Tag: democratic socialists

Zohran Mamdani Says He Will Defend Illegal Aliens’ Right to Live in NYC

Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani says he will defend the rights of illegal aliens to live in New York City against President Donald Trump.

During a press conference this week, Mamdani, an immigrant from Uganda, was asked about the potential of Trump having Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conduct raids across New York City as well as possibly sending in the National Guard.

In response, Mamdani attacked Mayor Eric Adams (D) and said he would fight for the city’s sanctuary policy that bans the New York City Police Department (NYPD) from working with ICE agents to arrest and detain even the most violent illegal aliens.

“I will not be the mayor that we have today who went on national television and opened the door to civil immigration enforcement,” Mamdani said. “I will be the mayor that stands up for our sanctuary city policies, that stands up for every New Yorker’s right to live in this city, and the mayor who will hold everyone accountable to the law, no matter who they are.”

Months ago, Mamdani suggested that his administration would go even further than the city’s sanctuary policy, though he was unclear on the details.

“The Trump administration is waging war on the First Amendment and our constitutional rights as it continues to abduct New Yorkers from across our city,” Mamdani said. “Any effort to cooperate with these efforts is a moral stain on our city. We should strengthen our sanctuary city laws.”

Keep reading

Foreign Election Interference? UK Leftists Campaign For Mamdani In NYC Race

A member of the United Kingdom’s parliament announced Sunday that he was campaigning on behalf of socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

Independent Member of Parliament for Islington North Jeremy Corbyn posted on X that he was “hosting a phone bank” with the Democratic Socialists of America “to Get Out The Vote for” Mamdani.

“Let’s get Zohran over the finish line for a New York that’s affordable for all!” Corbyn posted on X.

The Federalist’s CEO and co-founder Sean Davis pointed out that Corbyn was engaging in “literal foreign election interference on behalf of a Ugandan Muslim who wants to ‘globalize the intifada’ in America’s largest city.”

Notably, Corbyn once decried President Donald Trump for allegedly interfering in Britain’s elections.

In a June 1, 2019, post, Corbyn posted to Twitter: “President Trump’s attempt to decide who’ll be Britain’s next PM is an entirely unacceptable interference in our democracy. The next PM should be chosen not by the US president … but by the British people in a general election.”

A second Corbyn post just a few months later said: “Donald Trump is trying to interfere in UK election to get his friend Boris Johnson elected.”

Perhaps Corbyn’s election interference is unsurprising. Corbyn, much like the Democratic Socialists of America and other far-left activists, sees himself as part of a globalist movement in which national borders are obstacles that must be erased in order to achieve a global socialist agenda. Corbyn’s phone banking makes that clear. And it makes sense: Mamdani himself sees elections, no matter how “local,” as just a battlefield in a global ideological struggle. It’s exactly why Mamdani refuses to condemn calls for globalizing the intifada.

Globalists like Corbyn and Mamdani see no difference between London and New York, or Gaza and Manhattan. These are merely different fronts of the same fight, which is why Corbyn has no problem interfering in our elections.

Keep reading

Obama Privately Endorses Communist Zohran Mamdani in Phone Call and Offers Him Political Support

Former President Barack Obama has privately endorsed the mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani, a communist, in New York City.

According to The New York Times, Obama called Mamdani for around half an hour, during which time he praised his campaign and offered him political support.

Their report states:

Former President Barack Obama called New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Saturday, praising his campaign and offering to be a “sounding board” into the future.

The private, roughly 30-minute phone call, which has not previously been reported, was described by two people who participated or were briefed immediately on what had been said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation.

Mr. Obama said that he was invested in Mr. Mamdani’s success beyond the election on Tuesday. They talked about the challenges of staffing a new administration and building an apparatus capable of delivering on Mr. Mamdani’s agenda of affordability in the city, the people said.

The former president’s outreach on the eve of what has been a contentious election is notable, given how divided the Democratic establishment has been over Mr. Mamdani and the role that Mr. Obama still plays in the party.

Keep reading

INSANITY: Zohran Mamdani Plans to Tax Companies Even if They LEAVE New York City

One question that keeps coming up about Zohran Mamdani’s socialist fever dream for New York City, is how he is going to pay for all of the free stuff that he’s planning to give away.

This becomes especially complicated when you consider that some wealthy people and companies will flee the city if he becomes mayor.

Mamdani apparently has a plan for that. He is going to try to tax companies even if they leave the city. It’s not exactly clear how he plans to enforce this insane idea.

Townhall reports:

We suppose the silver lining of New York electing an avowed Democratic Socialist as mayor is that we’ll get to see how disastrous his socialist policies really are, and that’ll discourage the rest of the nation from voting for socialism. But we won’t pretend that learning that lesson will be hard, especially for the people of New York who didn’t vote for Mamdani.

In his latest tax-grab scheme, Zohran Mamdani vows to tax businesses that leave New York and, it seems, any company that merely does business in New York, even if they’re headquartered elsewhere.

“So the way that this tax works is it applies to any business doing business here. They could be located in Miami, but if they’re doing business in New York, it applies to them,” Mamdani said.

This policy proposal is insane. So insane, in fact, we don’t even know how to wrap our heads around it. That’s hundreds of thousands of businesses, including international ones.

In what world does any of this make sense?

Keep reading

Mamdani Leads as Election Day Approaches in High-Stakes NYC Mayoral Race

New York City voters will go to the polls on Nov. 4 to cast their ballots in a three-way mayoral race that could have far-reaching consequences for the city and beyond.

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Party nominee who describes himself as a democratic socialist, is heavily favored to win. He faces former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent, and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee known for wearing a red beret.

Previously, sitting New York City Mayor Eric Adams was also running for reelection as an independent, but he dropped out on Sept. 28 and backed Cuomo.

Cuomo has repeatedly called for Sliwa to back out of the race. Sliwa has rejected that demand.

Despite his rivals’ efforts to consolidate opposition to the self-described democratic socialist, polling shows that Mamdani is overwhelmingly favored to win the race in America’s largest metropolis.

Mamdani has led by double-digits in every poll of New York City voters taken since July. He has garnered about 45 percent of the vote in recent polls, compared to about 30 percent for Cuomo and roughly 15 percent for Sliwa.

Keep reading

3 Reasons Why Zohran Mamdani’s City-Run Grocery Stores Will Fail

New York City Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani says City Hall needs to get into the grocery business because New Yorkers are being “priced out” of private supermarkets. If elected, Mamdani says he’ll spend $60 million on opening one government-run grocery store in each of the five boroughs that would deliver healthier produce at lower prices. Here’s why that’s a terrible idea.

1. Mamdani-Marts Can’t Compete With Discount Grocery Chains

Mamdani says that New Yorkers should think of city-run grocery stores as a “public option” that would deliver cheaper food by saving on rent and taxes. And they wouldn’t need to make a profit.

Except profit margins for grocery stores are typically below 2 percent, and private grocers keep costs down by utilizing complex supply chains and economies of scale that Mamdani’s stores won’t have access to.

“The grocery business is really tough,” says Scott Lincicome, who is the vice president of general economics at the Cato Institute. Private grocery stores provide “a vast variety of fresh frozen produce and other goods that everybody wants all the time, which is actually really difficult to do, particularly at reasonably low prices.” In Kansas City, a government-run grocery store scheme lost nearly $900,000 just last year. 

Lincicome says that if New York politicians want to give their constituents access to cheaper groceries, they could allow Walmart in the Big Apple. But New York politicians have used zoning regulations to keep the nation’s largest and most affordable supermarket from opening a store anywhere in the five boroughs. 

“Walmart is the absolute leader in supply chain efficiencies,” Lincicome told Reason. It “does this via a truly global network of warehouses and trucks and airplanes and all of these amazing things that shave off fractions of a penny off of every transaction.” The idea that New York “could somehow try to replicate Walmart’s global supply chain and entire business model is just laughable.”

2. New York Has Fewer “Food Deserts” Than Any Other City 

Mamdani says his grocery stores will help address the problem of neighborhoods lacking easy access to fresh food. But Lincicome cites a recent study showing that “ranked the Big Apple the No. 1 U.S. metro area in terms of residents’ ‘equitable access’ to a local supermarket.”

“You can basically walk almost everywhere in New York City in 10 minutes and find a grocery store,” he told Reason.

Lincicome cites multiple studies (1, 2, 3) showing that new grocery stores don’t improve food access. But this is old news: In 2012, Reason covered three earlier studies that exploded the myth that adding neighborhood supermarkets improves the diets of their surrounding communities.

3. It’s a waste of money

Mamdani said that he is going to pay for his grocery stores by “redirecting” $140 million worth of city funding that is already being spent subsidizing corporate grocers. As the Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney was the first to notice, that number is based on a misreading of a city website. The city subsidizes some private grocery stores at a cost of about $3.3 million per year.. As some Bronx residents told Fox News‘ Kennedy in a new video published by Reason, the city should focus instead on helping the homeless, dealing with “rats the size of cats,” and cleaning “all of the needles on the street.”

Direct assistance is a more cost-effective and less destructive way to support low-income households than government-run supermarkets, and it’s something the federal government already does in abundance. Through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, 1.79 million New Yorkers—20 percent of the city’s population—receive help purchasing groceries each month.

As one New Yorker told Kennedy in Reason‘s latest video, “you’re focusing on the wrong things, Mamdani.”

Keep reading

Zohran Mamdani Brandished Handgun in Music Video—Then Called To Ban Them

As the rapper formerly known as Young Cardamom, Zohran Mamdani donned fatigues and brandished a handgun in a music video for a song glorifying militant violence. As a politician, the socialist has called for a ban on “all guns” to remedy the “scourge of gun violence.”

The video for the 2016 song “Wabula Naawe” is “set in the Luwero Triangle in 1981 during the days leading up to the Ugandan Bush War,” our Jon Levine reports. It “opens with a spray of gunfire” before depicting “armed militants shooting firearms from the back of a truck—to the words ‘let’s get together and settle this thing once and forever.’ It later portrays a man being shot in the head at point-blank range as Mamdani raps lyrics like, ‘I’ll finish you like food on a plate,’ ‘You are about to run like a chicken,’ and, ‘You’ll pray for death.’”

“Mamdani has taken a more critical stance on firearms since entering politics,” writes Levine. As a state assemblyman, he called to “ban all guns” and voted for a bill placing restrictions on firearms marketing. He has since pledged to spearhead a “nationwide ban on assault rifles.”

Keep reading

Zohran Mamdani’s Mother Says He Is ‘Not an American at All’ in Resurfaced Interview

Zohran Mamdani’s mother, in a resurfaced interview with the Hindustan Times from 2013, said her son is “not an American at all.” She also used terminology that many view as derogatory to the United States.

“He is a total desi,” filmmaker Mira Nair said about her son while he was attending Bowdoin College. “Completely. We are not firangs at all. He is very much us. He is not an Uhmericcan (American) at all. He was born in Uganda, raised between India and America. He is at home in many places. He thinks of himself as a Ugandan and as an Indian.”

In Hindi and Urdu, the word “firang” refers to foreigners, particularly Westerners. But Mehek Cooke, an attorney born in India who now works as a consultant for the GOP, told Fox News the term is not “some harmless cultural term,” but rather a “slur.”

“It’s the word used back in India to mock outsiders, to say you don’t belong,” Cooke said. “Using it here about your own child raised in the United States carries the same tone as calling someone a derogatory word — or worse. It’s flippant, divisive, and dripping with contempt for the very country that gave your family a better life.”

“When Mamdani’s mother says her son was ‘never a firang and only desi,’ it’s a rejection of America. It’s ungrateful, disrespectful, and frankly repulsive to live in this country since age seven, receive every freedom, education, and opportunity America offers, and still deny being American,” she concluded.

Keep reading

Washington Post: Some Democrats Now ‘Growing Anxious’ About What a Zohran Mamdani Victory Will Mean for Their Party

A new report from the Washington Post claims that some Democrats are getting nervous about what a win for Zohran Mamdani in New York City would mean for their party in the long term. They are not alone.

Even Bill Maher expressed concerns about this on his show last Friday night.

The Democratic Socialist (communist) candidate has very little experience and has promised the moon and more to his loyal supporters. Rank and file Democrats, who have fought the ‘socialist’ label for years, now realize that there will be no escape from that in the future if Mamdani wins and becomes the face of the party.

The Washington Post piece is behind a paywall, but FOX News has some details:

‘Democrats are nervous’ about potential Zohran Mamdani victory, new report warns

A report from The Washington Post Tuesday warned that “Democrats are nervous” about New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, as the 34-year-old democratic socialist’s momentum continues ahead of the election.

“In New York, Zohran Mamdani is on the verge of taking democratic socialism to new heights if he wins election as mayor of the nation’s most populous city,” wrote The Post’s Sabrina Rodriguez. “Outside New York, some Democrats are growing anxious.”

The headline read, “A democratic socialist is poised to become New York mayor. Democrats are nervous.”

The report contains quotes from numerous Democrats expressing their concerns over what Mamdani’s potential win could mean for the Democratic Party’s image and how it could reinforce Republicans’ claims that Democrats aim to usher in socialism.

“It’s one thing for Republicans to use absurd attacks calling Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi socialists to scare voters,” Fernand Amandi, a longtime Democratic strategist, told The Post. “It’s another thing to use an actual socialist to scare voters about the Democrats being the party of socialists, and that’s the concern about Mamdani.”

Mamdani was recently caught in a lie about a family member who was supposedly afraid to ride the NYC subway after 9/11 because of Islamophobia.

He has also worked very hard to erase his own anti-police record, but keeps getting tripped up on that as well.

Keep reading

Zohran Mamdani’s Fatal Flaw Revealed — and It’s NOT Communism, Socialism or Radical Islam

It’s not your fault. Our country’s entire theory of justice is predicated on proportional penalties — that the “punishment fits the crime.” It’s derived from the Biblical edict of “an eye for an eye” and has been drilled into your head since birth.

So, no wonder it seems weird and counterintuitive when two people commit the same “crime,” and the first guy’s career is absolutely, completely destroyed — his reputation is annihilated and he never works in his field again — but the second guy shakes it off like a bad case of fleas.

You’ve seen it happen repeatedly in music, Hollywood, sports, news/entertainment, and business… but especially in politics. (Just off the top of your head, you’ve probably got half a dozen examples.) 

That’s because our legal system is based on the “punishment fits the crime,” but the court of public opinion is based on something else. And it’s less about the “crime” and more about your personal brand.

More specifically, how the “crime” relates to your brand identity.

Why did Bill Clinton’s approval rating increase during the Monica Lewinsky scandal? Part of the reason was a strong economy. And in a battle of personalities, Bill Clinton was far more likable (and charismatic) than his GOP adversary, Newt Gingrich. 

Those were two important factors.

But the biggest reason — by far — was Bill Clinton’s brand identity: Boinking an intern sure sounded like something Slick Willy would do, so when his DNA was found on Monica’s dress, it didn’t really change how we thought about him.

When Pete Rose died, I wrote that his biggest PR mistake was admitting to gambling. Even though it was 100% obvious he was guilty! Before, his brand identity was based on being a scrappy, hard-working, elbow-throwing, record-setting baseball outcast. 

He was the perfect American antihero.

But then he admitted to gambling in 2004, and his image changed in an instant. He was a liar — a desperate, degenerate liar!

And near-immediately, support for his inclusion in Cooperstown fell off a cliff. The passion of his supporters vanished overnight, and Pete Rose died without ever reaching the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Different brand identities have different vulnerabilities.

Which brings us to Zohran Mamdani, the next mayor of New York City. The ex-governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo — an experienced, savvy politician in his own right — has been hammering Mamdani as hard as he can, focusing on his far-left positions, support of radical Islam, and lack of experience.

Keep reading