing aid for other students.

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

Harvard’s bonds, part of its $8.2 billion debt pile, have been falling since Trump first warned U.S. universities in March of cuts to federal funding.

International students enrolled at Harvard include Cleo Carney, daughter of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and Princess Elisabeth, first in line to the Belgian throne.

Keep up the fight, Harvard!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Jeffrey Mervis, senior correspondent for Science, had a policy piece yesterday entitled,  “NSF cuts reduced grantee diversity” that reviewed recent Trump orders to eliminate National Science Foundation (NSF) research grants.

More than half of the 1500 research grants that the NSF has terminated in the past month, were aimed to bring groups historically underrepresented in science into the mainstream. Ending those grants reversed decades of efforts focused on what the agency calls the “missing millions” women, racial and ethnic minorities, veterans, and low-income and rural students.

But that’s not the only impact. The terminations also reduced the diversity of NSF’s pool of funded scientists, as researchers from several of those groups have borne the brunt of the cuts.  Here is an excerpt.

“According to demographic data NSF collects on all its principal investigators (PIs), 58% of the grants canceled to date were led by women, although only 34% of the total pool of active NSF grants have women as PIs. The percentage of Hispanic PIs and those with disabilities who lost grants was roughly twice their presence in the overall pool of active grants. And Black PIs have suffered the heaviest blow: They held 17% of the canceled grants, although they only make up 4% of the total NSF pool of active grants.

Taken together, those statistics “are startling and very depressing,” says physicist Tabbetha Dobbins, dean of the graduate school at Rowan University and a member of an NSF advisory panel overseeing its efforts to broaden participation. “We’ve all heard [NSF officials] say that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. These grants are designed to nurture that talent and provide those opportunities, and these cuts will make it harder to achieve that goal.”

In contrast, according to the NSF data, men were PIs on just 35% of the terminated grants despite making up 60% of the total pool of PIs with active grants. White scientists were also more likely to be spared: Although they are PIs on 60% of all active grants, they only led 52% of the terminated projects.

Biologist Jo Handelsman of the University of Wisconsin–Madison says she is not surprised that researchers from underrepresented groups were more likely to feel the ax than their white, men colleagues. “These scientists are more likely to do work on interventions intended to broaden participation in science,” she says.

Handelsman adds that the skewed demographics of the terminated grants sends a discouraging message to aspiring scientists from underrepresented groups. “We’ve been fighting for decades to increase participation by people from these groups,” says Handelsman, who has received a presidential medal for science mentoring and served in the White House under former President Barack Obama. “And now they’re seeing that there may not be a place at the table for them. It’s frightening.”

Last month NSF began to terminate grants for projects it says preferentially favored one demographic group or excluded participation by certain groups. The policy stems from directives Trump issued after taking office on 20 January that ban federally funded diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The president has disparaged those efforts, calling them discriminatory and claiming they aren’t open to everyone, in particular, white men.

But several scientists told Science Trump is wrong about the audience being served by their terminated projects. “I get that Trump doesn’t like DEI, but we don’t exclude anybody,” says Tammie Visintainer, a science educator at San Jose State University (SJSU) who has lost NSF funding for two projects. One helps local secondary school teachers prepare units and guide student research on the health and environmental effects of urban heat islands, and the second aims to improve introductory undergraduate science courses at SJSU. “Remember, white men are still a majority in science,” Handelsman says. “So when we improve how we teach science, the white male students learn more, too.”

One of the hardest hit programs is the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP). About two-thirds of the more than 60 alliances in the program have lost their grants, and NSF plans to eliminate the division that funds them and fire the program’s managers. Named for a prominent Black congressman, LSAMP would seem to meet Trump’s definition of exclusionary.

Biologist Christopher Botanga of Chicago State University disagrees. He had three NSF LSAMP grants, now canceled, to run programs to attract undergraduates into science, technology, engineering, and math fields and prepare them to pursue advanced degrees. One grant, he says, supported an Illinois program that has operated for 3 decades and served 900 students. He says a sizable portion qualified because they are the first in their family to attend college.

For Visintainer, having her grant cut essentially erases the past 4 years of her scientific life. “All the blood, sweat, and tears that I poured into the project, it’s all lost,” she says. But she has no plans to stop. “There is no way that we shouldn’t be focused on making cities more livable,” she says, “or improving how we teach undergraduate science courses. I don’t exactly know what I’m going to do, but I’m not giving up.”

Sad situation for research in our country!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Trump administration revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students in its escalating battle with the Ivy League school, saying thousands of current students must transfer to other schools or leave the country.

The Department of Homeland Security announced the action yesterday, saying Harvard has created an unsafe campus environment by allowing “anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators” to assault Jewish students on campus. It also accused Harvard of coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party, saying it hosted and trained members of a Chinese paramilitary group as recently as 2024.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status,” the agency said in a statement.

Harvard enrolls almost 6,800 foreign students at its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, accounting for more than a quarter of its student body. Most are graduate students, coming from more than 100 countries.

Harvard called the action unlawful and said it’s working to provide guidance to students.

“This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country, and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission,” the university said in a statement.

The Trump administration’s clash with Harvard, the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, has intensified since it became the first to openly defy White House demands for changes at elite schools it has criticized as hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism. The federal government has cut $2.6 billion in federal grants to Harvard, forcing it to self-fund much of its sprawling research operation. President Donald Trump has said he wants to strip the university of its tax-exempt status.

The administration has demanded records of campus protests

The threat to Harvard’s international enrollment stems from an April 16 request from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who demanded that it provide information about foreign students that might implicate them in violence or protests that could lead to their deportation.

In a letter to Harvard on Thursday, Noem said the school’s sanction is “the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements.” It bars Harvard from hosting international students for the upcoming 2025-26 school year.

Noem said Harvard can regain its ability to host foreign students if it produces a trove of records on foreign students within 72 hours. Her updated request demands all records, including audio or video footage, of foreign students participating in protests or dangerous activity on campus.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem said in a statement.

The action revoked Harvard’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which gives the school the ability to sponsor international students to get their visas and attend school in the United States.

Harvard President Alan Garber earlier this month said the university has made changes to its governance over the past year and a half, including a broad strategy to combat antisemitism, but warned it would not budge on its “its core, legally-protected principles” over fears of retaliation. He said he wasn’t aware of evidence to support the administration’s allegation that its international students were “more prone to disruption, violence, or other misconduct than any other students.”

Students in Harvard College Democrats said the Trump administration is playing with students’ lives to push a radical agenda and to quiet dissent. “Trump’s attack on international students is text book authoritarianism — Harvard must continue to hold the line,” the group said in a statement.

The administration drew condemnation from free speech groups, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which said Noem is demanding a “surveillance state.”

“This sweeping fishing expedition reaches protected expression and must be flatly rejected,” the group said in a statement.

The revocation opens a new front in a closely watched battle

Many of Harvard’s punishments have come through a federal antisemitism task force that says the university failed to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence amid a nationwide wave of pro-Palestinian protests.

Homeland Security officials echoed those concerns in their Thursday announcement. It offered examples, including a recent internal report at Harvard, finding that many Jewish students reported facing discrimination or bias on campus.

It also tapped into concerns that congressional Republicans have raised about ties between U.S. universities and China. Homeland Security officials said Harvard provided training to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps as recently as 2024. As evidence, it provided a link to a Fox News article, which in turn cited a letter from House Republicans.

Asked for comment on the alleged coordination with the Chinese Communist Party, a Harvard spokesperson said the university will be responding to the House Republicans’ letter.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, called the latest action an “illegal, small-minded” overreach.

“I worry that this is sending a very chilling effect to international students looking to come to America for education,” he said.

The Trump administration has leveraged the system for tracking international students’ legal status as part of its broader attempts to crack down on higher education. What was once a largely administrative database has become a tool of enforcement, as immigration officials revoked students’ legal status directly in the system.

Those efforts were challenged in court, leading to restorations of status and a nationwide injunction blocking the administration from pursuing further terminations.

Harvard has to stay the course in its fight with Trump.

Tony 

Dear Commons Community,

Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in a campaign ad for his mayoral run, claims the feds are targeting Democrats with probes, including ones against him and state Attorney General Letitia James. As reported by the New York Daily News.

Mayoral front-runner Andrew Cuomo went on the offensive yesterday following news that he’s under criminal investigation by President Trump’s Department of Justice, rolling out a campaign ad blasting the probe as a nakedly political effort to disrupt his momentum in the race.

The 33-second spot kicks off with a narrator recounting how Trump’s administration has recently used federal law enforcement to target elected Democrats across the U.S. — including New York Attorney General Letitia James, a longtime political nemesis to Trump who’s facing a criminal DOJ probe, too.

“Now, they’re attacking Andrew Cuomo to interfere with New York City’s election. Why? Because Andrew Cuomo is the last person they want as mayor,” the ad narrator says as dramatic music plays in the background.

“If Donald Trump doesn’t want Andrew Cuomo as mayor, you do,” the narrator concludes.

A spokesman for Cuomo, who’s polling as the favorite to win next month’s Democratic mayoral primary, said the ad is now only airing on digital platforms, but added, “stay tuned,” when asked whether it’ll appear on television as well. The spokesman declined to say how much the campaign spent on the ad.

The ad comes just hours after news broke late Tuesday that Trump’s DOJ about a month ago launched a criminal investigation into allegations that Cuomo lied before Congress last year while testifying about his controversial decision, as governor in 2020, to force New York nursing homes to admit residents diagnosed with COVID-19. The policy is believed to have resulted in thousands of deaths.

The probe was launched in response to a criminal referral from House Republicans that former President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice previously declined to act on. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.

Democrats and Republicans alike, though, have for years lambasted Cuomo for the 2020 nursing home policy. That, along with sexual misconduct accusations against him from more than 10 women, formed the basis for the impeachment inquiry the state Legislature launched into Cuomo in 2021 before he resigned as governor.

Cuomo drew particular ire for his administration’s undercount of the number of nursing home COVID deaths in New York, with House Democrats releasing a report late last year concluding he inappropriately “interfered” with the tally and arguing he “should be held accountable.”

Though the nursing home matter is a fraught issue for him, Cuomo’s new ad indicates he will try to use the Trump DOJ probe as a badge of honor as he continues to poll as the favorite to become the next mayor of New York City, where Trump remains deeply unpopular.

AG James, whose investigative report on Cuomo’s alleged sexual harassment contributed to his political downfall in 2021, found it curious the ex-gov included her in his new ad, but noted the spot only referred to her by title, not by name.

“Say my name, say my name. It’s Letitia James, and my candidate is Adrienne Adams,” James told the Daily News in a statement, referring to the Council speaker’s mayoral run, which she has endorsed. The speaker declined to comment.

One of Cuomo’s other mayoral primary opponents, Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, who has for weeks accused Cuomo of not pushing back enough on some of Trump’s most controversial policies, argued the DOJ probe explains the ex-gov’s silence.

“Now, New Yorkers know why: Cuomo was attempting to keep his failed legacy of nursing home deaths and COVID mismanagement off the front pages,” Myrie said. “We deserve better than crooked, corrupt Cuomo who has spent decades in office ignoring the law to serve himself. We cannot trade one compromised mayor for another.”

In response to Myrie’s broadside, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said the governor’s team didn’t know anything about a DOJ probe until The New York Times first reported about it late Tuesday. “Myrie once again has shown he talks without thinking,” Azzopardi said.

Myrie’s “one comprised mayor for another” comment was referring to Mayor Adams, who was charged by the DOJ in a sweeping federal corruption indictment while Biden was still in office.

Once Trump came into office, his political appointees — without opining on the merits of the case — secured a controversial dismissal of Adams’ indictment because they said they needed it quashed so he could play a larger role in helping the president’s “mass deportation” agenda.

Adams, who has since the dismissal faced accusations he’s beholden to Trump’s agenda, stayed clear of taking a shot at Cuomo following news of the DOJ investigation.

“Investigations must take their course, and I’m not going to do to him what others did to me,” Adams, who has denied a quid pro quo with Trump, told reporters after an unrelated press conference in Manhattan on Wednesday morning. “I’m going to allow the investigation to take its course.”

Adams is no longer running in the Democratic mayoral primary, having dropped out of it amid fallout from his indictment dismissal. But he is seeking reelection as an independent candidate in November’s general election, meaning he could face off against Cuomo in that contest if he wins the Democratic primary.

Ex-city Comptroller Scott Stringer, another candidate in June’s mayoral primary, said both Cuomo and Adams should be considered compromised by Trump at this point.

“For the people in New York City, here we go again: A president with a thumb on the next mayor,” he said at a mayoral candidate forum Wednesday, “and that’s just the political reality of what this city is facing.”

In my opinion, Trump going after Cuomo will guarantee Cuomo a victory in the Democratic primary in June and the mayoral election in November.  New York City voters hated Trump even before he became president and are smart enough to see through Trump’s DOJ probe.

Tony