Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig newyorkbrightest.com. NS
Answer
newyorkbrightest.com. 5 NS ns1.newyorkbrightest.com.
newyorkbrightest.com. 5 NS ns2.newyorkbrightest.com.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.newyorkbrightest.com. 5 A 54.37.82.2
ns2.newyorkbrightest.com. 5 A 5.135.31.116
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0