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Trump disparages Zohran Mamdani’s victory after Democrats sweep key 2025 elections – live
The president continued to undermine the results of New York’s mayoral election. He’s yet to reference the new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, by name. But he’s used the historic victory as a way to color the future direction of the Democratic party.“If you want to see what congressional Democrats wish to do to America, just look at the result of yesterday’s election in New York, where their party installed a communist,” Trump said, inciting a series of boos as a result. “Now the Democrats are so extreme that Miami will soon be the refuge for those fleeing communism in New York.”He went on to summarize the situation at large: “The decision facing all Americans could not be more clear – we have a choice between communism and common sense.”Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, held a call with reporters on Wednesday declaring: “Make no mistake, the Democratic Party is back.”“The Democratic Party is all gas, no brakes,” Martin added.“We made it clear we don’t want gilded ballrooms. We want lower health care costs,” he said. “We don’t want marble bathrooms. We want lower energy bills. We don’t want Great Gatsby parties. We want kids to be able to eat dinner every night.”Martin credited the candidates with a relentless focus on affordability issues – from Zohran Mamdani’s freeze the rent in New York City to Mikie Sherrill’s Day 1 state of emergency on utility costs in New Jersey.He also touted the party’s inroads with young people, and particularly young men, a demographic group Democrats have struggled with. It was his hope that the resounding victory on California’s redistricting measure creates a “chilling effect” on Republican states weighing gerrymanders at Trump’s request.“This is not your grandfather’s Democratic Party. We will meet you in every single state that you decide to try to steal more seats,” he said.Tuesday’s election results point to voter discontent with Donald Trump, according to a new poll by the Associated Press. The news organization surveyed more than 17,000 voters in states that held elections this week and found most disapproved of Trump’s performance as president.In Virginia and New Jersey, slightly less than half of voters said Trump was a factor in their voting. But the majority of those who did cite the president as a factor said their vote was to oppose him – four in 10 voters. Similar patterns were seen in New York City and California.Republicans mostly said Trump wasn’t a factor in their vote, despite saying they approve of his job performance. In California, only one in 10 voters said they were voting to support Trump.Immigration was a hot-button issue for many voters who said Trump’s aggressive approach had “gone too far”. This was most starkly seen in New York City and California, where about six in 10 voters said their state shouldn’t cooperate with the White House on immigration enforcement.Jared Golden, the Maine Democratic representative, announced today that he won’t seek re-election to Congress in 2025.“I have grown tired of the increasing incivility and plain nastiness that are now common from some elements of our American community – behavior that, too often, our political leaders exhibit themselves,” the congressman wrote in a column for the Bangor Daily News. “Additionally, recent incidents of political violence have made me reassess the frequent threats against me and my family.”Golden said that while he’s confident he would win if he were to run again, “what has become apparent to me is that I now dread the prospect of winning”, also citing the ongoing government shutdown – now the longest on record – as part of his decision. “The nonstop, hyperbolic accusations and recriminations by both sides reveal just how broken Congress has become,” he said.Golden’s decision to step aside in a district that supported both him and Donald Trump in 2020 and 2024 poses a challenge for Democrats. To keep the seat competitive, they’ll need to find a candidate who can connect with rural voters in a state with a strong libertarian streak.My colleagues Andrew Witherspoon and Will Craft have been digging into the data following Tuesday’s mayoral election in New York, looking at the sections of boroughs where Zohran Mamdani performed particularly well.
The US supreme court appeared skeptical of the legal basis of the Trump administration’s sweeping global tariff regime on Wednesday after justices questioned the president’s authority to impose the levies. The question at the heart of the case is whether the Trump administration’s tariffs violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law which only gives the president authority to “regulate or prohibit international transactions during a national emergency”. Today, even conservative justices sounded doubtful of the strength of the Trump administration’s position. “The vehicle is the imposition of taxes on Americans, and that has always been a core power of Congress,” said Chief Justice John Roberts. Lawyers for the small businesses challenging the White House said that the president’s actions were unprecedented. “They are tariffing the entire world in peacetime, and they are doing it asserting a power that no president in our history has ever had,” said attorney Neal Katyal.
As he hosted Republican senators at the White House, Donald Trump offered some initial thoughts on the Democratic victories across the country on election night. “Last night, it was not expected to be a victory, it was very Democrat areas. But I don’t think it was good for Republicans,” the president said. “I’m not sure it was good for anybody.” Later, while speaking at the America Business Forum in Miami, Trump particularly disparaged Zohran Mamdani’s historic win in New York City. “The decision facing all Americans could not be more clear – we have a choice between communism and common sense,” he said, while mispronouncing the new mayor’s name.
On Capitol Hill, and day 36 of the government shutdown (now the longest on record), Republicans continued to rebuke Democrats for failing to pass a stopgap funding bill. House speaker Mike Johnson also used his daily press conference to both downplay and foreshadow what Tuesday’s election results suggest going forward. “There’s no surprises. What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming,” the speaker said, before stating the importance of maintaining a Republican majority in the midterm elections. “If we lose the majority in the House, and this radical element of the Democrat party were able to take over, we’ve already seen that movie. They will try to end the Trump administration,” Johnson said.
Meanwhile, Trump had choice words for GOP lawmakers, as he pushed for them to blow up the filibuster. Despite reticence from Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, the president pushed the virtues of abolishing the 60-vote threshold needed to end debate on legislation. His argument largely rests on the grounds that Democrats would do the same, and would use it to advance their own agenda if they were given the opportunity. “We have to get the country going. We will pass legislation at levels you’ve never seen before, and it will be impossible to beat us,” he said. “They’ll [Democrats] most likely never attain power, because we will have passed every single thing that you can imagine.”
Republicans in California on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit challenging a high-stakes redistricting measure that could help flip up to five congressional seats for Democrats.The suit, filed by Republican assembly member David Tangipa, 18 California voters and the state Republican party, in the US district court for the central district of California argues that the new maps are unconstitutional because they were drawn to increase the voting power of a particular racial group. It asks the court to block the new maps from taking effect, at least temporarily.The measure, Proposition 50, was approved by voters on Tuesday evening, in a decisive victory for Democrats. The plan temporarily gives the power to draw congressional districts to the California legislature, allowing it to adopt maps that will help Democrats pick up five seats in the US House of Representatives.Mike Columbo, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that California Democrats drew the maps to increase the power of Latino voters.While the supreme court allows states to use race as a factor in drawing political maps, Columbo argued that the intent was to help minority voters elect the candidates of their choice. In California, he noted, Hispanic voters represent the largest ethnic group.“There is no majority race in California more than Hispanics,” Columbo said. “Hispanics have had fantastic success in electing candidates of their choice. Accordingly, California cannot meet this exception.”Democrats have expressed confidence that the maps would withstand a legal challenge.Trump’s address today in Miami is sounding more like a campaign rally, as he responds to the Democratic victories across the country after Tuesday’s election.“Let’s see how a communist does in New York. We’re going to see how that works out. We’ll help them. We want New York to be successful. We’ll help them a little bit,” the president said, after Zohran Mamdani was elected as the city’s youngest, first Muslim mayor.In MiamiThe White House had said Donald Trump’s remarks would be addressing his economic agenda and the trade deals he has signed in recent weeks. But it swiftly became a familiar litany of personal insults against political foes, including Joe Biden, the California governor Gavin Newsom, Chuck Schumer and Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat elected Tuesday as mayor of New York.In MiamiDonald Trump’s speech started off with a lengthy self-congratulation for winning his second term of office exactly one year ago today.“We rescued the economy … we saved our country,” he insisted, before recounting his pre-election photoshoot with a garbage truck, and serving hamburgers in a McDonald’s restaurant.“This is the golden age of America,” he said, touting a slew of recent trade deals with other nations, and insisting they would net $21tn for the US economy in one year. He claimed to have removed 600,000 Americans from food stamp aid, and that 2 million more were working than when he took office.“Prices are coming down very fast,” he said. “We’re going to have a bigger, better, stronger economy than my first four years.”The president continued to undermine the results of New York’s mayoral election. He’s yet to reference the new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, by name. But he’s used the historic victory as a way to color the future direction of the Democratic party.“If you want to see what congressional Democrats wish to do to America, just look at the result of yesterday’s election in New York, where their party installed a communist,” Trump said, inciting a series of boos as a result. “Now the Democrats are so extreme that Miami will soon be the refuge for those fleeing communism in New York.”He went on to summarize the situation at large: “The decision facing all Americans could not be more clear – we have a choice between communism and common sense.”The president took the stage in Miami to deliver remarks at the America Business Forum. He’s offered the greatest hits of many of his usual lines: extolling his 2024 win as the most “consequential election victory in American history”, declaring his second administration as the beginning of a “golden age of America” and baselessly claiming the 2020 election was stolen.He also disparaged the results of the New York mayoral election. “Watch what happens in New York, terrible,” Trump said, not referring to Zohran Mamdani by name. “And I hope it doesn’t happen, but you’re going to see it.”Johnson also said today that he has spoken with the president about how they can shore up support in the midterm 2026 elections. “If we lose the majority in the House, and this radical element of the Democrat party were able to take over, we’ve already seen that movie. They will try to end the Trump administration,” Johnson said. “He won’t have four years. He’ll have only two because they will move to impeach him, probably on the first day of the new Congress in January 2027, and they will try to systematically unwind all the important reforms that we’ve done for the American people.”The House speaker also said that Trump is “going to help” as campaign season kicks off. “He’s offered to do rallies and the tele-town halls and all the thing – he’s sent out a huge round of endorsements of incumbents,” he added.Earlier today, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, held his daily press conference on the steps of the US Capitol, declaring that Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York is “the biggest win for socialism in US history and the biggest loss for the American people”.Johnson added: “Working families watching this play out have a right to know that socialism and communism are not just confined in New York City, they are quickly coming to a town near you.”However, he urged those watching to not “read too much” into last night’s results. “There’s no surprises. What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming,” the speaker said.In response the sweep of Democratic victories on Tuesday, the vice-president took to social media to offer his analysis, noting that “it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states”, but laying out his thoughts regardless.“We need to focus on the home front. The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day,” Vance wrote.He added that “infighting” among Republicans “is stupid”.“I care about immigration and our sovereignty, and I care about establishing peace overseas so our resources can be focused at home. If you care about those things too, let’s work together,” he said.On the subject of Mamdani, this time last year no one had really heard of him. Now he is the first Muslim, millennial and mayor of South Asian heritage of America’s largest city. For this week’s episode of Politics America Weekly, Jonathan Freedland speaks to reporter Ed Pilkington about Mamdani’s historic win, his challenge to the president, and what the Democrats should take away from a successful night at the ballot box. You can listen here:I talked with leftwing commentator Hasan Piker on the phone earlier today, fresh off a night of celebrating Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York.Mamdani’s message can be replicated around the country, Piker said, despite the contention from some that the democratic socialist’s platform would be too radical for other parts of the country.“This is probably the 700th time saying this, and not just about Zohran in general, not even just last night. This is the message of my entire political advocacy. This is the message of my entire political career as a commentator, as someone who works with organizers and activists,” Piker said.“Yes, Zohran’s message is universal. It is applicable, and I think as long as you localize it to address the ailments that people feel, the issues that people feel in whatever locality, in whatever state that you are running for, as long as you center working-class struggles and affordability at the heart of your campaign, you will definitely win.”After a brief rebuttal from Sauer and more than two and a half hours of arguments, Roberts announces, “The case is submitted,” and the hearing concludes.The next step is a private conference at which the justices will take a preliminary vote on the outcome. More - in US Politics
Trump voters for Mamdani and a new left coalition: the biggest surprises from New York’s election
Two days before the New York mayoral election, Michael Lange made a big electoral prediction – not just of who would win overall, or in each borough or neighborhood, but block by block. Lange, a political analyst born and raised in New York City, has spent over a decade in progressive politics and has become something of a local celebrity this year for his deep dives into city data and polling.He published his highly detailed prediction map – which correctly forecast that Zohran Mamdani would win although failed to predict Andrew Cuomo’s strong performance – on his Substack, the Narrative War. Lange has a flair for witty coinages. He highlighted, for instance, the divide between the “commie corridor”, stretching from Park Slope to Bushwick to Astoria, where he predicted (accurately) that Mamdani would win by huge margins, and the “capitalist corridor” on Manhattan’s Upper East and Upper West Sides. There, “the Free Press and Wall Street Journal outrank the New York Times” in readership and most voters leaned toward Cuomo, who ran as a conservative-courting independent.I spoke with Lange on Wednesday morning to discuss the trends and surprises that emerged on election night.You’ve had a very busy election season. I could see you on Hell Gate’s election live stream last night, with your laptop strapped to you like a busking DJ in Washington Square Park. How was your night?I had to do that because they were dropping around 200,000 ballots into the system every few minutes! I was actually a little nervous at the beginning: Mamdani led the early vote by 12 points, but there were two big batches of ballots that came in after that and his lead went from 12 to 8%. I was worried.You know, there was a world in which yesterday went kind of poorly for Mamdani, where Cuomo was going to end up basically doubling his votes from the Democratic primary. But Mamdani added 500,000 votes to his primary coalition, and that’s a huge reason why he won. He went out and massively expanded his base from the primary.Where did Mamdani get those extra votes from?He built the coalition that the left always wanted to build: it’s multiracial, it’s young, it’s renters and it’s people squeezed by affordability. He improved considerably with Black and Hispanic voters, working- and middle-class voters, compared to the primary. Plus he further maximized his base of liberal progressives, young leftists, and Muslims and south Asians. He couldn’t have won without making those significant inroads.There were also some Trump/Mamdani voters – is that a big trend?It’s definitely a real thing, confined to working-class Latinos, south Asians and Muslims. Voters in immigrant strongholds that went for Trump last year went for Zohran this year. But I wouldn’t say he was winning over white working-class voters and Maga voters.One of the big stories of the night was the sky-high turnout. Who did that help?Both sides. Turnout was significantly higher than I had expected. I thought we might go over 2 million, but it’s closer to 2.3 million – that is a lot of darn voters. There was a decent anti-Mamdani block, who were motivated, but the Mamdani base was also motivated, and that was enough to win.You predicted he’d get over 50% of the vote. Is he on course for that?Right now you would say he’s favored to get over 50%. He’s at 50.4% but there’s still, like, probably 200,000 votes left to report [as of Wednesday morning]. So I don’t think it’s definitive, but I think it’s likely, and I hope he does because then no one can say Sliwa was a spoiler.Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, is the other big story of the night. His vote completely collapsed.He didn’t win a single precinct in any borough. Not even Tottenville in Staten Island, which is like an 88% Trump neighborhood. That really surprised me. Cuomo kept very white areas, very wealthy areas and very religiously Jewish areas, and then added all of these Republicans on Staten Island who had a strong turnout. I think there was a lot of tactical voting by the Republicans. They were doing it before Trump tweeted his support for Cuomo, but that definitely helped. It could have even turned the tide if Mamdani’s coalition hadn’t grown.View image in fullscreenWhat about your much mentioned “commie corridor” – was support for Mamdani overwhelming in those parts of Brooklyn and Queens?I think there was a little dilution of the commie corridor in some areas like Astoria or Greenpoint that have more older white ethnic folks. In Astoria, for example, the Greek landlords and homeowners all went for Cuomo. So there was a little resistance. But no, mostly the commie corridor is another huge reason why Zohran won – he was polling between 77% and 83% in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Bushwick.In the lead-up to the election we reported on whether Mamdani was making inroads with Jewish New Yorkers. Is there any suggestion that he did?There are neighborhoods with a lot of secular and more progressive-leaning Jews – like Park Slope and Morningside Heights – where he did well. But in the wealthy Jewish communities like the Upper East Side, his position on Israel definitely mattered there. Similarly in the more middle-class Jewish areas like Forest Hills, Rego Park, or Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale in the Bronx – they all leaned Cuomo. And also, you have Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in southern Brooklyn, they were pretty staunchly Cuomo. So I don’t know if there were crazy narrative-busters on this one, but Mamdani did hold more progressive Jewish neighborhoods and even parts of the Upper West Side [which has more reform and conservative Jews] by big margins.Has Mamdani rewritten what New York means politically? Will the commie corridor become a launch pad for leftwing candidates?Yes, it’s no coincidence that some of the biggest political leaders from the left come from a handful of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. I’m sure that we’ll see more of that – people will come from these neighborhoods to be elevated nationally.But I think that every city in America can have their own commie corridor. Urban places are the epicenters of leftwing power in America – because they’re young, people rent and they are places where people are crushed by the inequalities we face. More
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What does Prop 50’s passage mean for California, Gavin Newsom and the US?
Californians overwhelmingly backed Proposition 50, the crucial redistricting measure that Democrats have said is essential to safeguarding democracy and pushing back against the Trump administration.“We stood firm in response to Donald Trump’s recklessness, and tonight, after poking the bear, this bear roared with unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result,” Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday after the ballot measure passed.The effort was a direct attempt to counteract Texas’s partisan gerrymander, undertaken at Trump’s behest, to create several new safely Republican districts. Under Prop 50, California will halt the work of its independent redistricting commission until after 2030 and allow the legislature to redraw congressional districts to carve out five additional Democratic seats.The new map is expected to oust longtime Republican officials, and have significant effects on the 2026 midterms.How did the state vote?As of Wednesday morning, results showed that some 63.8% of voters approved the proposition with just 36.2% voting against the measure in what the Associated Press described as a “swift and decisive victory”. More than 8 million people voted in Tuesday’s election and the measure won the majority of votes along much of the coast and in southern California. It was largely unpopular in the northern and inland regions that will be most affected by redistricting.Who is at risk of losing their seat?These Republicans are at risk under California’s new congressional map: Darrell Issa, whose district covers east San Diego county; Doug LaMalfa, who has represented a large swath of rural northern California for more than a decade; Ken Calvert, a Riverside county representative who has served in the US House since 1993; David Valadao, who represents the southern San Joaquin valley; and Kevin Kiley, the representative for much of eastern California. Kiley introduced a bill to ban mid-decade redistricting nationwide, but his proposal did not advance.After the measure passed, Republicans in California sued over Prop 50, and asked the court to block the new maps from taking effect. An attorney representing the plaintiffs – which include Republican state lawmaker David Tangipa, 18 California voters and the state’s Republican party – said that Democrats drew congressional boundaries to increase the voting power of Latinos. The new congressional districts will leave racial representation almost unchanged, according to an analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California.How will Prop 50’s passage affect the midterms?The measure is expected to have a major effect on the outcome of the 2026 midterms. Past elections have shown that the president’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections, and Democrats argued Prop 50 will help ensure Republicans do not retain full control of the federal government.“The passage of this new map – which is designed to protect a slew of vulnerable Democrats and will cost Republicans three to five seats in 2026 – is the most consequential development to date in the mid-decade redistricting wars due to the sheer number of seats that it impacts,” Erin Covey, with the Cook Political Report, said in a statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The outcome of these races in California could ultimately determine which party wins control of the House next November.”What does this mean for Gavin Newsom?The decisive victory of Prop 50 is a major win for the proposal’s biggest champion, Gavin Newsom. The California governor has been one of Trump’s most high-profile opponents and helped rally massive support for the proposal. Newsom is widely expected to seek the White House in 2028 and the win has further raised his profile nationally and elevated his status as a Democratic leader.Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic consultant who leads the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, told the Guardian this week that Newsom had gambled on Prop 50 and it appeared it would pay off.“But more than that is the fact that he fought back – that he dared to do this, that people said it was dangerous for him, and he forged ahead with it anyway.” More
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CNN’s All Access election night ‘watch party’ might not be the network’s future
CNN wanted to try something new on election night, and you can’t blame them.Cable news networks – well, besides Fox News – are struggling to retain viewers, even on a night where voters were getting their first real say on Donald Trump’s second presidency.More and more customers are cancelling their cable packages in favor of cheaper streaming services or free content on social media. So, the network recently launched a new streaming product of its own called CNN All Access – priced at $6.99 a month – that offers online access to a full menu of the network’s news and non-news content, along with a stream of CNN’s television product, something a previous incarnation lacked.On Tuesday, CNN All Access subscribers got exclusive access to an election night broadcast – the CNN Election Livecast – that the network’s data guy and host Harry Enten likened to a “watch party”. Previewing the event on CNN’s main channel, Enten said it would be “kind of like hanging out with your best friends who know the most about politics”.There’s no question that CNN’s cast on Tuesday night featured political experts, including commentators Ben Shapiro (the Daily Wire), Charlamagne tha God (the Breakfast Club), Ana Kasparian (the Young Turks) and the gen-Z conservative activist Isabel Brown, who also hosts a show for the Daily Wire. But the program often felt far from what was actually happening at the polls.Throughout the two-hour program, there were few updates on the results of the election. Those watching the streaming show rather than the main CNN broadcast, which featured the network’s standard election-night fare – anchors Jake Tapper and John King pointing to maps and getting live reports from campaign celebrations – were late to find out that the network had projected Zohran Mamdani as the winner of the New York City mayoral election. (Enten had to interrupt a discussion between Shapiro and Kasparian about the white nationalist Nick Fuentes to actually share the update.)CNN designed a set for the event that featured comfy couches, arcade games, a pop-a-shot basketball game and a foosball table. The idea was that the cast would actually have some fun, playing games while chatting politics and taking in the results. But everyone stayed glued to their seats – until the very end of the broadcast, when Enten made Shapiro play the basketball game. Neither had much success. “We have this lovely room here, and we haven’t actually utilized it at all,” Enten said. A large coffee table in the center of the room featured bowls of snacks that never seemed to get touched.Kara Swisher, who was beamed into the room for a few minutes, perhaps too honestly, described it as “the weirdest living room I’ve ever seen”.The panel also seemed to lack true ideological diversity, with the cast seeming to largely agree that Mamdani would struggle to actually govern – and all affirming that they viewed Joe Biden’s administration as a failure.About an hour in, Charlamagne tha God left the panel because, Enten said, he needed to get up early the next morning for his day job. He was replaced by Tezlyn Figaro, who has appeared on the Breakfast Club.As the event wound down, Enten struggled to actually end it because the panel was in the middle of a heated discussion about whether Mamdani was a “jihadist”.“That, I think, is a lovely way to end this evening,” Enten said, finding a stopping point. “I think it’s been an amazingly fun time – a different experience.”At that, in a nod to what matters most at CNN right now, Enten said he was off to spend a few hours analyzing election results on the television channel. More
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London mayor sees parallels in Zohran Mamdani’s victory: ‘Hope won’
While the soon-to-be first Muslim mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, was in the final throes of his mayoral campaign on a brisk day in New York, Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim of mayor of London, was wrapping up a two-day climate summit in a steamy if overcast Rio de Janeiro.“Hope is not gone,” Khan told the 300 city mayors gathered in the Brazilian city’s museum of modern art.The London mayor was referring to the challenges faced by regional politicians in dealing with the climate emergency in the face of the scepticism or outright denial of the science by national governments – including that led by Donald Trump.But on hearing of Mamdani’s win, Khan suggested that this too had given him hope. London and its mayor have been repeatedly raised by figures such as Trump’s former chief of staff Steve Bannon as the disastrous outcome that New Yorkers had to avoid.“In recent years, there’s been a growing chorus of commentators and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic attacking London and New York for their liberal values,” Khan told the Guardian. “They paint a picture of a lawless dystopia in an attempt to sow fear and division. But ask most Londoners or New Yorkers, and you’ll find that this narrative falls on deaf ears.“Many of the challenges our cities face are similar, but they are not identical. But we are united by something far more fundamental: our belief in the power of politics to change people’s lives for the better.”He later tweeted: “New Yorkers faced a clear choice – between hope and fear – and just like we’ve seen in London – hope won.”Khan, 55, the London-born son of Amanullah and Sehrun Khan, a bus driver and seamstress respectively, who arrived in Britain from Pakistan in 1968, achieved a historic third term as mayor on the Labour ticket in May last year.Mamdani, the son of a Ugandan academic, Mahmood Mamdani, a specialist in colonial and post-colonial history, and Mira Nair, the acclaimed film-maker, made his own history on Tuesday as a Democrat picking up nearly 200,000 more votes in New York than his nearest rival, the former state governor Andrew Cuomo.“It’s never been more crucial for our cities to challenge those who weaponise our diversity and instead stand firm in the belief that no matter who you are, or where your family is originally from, you can achieve anything,” said Khan. “In our cities, hope and unity will always triumph over fear and division.”There are obvious, albeit superficial, similarities between the two men.For all that Mamdami, 34, has been characterised as a diehard socialist, his policy platform bears a distinct resemblance to that of Khan, who would describe himself as of the “soft left” on the British political spectrum – a flavour of progressive politics that is less enamoured of the munificence of market forces than politicians such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, but more sceptical about handing over the running of the economy to the state than the likes of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.They have both proposed types of rent controls. Mamdani wants a $30 (£23) an hour minimum wage in the city, while Khan has long supported a voluntary London living wage, which at £14.80 ($19.30) per hour is more than £2 beyond the UK’s statutory minimum.Mamdani has proposed to impose a 2% levy on earnings above $1m year (affecting about 34,000 households), but that will involve negotiating with the New York state legislature and with Governor Kathy Hochul, who has said she opposes new income taxes. Khan does not have the powers to raise taxes, but he has sought such cash-raising powers to fund major transport projects.Making their cities affordable has also been central to both men’s policy prospectus: Mamdani proposed free bus transit while Khan has frozen fares for years. Both men have been outspoken on Gaza, condemning Hamas’s October 7 attacks but describing Israel’s war as genocidal. Khan was ahead of his party leader, the prime minister, Keir Starmer, in calling for the UK to recognise a Palestinian state.The context, though, is quite different. Mamdani terrifies and excites his party in equal measure, observers say. Unlike Khan, whose 2024 campaign mantra was a “London for everyone”, the New Yorker’s rhetoric draws up dividing lines, and is seen by some as making a bogey figure of the “billionaire”.Khan has been involved in Labour politics for over 30 years and is well-attuned to building electoral coalitions. Asked about warnings that the wealthy would leave New York if Mamdani won, he responded by inviting them to the UK.“If that is the case, come to London,” he said. “I am going to roll out a red carpet and welcome you.”Brett Bruen, a former US diplomat in the Obama administration, said that the major issue is that at 34 years of age, there is very little to go on when judging how Mamdani will actually govern.He said: “He’s certainly managed to stand out as a leader made for this moment, but that comes, obviously, with quite a lot of scrutiny. Some of it, I think, is warranted in questions about his résumé and whether or not he’s got like the requisite experience to lead this huge city.“It’s fair to say that he is on the outer extremities of the political spectrum, even in New York. And you know, we have seen, in the case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and some others, that while they’ve done well in certain segments, they also become popular targets for Trump and the Republicans.“Those of us who are more in the centre of the party, face a problematic predicament. How do we talk about a party that can appeal to independents, that can even appeal to moderate Republicans, when some of our most vocal and visible voices are those that are out so far on the left?”If the two men differ in terms of experience, rhetoric and level of internal support within their respective parties, there are certainly parallels in the dog-whistle – and worse – politics that their candidatures provoked among their opponents.When Khan first stood for mayor in 2016, his Conservative rival Zac Goldsmith was accused of pursuing arguably the dirtiest campaign in British politics.Tamils, Hindus and Sikhs were sent letters warning that their jewellery was unsafe, because Khan planned to introduce a wealth tax.The Conservative then cabinet minister Michael Gove suggested that Khan would implement sharia law if elected.The campaign culminated in an article by Goldsmith in the Mail on Sunday accompanied by a photograph of a London bus blown up during the 7/7 terror attacks and a headline suggesting that a vote for Khan would put the city into the hands of a party that “thinks terrorists are its friends”.Trump, meanwhile, has described Khan as a “terrible, terrible mayor”, and falsely claimed that London was facing “sharia law”.Mamdani faced similar slurs. “God forbid, another 9/11, can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?” asked Cuomo at one stage to the conservative radio talkshow host Sid Rosenberg.“He’d be cheering,” Rosenberg replied. Cuomo, who had previously referred to Mamdani as “a terrorist sympathiser”, laughed, adding: “That’s another problem.”“Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday.Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Democratic governor of New Mexico, said that what united Khan and Mamdani was that they offered a positive vision of the future.“I think that is incredibly attractive to voters,” she said. “They want new ideas. They want innovation. They want optimism. They don’t want somebody who’s dark and negative and angry.“Mamdani is the opposite of dark, angry, moody and he’s very optimistic. So I think that’s the future of the Democratic party, identifying this enthusiasm and optimism for the future.”Leah Kreitzman, who was Khan’s director of external and international affairs until 2021, said that there was a clear parallel between the two men that explained much of the vicious backlash they endured.“The reason why [Sadiq] gets attacked, both by the far right and by Islamist extremists is that the very fact of him and his success means that they’re wrong,” she said.“He completely defies their ideology and worldview: that he can be a Londoner, a Brit, a Muslim, from immigrant parents, liberal in his politics, but religious in his beliefs. If that’s all true and it’s successful and popular, they’re wrong.“[Khan and Mamdani] are quite important people in that sense, because they’re living embodiments of the fact that you can be all of those things.”The two men, who have only spoken once after Mamdani won the Democrat ticket for the mayoral election, have clearly also recognised that there is electoral mileage in having a clear positive vision but also in being the anti-Trump candidate.Khan told the Guardian: “What do nativist populist leaders hate? They hate liberal democracies. They hate progressives. They hate multicultural society. And in London, we have all that, and it’s really successful. So you know, having a really successful liberal, progressive, multicultural city led by a mayor elected not once, not twice, three times who’s of Islamic faith and Pakistani origin must be a real sore to him, a running sore, but that’s his problem not mine.”On winning in New York, Mamdani, with typical swagger addressed the US president: “Donald Trump, since I know you‘re watching, I have four words for you – turn the volume up.” More
- in US Politics
The Guardian view on Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York: the Democrats can build on an uplifting night | Editorial
Since the re-election of Donald Trump last November, a demoralised Democratic party has struggled to reverse a palpable sense of downward momentum. At a grassroots level, amid plunging poll ratings, there has been a yearning for renewal and a more punchy, combative approach in opposition. Against that bleak backdrop, the remarkable election of Zohran Mamdani to the New York City mayoralty is a moment for progressives to savour.Mr Mamdani entered the mayoral race last October as a socialist outsider with almost zero name recognition. He won it with more than 50% of the vote after the highest turnout in more than half a century, and despite the best efforts of billionaires to bankroll his chief rival, the former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, to victory. That achievement makes him the youngest mayor of the US’s largest city for more than 100 years and the first Muslim to occupy the role.New York is a traditional Democratic stronghold and is in no sense a national bellwether. Nevertheless, faced with a Maga movement that has based its success on the support of working-class voters, the Democratic party can learn much from Mr Mamdani’s extraordinary triumph. Leaving culture-war politics to his increasingly desperate opponents, he campaigned relentlessly and almost exclusively on the theme of affordability.Charges of ideological extremism failed to stick because pledges of free childcare, free buses and a rent freeze spoke to an essentially social democratic message, offering public solutions to years of rising inequality. That vision persuaded a vast army of 100,000 volunteer canvassers to knock on millions of doors, more than offsetting Mr Cuomo’s far greater financial resources. The central insight was that values-driven opposition to Maga populism can succeed when supplemented by a positive offer to voters whose living standards have been steadily eroded.On an uplifting night for Democrats, a similar pattern was seen in New Jersey and Virginia, where more centrist-leaning candidates won gubernatorial races by impressive margins. Cost-of-living pledges were again to the fore, including a proposed freeze on electricity prices and a focus on housing costs. California offered further grounds for a cautious rebirth of optimism; after Republican gerrymandering of congressional boundaries in Texas, voters backed countermeasures to redress the balance ahead of next year’s midterm elections.As the Democratic party journeys through the wilderness of a second Trump term, it would be fanciful to believe that a corner has been definitively turned. For New York’s mayor-elect, the hard yards are yet to begin. Mr Trump has already threatened to withhold federal funds from an administration he will do his utmost to discredit, undermine and disrupt. More broadly, the reluctance of senior Democratic figures to endorse Mr Mamdani’s campaign confirms that internal divisions over strategy are a long way from being resolved.However, it would be churlish to ignore green shoots of political recovery when they appear. As Mr Trump’s popularity sinks amid ongoing cost-of-living concerns and high inflation, the hollowness of Maga pledges to improve blue-collar living standards is a major zone of vulnerability. An emerging focus on affordability anchors Democrats in the preoccupations of their lost voters, as well as those who have remained loyal. By campaigning on that basis with elan and conviction, Mr Mamdani has blazed an inspiring trail. More
- in US Politics
The Zohran Mamdani method can work beyond New York. Take the fight to the right | Aditya Chakrabortty
Zohran Mamdani was forged in the era of Donald Trump. He came to socialism through watching Bernie Sanders run for the US presidency in 2016, in the contest that ultimately gave us Trump I. Last November, a few days after the election of Trump II, he asked voters why they’d backed that guy. The conversations prepared Mamdani in his battle for New York, and the film of them reveals so much about the politics of this era that it repays watching.Those of us schooled in the tactics of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair might roll our eyes at yet another “listening exercise”, starring a powerbroker and his retinue in some beautifully lit hall, but this is no such thing. Here stands an unknown on a street corner in the Bronx, waving a placard as doughtily as a Seventh-Day Adventist. Rather than read off a Rolodex of platitudes, this politician sees his public – some of whom look a little like him, yet whose faces and bodies are etched with the strains of the city. Never having spoken to power, even a lowly state assemblyman such as Mamdani, they talk of lives made smaller and shorter in an economy where the daily basics are too costly. Politics has failed them, so they consider politicians to be failures.Such frustrations propelled Trump into the White House. This week they made Mamdani mayor of the US’s largest city. Analysts have often put the two side by side, only to utter banalities about how they are both good on TikTok or – that giveaway from pundits striving to earn their keep – “populist”. Yet the comparison carries far higher stakes.Both New Yorkers, they embody opposite sides of the metropolis: Manhattan versus its suburbs ; towers versus the streets. They also represent alternative paths for the US. Trump leads his country towards ethnonationalism and Darwinian economics; Mamdani stands for immigrants and a city affordable for all. Crucially, he understands the urban working class is not just white, but often black and brown. It is only through an understanding of the grave dangers posed by Trump that you can glean the hopes vested in Mamdani.A few examples: in September, Trump’s guards grabbed Korean engineers, who had their papers in order, from a Hyundai factory to force them out of the country and thousands of miles away. Last month, ICE agents abducted a British journalist travelling the US on a valid visa for criticising the brutalities committed by Israel. Last week, only hours before 42 million low-income Americans lost their access to food aid, the president hosted a Great Gatsby-themed bash, featuring a scantily clad woman in a giant martini glass. The fete was titled: “A little party never killed nobody.”Such guffawing, lethal thuggishness is why other cities are so enlivened by a contest of otherwise glancing importance to their own lives. Even in a globalised social media, the question of who heads five boroughs on the eastern seaboard of the US does not usually command transnational significance. In the country, the centre of financial power is shifting from east coast to west, from Atlantic to Pacific, Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Nor does the new boy’s crowd appeal derive solely from his youth and charm, or even his recognition of the enduring greatness of the Wu-Tang Clan – although none of those hurt.Still, the chief reason Mamdani has aroused such keen interest is because he is the first leftwinger to show that politicians can not only face down Trumpism, they can beat him. That is the defining task of our era, as New York’s new mayor knows. Amid the thank-yous of last night’s victory speech, he declared: “If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.”Over the past year of Trump II, the finest talents on the centre-left have been stumped how to respond. Obama? Almost nothing. Kamala Harris? Writing her memoirs, of course. The fiercest hostility to Mamdani has come from those supposed to be on his side. After losing in the primary, serial sex pest Andrew Cuomo ran as an independent – and campaigned as Trump’s pick in this week’s contest. The man who is today the first Muslim to lead New York has faced constant innuendo that he is a terrorist sympathiser.Across Europe, the prefects of social democracy have kowtowed to the US’s extremist-in-chief. Keir Starmer treated him to an unprecedented second state visit, while Nato chief Mark Rutte has called him “daddy”. Five years ago, US media moguls took the knee to show off their commitment to diversity; now they bend the knee to a racist loudmouth. Columnists and podcasters talk utter sausage about a “vibe shift” in US politics, even while two days of mass rallies against Trumpism drew something like 12 million people.The centre-left should be taking on the extreme right and acting as the anti-Trump. Instead, as Fintan O’Toole writes in the latest New York Review of Books, it is playing at being not-Trump. Or: not-Farage, not-Weidel, not-Le Pen. In the UK, Starmer’s pitch is basically: we’ll adopt the language and the flags, but deploy them with greater civility. As a response to this moment, it is morally contemptible and politically myopic.In his fine new book The Great Global Transformation, the former World Bank economist Branko Milanovic describes how our political and economic order is now coming to an end. China and the global south now account for more of the world economy than the US, Japan, Europe and the many others put together that he terms the “capitalist core”; at the same time, capitalism is being redefined. The elites who prospered under the regimes shaped by Reagan and Thatcher are now redefining their nations into narrower, meaner, harsher societies, ditching the old commitments to multiculturalism and equality for women. They are forcing upon the rest of us capitalism without secure contracts, unions or even the HR department.Hold Milanovic’s lens over Trump and what do you see? Not an all-powerful emperor, nor some scheming bureaucrat like Putin – but the US’s Yeltsin. He is the buffoon presiding over his country’s decline in influence and importance, while behind him in the shadows the oligarchs carve up the spoils. And if democracy proves too troublesome, why, they’ll buy it. One of the biggest players in the New York elections was hedge-fund guy Bill Ackman, who offered to bankroll anyone who could bring down Mamdani.In the 90s and 00s, the centre-left’s response to Reagan and Thatcher was Clinton, Blair and the third way. They compromised with the new money and triangulated their electoral bases – and they held power, for a while.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut this is a new era: you can’t reach an accommodation with an ICE agent when he’s kneeling on your neck. Climate chaos does not come with a moderate option. An oligarch is not interested in your pitiful attempts to strike a deal. To see the logical endpoint of the new left’s embrace of money, look no further than Peter Mandelson. Famous for being “intensely relaxed” about people getting filthy rich, he became especially relaxed in the company of the filthy rich, such as money man and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – and is now discovering anew the meaning of “disgraced”.The old foxholes and get-out clauses, abstractions and moist eyes, won’t work for the left now. Voters don’t talk about inequality; they worry about paying the bills and getting by. The young aren’t mollified by talk of “suffering” in Gaza; they want it stopped. And bang opposite, the right are bending politics and economics to their will.You can see the past year between Trump’s election and Mamdani’s as real-time dialectic. Thesis, antithesis; right hook, southpaw. It is foolish to pretend that there is any equivalence of power between the White House and Gracie Mansion, but at least the left is still in the fight.
Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist
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