I'm John Batson with Elizabeth Peek, my colleague, and Liz and I have lived in New York, Manhattan, a long time.

We've seen a lot of storms come and go. The 70s, the 80s, they're big storms. We have a mayor who's not seen much of that. And apparently a mayor who's not read backstories about how you handle the snow in New York City. First, you get people off the street when it's going to be zero degrees. and then you make sure you clean the queens.

You got a clean queens, Liz. Otherwise, you wind up with a really tough road ahead

in the mayor's office. Mom Dani is not evidencing that he's commonsensical. You've written a column

pointing out that he chose

not to have the homeless removed from sleeping outdoors because he wants affordable housing.

I don't put those things together, but are we looking at a rookie mistake here?

I think we are. You know, it's all, really, Mamdani came in, eager to get rid of everything

Eric Adams had done. Eric Adams wasn't a perfect mayor, but I do believe he was trying to make the city

better. And Mamdani has scrapped. One of the many things he scrapped was the sweeps of homeless encampments.

And tragically, he basically made that change before we had this plunge to single-digit

temperatures. And indeed, three people were found dead Saturday morning, homeless people.

So did they all die of hypothermia?

I have no idea.

But we don't know yet the circumstances.

I'm quite sure, forgive me saying this, that whatever, if there is blame to be attached here,

we're not going to hear much about it.

But these are stupid, yes, rookie mistakes.

Frankly, another less tragic, but equally dumbheaded decision was to have kids go to school

and not cancel school.

Everybody wants a snow day, including teachers.

And the kids who would have been out sledding were stuck at home trying to do online learning.

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