Facing Trump’s Threats, New York’s Governor Adopts a ‘Rambo’ Attitude

Since the November election, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York had preached patience in dealing with President Trump, favoring a more deliberative, compromise-building style that has guided her tenure.

But this week, Ms. Hochul seemed intent on following a different course.

After Mr. Trump announced his move to kill New York City’s congestion pricing program, the governor responded on Wednesday with uncharacteristic drama and anger.

She invoked “Rambo,” the Sylvester Stallone film franchise, saying that Mr. Trump would answer for drawing “first blood.”

She took a jab at Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s time as a reality television contestant, and displayed a Trump-like showmanship when she derided the president for likening himself to royalty.

“At 1:58 p.m., President Donald Trump tweeted, ‘Long live the king,’” she said at a news conference. “I’m here to say, New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years and we sure as hell are not going to start now.”

Congestion pricing is not the only crisis that has forced Ms. Hochul to reconsider her deliberative style.

The governor has been weighing whether to use her constitutional authority to remove the embattled New York City mayor, Eric Adams, whose administration is in disarray after four deputy mayors announced their resignations this week.

Mr. Trump’s threats and Mr. Adams’s difficulties present profound and distinct challenges for Ms. Hochul. Together, they may heavily shape her political prospects as she struggles in the polls ahead of a difficult re-election next year.

She is hardly alone among the Democratic governors who are seeking an effective way to respond to the array of actions taken by Mr. Trump since his return to office. Some have taken extraordinarily combative stances: Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois used his State of the State address this week to compare the first month of Mr. Trump’s term to the ascent of Nazism in 1930s Germany.

Ms. Hochul had adopted a more diplomatic approach, saying her relationship with Mr. Trump “does not have to be adversarial.” She spent weeks working behind the scenes trying to find common ground with the president on congestion pricing, only to see him move to kill it without warning.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the city’s subways and buses, immediately filed a 51-page legal challenge on Wednesday, arguing that the attempt to end congestion pricing was “arbitrary and capricious” under the law.

The governor said the tolling program would continue unless a judge ordered otherwise, and her team made clear that they did not expect such instructions. “Until a judge rules, these cameras are staying on,” Ms. Hochul’s legal counsel, Brian K. Mahanna, said. “And we expect a judge to rule in our favor.”

If the state loses its case, Ms. Hochul must find a way to fill a multibillion-dollar hole in the transit authority’s budget, money that was to pay for sorely needed repairs to the system’s infrastructure. Mr. Trump made clear that federal funds would not be coming, saying it was “up to New York” to find other revenue streams.

Peter Ragone, a veteran Democratic strategist who has advised Mayor Adams’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio, and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, said that Ms. Hochul would never win over suburbanites who avidly oppose congestion pricing. But her defense of the program could fire up a coalition of voters and interest groups essential to her re-election.

“Environmentalists, business leaders and transit commuters all now have to come to Kathy Hochul’s defense,” Mr. Ragone said. “All of the sudden, three key constituencies are now fighting for her against a shared adversary in Trump.”

The governor’s stance against Mr. Trump — along with a similarly pugilistic approach she took in fighting an attempt by Louisiana officials to extradite a New York doctor who was indicted after sending abortion medication to a resident of that state — has won praise from New York Democrats. So did her move on Thursday to give the state more oversight of the Adams administration.

Mr. Adams has been charged in a five-count federal corruption indictment, but the Justice Department has moved to dismiss the case. The prosecutor who was overseeing the mayor’s case asserted that Mr. Trump’s appointees at the Justice Department and Mr. Adams’s lawyers entered into a quid pro quo: If he could avoid a trial, Mr. Adams would be in better position to help enforce Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda.

On Thursday, the governor said she would not remove Mr. Adams for now. But she unveiled a package of proposals meant to give other state and city officials the legal power to keep watch over Mr. Adams’s team at City Hall and protect the city from federal interference.

“We know they will stop at nothing to try and exercise control over New York,” Ms. Hochul said of the Trump administration.

Assemblyman Micah Lasher, who once served as Ms. Hochul’s policy director, said that Ms. Hochul had tried to work with the mayor of New York City rather than undermine him like her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, had. By nature, she is not combative, he said, and “is always going to try to find a path forward that doesn’t create unnecessary conflict.”

“She is trying to chart a course in the middle of opposing poles, and that is really hard,” Mr. Lasher said. “You’re seeing it right now with the mayor: How do you impose order and create a sense of confidence in a government where confidence has been shattered without resorting to extreme measures?”

Those close to Ms. Hochul said that in mulling whether to remove Mr. Adams, she is mindful of the long-term impact and precedent of exercising such an extraordinary power. The New York City Charter and State Constitution effectively make her both jury and, if she wants, judge when deciding Mr. Adams’s fate.

In recent days, the governor has looked for ways to both stabilize governance in the state’s largest city and convey her concern about the mayor’s behavior. She convened prominent politicians and faith leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton on Tuesday, soliciting their views on whether Mr. Adams should stay. In those conversations she betrayed little about what she might do.

At Thursday’s news conference Ms. Hochul again brought up how Mr. Trump had likened himself to a king, but this time she used it to underscore why she did not want to usurp the voices of voters by removing Mr. Adams on her own.

Shortly after, her 2026 re-election campaign emailed a fund-raising appeal with a similar message. It included a doctored magazine cover, made to look like Time magazine, featuring Mr. Trump with a crown atop his head. The image had been circulated by the White House’s social media accounts, and held aloft by the governor at the news conference the day before.

“Next time you’re stuck in traffic, the next time your train is delayed, the next time you’re in a flooded station because infrastructure repairs are not made, I want you to think of this,” she had said, pointing to the image.

Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting