How to watch NYC public advocate debate on PIX11

NEW YORK (PIX11) — Democratic candidates looking to become New York City's next public advocate will face off in a debate on PIX11 on Thursday night.
Participating candidates include incumbent Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who is running for a second term, and Assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar, who made history as the first South Asian-American woman to be elected to a New York state office.
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The public advocate is responsible for introducing and co-sponsoring bills in the City Council. They also provide oversight for city agencies and investigate citizens' complaints about city services.
In the event of a vacancy or incapacity of the mayor, the public advocate is first in line to become mayor.
The debate starts at 7 p.m. EST on Thursday, June 5.
The debate will air live on PIX11, PIX11.com, and the PIX11+ smartTV app starting at 7 p.m.
The debate will stream live on PIX11.com and the PIX11+ app on Roku, Amazon FireTV, Apple TV, and Samsung Smart TVs. For more information on the PIX11+ app, click here.
Ben Mitchell is a digital content producer from Vermont who has covered both local and international news since 2021. He joined PIX11 in 2024. See more of his work here.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Chicago Tribune

21 minutes ago

• Chicago Tribune

Mohammad Hosseini: Civilians like my family are caught in the crossfire between Iran and Israel

Ordinary people are in total shock and stress in Iran. The capital city Tehran, a megacity with more than 10 million inhabitants — and 17 million in the metropolitan area — has thousands of hospitals and other civilian facilities that can't be evacuated immediately. Many people, including my parents, have responsibilities that prevent them from leaving Tehran. Then there are many who have no other place to go. Those who have left Tehran are stuck on roads for hours on their way to nearby cities that are being inundated with the influx, and they face a shortage of food, fuel and other essential resources. In short, we are dealing with a nightmare in which even the official media that communicates emergency warnings and supports civilians has been a target. I was born in Iran at a time when the armed forces were fighting an Iraqi invasion, a war that lasted from 1980 to 1988. My only recollection of that horrible event is the sound of sirens. At school, our books told us that America and Israel are enemies: 'The Americans exploited us until 1979, and now that we are finally free of their tyranny and have finally pushed the Iraqis out, we should contain the American military offshoot, Israel, to fully push colonial interests out of our region.' This and other messaging that was much more radical — involving weekly chants of 'Death to America' and 'Death to Israel' during Friday prayers — were promoted by the state media. Nevertheless, the ordinary people of Iran have not acted on these sentiments and, based on anecdotes from visitors to Iran, are very welcoming toward Americans. Perhaps the biggest fear in Iran and Israel has been the prospect of a direct confrontation. On both sides, people have tried to moderate harsh rhetoric or encourage their political establishment to find peaceful solutions such as the 2015 nuclear deal. Nevertheless, hard-liners in both countries have remained resolute, telling the public that moderates are naive and fail to grasp the true nature of the threat. Iranian hard-liners have consistently pointed to the presence of American military bases in the region as a major source of danger. Meanwhile, Israeli leaders have argued that, given Iran's support for regional proxies, it is better to strike first than to risk destruction, as captured by the doctrine 'rise and kill first.' This time, though, we are all afraid that the current conflict will go on for weeks before one of the parties backs off. Many Iranians and Israelis who have left their country have family and friends back home who are caught in the crossfire. My retired parents are both taking care of their moms. My maternal grandmother has Parkinson's disease and cannot do much. My paternal grandmother has severe arthritis with significant cartilage damage and bone issues in her back, which have made her completely immobile. Health care services are overwhelmed or short-staffed, and chaos is rising in both countries. In Israel, empty supermarket shelves and uneven distribution of bomb shelters are causing stress to rise among its residents. In Iran, the internet has been shut down nationwide, and international landline calls have been blocked since Wednesday, cutting off citizens from contact with loved ones. Having heard explosions in recent days, my mom told me in one of our last calls that she is reminded of when the nearby Imam Khomeini Hospital was hit by a missile in 1987. She had left her children at home to buy groceries and was on her way back when the attack happened. 'When I heard the blast, I dropped everything and ran,' she recalled. By the time she reached home, the windows were shattered, and her ears were still ringing, a problem she continues to suffer from. She walked into the house and found my sister and me with wet pants, crying. There are many stories like this one, and many far worse, but more importantly, new ones are unfolding as ordinary people in both countries are terrorized by the conflict. Indeed, the outcome of this conflict, whether a fragile ceasefire or a regime change in Iran, is likely to be disastrous for the Iranian and Israeli people. In the case of a ceasefire, it would leave behind weakened governments that, despite decades of propaganda, failed to protect their citizens. On the other hand, regime change could plunge Iran into chaos, triggering a protracted, uncertain process of drafting a new constitution, forming a stable government and rebuilding public trust, a process that may ultimately fail. Consider the ongoing instability in Libya. In Israel, hard-liners would tighten their grip on all facets of the political establishment, push Arabs back and destroy any chance of building a democratic society. A ceasefire would at least prevent further bloodshed in both countries and give grassroots communities a chance to regroup and heal the trauma of the war. Further escalation, on the other hand, would cause only more death and destruction and limit opportunities for reconciliation.

Chicago Tribune

21 minutes ago

• Chicago Tribune

Editorial: U.S. bombs fall in Iran

Saturday evening, President Donald Trump announced on social media that the U.S. had dropped 'a full payload of bombs' on Iran's most important nuclear site, Fordow, as well as completing strikes on Natanz and Isfahan. The stunning action, which came sooner than even close observers anticipated and is without obvious precedent, embroiled the U.S., for better or worse, in the middle of the ongoing war between Israel and Iran. Saturday June 22 turned out to be a historic day with likely far-reaching consequences for the Middle East. Consider: An American attack unfolded inside Iran. Many Americans were unnerved by the President's action and understandably so, given the likelihood of an Iranian response, as we write yet unknown. What should be made of Trump's action? We would have preferred the President had given more time to diplomacy, always preferable to war. His 'two-week' deadline appears to have been a ruse and we prefer that the President of the United States keep his word. And we would have preferred the involvement of Congress. Our qualms do not mean we believe that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's oppressive and theocratic Iranian regime, which has fought proxy wars by propping up the likes of Hamas and Hezbollah, should be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. Nobody wants that to happen, beginning with Israel, of course, but including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and, well, every nation where rational people dominate public discourse. How close the Iran regime really is to building a nuclear weapon is contested. Those of us with long memories can remember Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talking about the imminence of an Iranian nuclear bomb as far back as 1996. More than 20 years ago, Netanyahu was again saying that Iran was very close to building a bomb that could reach the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. All this time, Iran has kept insisting its nuclear program is only for peaceful, civilian purposes. On the other hand, nuclear watchdogs also have consistently raised concerns about the growth of Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and Khamenei's regime has not exactly been a model of cooperation. Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said, 'is the only non-nuclear-weapon state in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60 percent.' That does not constitute evidence of a plan to build a bomb in and of itself, but the higher the level of enrichment, the closer the uranium gets to 90% weapons grade, and Iran's enrichment level is widely viewed by experts as a significant step closer to weapons grade. For the average American, the truth is not easy to discern even from our own officials. Take U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's testimony to Congress this past March. On the one hand, she said the view of the intelligence community was that 'Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.' On the other, she also said Iran was suddenly talking a lot more about nuclear weapons. That might sound vague, but it's actually highly significant, given the regime's hatred of Israel and the battles with the Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas. It's likely that the intra-Iranian discourse has shifted in the light of Israeli aggression. As one of the attendees at the American Nuclear Society's conference in Chicago this past week told us, there likely are those within the Iranian program who are more than interested in building a nuclear bomb to protect the regime, even if the majority are scientists interested only in peaceful, civilian uses and either ambivalent or silently hostile toward Khamenei. The question that does not get enough attention is the balance of power. Some in the latter category, she told us, already have been killed by Israel, much to their colleagues' regret. Some of those in the former category who are still alive thus are most likely newly emboldened. At the time of writing, it was unclear how much Saturday night changed that equation. No doubt there are Iranian voices speaking in favor of a major response. One can only hope other voices are arguing for caution, not least for the people of Iraq who awoke in fear Sunday morning. In terms of realpolitik, of course, Israel most wants regime change in Iran. So does the vast majority of the Iranian diaspora, including some we know in Chicago. So does the vast majority of the Iranian people, given Khamenei's repression of women, his stealing of elections, his meeting of dissent with brutal violence, his funding of terror, his denouncement of opposing voices. And that's only the start of the list. This is not a regime worth defending, and recent progressive attempts to link the situation in Iran with the war in Iraq, ostensibly fought over weapons of mass destruction that did not prove to exist at scale, are illogical. This time around, the question in Iran is more about intent, not the existence or otherwise of weapons. And people's intent can change as circumstances change. What is worth debating is whether the Israeli attacks will make the end of the Khamenei regime more likely. You could argue the events of the last several days are weakening Khamenei. You could also argue that spring does not arrive when the sky is full of bombs and people are fleeing Tehran as fast as humanly possible. So where should you stand? Not with the MAGA isolationists, certainly, who claim that none of this has anything to do with this country, a view widely assumed to be cleaving the MAGA movement in two, which is no bad thing in our view. That's not to say the likes of Tucker Carlson are wrong about the potential costs of a war with Iraq; all wars extract their price and too little stateside attention is being paid in our view to the danger of nuclear contamination, which is rightly front of mind in the Persian Gulf States, even though those states are no fans of the Iranian regime and want it gone. But the horse bolted decades ago when it comes to U.S. involvement in the Middle East. But we also don't recommending standing with those far leftists who view Iran as benign, its hatred of Israel as overblown and who overlook Khamenei's human rights abuses to fit some anti-capitalist narrative. When you see the extremes of American political discourse getting into bed together, that's a great moment to leave the bedroom. What has changed the most, of course, is that the Oct. 7 attacks changed the Israeli mindset vis-a-vis Iran, and that Netanyahu calculated that the Trump administration would be more supportive of the kind of systemic change in the region that Israel now sees as crucial to its security. He was not wrong. Trump, we all know by now, is a born improviser, which can be dangerous in situations like these. Some would argue his application of force was necessary if we want to get Iran to halt its nuclear activities. The other view is that actually dropping some massive bomb deep down into the uranium enrichment facility at Fordo will not be worth the cost. Adding to the complexity, arguably the redundancy, of that question is the reality that Israel was not going to stop, whatever the U.S. did or did not do in its support. One hopeful interpretation is that the U.S. action ends with this move against the nuclear facilities and that the talking now starts again. This weekend, though, there is reason to worry about the Iranian people, most of whom long for a deal wherein Khamenei and his crew hop a plane and set the Iranian people free. In his social media post, Trump said this was the time for peace. May he be good for his word.

Boston Globe

27 minutes ago

• Boston Globe

Meet the unorthodox governor who could be the MAHA movement's favorite Democrat

Over his years in politics, Polis has — if nothing else — stood out. Advertisement A wealthy tech entrepreneur, he bankrolled early efforts to turn Colorado into a Democratic stronghold before running for office himself — first for Congress, where he served five terms. In 2018, he became the first openly gay man to win a state governorship. Since taking office, he's pursued an agenda with centrist, libertarian, and progressive threads, prioritizing cutting taxes but also making kindergarten fully free in the state. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Now, Polis is distinguishing himself as a rare Democrat willing to engage with In an interview with the Globe on Tuesday, Polis declined to praise or criticize Kennedy directly — or talk about him much at all — when asked to assess the secretary's performance. Advertisement Polis expressed 'skepticism and concern with regard to casting aspersions on vaccines that are absolutely critical to protect health and reduce deadly disease incidence.' But where many Democrats have avoided engaging with the 'I mean, we're a proud part of the United States of America, so of course, we're going to work with our own federal government,' Polis said. 'So that means … playing defense where we need to, and it also means seeking opportunities where we can.' The governor argued that as he works with the administration, he's also 'trying to defend and improve and increase vaccine use' and fight sweeping SNAP cuts proposed by Trump's allies in Congress. As Democrats anxiously search for new leaders to meet this moment, Polis has attracted speculation as a contender for the presidency in 2028. And he hasn't exactly shunned the attention. Asked about a presidential campaign, Polis told the Globe that he's 'not thinking about any other job' and that he's focused on 'running through the tape to deliver' as governor until he leaves in January 2027. But he didn't rule out the possibility. Senator John Hickenlooper, the previous Democratic governor of Colorado, predicted that Polis — whom he praised as a 'leader among Democrats' — will 'stay actively engaged' after leaving the governorship. 'He addresses each issue as a unique issue, and he doesn't worry about what other people said or what other people think,' Hickenlooper said. Advertisement Polis may not worry about it, but he draws strong — and often polarizing — reactions in Colorado. In recent years, he's alienated some fellow Democrats, raising doubts about how solid his base would be if he pursued national office. Howard Chou, a former state party vice chair and a Colorado delegate to the Democratic National Committee, argued Polis has become 'very unpopular' within his own party. His openness to Kennedy hasn't helped. 'I'm OK with working with people to get stuff done,' said Chou, 'but also to facilitate some of Kennedy's craziness has not gone off well.' One of Polis's more controversial moves was his recent vetoes of Democratic-backed legislation, especially a bill that would have Through a spokesman, Colorado Democratic Party Chair Shad Murib, who participated in demonstrations against Polis's labor stance, declined to be interviewed. Polis told the Globe he has 'very strong' relationships with Democrats and downplayed any lingering differences. Meanwhile, some Colorado Republicans appreciate his independent streak. 'One of the things I really like about Governor Polis is the fact that he doesn't have to accept every aspect of somebody in order to find the things he can connect with them on,' said Kelly Maher, a GOP strategist who previously worked on efforts to defeat Polis. Polis's unconventional approach, and his interest in issues now close to the MAHA movement, dates back to his time in Congress. In 2015, he was a lead co-sponsor of bipartisan legislation to legalize the sale and shipment of raw milk across state lines. He's since attempted to legalize raw milk in Colorado as governor. Advertisement Broadly, Polis may reflect Colorado's liberal but libertarian-tinged politics as well as its environmentally focused and health-conscious populace — the type of milieu from which Kennedy emerged in the first place. And nowhere in the state are those tendencies stronger than in Polis's hometown of Boulder, In his first year as governor, Polis opposed Democratic-backed legislation intended to increase childhood vaccine uptake in Colorado, objecting to a provision requiring parents to seek a child's vaccine exemption from officials in person. The bill never became law. After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Polis advocated for the new vaccines and blamed misinformation for packing hospitals with unvaccinated people. 'It's just like, science solved this thing but then people screwed up the solution,' he said in an interview at the time. But the governor also became an early Democrat to lift masking requirements. In welcoming Kennedy's appointment, Polis credited him with opposing vaccine mandates and felt he would 'shake up' the nation's public health establishment. Now, with Colorado's The governor said he only met Kennedy once, at a national governors' event, but that he has worked more closely with Rollins, a self-described 'MAHA mom.' Rollins began working with a handful of governors to align states with MAHA priorities by encouraging them to exclude sugary drinks and other 'ultra-processed' foods from food stamp eligibility. Among the first nine governors to request waivers, Polis was the lone Democrat. Advertisement Noting Colorado is 'a very health-conscious state,' Polis said he was interested in pursuing the waiver as a 'powerful and compelling way to drive down health care costs by reducing chronic disease and preventing diet-related illness.' There's debate among nutrition experts over the possible impacts. Kate Bauer, an associate professor at the University of Michigan who studies SNAP, argued that such waivers 'make life hard for SNAP users and make people not want to be in the program.' As for Polis, he sees more opportunities to work with MAHA, telling the Globe he supports Kennedy's efforts to ban artificial food dyes that have been linked to some health risks. Ted Trimpa, a Colorado Democratic strategist who has known Polis for decades, said that 'what makes Jared authentic' is that he 'understands you have to work with people you don't necessarily agree with.' 'We can't wave a wand and make RFK Jr. go away. You can either try to find glimmers of hope in the craziness … or not,' he added. 'Jared is willing to walk down that path and some politicians aren't. But that's what makes him different.' Sam Brodey can be reached at