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      Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application

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      Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat running for mayor of New York City, was born in Uganda. He doesn’t consider himself Black but said the application didn’t allow for the complexity of his background.As he runs for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has made his identity as a Muslim immigrant of South Asian descent a key part of his appeal.But as a high school senior in 2009, Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, claimed another label when he applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times.Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani, 33, said he did not consider himself either Black or African American, but rather “an American who was born in Africa.” He said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process. (He was not accepted at Columbia.)“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” said Mr. Mamdani, a state lawmaker from Queens.The application allowed students to provide “more specific information where relevant,” and Mr. Mamdani said that he wrote in, “Ugandan.”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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      Zohran Mamdani Won by Listening. Democrats Should Try It.

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      In the doldrums of last November, depressed and paralyzed by Donald Trump’s victory, I stumbled upon a video in my social media feed of an affable young man in a suit and tie, microphone in hand, interviewing voters in immigrant-heavy areas in Queens and the Bronx.“Did you get a chance to vote on Tuesday?” he asks. And then, “Who did you vote for?”Some didn’t vote at all. But many voted for Trump.What struck me about the video was the young man’s open-ended curiosity. Through it all, he simply listened to the responses to his questions, his friendly face inquisitive.Toward the end of the video he finally makes his pitch to a voter: “You know, we have a mayor’s race coming up next year, and if there was a candidate talking about freezing the rent, making buses free, making universal child care a reality — are those things that you’d support?”“Absolutely,” the man replies.New York Democrats did indeed embrace that message, vaulting that young man, Zohran Mamdani, who was as unknown to most New Yorkers as he was to me, to the top of the heap last month in the very crowded Democratic mayoral primary field. Like many people, I was resigned to an Andrew Cuomo romp, despite his odious past and his lazy campaign. Instead, we got an electrifying rout by a young, charismatic democratic socialist. When the final tally under ranked-choice voting was announced on Tuesday, Mamdani had won 56 percent of the vote, a 12-point margin on Cuomo, the heavy favorite.In the dizzying days since that stunning upset, there has been a great deal of hand-wringing about its meaning. Unsurprisingly, Republicans have had a racist freakout, portraying Mamdani, a Muslim who was born in Uganda to Indian-origin parents, as a dangerous jihadist who will impose Shariah law and invite the slaughter of Jewish New Yorkers. Without a trace of irony, they have also pilloried him as a godless Communist who will destroy the financial capital of the United States by seizing the means of production. Trump mused about arresting him.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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      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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      After Mamdani Mania, the Next Democratic Test Comes to Tucson

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      Adelita Grijalva remains heavily favored to win the House seat of her late father, Raúl Grijalva, but youthful challengers and tired voters are asking why change is so hard for Democrats.Beatrice Torres is tired of voting for Grijalvas.Year after year, Ms. Torres, 70, dutifully volunteered and cast her ballot for Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, a staunch Arizona progressive who was battling lung cancer when he was elected to his 12th term in November. He succumbed in March, the second of three House Democrats to die this year, bolstering the Republicans’ oh-so-slender majority.Now, Mr. Grijalva’s oldest daughter, Adelita, has been asking Ms. Torres to vote for her in the Democratic primary on July 15, another Grijalva to take up her father’s seat. Several challengers are trying to block her, saying that Arizona needs a fresh voice and new ideas, not another Grijalva. And Ms. Torres agrees.“Nobody is listening,” Ms. Torres said, clearly frustrated one scorching morning last week as she sat in her living room on Tucson’s working-class south side, shades drawn against the sun.Ms. Grijalva is still likely to prevail in the heavily Democratic district — dozens of powerful Democrats have endorsed her, including the state’s two Democratic senators. But with two weeks to go, the special election in Arizona’s Seventh District is brewing into the next contest to question what the Democratic Party wants after its defeats of 2024 — experience versus generational change, left versus center, old versus new.And beneath it all is simmering anger over the reluctance of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other aging, ailing Democrats, like Mr. Grijalva, who died at 77, to leave office when their time had come.“We need change,” Ms. Torres said.Ms. Grijalva, 54, is a longtime elected official in Tucson, but to some frustrated voters, she is also the embodiment of their sclerotic party.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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      Don’t Let Shark Panic Spoil Your Fourth of July

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      Yes, the shark population has increased. But the threat is minimal and, in truth, sharks have always been swimming around us, experts say.Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at how concerned about sharks you should be if your plans for the long Fourth of July weekend include going to the beach. We’ll also get details on the continuing war of words between President Trump and Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesIt’s a safe bet that more cameras will be trained on the beaches off Long Island over the Fourth of July weekend than Steven Spielberg used in making “Jaws.” State agencies have 28 camera-equipped drones they can send up, including one that can drop life jackets as needed. Local governments have their own aerial equipment.If the heart-pounding theme from that movie is not already running through your head, this is when it might start. But shark experts maintain that the chance of a close encounter with a shark is unlikely, even though a 20-year-old woman apparently had one at Jones Beach last week. She sustained a bite on one foot and a gash on one leg, officials said.“I tell people, have fun — the threat is minimal,” said John Sparks, a curator in the department of ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History. “You’re always swimming around sharks. You always have been. My bottom line: You shouldn’t be any more worried than you’ve ever been.”Nothing unusual happened on Monday when the Nassau County executive, Bruce Blakeman, went for a swim not far from where the woman was bitten. But Blakeman, and any creatures circling in the water at the same time, were being watched by a marine patrol boat and a helicopter. And on Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul said that New York State was “continuing to strengthen our shark surveillance capabilities.”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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      Mamdani Says Trump Is Attacking Him to Divert Focus From G.O.P. Agenda

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      Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, has been targeted by the president and other Republicans since his success in the primary.Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, forcefully denounced President Trump on Wednesday for threatening to arrest him and repeating baseless claims that he immigrated to the United States illegally.Speaking after a labor union rally in Manhattan, Mr. Mamdani said that he was running to make New York City a bulwark against “authoritarianism” in Washington. But he also argued that Mr. Trump was targeting him as a way of diverting attention from Republican plans to slash taxes for the rich and social safety net programs for the neediest.“I fight for working people,” Mr. Mamdani said. “Ultimately, it is easier for him to fan the flames of division than to acknowledge he has betrayed those working-class Americans.”The remarks, Mr. Mamdani’s first public comments since clinching his party’s nomination this week, offered an early glimpse at how the New York Democrat may try to blunt Mr. Trump’s extraordinary attacks and use them for his own purposes.The victory by Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, over former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and other Democratic rivals has illustrated and even deepened the divisions in American politics, not always along party lines. But few responses have been as ugly or sustained as Mr. Trump’s.“A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday. “We’re going to look at everything.”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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      The Streets Are Safer This Year for Drivers, Cyclists and Pedestrians

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      There have been 87 traffic deaths in the city so far this year, the lowest number since 2018. Officials credit the Vision Zero program and congestion pricing.Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at street fatalities in the first six months of 2025, which fell to a number not seen since 2018. We’ll also get details on Zohran Mamdani’s win in the Democratic primary, which is now official.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesTo city transportation officials, 2025 looks a lot like 2018. So far, anyway.In the first half of this year, 87 traffic deaths were recorded on New York City streets. That was the same number as in the first six months of 2018, which went on to become the safest year since the city began keeping records on traffic fatalities 115 years ago, with 206 deaths on city streets.As that total suggests, the statistics may look different by the end of the year. Crashes and collisions typically rise in the summer, and the second half of a year usually outpaces the first.But for now, city officials are encouraged, with Ydanis Rodriguez, the transportation commissioner, saying in a statement that the city’s streets are “are safer than ever” for everyone on them — pedestrians, cyclists and drivers. The 87 deaths from January through June compared with the 128 reported in the first six months of last year, which ended with 251 fatalities in all.Of the 87:51 were pedestrians, compared with 63 in the first half of last year.15 were drivers or passengers in cars or S.U.V.s, down from 29 in the first six months of 2024.20 were people on what the city calls “motorized two-wheelers,” a category that includes e-bikes, scooters, mopeds and motorcycles. That was down from 33 from January to June a year ago.So far in 2025, one cyclist on a conventional, nonelectric bike has been killed. There were three such deaths in the first half of 2024, six in the comparable months of 2023 and 11 from January to June 2019.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