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    Mamdani’s Win Has Put Buses in the Spotlight. Should They Be Free?

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    The lowly New York City bus is getting new attention thanks to Zohran Mamdani’s vow to make the service free for all. But can free also mean fast?New York City buses are slow, often crowded and overshadowed by the subway. But thanks to a surprise role in the mayoral election campaign, the humble bus is suddenly in the spotlight.Zohran Mamdani, the Queens assemblyman who in the Democratic primary last week roundly defeated a crowded field that included former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has vowed to make the city’s bus service — a network of 348 routes that carries 1.4 million passengers a day — free for all.The promise marks an unlikely star turn for a branch of the transit system that generally serves passengers who are older and poorer than those riding the subway. At Mr. Mamdani’s rallies about the high cost of rent and child care, the bus fare has become a symbol of the city’s affordability crisis, especially for residents of neighborhoods with limited access to trains.Nearly one in five New Yorkers said they struggled to pay for subway and bus fare in 2023, according to a report by Community Service Society of New York, an anti-poverty group. And the fare, currently $2.90 for both buses and subways, is expected to increase to around $3 early next year.Mr. Mamdani is now among the most high-profile supporters of the idea, popular among some left-leaning transit advocates, that the bus system should be treated as a tax-funded service like public schools and law enforcement.But the plan has split transit supporters who disagree on whether subsidizing the bus system is worth forgoing more than $800 million a year in fare revenue from bus riders, at a time when federal funds for New York State could prove unreliable. And for passengers who have stood in a packed bus, the concern is simpler still: Can free also mean fast?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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      10 Ways of Making Sense of Zohran Mamdani’s Win

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      Four years ago, when Eric Adams was elected mayor, New Yorkers were told that it marked the end of a progressive wave that had shaped national Democratic politics at least since the shock election of Donald Trump in 2016. Just five months ago, as Democrats reckoned with the meaning of a second loss to Trump, the refrain was similar: The party had been pulled too far left by its activist flank, which it needed to not just discipline but also perhaps disavow. At the time, Zohran Mamdani was registering just 1 percent support.Now he has won a decisive primary victory by bringing a remarkably novel electorate to the polls. And a lesson of his shock victory is one we probably should have learned several times over the past decade: Politics are fluid, even quicksilver, and the just-so stories we tell ourselves about what is possible and what is not are almost always simplistic and in many cases just plain wrong.New York is only one city, exceptional in many ways, and last week’s was just one election — a primary at that, featuring a front-runner burdened by laziness and a toxic past. And there are obvious reasons to think that the Mamdani playbook now being debated so furiously both by its admirers and by its detractors would not work in other parts of the country — at least, not in all of them. But Mamdani’s triumph is nevertheless, as I wrote a few weeks ago in anticipation, an extremely big deal, elevating an avowed leftist closer to a more consequential executive office than any has held in generations. And though Mamdani’s ascension comes with meaningful risks, it also throws open a whole new horizon of political possibility. Mamdani’s supporters are exhilarated by the fresh air. But the oxygen spent on him by his haters over the past week shows that they, too, think Mamdani’s win is a major national event.Last month, I asked what stories we might tell about a Mamdani victory — for the left, for the city and indeed for the whole country. But election night delivered enough of an earthquake that a number of new and important story lines have emerged since — too many, I think, to organize in any way but as a grab bag of observations. Here are 10.1. The American left has a new face, and New York City is now an extremely high-stakes progressive experiment.These days, with American politics more and more nationalized, every candidate everywhere is, to some extent, required to participate in national debates and be subjected to national scrutiny (on cable news and social media as well as offline). Perhaps in another era or another city an election like this could be cauterized from the national landscape, allowing an experiment in one city to play out on its own terms. Not now.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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      Taking From the Poor and Giving to the Rich Is Not Populism

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      “I love the poorly educated,” President Trump declared during the 2016 campaign. His intense support for the “big, beautiful” $4.5 trillion tax-and-spending bill now before Congress shows that he has a unique way of demonstrating his affection.Republicans are on the verge of enacting Trump’s upwardly distributive fiscal policy measure, which has become an extreme test of the loyalty of his more downscale MAGA supporters, who not only oppose the bill but stand to bear the brunt of its negative consequences.In its current form, which is changing by the hour, the measure, known popularly as B.B.B., would provide the upper classes, including Trump’s allies and donor base — corporations and the rich — with tax cuts worth approximately $4.45 trillion over 10 years. The measure would offset the cost with the largest reductions in safety net programs in recent decades, if not all time, for those on the lower tiers of the income distribution.This pared-back social spending would adversely affect a large bloc of rural and exurban Republicans who played a crucial role in putting their party in control of the House and Senate, and Trump in the White House.“You can very safely say,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, told The Washington Post, that “this is the biggest cut to programs for low-income Americans ever.”Many of the details of the legislation remain in flux as the Senate continues to vote on amendments. If the Senate approves the legislation, the House and the Senate will still have to come to agreement on a final version for the measure to become law.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 May Get His ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ but the G.O.P. Will Pay a Price

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      And so will many voters.There will be many short- and long-term consequences if Republicans succeed in passing President Trump’s signature policy bill, as they aim to do before the July 4 holiday, David Leonhardt, the director of the Times editorial board, tells the national politics writer Michelle Cottle in this episode of “The Opinions.”Trump May Get His ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ but the G.O.P. Will Pay a PriceAnd so will many voters.Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.Michelle Cottle: I’m Michelle Cottle and I cover national politics for Times Opinion. So with the July 4 weekend looming, I thought we’d talk about a different kind of fireworks: that is, President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” and as always, I hope the air quotes there are audible for everybody.But that bill looks like it is on track for passage. From Medicaid cuts to tax breaks for the rich, it is a lot. Thankfully with me to talk about this is David Leonhardt, the fearless director of the New York Times editorial board, who has some very pointed thoughts on the matter. So let’s just get to it. David, welcome.David Leonhardt: Thank you, Michelle. It’s great to be talking with you.Cottle: I’m so excited, but warning to all: We are recording on Monday midday and even as we speak, the Senate is brawling its way through to a final vote. So the situation is fluid and could change the details by the time you all hear this.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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      We Shouldn’t Have Billionaires, Mamdani Says

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      Appearing on “Meet the Press” days after the mayoral primary, Zohran Mamdani defended his proposals to make New York City more affordable and to increase taxes on the wealthy.Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned for mayor on the theme of making New York City more affordable, said in a major national television interview that during a time of rising inequality, “I don’t think we should have billionaires.”Mr. Mamdani, the likely winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York, said in an appearance on “Meet the Press” on Sunday that more equality is needed across the city, state and country, and that he looked forward to working “with everyone, including billionaires, to make a city that is fairer for all of them.”At the same time, Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, asserted that he is not a communist, a response to an attack from President Trump. “I have already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am — ultimately because he wants to distract from what I’m fighting for,” Mr. Mamdani said.But one question he continued to sidestep was whether he would denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada,” after he declined to condemn it during a podcast interview before the primary.The slogan is a rallying cry for liberation among Palestinians and their supporters, but many Jews consider it a call to violence invoking resistance movements of the 1980s and 2000s.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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      $105 Million Reparations Package for Tulsa Race Massacre Unveiled by Mayor

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      The plan, the first large-scale attempt to address the impact of the 1921 atrocity, will raise private funds for housing assistance, scholarships and economic development.The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, one of the most horrific episodes of racial violence in U.S. history, killed up to 300 Black residents and destroyed a neighborhood. More than a century later, the city’s mayor announced a $105 million reparations package on Sunday, the first large-scale plan committing funds to address the impact of the atrocity.Monroe Nichols, the first Black mayor of Tulsa, unveiled the sweeping project, named Road to Repair. It is intended to chip away at enduring disparities caused by the massacre and its aftermath in the Greenwood neighborhood and the wider North Tulsa community in Tulsa, Okla.The centerpiece of the project is the creation of the Greenwood Trust, a private charitable trust, with the goal of securing $105 million in assets — including private contributions, property transfers and possible public funding — by next spring, the 105th anniversary of the attack.The plan does not include direct cash payments to the two last known survivors of the massacre, who are 110 and 111 years old. But such payments could be considered by the trust’s Board of Trustees, according to Michelle Brooks, a city spokeswoman.Mr. Nichols said a plan to restore Greenwood — a neighborhood that was so prosperous before the attack that it inspired the name Black Wall Street — was long overdue.“One hundred and four years is far too long for us to not address the harm of the massacre,” Mr. Nichols said in an interview before the announcement. He added that the effort was really about “what has been taken from a people, and how do we restore that as best we can in 2025, proving we’re much different than we were in 1921.”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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      Teachers Saved My Life. Why Do We Treat Them So Poorly?

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      I have attended commencements of all kinds throughout my career, and I can tell you that some of the best are in prisons.Over and over, I have spoken at these commencements with incarcerated men and women who acknowledge the awful choices or stupid mistakes they made, the strangers or loved ones they hurt, yet emerge from prison renewed through higher education. While 95 percent of the people incarcerated will come home one day, they often return to the same cycles that led them to prison in the first place. Through college coursework, they are able to reflect on their past, develop a clearer vision for their future and gain the skills to contribute to their families and communities.One student told me that pursuing college while incarcerated was the first time he had moral and academic credibility with his family. The potential for higher education in prison to change lives is the reason that I worked to expand these programs when I was the U.S. secretary of education and president of a national education civil rights organization, and do so now as chancellor of the State University of New York.I believe so deeply in the transformative power of education because teachers saved my life.When I was 8 years old, in October of 1983, my mother died suddenly from a heart attack. It was indescribably devastating. I then lived alone with my father, who was struggling with Alzheimer’s until he died when I was 12. During those years with my father, no one outside our home knew he was sick, and I didn’t know why he acted the way he did.Some nights he would talk to me; some nights he wouldn’t say a word. Other nights he would be sad or angry, or even violent. Home was scary and unstable, but I was blessed to have New York City public schoolteachers who made school a place that was safe, nurturing, academically rigorous and engaging.If not for Allan Osterweil, my teacher in fourth, fifth and sixth grade at P.S. 276 in Canarsie, Brooklyn, I would be in prison or dead. Amid the darkness of my home life, Mr. Osterweil gave me a sense of hope and purpose. In his classroom, we read The New York Times every day. We learned the capital and leader of every country in the world. We did productions of Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll.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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      From One Forest to Another: A Homeless Sweep Changes Little

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      After federal officials began a sweep of a vast forest in Oregon, most of the people who had used the woods as a last refuge had left. But they didn’t go far.With nowhere else to go, many drove their aging R.V.s to a different forest just a few dozen miles away. Advocates for the homeless estimate that there had been 100 to 200 people living in the original encampment on the outskirts of Bend, Ore., a town that has been transformed by an influx of wealthy newcomers.The cost of housing is now out of reach for many in Bend. In recent years, the town has increased the number of beds in shelters, but has not been able to meet the demand. The chasm between rich and poor has widened so much that it even swallowed up a former mayor: He died homeless after being discovered with frostbite in a tent in a Walmart parking lot.Forest law enforcement officials have been deployed to clear the homeless encampment near Bend.On the day of the closure, many R.V.s got no farther than the blacktop just past the police cordon.“I honestly don’t know what to do,” said Andrew Tomlinson, 41, who had been living in the encampment. “I have nowhere to put our R.V. If we leave it, it will be towed, and everything we own is in there.” Mr. Tomlinson said he was unable to work after a heart attack four years ago. He has two stents in his heart and edema in his legs — the wounds have broken the skin, requiring him to apply daily bandages.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