Brian Lair on WNYC, now as usual on Wednesdays, our lead Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim,

after the mayor's Tuesday news conferences.

Now, Liz joins us to cover what happened at the mayor's weekly press

conference, and this week was quite eventful. We're going to include a clip of Governor Hokel in

this, too. You'll hear why. But did you hear that Mayor Adams stopped reading the news?

He said it at the news conference yesterday. I saw it. For the past month, he revealed he's relied solely on press briefings.

Maybe this means you might be more informed on current events than the mayor of the city of New York. We'll get to that.

Also, Adams' response to the arrest and detention of Columbia University, recent grad school graduate, Mahmu Khalil, and new developments in the

corruption case and alleged quid pro quo with Trump suspending the case, there seems to be new

evidence of a political motive possibly for at least part of why the case may have been brought,

but not in the way Adams has been claiming,

we'll explain. Hey, Liz, happy Wednesday, never a dull moment these days, right?

That's right, Brian. Happy Wednesday. Let's start with the detention of Mahmoud Khalil. The 29-year-old

Palestinian was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs En enforcement Saturday, ICE, for his role in organizing campus protests, calling on Colombia to divest from Israel because of the war in Gaza.

He is a green cardholder, legal permanent resident. He was entering his building with his eight-month pregnant U.S. citizen wife when ICE agents

detained him and put him in an immigrant detention facility first in New Jersey and then in Louisiana

to the shock of his wife who was going to visit him in Jersey.

According to the website Zateo, Khalil wrote to university administrators just a day before his arrest, saying,

I haven't been able to sleep, fearing that ICE or a dangerous individual might come to my home.

I urge you to intervene and provide the necessary protections to prevent further harm.

So, Liz, before I play a clip of the mayor from yesterday's news conference, can you talk about

the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil in the context of the mayoral campaign?

...