Rosalind Adams

great story by @rosalindadams.bsky.social — well worth your time to read

The ‘Godmother’ of Weed vs. Her Uncle, the DEA Agent Cannabis officials courted a rising pot star to join New York’s legal market. Then a stunning police raid upended everything and shattered her family.

She grew award-winning strains and was poised for a legal cannabis license. Instead, a massive police and FDNY raid — triggered by her vindictive ex-DEA uncle — left “the Godmother” facing felony charges. @rosalindadams.bsky.social deep dive into the family saga.
www.thecity.nyc/2025/11/20/g...

The ‘Godmother’ of Weed vs. Her Uncle, the DEA Agent Cannabis officials courted a rising pot star to join New York’s legal market. Then a stunning police raid upended everything and shattered her family.

This Brooklyn woman got caught in New York's extremely messy legal cannabis industry launch and saw her family wrecked because of it. A wild read from @rosalindadams.bsky.social.

The ‘Godmother’ of Weed vs. Her Uncle, the DEA Agent Cannabis officials courted a rising pot star to join New York’s legal market. Then a stunning police raid upended everything and shattered her family.

Who doesn’t love some good old-fashioned family drama?

Well, here’s some for ya — and it’s good stuff, as they say in the trade. From @rosalindadams.bsky.social in @thecity.nyc www.thecity.nyc/2025/11/20/g...

NYSNA has now announced it is endorsing Zohran Mamdani for mayor, right on the heels of 32BJ and HTC. That's three major unions now lining up behind that had not backed Mamdani in the primary (NYSNA did not endorse, and 32BJ/HTC backed Cuomo)

New: 32 BJ, the powerful union that endorsed Cuomo for mayor, is now out on record backing Zohran Mamdani in November's election.

I'm being told HTC is expected to follow suit, too.

We first reported yesterday this was likely: www.nydailynews.com/2025/06/26/m...

Reign in Cuomo’s Aggressive, Taxpayer-Funded Legal Tactics, Advocates Demand Women subpoenaed by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo called on lawmakers to curb his litigation spending and push for greater protections for whistleblowers.

Charlotte Bennett, an ex-Cuomo aide who prev sued the gov, advocated for legislation to protect ppl from retaliatory defamation suits calling them “financially devastating, emotionally traumatizing.”

(Cuomo’s filed 2 notices of defamation claims against her)

www.thecity.nyc/2025/06/26/c...

Cuomo Accusers Celebrate ‘Poetic Justice’ of His Primary Defeat Women who reported harassment express relief, after getting ensnared in the former governor’s costly legal gauntlet.

“There are no more wars for him to fight. It’s over. The book is closed on the Cuomo dynasty.” — Karen Hinton told @rosalindadams.bsky.social
www.thecity.nyc/2025/06/25/c...

Thanks for reading, Tom!

Cuomo’s attacked James fiercely the past 4 yrs as part of his defense in his sexual harassment suits. He’s called the AG office report biased and filed an ethics complaint. Zohran’s win is no doubt personal for James, too www.thecity.nyc/2025/06/02/c...

Here's a longer video of Brad Lander's detention just now inside 26 Federal Plaza as he tried to walk a man out of immigration court, by masked federal agents.

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The Terrible Truth About Sherita, Brooklyn’s Beloved Billboard Dinosaur The vanished icon of Atlantic Ave. was the relic of a secretive family who grabbed buildings from immigrant owners across the booming borough.

the ugly, no good, horrible truth behind brooklyn's queer icon sherita: www.thecity.nyc/2025/05/19/s...

Creators, porn stars turn to AI doppelgangers to keep fans entertained The latest wave of AI is being built to emulate specific people, adopting their faces and speech patterns to advertise uncanny simulations the promoters say are always available and can never die.

I talked to a researcher who studies social isolation about this in 2023. Friendships, unlike AI, aren't built on "instant gratification": What happens when people "try to create real intimacy with a real person ... who can’t be manipulated in the same way?” www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Following THE CITY’s Trail, Campaign Board Escalates Eric Adams Fraud Probe Undeterred by the Trump administration’s derailing of the mayor’s criminal case, the NYC Campaign Finance Board again denies him reelection matching funds. It’s also examining events where our investi...

truly remarkable how much of our reporting is now showing up in this probe. so proud of my colleagues!

the CFB "has asked Adams’ election lawyer for voluminous records about a host of fundraising activities connected to 11 individuals, eight of whom were first exposed by THE CITY"

Woman from Haiti dies while in ICE custody at detention facility in Broward She’d been at the facility for 20 days and in ICE custody for two months, 13 days.

Woman from Haiti died in ICE custody at a for-profit immigration detention center owner by GEO Group 👇

Eric Adams plans to run on an ‘EndAntiSemitism’ ballot line The pick, first reported by POLITICO, is a challenge to mayoral frontrunner Andrew Cuomo, who is running on his opposition to antisemitism.

Mayor Eric Adams is petitioning to run on an “EndAntiSemitism” ballot line — a choice that highlights one of his few remaining areas of unbridled political support, and attempts to undermine Andrew Cuomo.
www.politico.com/news/2025/04...

Cuomo’s Campaign Strategy: Limit Appearances and Avoid Confrontation (Gift Article) Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is embracing a so-called Rose Garden strategy in his tightly controlled campaign for mayor of New York City.

Protesters stormed the stage as former governor Andrew Cuomo spoke at the Black Agenda forum in Brooklyn tonight. It might be one reason why he’s running a Rose Garden strategy: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/n...

Miriam Jordan By Miriam Jordan Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent. April 22, 2025, 5:04 a.m. ET In late January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan immigrant working in a delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonald’s. He was heading to the address when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful. The U.S. authorities took Mr. Prada into custody when he attempted to re-enter the country; he was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela. That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world. But Mr. Prada has not been heard from or seen. He is not on the list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads.

NEW from @nytimes.com: A bone-chilling account. A Venezuelan man detained alongside the 238 sent to El Salvador on March 15 seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. His name isn't among the names of those sent to CECOT that day and no one spotted him among those men. He's just... gone.

Harvard University is suing the Trump administration.

Here is the school’s complaint, which was just filed in federal court in Massachusetts:

Anxiety Is Side Effect of Staffing Cuts at Sept. 11 Health Program Mayor Eric Adams has been slow to criticize the moves of the Trump administration, which have 9/11 survivors and first-responders on edge.

“It’s total chaos,” he said, with clients calling up unsure of how to access the program’s services. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.” Barasch told @katiehonan.bsky.social that one man called asking, “Will the government keep paying for my chemo?”
www.thecity.nyc/2025/04/21/9...

Photo of a yellow diamond -shaped road sign on the side of a freeway that says "SOFT SHOULDER"

finally, a place to cry

DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants DOGE is knitting together data from the Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration, and IRS that could create a surveillance tool of unprecedented scope.

🚨SCOOP🚨: DOGE is building a master database at DHS that could track and surveil immigrants.

They are already cross-referencing immigration data with data from SSA, IRS, and voting records from at least Pennsylvania and Florida, sources tell me.
www.wired.com/story/doge-c...

BREAKING: SCOTUS orders the government not to remove from the country, for the time being, any of the individuals slated for possible deportation to El Salvador. The vote is apparently 7-2, with Justices Thomas and Alito in dissent

How Universities Became So Dependent on the Federal Government (Gift Article) For decades, universities got billions in federal dollars for research. The relationship was mutually beneficial, until President Trump decided it wasn’t.

This is a concise overview of how American research universities became so heavily reliant on federal government funding and how that relationship has been mutually beneficial.

A great book on this subject focused on Oceanography is @naomioreskes.bsky.social's Science on a Mission.

🔊 Listen Now: A whistleblower's disclosure details how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data All Things Considered on NPR One | 7:13

Happy Friday everyone. Thanks for reading NPR.org this week.

Wanted to take a second to also remind you: I interviewed whistleblower Dan Berulis to accompany my lengthy written story on NLRB. Hear from him in his own words:

one.npr.org/i/nx-s1-5355...

i read the first part of this hed and thought it was gonna be a story about kilmar/ el salvador and then

A graphic showing that 50.6% of research projects with "LGBT" search terms have been cancelled. 45.8% of grants with "transgender" in the search terms have been cancelled. 45.5% of research grants with "vaccine hesitancy" have been cancelled. 3.4% grants with "HIV" or "AIDS" have been cancelled.

The US National Institutes of Health has terminated nearly 800 research projects at a breakneck pace, wiping out significant chunks of funding to entire scientific fields

Read the full story: https://go.nature.com/3EuFRPV

A beeswarm chart of canceled NIH grants showing the years into each project when the funding was pulled. Each dot represents a terminated grant and is colored by the number of publications associated with the project: none, one to four or five or more. The grants are separated into thee rows based on the award type (R01, U01, U54). RO1 research projects had the most terminations, which occurred at all stages of research, from the project onset to 7+ years in. Most grants were canceled short of the 4-5 year lifespan of a typical grant, and 40% of R01s had no publications at the time of termination. Projects that had been active for longer had more publications, suggesting that more findings are disseminated in the later stages of these grants.

In terminating hundreds of NIH grants, the Trump administration dumped years of investment down the drain. In my latest @opinion.bloomberg.com column, we analyzed the cancelled projects & talked to scientists to understand just how much the public loses out. It's a lot: tinyurl.com/bdey86su

finally, some humanity