Episode Details

New York Times Close Up tackles two of New York’s most charged debates: protest, belonging and deportation in the Gaza era, and the fight over AI in America’s largest school system. Times Metro reporter Jeffery C. Mays sits in for Sam Roberts to talk with Times reporter Ashley Southall about Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s public show of support for Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, the former Columbia protest leader now facing deportation under Trump’s immigration crackdown, and what their Ramadan dinner says about Islamophobia, Jewish–Muslim tensions, and power in a 2026 New York shaped by Gaza protests and ICE raids. Southall also updates the fragile promises of New York’s legal cannabis “equity” market through the story of Leeann Mata, Brooklyn’s first Black woman dispensary owner, and why bureaucracy, banking rules and lopsided contracts are still shutting out the people legalization was supposed to help. Then education reporter Troy Closson joins to break down how Mamdani and new schools chief Kamar Samuels will decide whether over one million NYC students get AI chatbots and “education revolution” tools in class, or whether the city hits pause amid parent backlash, L.A.’s AI scandal, and fears that Big Tech could turn classrooms into the next experiment.

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