A general view shows the skyline of Philadelphia at sunset from South Street Bridge on Schuylkill river. (Nicolò Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)
(PHILADELPHIA) — More than 26 years after a man was gunned down outside his Philadelphia home in what police described as a mob-style killing, a suspect was arrested this week, a block from the crime scene, authorities said.
Federal prosecutors announced on Tuesday the arrest of 60-year-old Richard Leidy in the 1999 ambush that left Guerino “Gino” Marconi dead and his 31-year-old girlfriend, Patricia Miley, wounded.
According to documents filed in Philadelphia federal court, Leidy is charged with murder, attempted murder and possession of a prohibited firearm. Leidy is also charged with simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, possession of an instrument of crime with intent and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
Leidy was arrested on Monday at his home in South Philadelphia, which is about a block from where the fatal shooting of Marconi unfolded on South 20th Street in South Philadelphia, authorities said. It was unclear if Leidy was living at the same residence when Marconi was killed.
Leidy was arraigned on the charges on Tuesday, but did not enter a plea, according to court records. A preliminary hearing in the case has been scheduled for Sept. 15, which, according to court documents, will be Leidy’s 61st birthday.
Details of what led investigators to arrest Leidy in the cold-case killing were not immediately disclosed.
Leidy is being held in federal custody without bail.
At the time of the killing, 42-year-old Marconi was described in media reports as a low-level associate of Joseph Salvatore “Skinny Joey” Merlino, then reputed boss of the Philadelphia crime family.
On the night of April 10, 1999, Marconi and Miley were both shot by an assailant wielding a rifle, who confronted them outside Marconi’s home, the Philadelphia Police Department said at the time.
Marconi was shot once in the head and taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, the Philadelphia Daily News reported at the time. Marconi’s girlfriend, Miley, was shot three times in the attack and critically injured, but survived the shooting, the Daily News reported.
Before fleeing the scene, the gunman torched a van that was parked in front of Marconi’s home and set other vehicles on fire, according to police.
A motive for the shooting was not immediately disclosed.
Marconi, who grew up in South Philadelphia, owned an auto body shop in South Philly at the time of his death, the Daily News reported, citing property records.
The newspaper said Miley worked as a billing clerk for a Philadelphia law firm.
Sign for “Alligator Alcatraz” at the entrance to the detention center in the Everglades, Florida, United States, on August 24, 2025. (Jesus Olarte/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(OCHOPEE, Fla.) — The controversial immigration facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will soon have no detainees in it, according to an email obtained by ABC News.
The email was sent by Kevin Guthrie, the head of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, to the interfaith community.
“We are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days,” Guthrie wrote.
The detention center was the subject of lawsuits, one of which halted new detainees from being transported to the facility.
President Donald Trump and top Homeland Security brass visited the facility, which they have testified in court is expected to cost about $400 million.
The South Florida Interfaith Community wrote to the FDEM about allowing access to faith services at the facility in recent days.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently announced that his administration is opening a new immigration detention facility in the state dubbed “Deportation Depot.”
Co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., Jensen Huang attends the 9th edition of the VivaTech trade show at the Parc des Expositions de la Porte de Versailles on June 11, 2025, in Paris. (Chesnot/Getty Images, FILE)
(NEW YORK) — Chip giant Nvidia delivered more revenue than expected over a recent three-month period, the company said on Wednesday, defying concern among some prominent figures about a possible bubble in the artificial intelligence industry.
The California-based company recorded $46.7 billion in sales over three months ending in July, which exceeded analyst expectations of $46.2 billion. The jump in revenue marked 56% growth compared to the same quarter a year earlier.
The fresh data offered the latest window into the health of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, which in recent years has become a key engine for stock market gains and economic growth.
Nvidia, the $4 trillion company behind many of the chips fueling AI products, has expanded at a breakneck pace since an AI boom set off by the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022. The California-based company saw its stock price soar nearly 700% over the ensuing two years.
Alongside continued growth, the company is weathering new challenges. President Donald Trump barred the sale of chips to China earlier this year, before revoking the ban in July. A month later, Trump struck an agreement with Nvidia allowing the company to sell chips in China if the firm hands over 15% of revenue generated by the exports to the U.S.
Speaking at the White House earlier this month, the president recounted the agreement with Nvidia.
“I said, ‘If I’m going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I’m giving you a release,'” Trump said.
In May, the company said it expected to suffer an $8 billion loss as result of restrictions imposed upon chip exports. Earnings released on Wednesday said the company did not sell any H20 chips in China over the most recent quarter, but the firm did not mention any losses related to the policy.
In recent weeks, some prominent figures have warned of an AI bubble, casting doubt on the sustainability of the sector’s gangbusters growth. Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo, said last month that the AI bubble may exceed the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, suggesting that the top firms are overvalued.
In an interview earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also said the AI industry had become a bubble.
“Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes,” Altman told tech publication The Verge.
Still, the AI sector remains a bright spot for the U.S. economy. AI-related spending added a 0.5 percentage point boost to annualized gross domestic product growth over the first half of 2025, Pantheon Macroeconomics found.
Pope Leo XIV holds his weekly General Audience at the Paul VI Hall on August 20, 2025 in Vatican City, Vatican.Photo by Mario Tomassetti – Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images)
(VATICAN CITY) — Pope Leo XIV said on Wednesday he supports the statement put out by the last remaining churches in Gaza City, which called for an end to the war and said they will not evacuate amid Israel’s ramped-up military action and threats to destroy Gaza City.
“I return today to address a strong appeal to both the parties involved and to the international community to put an end to the conflict in the Holy Land that has caused so much terror, destruction and death,” the pope said in Italian on Wednesday at his weekly audience. “In particular, the obligation to protect civilians and the prohibitions on collective punishment, indiscriminate use of force and forced displacement of the population.”
The churches said Tuesday that the clergy and nuns have decided they will “remain and continue to care for all those who will be in the compounds,” the churches said in a joint statement to the Israel Defense Forces.
Hundreds of civilians — including women, children and elderly — have been seeking refuge in the Greek Orthodox compound of Saint Porphyrius and the Holy Family compound since the outbreak of the war and the Latin compound has been hosting people with disabilities who have been under the care of the Sisters Missionaries of Charity for many years, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said in a statement Tuesday.
“Like other residents of Gaza City, the refugees living in the facilities will have to decide according to their conscience what they will do. Among those who have sought shelter within the walls of the compounds, many are weakened and malnourished due to the hardships of the last months. Leaving Gaza City and trying to flee to the south would be nothing less than a death sentence. For this reason, the clergy and nuns have decided to remain and continue to care for all those who will be in the compounds,” the churches said.
The churches criticized Israel’s plans surrounding its decision to take control of Gaza City, saying, “There can be no future based on captivity, displacement of Palestinians or revenge.”
“We echo what Pope Leo XIV said a few days ago: ‘All peoples, even the smallest and weakest, must be respected by the powerful in their identity and rights, especially the right to live in their own lands; and no one can force them into exile,'” the churches said.
The churches called for an end to the war and the “spiral of violence.”
“There has been enough devastation, in the territories and in people’s lives. There is no reason to justify keeping civilians as prisoners and hostages in dramatic conditions. It is now time for the healing of the long-suffering families on all sides,” the churches said.
Israel began the first stages of its attack on Gaza City last week, calling up 50,000 to 60,000 reservists for the operation to occupy the city, according to IDF spokesman Eddie Defrin and an Israeli military official.
Mass protests against the military action on Gaza were seen across Israel on Tuesday, with protesters demanding the Israeli government get a ceasefire deal in Gaza that would secure the release of the remaining hostage held there.
Israel is also facing criticism for Monday’s attack on a hospital in Khan Younis that killed five journalists and 15 medical workers, according to their media organizations and the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
Netanyahu called the attack a “tragic mishap.”
The IDF released an initial report on Tuesday, which concludes that “six of the individuals killed were terrorists, one of whom took part in the infiltration into Israeli territory on October 7th.”
Palestinians, including children, who are struggling to access food due to Israel’s blockade and ongoing attacks on the Gaza Strip, wait in line to receive hot meals distributed by the charity organization in Gaza City, Gaza on July 30, 2025.(Photo by Abdalhkem Abu Riash/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said last week that famine was determined in parts of Gaza for the first time.
The IPC report projected that famine would expand in the region by the end of September and more than 100,000 children under age 5 were at risk of death from acute malnutrition through June 2026.
In a statement, the Israeli prime minister’s office called the IPC’s determination of famine “an outright lie” and “a modern blood libel.”
Humanitarian experts and doctors described the report as unsurprising — a situation they have warned about for months — but “appalling” nonetheless.
“The situation itself is appalling,” Scott Paul, director of peace and security for the non-governmental organization Oxfam America, told ABC News. “I think if anyone is surprised by this news, then they haven’t been paying attention to the repeated warnings of local communities, Palestinian organizations, international organizations and other states and humanitarian donors.”
Aid organizations have said the next steps after such a report are securing an immediate, and permanent, ceasefire and opening border crossings to allow unhindered access of humanitarian aid and medical supplies.
While some experts told ABC News it’s not too late to increase aid and ready-to-eat therapeutic food for cases of malnutrition, others are less optimistic that the report will result in meaningful change.
“What will be done will be nothing,” Dr. John Kahler, a pediatrician and co-founder of MedGlobal, who has been on multiple medical missions to Gaza, told ABC News. “There’s plenty of money and plenty of resources available. It’s 100% access. And so, this [famine determination] won’t do a thing to move that needle.”
He added, “I’m in a difficult position with organizations at large, because they think the production of yet another document has some dramatic meaning. We knew this.”
To determine if a famine is happening, three thresholds have to be met: 20% of households must be facing an extreme food shortage, 30% of children must be acutely malnourished and either two adults or four children must be dying every day per 10,000 people, according to the IPC.
A termination is separate from a declaration. The IPC itself doesn’t issue official declarations of famine, but its findings can inform governments and bodies such as the U.N. to make a famine declaration.
Humanitarian experts have said there is no legal mechanism that a government body or the U.N. would have to go through to formally declare a famine.
“Governments or international organizations might have their own sort of processes internally to go into famine mode, but I don’t think that anyone should be holding their breath for a piece of paper that says ‘famine declaration’ on the top, because that likely won’t come,” Paul, of Oxfam America, said.
He noted that the U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator already addressed the famine determination during a press conference with reporters on Friday and acknowledged it in the wake of the IPC classification.
“This isn’t the penultimate step. This is it. We have arrived at famine,” Paul said.
Kahler agreed, adding that the IPC report should not be taken as a warning — rather that the warning should have occurred months ago with previous reports.
“The health system’s collapsed, the educational system’s collapsed, the public health system’s collapsed,” he said. “I’m not sure what else to warn people about.”
Paul said normally what would follow would be an immediate “all hands-on deck” effort from the U.S. government and others to influence the Israeli government to secure a ceasefire and increase the flow of aid, which he said should have been done with prior warnings of emergency levels of food insecurity famine warnings.
Since May, the U.S. has participated in providing aid to Gaza through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which set up designated aid distribution sites rather than delivering aid throughout the strip. Palestinians and aid organizations reported incidents of people being shot at while trying to retrieve aid as well as general chaos at the sites, which continues to be an ongoing issue.
The Israel Defense Forces has previously said it only fires “warning shots” toward people who are allegedly “advancing while posing a threat to the troops.” The Israeli government has also previously claimed that Hamas shoots people waiting in food lines and films the events for propaganda videos. Hamas has denied these claims.
Israeli officials have argued there are hundreds of truckloads of aid sitting at the border for the U.N. and its partners to distribute. The U.N., however, said it can’t deliver the aid safely.
“One of the things that is not well understood is how complex it is for the United Nations to do our work here in the Gaza Strip,” Tess Ingram, a spokesperson for UNICEF who is currently in Gaza, told ABC News. “I think what is not well understood is the challenges that we face on a daily basis that impede our work. It’s like a game of ‘Snakes and Ladders.’ We take one step forward and then we have to take two steps backwards because there are constantly hurdles in front of us that we have to overcome, and many of these hurdles do not need to be there.”
These threats include poor road conditions, lack of route alternatives, poor telecommunications, large crowds of desperate people and unpredictable supply lines, according to the U.N.
Paul noted that a prior IPC report, issued at the end of July, found that a “worst-case scenario of famine” was unfolding in Gaza.
“It was less than a few weeks ago that the same technical body on hunger issued a very clear warning [on] famine, which is about as close as they can come to an official confirmation without doing it,” he said. “The situation will get worse, and famine will continue to spread as long as all routes for humanitarian assistance … is not immediately opened up.”
Co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., Jensen Huang attends the 9th edition of the VivaTech trade show at the Parc des Expositions de la Porte de Versailles on June 11, 2025, in Paris. (Chesnot/Getty Images, FILE)
(NEW YORK) — An earnings report to be released by chip giant Nvidia on Wednesday will offer a window into the health of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, which in recent years has become a key engine for stock market gains and economic growth.
Nvidia, the $4 trillion company behind many of the chips fueling AI products, has expanded at a breakneck pace since an AI boom set off by the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022. The California-based company saw its stock price soar nearly 700% over the ensuing two years.
Analysts expect Nvidia to record $46.2 billion in revenue over three months ending in June, which would amount to a 53% jump compared to a year earlier. That would mark robust growth but it would come in well below a 122% spike in revenue enjoyed in the same quarter a year ago.
Alongside continued growth, the company is weathering new challenges. President Donald Trump barred the sale of chips to China earlier this year, before revoking the ban in July. A month later, Trump struck an agreement with Nvidia allowing the company to sell chips in China if the firm hands over 15% of revenue generated by the exports to the U.S.
Speaking at the White House earlier this month, the president recounted the agreement with Nvidia.
“I said, ‘If I’m going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I’m giving you a release,'” Trump said.
In May, the company said it expected to suffer an $8 billion loss as result of restrictions imposed upon chip exports.
In recent weeks, some prominent figures have warned of an AI bubble, casting doubt on the sustainability of the sector’s gangbusters growth. Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo, said last month that the AI bubble may exceed the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, suggesting that the top firms are overvalued.
In an interview earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also said the AI industry had become a bubble.
“Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes,” Altman told tech publication The Verge.
Still, the AI sector remains a bright spot for the U.S. economy. AI-related spending added a 0.5 percentage point boost to annualized gross domestic product growth over the first half of 2025, Pantheon Macroeconomics found.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is once again vowing to protect Social Security if congressional Republicans seek another reconciliation bill.
Asked earlier this week what he would prioritize should Republicans in Congress seek a reconciliation bill, a cost-cutting tactic that would bypass the usual Senate filibuster, Trump said he would focus efforts on cutting unnecessary things, and “save” others, such as Social Security.
“One thing I said and I gave my word — we’re not going to hurt anybody on Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security,” Trump said Monday in the Oval Office. Congress is prohibited from touching Social Security’s benefit structure or revenue mechanisms in a reconciliation bill.
Trump went on to say “we’re doing great on Social Security” and that “we’re going to protect it.”
Protecting Social Security is a common refrain for Trump, who promised to protect the federal program on the campaign trail and has reiterated that message through his second term as president — even as his administration has sought cuts for other federal programs and agencies.
Trump has touted “no tax” on Social Security with the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act last month. While the bill doesn’t end Social Security taxes, it will provide many older Americans who qualify for the program with a tax break, according to a Politifact report.
Trump’s megabill gives an additional tax deduction of up to $6,000 for Americans 65 and older. The tax deduction is temporary and is in effect until 2028.
While the move that could mean more income for seniors, some critics say it will have little effect on the social insurance.
Laurence Kotlikof, a professor of economics at Boston University, said changes to the tax deductibles “make it look like Trump had made good on his promise, but there’s no connection of this at all to the taxation of Social Security benefits.” Kotlikof explained that if a person is low income and their tax rate is low to begin with, they will not get much of a tax break from the deductible.
Democrats have criticized the GOP-passed megabill as benefiting the rich while hurting low-income people.
The Trump administration celebrated the program’s 90th anniversary earlier this month with the Social Security Administration’s leader saying he is looking for ways to help the program evolve to help future generations, too.
Frank Bisignano, the administrator of the Social Security Administration, earlier this month shared plans to help Social Security become a “digital-first agency.” Bisignano said the administration had a “bold goal” for 200 million Americans to have a digital SSA account by the end of next year — making the program predominantly digital.
While Trump has expressed confidence in the future of the program, projections state that the program’s trust fund will run out in less than a decade.
The Social Security trust fund, which pays retirement and survivor benefits, is set to run out in 2033, resulting in a 23% reduction in payable benefits at that time, according to the 2025 Trustees Report — a Social Security Administration report that describes the projected fiscal outlook for both Medicaid and Social Security programs and their trust funds. The OASI trust fund will be able to pay 100% of total benefits until 2033. At that time, the reserves will be depleted and will be sufficient to only pay 77% of total benefits, according to the 2025 Trustee Report.
The combined trust funds that Social Security uses to pay retirees, survivors and those with disabilities are set to run out by 2034 — a year earlier than what was last projected in the 2024 report, according to the Trustees Report. Once the combined funds are depleted, the funds would only be able to pay 81% of benefits, according to the report.
The OASI trust fund that is projected to run out in 2033 was valued at $2.538 trillion at the end of 2024, according to the 2025 OASDI Trustees Report. The combined trust funds that fund social security are worth in total $2.7 trillion as of the end of 2024, according to trust fund data on the Social Security Administration website.
In a written statement to ABC News, the Social Security Administration touted the “historic” tax relief to seniors due to the passing of the Trump’s megabill and maintained that it will continue to work with Congress to “protect and strengthen” the program.
(RIVERSIDE COUNTY, Calif.) — Officials in California said they have a “pretty strong indication” on the location of the remains of Emmanuel Haro, the 7-month-old child who has been missing for nearly two weeks.
Emmanuel was reported missing on Aug. 14 at approximately 7:47 p.m. local time after his mother “reported being attacked outside a retail store on Yucaipa Boulevard,” the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Aug. 15.
“This was preventable in numerous ways,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said in a press conference on Wednesday.
In the press conference, authorities confirmed the search for Emmanuel continues. They believe the child was “severely abused over a period of time” and that both parents “would have been aware of that abuse,” according to Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin.
“The filing in this case reflects our belief that baby Emmanuel was abused over time and that eventually because of that abuse, he succumbed to those injuries,” Hestrin said.
The child’s parents, 32-year-old Jake Mitchell Haro and 41-year-old Rebecca Renee Haro, were arrested at their residence in Cabazon for the murder of the baby, officials said last week. The two have been charged with murder and making a false police report, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office said on Tuesday.
Officials on Wednesday said that the child’s father — whom they described as an “experienced child abuser” — “should have gone to prison” due to previously abusing another child he had with his ex-wife back in 2018, but a judge at the time granted him probation, a ruling the Hestrin called an “outrageous error in judgement.” Authorities said that the child in that case has been left bed-ridden.
“If that judge had done his job as he should have done, Emmanuel would be alive today,” Hestrin said.
The parents appeared in court on Tuesday for less than five minutes, with a $1 million bail set for both. Their arraignment will continue on Sept. 4.
Prior to the press conference, officials said the child is presumed dead and they had been searching for his remains.
On Sunday, officials conducted another search for the 7-month-old “along the westbound shoulder of the 60 Freeway, near Gilman Springs Road, in Moreno Valley,” with the father of the child and cadaver dogs accompanying detectives. That search concluded after “Emmanuel was not located,” authorities said.
Back when Emmanuel was originally reported missing, his mother told officials that “while she stood outside her vehicle, changing the child’s diaper, she was physically assaulted by an unknown male and rendered unconscious,” authorities said.
When she woke up, the child was gone, the mother said at the time, according to officials.
Once on the scene, scent-tracking dogs were deployed, but the 7-month-old “was not located,” officials said.
The sheriff’s department interviewed “multiple individuals” regarding the disappearance, including the child’s parents.
Since then, officials noted that they have conducted “extensive” searches in the areas of Yucaipa and Cabazon and have also served “several search warrants at the Haro home.” Authorities also previously said they were reviewing a “large amount of surveillance video” from the areas of interest.
In an interview with Los Angeles ABC station KABC prior to her arrest, Rebecca Haro described her son as a “happy boy” and begged whoever has her son to “give him back to me.”
“Please don’t hurt my son,” she told KABC on Aug. 16.
The father, Jake Haro, previously pleaded guilty to willful cruelty to a child following a 2018 arrest, KABC reported.
“Whoever took our son, please bring him back,” Jake Haro told KABC on Aug. 16.
Rebecca Haro is currently held at the Robert Presley Detention Center, while Jake Haro is being held at the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility, according to jail records.
(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved updated COVID-19 vaccines for some Americans.
The vaccines were approved for use in adults aged 65 and older and for those between ages 5 and 64 with at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe COVID.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams is saying he’s sorry for the controversy that has surrounded his administration over the past year amid allegations of corruption against the mayor and his associates.
Adams’ tenure has been marked by some measurable achievements that he continues to tout, including a post-COVID recovery and declining crime rates; however, he’s had to deal with the fallout of a federal investigation into him and several separate probes surrounding his top officials over the years.
While the mayor has continued to maintain his innocence after the corruption case against him was dismissed, Adams told ABC News Tuesday that he understands the controversy that has defined his last year in office has been a distraction for New Yorkers.
“To those New Yorkers who have to pick up their paper and read this headline, all I can say is I’m sorry, and I’m committed to this city,” Adams said.
Adams was indicted last September on five counts in an alleged long-standing conspiracy connected to what prosecutors said were improper benefits, illegal campaign contributions and an attempted cover-up.
The charges against the mayor — including counts of wire fraud, conspiracy, bribery and solicitation of a contribution from a foreign entity — were dropped against him in April by the U.S. Justice Department in what his critics claim was a quid pro quo with the Trump administration.
Adams and the Justice Department denied there was a quid pro quo involved in the dropping of the charges.
At least ten of his aides, associates, and appointees have been charged with crimes, and a string of top officials – including four deputy mayors, his school’s chancellor, and police commissioner – resigned ahead of Adams’ indictment last year.
Last week, his former chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin was indicted for allegedly profiting from her position in government. She has pleaded not guilty.
Adams, meanwhile, has sought to distance himself from the criminal cases that continue to follow some of his allies and aides.
“You know, we made mistakes. There are people that we brought in government that was probably not ready to go into government, but we must forge ahead,” Adams told ABC News when asked about the scandals involving his inner circle.
The latest controversy to hit the Adams administration came last week when Winnie Greco, a former aide and campaign volunteer, allegedly handed a reporter a bag of potato chips stuffed with cash. Greco resigned from her position in the Adams administration last year after the FBI searched her home.
She has not been charged and the FBI has not commented on the search at her home. Greco and her attorney said the incident with the chip bag was a misunderstanding.
When asked about the incident, Adams said Greco’s actions were “wrong.”
“I don’t know what happened there. It is not something that I believe one should do. It gives a false image. It’s the wrong thing that should be done,” Adams said, adding that Greco is no longer working as a campaign volunteer.
While legal issues continue to follow some of his aides, the criminal case against Adams himself was dismissed earlier this year following orders from top Department of Justice officials.
The decision to dismiss the case was made without considering the strength of the case against Adams, but rather because the charges ” unduly restricted Mayor Adams’ ability to devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime,” the Justice Department argued.
Adams dismissed concerns that if re-elected, he would be more beholden to the Trump administration because it didn’t pursue the indictment.
“The case was dropped with prejudice. That means to New York, to New Yorkers, that it won’t come back again,” Adams said, referencing how prosecutors are barred from bringing the same case against him if the Trump administration changes its position.
Adams continued to argue that the case against him was politically motivated.
“I didn’t spend all my life in law enforcement to break the law. I’ve never broke the law. I never did anything to violate the trust of the people of the city,” he said.
The mayor faces strong competition in the November election.
Progressive upstart Zohran Mamdani handily won the Democratic mayoral primary, and the 33-year-old Democratic socialist maintains his lead over both Adams and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as a third-party candidate, in early polling.
Adams, who is running as an independent candidate, said he believes he remains a Democrat and said he offers a version of politics that appeals to a broader swath of voters than Mamdani.
“I’m a pragmatic moderate Democrat that believes in family, public safety, employment, pro-business, those things that make cities healthy,” Adams said.
