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      Mamdani and Lander Will Cross-Endorse Each Other in N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race

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      Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander, the two leading progressive candidates in the race, hope their partnership will help them leverage the ranked-choice voting system to defeat Andrew M. Cuomo.Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander, the leading progressive candidates in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, will cross-endorse each other on Friday, creating a late-stage partnership designed to help one of them surpass former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in ranked-choice balloting.The candidates, who are second and third in the polls behind Mr. Cuomo, will encourage their supporters to rank them in the top two spots on their ballots. The city’s ranked-choice voting system allows primary voters to list up to five candidates in order of preference.If no candidate receives more than 50 percent of New Yorkers’ first-choice votes, ranked-choice tabulations will begin. When voters’ top choices are eliminated during that process, their support will get transferred to candidates who are lower on their ballots.The partnership, which is being announced one day before early voting begins, would effectively turn Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman, and Mr. Lander, the city comptroller, into something of a joint entry. They hope that one of them will eventually accumulate many of the other’s votes as a result.Mr. Mamdani, who has steadily risen in the polls and is running second behind Mr. Cuomo, said in a statement that at Thursday night’s debate, he and Mr. Lander had exposed Mr. Cuomo as “a relic of the broken politics of the past.”“I am proud to rank our principled and progressive comptroller No. 2 on my ballot because we are both fighting for a city every New Yorker can afford,” Mr. Mamdani said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How the 2020 George Floyd Protests Are Haunting Democrats in 2025

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      No longer demanding cuts to police budgets or straining to show solidarity with protesters, Democrats are taking a far more cautious approach.Five years ago, as grief and anger over George Floyd’s murder ignited national protests, top Democrats joined the demonstrations, called for cutting police budgets and, in a ham-fisted effort at solidarity, even knelt in kente cloth at the Capitol.Now, as President Trump spoils for a fight by sending unwanted troops to Los Angeles to stamp out protests and help with immigration raids, Democrats scarred by recent elections have a starkly different message for demonstrators:Don’t play into his hands.Five years after the 2020 racial justice movement prompted a wave of cultural changes and then an enduring political backlash, many Democrats are signaling that they now recognize how skillful Republicans can be in using scenes of unrest — whether limited or widespread, accurate or not — to cast liberal lawmakers as tolerant of lawlessness.Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lead fellow Democrats in moment of silence for George Floyd in 2020.Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times“Many of the 2020 protests played out in ways that Democrats did not see and they did not foresee,” said former Senator Doug Jones of Alabama, a Democrat who lost his re-election bid that year. At the time, he said, some did not grasp that “once you got to a certain critical mass of protesters, that some bad things were going to happen.”“I think they do now,” said Mr. Jones, who stressed that Mr. Trump was needlessly escalating tensions. “I also think that they appreciate the fact that any violence is one, is uncalled-for, it needs to be prosecuted. But it’s also playing into the narrative of Donald Trump.”So far, the demonstrations now — relatively small, scattered and generally peaceful — bear little resemblance to the mass protests of 2020, which in some cases devolved into destructive riots.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California Leaders React to Governor Gavin Newsom’s Speech

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      Elected officials, as well as social media influencers, had wide-ranging opinions of the governor’s prime time address warning that democracy is in danger.For months, Californians weren’t sure what to make of Gov. Gavin Newsom.There was the new podcast on which he interviewed right-wing influencers and said he felt trans athletes shouldn’t participate in women’s sports. There was the meeting in February with President Trump in the White House. And there were occasional snipes at Republicans, but nothing like those Mr. Newsom had dished out in years past.Then came a blistering nine-minute speech on Tuesday in which Mr. Newsom warned Americans that Mr. Trump was destroying democracy and acting as an authoritarian who would eventually send the military to states across the country.Many liberals in California cheered Mr. Newsom, finally seeing in him the leader of the resistance that they had been missing. Those feeling confused and fearful since Mr. Trump started his second term were looking for someone to stick up for them and said they appreciated Mr. Newsom’s forcefulness.“In a time of rising fear and growing threats to democracy, he spoke not just as a governor, but as a moral leader,” said Representative Lateefah Simon, Democrat of California. “He named the danger plainly.”But others, while supportive of his message, were not entirely convinced. They said testing the political climate ahead of a potential run for president.“Even if you’re late to the party, you know, welcome to the fight,” said Hugo Soto-Martinez, a progressive City Council member in Los Angeles, who appreciated what Mr. Newsom said but wished the governor had stood up to the president sooner.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mikie Sherrill Wins the Democratic Primary for Governor of New Jersey

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      Ms. Sherrill, the only woman in a six-candidate race for the Democratic nomination, emphasized her service as a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot.Representative Mikie Sherrill on Tuesday won the Democratic Party’s nomination to run for governor of New Jersey, capping a hard-fought primary that featured a large field of prominent and well-funded candidates.With about 90 percent of the estimated vote reported, Ms. Sherrill, a former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot who represents New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, was outpacing five other candidates by a wide margin, according to The Associated Press.She is now expected to compete in November’s general election against Jack Ciattarelli, the winner of Tuesday’s Republican primary. Mr. Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman, is running his third race for governor and is backed by President Trump, who has made clear his goal of helping to propel a Republican to the State House in Trenton after eight years of Democratic control.Mayor Ras J. Baraka of Newark was in second place, just ahead of Mayor Steven Fulop of Jersey City, according to results tallied by the A.P., which are likely to change somewhat after ballots mailed by Election Day are fully counted.The three other candidates carved up the balance of the total vote: Representative Josh Gottheimer, of New Jersey’s Fifth Congressional District; Sean Spiller, the president of the New Jersey Education Association; and Stephen Sweeney, a former State Senate president.“I’m going to protect our rights — including a right to an abortion,” Ms. Sherrill told supporters gathered in Morristown, N.J., to celebrate her victory. As for Mr. Ciattarelli, she said, “I am ready to shake up the status quo, and Jack is the status quo.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Crackdown on LA Protests Contrasts With His Jan. 6 Response

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      The president often expresses an open desire for aggressive law enforcement and harsh tactics when protests originate from the political left.When violent protests originate from the right — such as those in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, or at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — President Trump has chosen to downplay the violence or suggest the protesters have a noble cause and have been treated unfairly.But when protests originate from what he views as the political left, Mr. Trump often expresses an open desire for law enforcement and the military to harshly crack down on them.Over the weekend, Mr. Trump ordered that 2,000 National Guard troops be deployed on the streets of downtown Los Angeles to quell protests against his administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. That was followed by orders on Monday to send 700 Marines to join them, and then later in the day, with an order for 2,000 additional National Guard troops.Even though the demonstrations have been largely contained to specific areas and mostly peaceful, Mr. Trump claimed on social media that the protesters were “insurrectionist mobs” and that Los Angeles had been “invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals.”In endorsing harsh law enforcement tactics against immigration protests, Mr. Trump is picking a political fight on ground that Republicans believe is advantageous terrain. Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump, said on his podcast on Monday that the president’s response was “quite smart.”“He just won a massive national election on this very topic,” Mr. Bannon said, magnifying Mr. Trump’s showing in a race he won by less than 2.3 million popular votes. Mr. Bannon accused Democratic-led jurisdictions of inviting in undocumented immigrants and refusing to arrest violent protesters. “This is why President Trump has to bring in the National Guard and federalize them,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      This Is What Autocracy Looks Like

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      Since Donald Trump was elected again, I’ve feared one scenario above all others: that he’d call out the military against people protesting his mass deportations, putting America on the road to martial law. Even in my more outlandish imaginings, however, I thought that he’d need more of a pretext to put troops on the streets of an American city — against the wishes of its mayor and governor — than the relatively small protests that broke out in Los Angeles last week.In a post-reality environment, it turns out, the president didn’t need to wait for a crisis to launch an authoritarian crackdown. Instead, he can simply invent one.It’s true that some of those protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in Los Angeles have been violent; on Sunday one man was arrested for allegedly tossing a Molotov cocktail at a police officer, and another was accused of driving a motorcycle into a line of cops. Such violence should be condemned both because it’s immoral and because it’s wildly counterproductive; each burning Waymo or smashed storefront is an in-kind gift to the administration.But the idea that Trump needed to put soldiers on the streets of the city because riots were spinning out of control is pure fantasy. “Today, demonstrations across the city of Los Angeles remained peaceful, and we commend all those who exercised their First Amendment rights responsibly,” said a statement issued by the Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday evening. That was the same day Trump overrode Gov. Gavin Newsom and federalized California’s National Guard, under a rarely used law meant to deal with “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States.”Then, on Monday, with thousands of National Guard troops already deployed to the city, the administration said it was also sending 700 Marines. The Los Angeles police don’t seem to want the Marines there; in a statement, the police chief, Jim McDonnell, said, “The arrival of federal military forces in Los Angeles — absent clear coordination — presents a significant logistical and operational challenge for those of us charged with safeguarding this city.” But for Trump, safeguarding the city was never the point.It’s important to understand that for this administration, protests needn’t be violent to be considered an illegitimate uprising. The presidential memorandum calling out the National Guard refers to both violent acts and any protests that “inhibit” law enforcement. That definition would seem to include peaceful demonstrations around the site of ICE raids. In May, for example, armed federal agents stormed two popular Italian restaurants in San Diego looking for undocumented workers; they handcuffed staff members and took four people into custody. As they did so, an outraged crowd gathered outside, chanting “shame” and for a time blocking the agents from leaving. Under Trump’s order, the military could target these people as insurrectionists.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Abundance Agenda Has Its Own Theory of Power

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      I have had a fascinating few months. “Abundance,” the book I wrote with Derek Thompson, is either going to save the Democratic Party or destroy it. You think I’m kidding. Here’s The Wall Street Journal’s headline: “Can the ‘Abundance Agenda’ Save the Democrats?” Here’s The Nation: “Why the ‘Abundance Agenda’ Could Sink the Democratic Party.” The Atlantic placed the book at the center of “the coming Democratic civil war.”Before “Abundance” came out, I worried that its argument would be too agreeable to generate much debate. I didn’t foresee Ragnarok.But I was wrong about who would perceive it as a threat. The book is largely a critique of how Democrats have governed in the places where they’ve held power. But the obvious targets of that critique — blue-state governors like Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul and top Obama and Biden administration officials — have largely embraced it. Maura Healy, the governor of Massachusetts, laid out a plan for “housing abundance.” More than one top Democrat I expected to react defensively to the argument told me that they felt that they could have written it.This is, for Democrats, a liquid moment. The party is reimagining itself after its crushing loss in 2024, and a lot is riding on which critiques are woven into its renewal. And so the backlash to the book has come from a faction of the party that saw itself rising within the wreckage and worries that “Abundance” will derail its ascendance: the anti-corporate populists.“Abundance” is an effort to focus more of American politics on a surprisingly neglected question: What do we need more of, and what is stopping us from getting it? It is that focus that some of my friends on the populist left object to. Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham law professor who’s a central figure on the anti-monopolist left, told me that her problem with “Abundance” wasn’t the policies but the central question: “We should be focusing Democratic politics and politics in general on the problem of concentrated power and the way in which concentrated power is making it impossible to do things.”Demand Progress, a leftist advocacy group, went so far as to commission a poll to see which message appealed to more voters. Voters were asked to choose between the two framings of “the big problem” in American life: Was it “‘bottlenecks’ that make it harder to produce housing, expand energy production or build new roads and bridges” or rather that “big corporations have way too much power over our economy and our government.” Unsurprisingly, the latter won.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race, Mamdani Responds to a Call for His Deportation

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      Vickie Paladino, a councilwoman from Queens, called Zohran Mamdani a “radical leftist” who hates America, and warned against “future Zohrans.”In his surprising rise to New York City’s top tier of mayoral hopefuls, Zohran Mamdani has battled opponents’ attacks on his inexperience, his leftward politics and his criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza.But this week, Mr. Mamdani found himself facing a new attack that was both pointed and illogical, when a Republican city councilwoman from Queens called for him to be deported. (Mr. Mamdani is a U.S. citizen.)The remark by the councilwoman, Vickie Paladino, who is known for her incendiary social media posts, quickly became a talking point in the Democratic mayoral primary race, just a day before the candidates were to face off in their first debate.Ms. Paladino recirculated a 2019 social media post from Mr. Mamdani in which he said he couldn’t vote for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president in 2016 because he was not a citizen at the time. She was incredulous that Mr. Mamdani was being treated seriously as a mayoral candidate.“Let’s just talk about how insane it is to elect someone to any major office who hasn’t even been a U.S. citizen for 10 years — much less a radical leftist who actually hates everything about the country and is here specifically to undermine everything we’ve ever been about,” Ms. Paladino wrote on X late Monday evening. “Deport.”Mr. Mamdani, who is polling second behind former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in the June 24 primary, soon responded.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More