FIGHTING BACK

Cuomo Announces Plan to Combat Hate Crimes After Trump Win

“The ugly political discourse of the election did not end on Election Day.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Sunday announced a plan to combat the spate of hate crimes that erupted after Donald Trump won the presidential election. “The ugly political discourse of the election did not end on Election Day,” Cuomo said at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City. “In many ways it has gotten worse, [growing] into a social crisis that now challenges our identity as a state and as a nation and our people,” he said. As part of a wide-ranging initiative, Cuomo said, New York State Police will soon have a special unit devoted to hate crimes, legislation will be proposed to increase protections against discrimination for public school students, and a private-public legal defense fund for impoverished immigrants will be set up. Cuomo’s announcement comes after reports of hundreds of ugly racist incidents across the country after the election. The Justice Department announced Friday that it would conduct its own probe into the reports to determine whether any recent incidents warrant harsher penalties as hate crimes.