On Thursday, federal prosecutors unsealed a fifty-seven-page indictment alleging that the mayor of New York City took bribes, destroyed evidence, defrauded taxpayers, and pressured the Fire Department of New York on behalf of a foreign government. Eric Adams claimed to speak for the city’s working class and then, the indictment asserts, sold them out for luxury travel and a fraudulent straw donor scheme. He needs to resign now.

Even before facing corruption charges, Adams was failing New Yorkers. His own Mayor’s Management Report, which he strangely touted in a press conference earlier this month, revealed an inability to effectively govern. While the number of New Yorkers who need cash assistance is skyrocketing, the city is efficiently processing fewer than half of applications — it was 95.4 percent during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s final year in office. That same year, 91.9 percent of SNAP benefits were delivered in a timely fashion. Now it’s only 65 percent, up from a truly dismal 40 percent in 2023.

It now takes the city more than a year to fill vacancies in public housing units. Use of force and unconstitutional stops by the NYPD are rising along with emergency response times, while police overtime now exceeds $1 billion. Year after year, the Adams administration has violated city law requiring the expansion of dedicated bus lanes, making our system the slowest in the nation.