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Mamdani’s ‘Trump-proofing NYC’ campaign sets up fight with White House

Published

2 weeks ago

November 5, 2025

Zohran Mamdani is set to take on what’s considered the second-hardest job in the US: running New York City. His biggest challenge will be dealing with the man with the tougher job, President Donald Trump.

Mamdani, 34, pulled off a historic win in New York’s mayoral race with a slew of promises aimed at making life more affordable for residents. The democratic socialist received more than 50% of votes, while former Governor Andrew Cuomo — who ran as an independent — got just over 40%. Republican Curtis Sliwa managed about 7%.

For Mamdani to keep his campaign promises, he’ll require more money from the federal government — which provided over $7 billion in revenue for the city’s budget this year. But Trump has already derided him as a “communist lunatic” and made clear that he’ll squeeze access to funds.

The mayor-elect was defiant in his victory speech. “If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him,” Mamdani told supporters. “And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.”

Republicans are already positioning Mamdani as their foil, labeling him and his proposals as representative of the Democratic Party, as they prepare for mid-term congressional elections next year.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, posting on X after the New York City election, said the consequences of the Mamdani victory “will be felt across our entire country” as it “cements the Democrat Party’s transformation to a radical, big-government socialist party.”

Johnson was making the comments even as moderate Democrats won elsewhere on Tuesday night. Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer, easily took the Virginia governor’s race. Mikie Sherrill, a Navy veteran and ex-prosecutor, triumphed in New Jersey.

California Governor Gavin Newsom also won a significant victory when his state’s voters approved Proposition 50, allowing a redrawing of congressional maps to favor Democrats before the 2026 midterms. that could potentially thwart Trump’s plan to keep control of the house.

Trump-Proofing

Trump has already shown he’s prepared to use federal money as a lever against Democrats.

One day into the government shutdown, the White House halted $18 billion in New York infrastructure funding citing concerns over diversity and inclusion practices. The move threatens a key source of funding for critical improvements to the region’s ageing transit systems, including the extension of the Second Avenue Subway and the Hudson River tunnel project.

Apart from getting into potential fights with the Trump administration over funding for health care and food programs, Mamdani is also primed for a clash over the president’s deportation campaign.

Mamdani has pledged to strengthen New York’s sanctuary city status, which limits the local government’s cooperation with federal agencies over immigration enforcement. And in a section titled “Trump-Proofing NYC” on his campaign website, his platform calls for investing $165 million in funding for immigration legal defense services.

The mayor-elect said on Wednesday that his call to “Trump-proof” New York is about protecting the city’s most vulnerable residents from the policies of a president he views as hostile to their interests.

While he pledged to challenge Trump’s actions, Mamdani said his focus would remain on leading a city united around its people, not on engaging in a personal feud with the president.

Democratic Tensions

But it’s not just Republican antagonists that Mamdani will have to contend with. The Democratic establishment is still skeptical about the Queens assemblyman, who has limited political work experience beyond his four years in the New York state legislature. The rapid rise of Mamdani — whose career included a stint as a rapper before his time in Albany — has caught the party’s old guard by surprise.

Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul waited for months to endorse him in the mayoral race, and has said she won’t approve tax hikes that the new mayor will need to fund his agenda. Senator Chuck Schumer, doyen of the party’s establishment wing and one of the country’s most-prominent Jewish politicians, never publicly backed Mamdani.

In October 2023, Mamdani was arrested outside Schumer’s Brooklyn home, protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza just days after Hamas attacked the Jewish state.

On Wednesday, Schumer said he spoke with Mamdani and congratulated him on running a “very, very good campaign.”

“I’m moving forward,” said Schumer, who did not endorse Mamdani.

Wall Street billionaires and business leaders including Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb had also framed Mamdani’s policy proposals as a threat to New York’s financial health. Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, endorsed Cuomo in the primary and general election and has contributed to PACs supporting his candidacy.

“New York is on the verge of making a monumental mistake,” Home Depot Inc. co-founder Ken Langone said before the election, referring to the prospect of a Mamdani win. He compared the candidate’s policies to those that led to economic turmoil in Venezuela, Cuba and Argentina, adding that “capitalism works.”

But some on Wall Street are now adapting to the new reality. Ackman congratulated Mamdani after the election, telling the mayor-elect to “let me know what I can do.”

That Mamdani was able to win decisively shows the power of his appeal, and how much his charisma, social media savvy and messaging on affordability resonated with voters.

When he’s sworn in as New York City’s 111th mayor on Jan. 1, 2026, he will be the youngest person to hold the office in a century. He will also be its first Muslim leader and the first person of South Asian descent to hold the office in the city’s 400-year history. Mamdani only became a naturalized US citizen in 2018.

Lauren Klein, a Mamdani voter who works in art conservation and lives in Long Island City, said now that Mamdani is elected, she wants “more affordable housing, and an effective leader.” Another supporter, Jonathan Neer, said that he trusts Mamdani “to make a conscious effort.”

“Whether or not he will be a good mayor, I don’t know. But I trust him to try,” Neer said before stepping inside a Fort Greene bar in Brooklyn to watch Mamdani’s victory speech after Tuesday’s election.

Mamdani’s Promises

Mamdani has vowed to immediately start working to implement his campaign promises. Freeze rents in rent-stabilized apartments; provide free bus services; create a universal, free childcare program for children ages 6 months to 5 years; open five city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough — to name just a few.

Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic pollster and political consultant at Slingshot Strategies, said Mamdani’s narrow majority could help him in his appeal for more funding to make those pledges a reality.

“When he goes to Albany, when he goes to the federal government, he can say ‘I do have the majority of New Yorkers behind me when I asked for this,’” Roth Smith said.

“He’s going to have a tougher argument because it wasn’t 60% or 55%, it was 50 points and a hair,” he said.

And Mamdani’s promised rent freeze faces multiple hurdles — including the possibility that outgoing Mayor Eric Adams will stack the Rent Guidelines Board with his own appointees who won’t go along with a freeze.

All that means Mamdani risks disappointing his base of progressive voters if he isn’t able to fulfill his pledges once the euphoria over his win fades.

“The campaign is over, all the great promises,” said Apollo Global Management Inc. President Jim Zelter. Now, “it’s about delivering,” he said.

“You don’t celebrate the day you buy a company, you celebrate the day you sell it. There needs to be a change in tone and he needs to bring the city together,” Zelter said.

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Business

Bessent says Trump’s $2,000 checks would need congressional vote

Published

1 hour ago

November 16, 2025

Jace Porter

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said President Donald Trump’s proposal to send $2,000 “dividend” payments from tariffs to US citizens would require congressional approval.

“We will see,” Bessent said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures. “We need legislation for that.”

Trump, who has touted the billions raised in US tariff revenue this year, has talked about the checks as public frustration mounts over the cost of living. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Trump said the checks would go out sometime next year to “everybody but the rich.”

“It’s a lot of money,” he said. “But we’ve taken in a lot of money from tariffs. The tariffs allow us to give a dividend.” He added that “we’re also going to be reducing debt.”

The plan could cost the US government double what it’s projected to take in for 2025, according to one estimate. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a centrist watchdog group, estimated a preliminary $600 billion cost for the proposal, if the dividends were designed along the lines of government stimulus payments during the Covid pandemic.

Net US tariff revenue for the fiscal year through September totaled $195 billion and many economists have penciled in about $300 billion for calendar-year 2025.

Bessent said Americans should start feeling more economic relief in the beginning of next year, citing the tax cuts in Trump’s signature policy bill passed earlier this year.

“So I would expect in the first two quarters we are going to see the inflation curve bend down and the real income curve substantially accelerate,” he said.

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The Coast Guard has seized a record amount of cocaine while Trump says interdiction has failed

Published

2 hours ago

November 16, 2025

Jace Porter

In justifying American military strikes on boats suspected of smuggling drugs, President Donald Trump has asserted that the longtime U.S. strategy of interdicting such vessels at sea has been a major failure.

“We’ve been doing that for 30 years,” he said last month, “and it’s been totally ineffective.”

Trump’s comments came around the same time that the U.S. Coast Guard announced it had set a record for cocaine seizures — a haul of 225 metric tons of the drug over the previous year. That milestone, however, has not dissuaded the Republican president from upending decades of U.S. counternarcotics policy.

Under Trump, the U.S. military has blown up 20 suspected drug boats, resulting in 80 deaths, in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. Trump and other top officials have contended that such boats are being operated by narco-terrorists and cartel members with deadly drugs bound for America.

The strikes have generated international pushback from foreign leaders, human rights groups, Democrats and some Republicans who have raised concerns that the United States is engaging in extrajudicial killings that undermine its stature in the world.

Veterans of the drug war, meanwhile, say U.S. resources would be better spent doubling down on the traditional approach of interdicting drug boats, especially in the long term. That is because crews of drug boats frequently have valuable intelligence that can help authorities better target cartels and trafficking networks. Dead men, they say, tell no tales.

The Coast Guard has fought the drug war a long time

The Coast Guard for decades has interdicted small vessels suspected of smuggling illicit narcotics. Much of that work is focused on halting shipments of cocaine, most of which is produced in the jungles of Colombia.

Working with partner nations and other federal agencies — the Drug Enforcement Administration, the departments of State and Justice as well as U.S. Southern Command’s Joint Interagency Task Force-South in Key West, Florida — the aim is to inflict heavy losses on traffickers and limit the amount of drugs entering the U.S.

That campaign, by at least one measure, has never been more successful, despite constant complaints by the Coast Guard that it lacks funding to seize even more drugs.

The Coast Guard’s recent record cocaine seizure was almost 40% higher than the past decade’s annual average. The haul included 38 tons of cocaine offloaded by the cutter Hamilton when it returned from a two-month patrol. It was the largest amount confiscated by a single Coast Guard ship during a deployment, the Coast Guard reported. The interdictions have continued as part of what’s known as Operation Pacific Viper even during the federal government shutdown, with several cutters reporting major seizures last month.

In almost every case, drug smugglers have been brought to the U.S. for prosecution, and valuable information about ever-changing smuggling routes and production methods was collected — all without any loss of life and a far lower cost to American taxpayers. Experts said each missile strike is likely to cost far more than the payload of cocaine on every ship.

“The Coast Guard has extraordinary powers and authorities to do effective drug interdiction without killing unidentified people on small boats,” said Douglas Farah, a national security expert on Latin America and president of IBI Consultants. “When resourced, they are far more effective, sustainable and likely legal than the current Pentagon-led operations.”

Trump administration officials say strategy needed to change

Secretary of State Marco Rubio this week defended the shift in strategy, saying that “interdictions alone are not effective.”

“Interdictions have limited to no deterrent effect,” he added. “These drug organizations, they’ve already baked in the fact they may lose 5% of their drug shipments. It doesn’t stop them from coming.”

Part of the problem is that demand for cocaine is high, and supplies have never been so robust, according to authorities and experts. A sign of that trend: Cocaine prices have been hovering at historical lows for more than a decade.

The Coast Guard also does not have enough vessels or crew to halt it all. At most, it seizes not even 10% of the cocaine that officials believe flows to the U.S. on small vessels through what is known as the “Transit Zone” — a vast area of open water larger than Russia.

Cocaine shipments bound for the U.S. primarily work their way up the west coast of South America to Central America and then overland into the U.S. via Mexico. Shipments heading to Europe are smuggled through the Caribbean, often hidden in container ships.

Such interdiction efforts target cocaine, not fentanyl

In social media posts, Trump has claimed that his strikes have blown up boats carrying fentanyl and that each destroyed vessel has saved 25,000 American lives. According to experts and former U.S. counternarcotics officials, Trump’s statements are either exaggerations or false.

For the past decade, U.S. officials have sounded the alarm about rising overdose deaths in the U.S., particularly from opioids and synthetic opioids. Overdose deaths from opioidspeaked in 2023 at 112,000 but dropped to 74,000 in April. Experts have attributed that decline mostly to Biden administration efforts to boost the availability of lifesaving drugs that prevent overdose deaths.

The drug flowing to the U.S. from South America is cocaine. Fentanyl, on the other hand, is typically trafficked to the U.S. overland from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India. Cocaine overdose deaths are less frequent than those from fentanyl. In the last year, just under 20,000 people in America died from cocaine overdoses, federal data shows.

Trump and administration officials have also claimed that the crews of targeted vessels were narco-terrorists or members of cartels.

The Associated Press visited a region in Venezuela from which some of the suspected boats have departed and identified four men who were killed in the strikes. In dozens of interviews, residents of the region and relatives said t he dead men were mostly laborers or fisherman making $500 a trip.

Law enforcement officials and experts echoed those findings, saying the smugglers captured by the Coast Guard are hired for little money to ferry drugs from point A to point B.

“They are hardly kingpins,” said Kendra McSweeney, an Ohio State University geographer who has spent years researching U.S. drug policies.

Trump administration officials recently promoted big seizures

In April, months before Trump launched his military campaign, his attorney general, Pam Bondi, traveled to South Florida to welcome home the Coast Guard cutter James from its latest antinarcotics patrol. It had seized 20 tons of cocaine worth more than $500 million.

Flanked by FBI Director Kash Patel, she praised a “prosecutor-led, intelligence driven approach to stopping these criminal enterprises in their tracks.”

“This is not a drop in the bucket,” said Bondi, standing in front of the vessel loaded with colorful, plastic-wrapped bales of narcotics stacked several feet high. “Behind you is half a billion dollars of pure, uncut cocaine.”

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The 2026 class of American Rhodes scholars includes 5 students at U.S. military academies

Published

2 hours ago

November 16, 2025

Jace Porter

Five students at U.S. military academies and three each from Yale University, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among the 32 American winners named Sunday as 2026 Rhodes scholars.

The group includes students focused on housing, health outcomes, sustainability and prison reentry programs. They include:

Alice L. Hall of Philadelphia, a varsity basketball player at MIT who also serves as student body president. Hall, who has collaborated with a women’s collective in Ghana on sustainability tools, plans to study engineering.

Sydney E. Barta of Arlington, Virginia, a Paralympian and member of the track team at Stanford University, who studies bioengineering and sings in the Stanford acapella group “Counterpoint.” Barta plans to study musculoskeletal sciences.

Anirvin Puttur of Gilbert, Arizona, a senior at the U.S. Air Force Academy who serves as an instructor pilot and flight commander. Puttur, who is studying aeronautical engineering and applied mathematics, also has a deep interest in linguistics and is proficient in four languages.

The students will attend the University of Oxford as part of the Rhodes scholar program, which awards more than 100 scholarships worldwide each year for students to pursue two to three years of graduate studies.

Named after British imperialist and benefactor Cecil John Rhodes, the scholarship was established at Oxford in 1903. The program has more than 8,000 alumni, many of whom have pursued careers in government, education, the arts and social justice.

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