*By Carlo Versano*
Cynthia Nixon is sticking by her controversial bagel order.
The progressive Democrat challenging incumbent Andrew Cuomo in New York State's upcoming gubernatorial primary shared a cinnamon raisin bagel topped with lox and cream cheese with Cheddar on Tuesday. The unconventional medley ignited a [firestorm](https://nypost.com/2018/09/10/cynthia-nixons-bagel-order-is-horrifying/) on Twitter over the weekend, but Nixon has bigger fish to fry.
She wants the two-term Cuomo, who has long been thought to have presidential ambitions, to re-establish his liberal bona fides for voters calling for change. Cuomo maintains a 40 point lead over his challenger, according to the [latest polling] (https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2018/governor/ny/new_york_governor_democratic_primary-6526.html). But Nixon pointed to a slew of recent upsets ー Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Andrew Gillum, and Ayanna Pressley ー that have fueled her optimism for Thursday's primary.
"The polls across the board are just not capturing the progressive moment we're in," she said, adding that hundreds of thousands of new Democrats have registered to vote across New York State following Donald Trump's election.
Nixon's platform is built on issues of housing affordability, universal healthcare, and criminal justice reform. The latter has garnered her perhaps the most traction.
In a debate last month, Nixon pointedly called the legalization of marijuana a "racial-justice issue."
"Using marijuana is something that's effectively been legal for white people for a long time," she said during her interview on Cheddar. "It's time to make it legal for everybody else."
Part of that reform includes paroling and expunging the records of New Yorkers who were convicted of smoking or selling pot and using tax revenues from a nascent (decriminalized) weed industry to invest in communities that have been ravaged by the decades-long war on drugs.
Nixon's position on pot was viral enough to cause rapper T.I. to [gush](https://thegrio.com/2018/09/11/ti-cynthia-nixon-marijuana-vote/) over her on Twitter, though he admitted he doesn't know who the candidate is.
Cuomo, for his part, rejected what he called "reparations" during the debate, but struck a more cautious, pro-legalization position ー a leftward policy change that may have developed only at Nixon's prodding.
But the actress-turned-activist isn't running to liberalize Cuomo ー she's running to replace him.
"To be informed about Andrew Cuomo is to want a change," she said.
The former "Sex and the City" star said she has been encouraged by support upstate and in the suburbs, though New York City remains her core base. To that end, she has run aggressively on a campaign to fix the subway, pinning the decrepit state of the system on her opponent.
In New York, the subways are theoretically controlled by the governor, who oversees the MTA. Nixon has pledged to pass congestion pricing and a tax on the wealthy to pay for much-needed repairs to an aging infrastructure. She said Cuomo has not aggressively fought for the funding in Albany.
With two days to go until New York Democrats head to the polls, Nixon, who has refused corporate donations, knows she's the underdog against a well-known, well-funded, powerful incumbent. But there's no denying the country's progressive wave. The question remains whether that wave will be enough to carry Nixon to victory.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/cynthia-nixon-optimistic-despite-trailing-gov-andrew-cuomo-in-latest-polls).
Peter Zalzal, associate vice president for clean air strategies at the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, joined Cheddar to discuss the Biden Administration's unveiling of stricter fuel-efficiency standards for new automobiles. "The administration estimated that these rules will reduce about 2.5 billion tons of climate pollution by 2050, and using less fuel also means that we have to go to the gas pump less often. And so it means we save money, thousands of dollars in avoided fuel costs each year for consumers," he noted.
The relatively robust March jobs report showed that despite the low unemployment rate, Black, Hispanic, and women job seekers are still having difficulty finding work. William M. Rodgers III, the vice president and director of the Institute for Economic Equity at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis noted that participation rates in the labor force ticked up for minorities, adding to other positive signs of growth. He also spoke to Cheddar News to discuss further the jobs figures, the state of the labor market, and rising inflation.
U.S. markets opened higher to kick off the second quarter, despite a miss on the March Jobs Report. The economy added $431,000 in the month, slightly lower than the $490,000 analysts had expected. The unemployment rate also ticked down to 3.6% from 3.8%. Kevin Simpson, Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Capital Wealth Planning joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
President Biden is going after billionaires in his 2023 budget request to congress. The proposal would establish a 20% minimum tax rate on all households worth more than $100 million, as well as raise the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. Rhett Buttle, Small Business for America's Future Senior Advisor, Business Policy Expert & Biden Campaign Business Advisor, breaks down the proposal, what it aims to accomplish, and how small businesses might feel about it.
The Biden administration has announced the U.S. will accept up to 100,000 refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine and provide more than 1 billion dollars in new funding for the growing humanitarian crisis. The move comes as President Biden meets with his western counterparts in Europe to demonstrate a united front against Russia and show support for Ukraine. Altagracia Pierre-Outerbridge, Immigration Attorney for Outerbridge Law, explains how this is going to work.
The DOJ has endorsed an antitrust bill targeting tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Meta, and Google. The legislation would ban the companies from favoring their own products and services over their competitor's, making it more difficult them to dominate the marketplace. Greg Day, Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Georgia, breaks down the bill and its potential impact on anti-competition in the tech sector.
Catching you up with what you need to know on Apr 1, 2022, with Ukrainians hoping to flee the besieged city of Mariupol with a ceasefire is in place, President Biden orders the release of oil from U.S.reserves, LGBT activists suing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the "Don't Say Gay" Law, U.S. passports offering an "x" option for gender, and more.
America’s employers extended a streak of robust hiring in March, adding 431,000 jobs in a sign of the economy’s resilience in the face of a still-destructive pandemic and the highest inflation in 40 years.
