Behind Mamdani’s smile is zero accomplishments – Latest News
Mayor Zohran Mamdani simply handed his one hundredth day in workplace. The metropolis has survived.
But antisemitism in our metropolis of 1 million Jews thrives as by no means earlier than.
Tolerance for it is so pervasive that some longtime restaurant clients skipped Passover meals this yr for fears of being focused, in keeping with my mates within the business.
How a lot worse will it’s in Mamdani’s 1,360 days in workplace to come back?
On Sunday, he’s celebrating himself at a rally in Queens to be stocked primarily with unionized academics.
Self-adoration comes simply to Mamdani, a youngster of privilege who speaks, acts and grins as if he earned it regardless of having not labored a day in his life (together with his time period within the state Assembly, the place he did much less than nothing).
Mamdani has made himself remarkably unpopular in his first few months. His 48% approval score is embarrassing in contrast with predecessor Eric Adams’ 61% approval on the identical level in his mayoralty.
The mayor’s well-known smile, it will appear, can solely go thus far to appease his simply led base.
On sure public-policy points, Mamdani’s been disarmingly — blessedly — ineffectual.
He all however gave up on his free-buses-for all lunacy.
He acquired cold toes about axing the NYPD’s gang database and Strategic Response Group.
If he actually means to dismantle them, he has solely to inform NYPD boss Jessica Tisch; he is, after all, her boss, with the ability to overrule her — as he took pains to inform The New York Times this week.
He modified his thoughts about by no means again doing homeless sweeps and ceding mayoral control of colleges.
He took a few optimistic steps on zoning to advertise new housing construction. He set up a Coney Island Business Improvement District with a $1 million grant.
To wishful-thinking Mamdani foes, such backtracks and small actions signal a belated recognition of actuality.
Who is aware of, possibly he’ll someday embrace free-market capitalism!
Meanwhile, his horrified true believers regard Mamdani’s occasional tiny real-world forays as a grave betrayal.
In reality, Mamdani stays hell-bent on wrecking the financial system and housing market within the title of progressivism.
After his notion for town to raise property taxes proved too reckless even for the far-left City Council, he hasn’t given up attempting to steer the state to raise taxes on companies or rich people.
But he needs to blow a gap within the metropolis treasury — to substantiate his view that town wants more dough from Washington and Albany.
Get opinions and commentary from our columnists
Subscribe to our each day Post Opinion e-newsletter!
Thanks for signing up!
His scheme has help within the Legislature, however Gov. Kathy Hochul vowed to dam it.
We can solely hope her sudden onset of guts will survive previous this yr’s election, not like her 180 on congestion pricing.
His different pillar marketing campaign pledge — to freeze rents on 1 million stabilized residences — is up to town Rent Guidelines Board, which can vote in June.
Mamdani appointed six of the panel’s 9 members; it’s going to take braveness for them to disclaim him his want.
Should he prevail, there’s no telling the injury it will do to middle-class housing stock already reeling from latest Albany restrictions on yearly rents, evictions and landlords’ proper to move alongside the prices of capital repairs and upgrades to tenants.
Mamdani’s efficiency has been even more dismaying on an difficulty on the coronary heart of town’s soul: By his actions, inactions and phrases, he has made antisemitism respectable.
Once merely a fringe phenomenon, haters now really feel snug attacking and harassing Jews on the streets and at synagogues.
His animus is not restricted, regardless of his claims, to his detestation of Israel, which is mirrored in his renewed risk to have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested the subsequent time he’s on the town.
(Just attempt it, President Donald Trump and the NYPD itself have to be pondering).
Mamdani claims he doesn’t object to Israel’s existence however solely that it’s a Jewish state. He’s towards a “hierarchy of citizenship based on religion or anything else.”
Curiously, he has but to utter a peep in regards to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Afghanistan or Indonesia’s sharia-enforcing Aceh district, the place the least departure from excessive Islam’s strictest dictates can result in imprisonment, flogging or stoning to death.
Mamdani received’t even unequivocally resign the views of his spouse Rama Duwaji, an unreconstructed Jew-hater who primarily endorsed the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorists’ slaughter and rape of harmless Israelis.
His excuse that she’s a “private person” with “no formal position” in authorities suggests she has no, zero, affect on him —- an impossibility in a marriage or any long-lived intimate relationship.
One factor solely prevents Mamdani’s approval score from plummeting additional: The outstanding decline in violent avenue crime, which solely right-wing nuts deny.
Murders and shootings are on monitor for his or her lowest numbers in historical past.
There had been 2,262 murders in 1991 however solely 309 in 2025. Homicides this yr are 24.1% fewer than on the identical time final yr.
Should the mayor dump Commissioner Tisch for a successor more involved about criminals’ rights than about victims, rely on New Yorkers who voted for him — regardless of their qualms over his inexperience, puerile ideology and antisemitism — to lastly say, “Enough!”
