LETTER FROM NEW YORK

Shortly before Christmas, European visitors to New York couldn't believe the exorbitant prices charged in the Big Apple, and were frightened by the number of homeless people they encountered on the streets of Manhattan, migrants or otherwise. UnknowingTrumpists, they were merely observing the two issues that helped propel Donald Trump to victory: post-Covid-19 inflation and the arrival of newcomers, making the city less safe and less prosperous than it was before the pandemic. Four years on, New York hasn't completely recovered, not by a long shot. Dirtier, less wealthy, less safe, the city sometimes resembles Gotham City, with its mayor – Democrat Eric Adams, a former police officer prosecuted by the FBI for multiple corruption cases – on borrowed time; the dawn murder in the street of the head of health insurance company United Healthcare; and above all, New York's subway system, which has become the embodiment of its troubles.

The rule nowadays is to stand with your back to the wall to avoid being thrown under a train by an unhinged person. That's what happened again on New Year's Eve, when a 45-year-old music programmer was hurled onto the rails. The video is spectacular, even if he escaped with broken ribs. On December 22, it was a 57-year-old woman who was burned alive on a Brooklyn train by an illegal immigrant and drug addict from Guatemala. Her body was so badly damaged that it took the police a week to identify her.

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