Adams Uses Agency ‘Tracker’ to Control Messaging on Trump

On the day after President Trump’s inauguration, Mayor Eric Adams’s deputy mayor for communications assembled officials from across city government to let them know that change was coming.

The deputy mayor, Fabien Levy, instructed agencies to highlight their work in a positive way, but signaled that they should not criticize Mr. Trump’s policies, according to three people who participated in the meeting in January.

Since then, Mr. Adams and city agencies have been unusually quiet on the flurry of Trump administration actions that have raised concern among many New Yorkers.

Mr. Levy created a “federal response tracker,” a spreadsheet to log statements and social media requests from agencies so that he and the mayor’s office could vet each request, according to two people familiar with the tracker. The spreadsheet has columns listing the agency, the federal issue in question, proposed language and whether it has been approved.

The mayor’s office has avoided making public statements about “Know Your Rights” guidance on how immigrants should respond to federal immigration officials and gender-affirming health care for transgender people, according to one of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

The tracker is consistent with Mr. Adams’s stance since Mr. Trump took office. The mayor said in January that he would not publicly criticize the president and told top aides in February to also refrain from doing so over fear that such criticism could provoke Mr. Trump to withhold federal funding for the city’s priorities.