Happy Friday in New York City, where sometimes the savviest thing you can do is get yourself arrested.

Yesterday, former city comptroller and congressional candidate Brad Lander stood trial on charges stemming from a high-profile incident last September, when Lander and 10 other elected officials were arrested at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan while demanding access to holding cells on the building’s 10th floor. Lander — the only one of the arrested officials to choose to go to trial — was charged with obstructing an elevator. 

U.S. Magistrate Henry Ricardo acquitted him after a day-long trial. “The government failed to prove its case,” Ricardo said in delivering the verdict. If convicted, Lander faced a small fine or up to 30 days in jail.

The charge may have been minor, but the trial drew intense media attention citywide, with spectators packing the courtroom and even spilling out into an overflow area. Lander has made the trial a key part of his campaign for Congress in New York’s District 10. Recent polls find Lander leading incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman by as many as 34 points, with early voting set to begin tomorrow.

Lander will no doubt welcome the extra media attention during this critical stretch of the campaign. When Lander was arrested in a separate incident while running in the Democratic primary for mayor, he saw a surge in support that helped solidify his standing in third place, behind Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo. 

“I feel genuinely moved by the rule of law,” Lander told reporters following yesterday’s trial. ”What a blessing to live in a country where if the government arrests you and charges you with something, you could count on the ability to go in and make the government prove its case.”

Lander’s opponent, Dan Goldman, has tried to use the former comptroller’s arrest to paint him as a show politician more interested in spectacle than results.

“Our immigrant neighbors deserve someone who will fight and win for them, not a career politician who will fundraise off of a performative, self-promoting case that helps no one in the immigrant communities in the district,” Goldman wrote on X.

For now, his message appears to be falling on deaf ears, as Lander enters the early voting period with the polling lead, the lion’s share of the publicity (and a highly influential spotlight in the intro of the Daily Brief newsletter).

On Monday night, NPR climate reporter Rebecca Hersher was joined at the Center for Brooklyn History by three climate experts for a conversation about solutions to the climate crisis for the last of its three-part series “Confronting Climate Change.”

“This is the part where we get to focus on our own agency,” said Hersher. “There are so many things that we can do.” 

The first two discussions, also moderated by Hersher this spring, explored the science of climate change and the forces behind climate denial. This week’s talk, “Solutions — From Innovation to Action,” turned to the topic of mitigating climate change and how humans can adapt to the effects of climate change, which are already being felt globally.

Read on to learn more.

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