Politics and Government

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares14 Views

    Mamdani, Urged to Keep Tisch as Police Commissioner, Is Considering It

    by

    As Zohran Mamdani runs for mayor in the general election, some leaders are encouraging him to keep Jessica Tisch as New York City’s police commissioner.Zohran Mamdani, the front-runner to be the next mayor of New York, and Jessica Tisch, the city’s police commissioner, might not seem like natural allies.He is a democratic socialist who has questioned whether billionaires should exist. She is a billionaire heiress who has called for stricter criminal justice laws.But if Mr. Mamdani wins November’s general election, both appear open to working together — a potential partnership being pushed by influential business leaders and some of Mr. Mamdani’s more powerful Democratic allies.Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman who decisively won the Democratic primary last month, has said he would consider keeping Commissioner Tisch, and has praised her on the campaign trail and in private for improving public safety and running the Police Department more responsibly after the tumult of Mayor Eric Adams’s first term.Ms. Tisch, in turn, believes that she has made progress in making the city safer since taking command of the department seven months ago, and would want to stay in the job regardless of the outcome of the November election, according to two people familiar with her thinking.The leaders who have encouraged Mr. Mamdani to keep the commissioner include Letitia James, the state attorney general, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ms. James has enthusiastically endorsed Mr. Mamdani.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

    More stories

    • 100 Shares14 Views

      in Elections

      Zohran Mamdani Expands Campaign Team, Hiring Veteran Democrat

      by

      Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman and the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, is taking on a small handful of more experienced campaign hands.Zohran Mamdani powered his way to an upset in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City with the help of a small clutch of loyalists. Now, as he turns to the general election, he is taking the first steps to expand his orbit.Mr. Mamdani will announce on Wednesday that he has hired Jeffrey Lerner, a former political director of the Democratic National Committee and senior Senate aide, to serve as his new communications director. Mr. Lerner, 47, also once worked for Mr. Mamdani’s primary rival, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.Andrew Epstein, who had been overseeing both news and social media for the campaign, will shift into a new role as its creative director, overseeing a team producing the kind of viral narrative videos that helped catapult Mr. Mamdani past his opponents in the primary.Deandra Khan, a top operative at Local 32BJ SEIU, also recently joined the campaign’s political operation.“We are growing, we are maturing as a campaign,” Mr. Epstein, 38, said, indicating that more hires were expected in the coming weeks.The selections could be especially consequential for Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state lawmaker who is still trying to assure segments of his own party that he is prepared to lead the nation’s largest city. He also has to win an unusually volatile general election against Mayor Eric Adams, an independent, and others including Mr. Cuomo, who is considering a third-party challenge.Mr. Lerner, a Democratic campaign veteran, was most recently a managing director at Actum, a political consulting and lobbying firm. In the Obama White House and at the D.N.C., he worked closely with Patrick Gaspard, a senior party official who has played a growing role advising Mr. Mamdani.Mr. Lerner, who lives in Washington, said he had reached out to the campaign to offer his services after Mr. Mamdani’s primary victory. He said that the candidate had “reshaped the political conversation in New York City, and indeed, the nation,” and called him “New York City’s most savvy socialist.”He served as Mr. Cuomo’s communications director in 2007 during Mr. Cuomo’s first year as New York’s attorney general. In an interview, he said accounts of his former boss’s abrasive style were accurate in his experience and suggested he would talk more about that in the future.“I learned a lot about him as a prosecutor, a politician and person,” he said. “At this time, I have nothing to add to the wealth of reporting that accurately captures what it’s like to work for Andrew Cuomo.”In a statement, Mr. Mamdani said the new aide “shares our values and our commitment to make our city a place that is affordable and livable.” More

    • 100 Shares17 Views

      in Elections

      French Police Raid National Rally Over Campaign Finances

      by

      The authorities said they were investigating whether the nationalist, anti-immigrant party broke France’s campaign-finance rules.The police raided the headquarters of France’s far-right National Rally party on Wednesday as part of an investigation into its campaign finances, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.No one has been charged in the investigation, which was opened in July 2024 and aims to determine whether the nationalist, anti-immigrant party ran afoul of campaign-finance rules for France’s 2022 elections and the 2024 European elections.The investigation was the latest in a series of allegations of financial impropriety against the party. It adds to the persistent uncertainty that has dogged French politics in recent months as parties gear up for a 2027 presidential race.The National Rally, which has grown more powerful in recent years, has denied any wrongdoing and on Wednesday denounced the investigation as politically motivated.“This deployment of force has only one aim: to put on a show for the news channels, to search the private correspondence of the leading opposition party, to seize all our internal documents,” Jordan Bardella, the National Rally’s president, said on X. “Nothing to do with justice, everything to do with politics.”About 20 armed officers from France’s financial brigade took part in the raid, which was led by two investigative judges, according to Mr. Bardella.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

    • 125 Shares35 Views

      in Elections

      After Mamdani’s Win, Some Democrats Are Determined to Stop Him

      by

      Though Zohran Mamdani scored a resounding victory in New York City’s Democratic primary, some in his own party are strategizing about how to defeat him in November.The race for mayor in New York City took an unusual and turbulent turn on Monday as some Democrats lined up to suggest ways to defeat Zohran Mamdani, the one candidate officially running on their party’s line.Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Eric Adams, two Democrats currently planning to run in the November election as independents, each called on the other to drop out.A third independent candidate, Jim Walden, was less specific in his similarly themed proposal last week. He suggested that a poll be taken in the fall to determine who among what he referred to as the four “free-market candidates” has the best chance of defeating Mr. Mamdani in a race that “pits capitalism against socialism.” Mr. Mamdani’s left-leaning platform and democratic socialist affiliation have alarmed some of the Democratic establishment.Whoever doesn’t win the poll, Mr. Walden said, should pledge to bow out and support the winner.Mr. Walden’s proposal was backed on Monday by Mr. Cuomo as well as former Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat who held a news conference to announce his support alongside the Republican billionaire John Catsimatidis and Sid Rosenberg, a radio host and supporter of President Trump.The underlying notion is that in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans six to one, the only way to defeat Mr. Mamdani is for his challengers — the three independents and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate — to consolidate their support behind just one of them, and avoid splitting the vote in a five-way race.In some ways, the calls for unity among the independent candidates echo the push that left-leaning groups made during the primary, when they urged supporters to lock arms in an effort to defeat Mr. Cuomo.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

    • 113 Shares23 Views

      in Elections

      Von der Leyen Faces No-Confidence Vote in Far-Right Challenge

      by

      Ahead of the vote on Thursday, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the commission, appeared before the European Parliament to defend herself against complaints about transparency.Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, is expected to face a no-confidence vote in the European Parliament this week. While the measure is likely to fail, it will be a symbolic challenge to the European Union’s top official at a time of high tension.Ms. von der Leyen appeared before Parliament on Monday for a debate to address the complaints against her ahead of the vote, which is scheduled for Thursday.The challenge originated from Europe’s far right: Gheorghe Piperea, a parliamentary newcomer from Romania who belongs to a political group that is often critical of the European Union, accused Ms. von der Leyen’s commission, the E.U.’s executive arm, of “failures to ensure transparency.”The complaint referred to a lawsuit filed by The New York Times over the commission’s denial of a request for records of text messages between Ms. von der Leyen and Dr. Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s chief executive, when she was trying to procure coronavirus vaccines.The General Court in Luxembourg sided with The Times, ruling in May that Ms. von der Leyen’s commission did not provide enough of an explanation in refusing the request for her text messages with the Pfizer executive.Mr. Piperea’s complaint also referred to the commission’s push to ramp up joint defense procurement and to carry out digital laws. He asserted in a filing that the commission’s behavior had been repeatedly opaque and “undermines trust.”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

    • 88 Shares33 Views

      in Elections

      Can Democrats Find Their Way on Immigration?

      by

      The Democrats onstage saw themselves as morally courageous. American voters, it turned out, saw a group of politicians hopelessly out of touch.Standing side by side at a primary debate in June 2019, nine of the party’s candidates for president were asked to raise their hand if they wanted to decriminalize illegal border crossings. Only one of them held still.Six years later, the party remains haunted by that tableau. It stands both as a vivid demonstration of a leftward policy shift on immigration that many prominent Democratic lawmakers and strategists now say they deeply regret, and as a marker of how sharply the country was moving in the other direction.Last year, 55 percent of Americans told Gallup that they supported a decrease in immigration, nearly twice as many as in 2020, and the first time since 2005 that a majority had said so. The embrace of a more punitive approach to illegal immigration includes not only white voters but also working-class Latinos, whose support Democrats had long courted with liberal border policies.“When you have the most Latino district in the country outside of Puerto Rico vote for Trump, that should be a wake-up call for the Democratic Party,” said Representative Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, who saw Mr. Trump win every county in his district along the border with Mexico. “This is a Democratic district that’s been blue for over a century.”The Trump administration is pursuing the harshest crackdown on immigrants since World War II, an effort many Democrats see as a national crisis.Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The New York TimesWe 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

    • 150 Shares39 Views

      in Elections

      A Road Map for Undoing the Damage of the Big, Awful Bill

      by

      In the 30 years I have been a part of fiscal policymaking I don’t think I have ever seen a legislative push as impressive as the passage of President Trump’s big, dubious tax and policy bill.Don’t get me wrong: The consequences for health insurance, poverty, climate change and macroeconomic stability, in roughly that order of importance, will be horrendous. The Medicaid and other health care changes would undo about three-quarters of the coverage expansion from President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion. The law repeals much of what Joe Biden did for climate change in the Inflation Reduction Act. The tax provisions sustain most of the cuts from Mr. Trump’s first term and add in several others for good measure.But before Democrats — and hopefully some Republicans — even try to fix the damage, they should learn the lessons of how the Republicans got all this done, working against tremendous odds on a much faster timetable than the major legislative accomplishments from Mr. Trump’s three predecessors.The first lesson is that ideas really do matter. This legislation did not happen because the public or lobbyists were clamoring for it. Instead Donald Trump and congressional Republicans wanted it and were willing to overcome public disfavor and opposition from vested interests.Sure, special interests were at play in ways big (preserving workarounds to limits on state and local tax deductions) and small (getting new tax breaks for Alaskan whaling captains). But no major lobbying groups were asking for the broad contours of this legislation. The health care industry, which is expected to lose about half a trillion dollars, and the energy industry, which is losing huge tax breaks and subsidies, put up a fight. Their opposition, like that of other industries, went nowhere. And neither did Elon Musk’s — further evidence that oligarchy is the wrong lens through which to view this political moment.The second lesson is that while ideas matter, expert ideas do not necessarily matter. Past fiscal debates have divided economists and policy wonks. In President Trump’s first term, some economists would write opinion articles or go on TV news programs defending his tax cuts as adding to growth while other economists (including me) would write rebuttals.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

    • 113 Shares96 Views

      in Elections

      New Yorkers Embraced Ranked-Choice Voting. Mamdani’s Win Proves It.

      by

      Here are five takeaways from New York City’s second experience with ranked-choice voting, and how it helped Zohran Mamdani secure a decisive victory.Four years ago, New Yorkers had their first brush with ranked-choice voting, but few seemed ready to embrace it. Voters seemed puzzled by the process, and the Democratic mayoral candidates were hesitant to work together and make cross-endorsements to help each other.This year was different.All the campaigns tried to game the system, which allows voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. Organizations made group endorsements; campaigns told voters to avoid ranking specific candidates; and several contenders made cross-endorsement deals.Most of this benefited Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman and democratic socialist who officially won the Democratic primary for mayor on Tuesday after ranked choices were counted.He received nearly 100,000 additional votes from New Yorkers who ranked him lower on their ballots.Those votes helped Mr. Mamdani beat his main rival, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, by 12 percent — a decisive victory that shocked Democrats in the city and across the nation.Here are five takeaways from the ranked-choice count.Brad Lander, left, and Zohran Mamdani reached a cross-endorsement deal that added ranked-choice votes for Mr. Mamdani.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesLander’s Endorsement Helped MamdaniFor much of the campaign, Brad Lander, the city comptroller, was stuck in third place.The only citywide elected official in the race, Mr. Lander was expected to be the standard-bearer for the left flank of the party. But Mr. Mamdani’s charisma, social media savvy and focus on affordability catapulted him past Mr. Lander in the polls.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

    • 113 Shares65 Views

      in Elections

      Ask The Times About New York City’s Mayoral Race

      by

      Have questions about New York City’s mayoral race or politics in the city? We want to hear them.This year’s mayoral race in New York City is already historic in many ways. What questions do you have about the candidates, the electoral process, City Hall or our coverage of local politics? We’ll get them answered by our beat reporters and share the results in future editions of New York Today or our flagship newsletter, The Morning. (Sign up for The Morning newsletter here.)Ask The Times More