Free Buses and Child Care. A Rent Freeze. Can Mamdani Achieve His Plans?
Zohran Mamdani's rapid rise from upstart mayoral hopeful to likely winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City was propelled by the simple message that the city was too expensive — and that he had plans that would fix it.
Mr. Mamdani's singular focus on the city's affordability crisis resonated, especially with young voters. They embraced his populist promises to make bus service free, freeze rents on stabilized apartments, build city-owned grocery stores and offer free early child care.
But whether his campaign promises can become reality is an open question — and important parts of Mr. Mamdani's platform are not solely in a mayor's control.
While some of his left-leaning policy ideas are not entirely new — rents have been frozen before, for example — others would represent a dramatic reimagining of city government.
And much of Mr. Mamdani's agenda relies in large measure on increasing revenue through taxes on businesses and the wealthy — part of an overarching vision to rethink how the city funds expanded social programs. Along with raising income taxes, he has pledged to shift the property tax burden 'from the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods,' according to his campaign website.
Already, Mr. Mamdani's plans, in line with his democratic socialist political affiliation, have prompted intense backlash from business leaders who say he poses a danger to New York's economy. In private meetings, power brokers are discussing how to mount a strong challenge to Mr. Mamdani in the November general election.
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CNET
8 minutes ago
- CNET
Tariff Impacts Are Real: I Found 13 Companies With Official Price Hikes
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Best Buy Without getting into specifics, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry told the Wall Street Journal late last month that it has already raised prices on certain products as part of its response to the tariffs. e.l.f. Known as an affordable option in the beauty world, e.l.f. announced in late May that it would be implementing a $1 price hike across its product line in response to the tariffs. CEO Tarang Amin claimed that the reaction from customers was positive, on account of the company's transparency. "We're not trying to pull anything over on anyone," Amin told Fortune. "This is exactly what we're facing, and they understand." Macy's Speaking to CNBC in late May, Macy's CEO Tony Spring said that price hikes will be implemented on some products due to tariffs, while also emphasizing that other tactics -- like discontinuing certain products altogether -- will also be a response to rising costs. 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Fast Company
17 minutes ago
- Fast Company
Why your brain matters more than ever in the AI age
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What questions should I ask to improve my critical thinking? Bigger Comprehension Thinking has always set humans apart—something to be taught, mastered, and celebrated. In 1914, IBM founder Thomas J. Watson declared 'THINK' as the mantra for the struggling machine organization, saying ''I don't think' has cost the world millions of dollars.' We have arrived now at an incredible point when machines can think and learn in ways far surpassing human abilities. There are benefits to this—ways in which AI can make us all smarter. The key is to stay alert and grounded in what is uniquely human: the ability to examine an answer with clarity, to grasp what's around and underneath it, and to connect it to a bigger comprehension of the world around us.
WIRED
26 minutes ago
- WIRED
ICE Rolls Facial Recognition Tools Out to Officers' Phones
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now using a mobile app called Mobile Fortify that allegedly allows agents to identify individuals by pointing a smartphone at their face or capturing contactless fingerprints, 404 Media reports. The app reportedly taps into government databases, including Customs and Border Protection's Traveler Verification Service and a DHS biometric intelligence system, in an attempt to match facial images taken in the field against prior government-collected records. ICE says the tool is intended to help officers identify 'unknown subjects,' but civil liberties advocates tell 404 Media that it may open the door to surveillance-driven profiling and wrongful arrests. Nathan Freed Wessler of the ACLU told the site, 'Face recognition technology is notoriously unreliable, frequently generating false matches and resulting in a number of known wrongful arrests across the country. Immigration agents relying on this technology to try to identify people on the street is a recipe for disaster. Congress has never authorized DHS to use face recognition technology in this way, and the agency should shut this dangerous experiment down." US Feds Charge Group of Alleged Hackers Behind a Notorious Cybercrime Forum Global law enforcement this week announced the bust of a group of alleged cybercriminal hackers accused of carrying out years of profit-focused data breaches and running a notorious cybercriminal forum and market known as Breachforums. French authorities arrested four members of the group who went by the names 'ShinyHunters,' 'Hollow,' 'Noct,' and 'Depressed,' though the police sources who shared the news with the French newspaper Le Parisien didn't reveal the suspects' real names. 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Now cybersecurity analysts at Mandiant and Palo Alto Networks say the group is turning their attention to the aviation and transportation sector. Specifically, hackers were behind a cybersecurity incident last week that took down some IT systems and the mobile app for Canadian airline WestJet, Axios reports. Now Hawaiian Airlines has said it's experiencing a 'cybersecurity incident' affecting its network, though it hasn't yet revealed more details or any evidence that Scattered Spider is responsible. Cybersecurity firms tracking the group warn that other potential aviation and transportation industry targets should be on the lookout for the group, which often uses sophisticated social engineering to trick staff into letting them bypass multi-factor authentication and gain a foothold on target systems. Hackers Breach a Norwegian Dam to Open Valve Here's a curiosity that we missed a couple weeks ago: A rare industrial control system hijacking incident in which an unknown hacker appears to have messed with the computer systems that control the Lake Risevatnet dam in southwest Norway, opening a valve to its maximum setting. The tampering, the motivation for which was far from clear, increased the dam's water flow by nearly 500 liters a second, but didn't come close to approaching a dangerous level. No one appears to have spotted the change for close to four hours. Officials told the Norwegian energy news outlet Energiteknikk, which broke the story, that a weak password on a web-accessible control panel allowed the unauthorized access.
