Latest news with #socialism
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Wall Street gets the chills in New York's ‘hot commie summer'
Wall Street is, to put it mildly, not keen on the prospect of a socialist mayor of New York. It's 'officially hot commie summer', said billionaire money manager Dan Loeb. 'Socialism has no place in the economic capital of our country,' said hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, warning an exodus of wealthy taxpayers could cost New York up to $10 billion. Young people will get a 'refresher on the outcome of Marxism', said Bitcoin billionaire Tyler Winklevoss. 'Suicide by mayor,' said investment strategist Jim Bianco. Their target? Zohran Mamdani , the democratic socialist now favoured to become New York's next mayor. READ MORE Mamdani's plans include rent freezes, free childcare, free buses and public grocery stores, funded by tax hikes on the wealthy. Much of his wish list requires state approval, and Governor Kathy Hochul has already rejected proposed tax hikes. Still, the symbolism alone has unnerved the moneyed classes. Billionaire doomsaying isn't new. Investors made similar threats about leaving New York when Bill de Blasio ran in 2001, only to stay put once he was elected. Mamdani is clearly further left, and his rhetoric is fierier. Nevertheless, for all the talk of leaving for Florida or Texas, New York still offers what they can't: density, talent, infrastructure and prestige. Wall Street may squirm in this ideologically hostile summer, but flight may be harder than fury.
Times
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Did Hot Girls win the New York mayoral race for Zohran Mamdani?
Days before the New York mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani claimed victory in the Democratic primaries, Cait Camelia and Kaif Gilani walked the length of Manhattan with him during one of his final campaign appearances. 'We jumped in [on the walk] around Washington Square Park and watched these young men come up to him, dab him up, and say, 'Yo, you're so cool. Thank you so much for what you're doing',' said Camelia, 25. 'It's something they've been missing for a long time, someone who can introduce them to progressive ideas and pull them away from that right-wing manosphere.' Camelia and Gilani are the creatives behind 'Hot Girls 4 Zohran', a collective of young women and men who support Mamdani, 33, and make videos addressing the issues their generation faces, many of which are at the heart of the socialist's campaign. Gilani, 28, said being 'hot' had nothing to do with looks — but a desire to engage with progressive politics.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Zohran Mamdani has struck a blow to the Democratic party's passivity
We're told that the Democratic party is at a crossroads, that leaders have lost their identity and their way. We're told that they must spend millions discovering their own 'Joe Rogan', or espouse deregulation, or surrender the fight for the rights of targeted minorities. The Democrats, we're told, are in a moment of soul searching, of trying to find out how they lost young men and the white working class. They're still thinking, half a decade on, of how to undo the supposed damage of the 2020 summer, when protesters opposed to the extrajudicial killings of Black civilians shouted: 'Defund the police.' The subtext of this handwringing, which has been incessant in the media and among party insiders since the November election, is that the party must move, yet again, to the right. It is presumed that they can't attract voters otherwise. The apparent victory (still unofficial because the counting won't technically be complete until July) of a 33-year-old socialist in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary this week suggests otherwise. Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblymember from Queens, was a little-known leftwing activist whose campaign against the former governor and New York household name Andrew Cuomo was polling in the single digits. But with immense personal charisma and a talent for retail politicking, airtight message discipline centered on making life affordable, and a small army of motivated young volunteers, Mamdani defeated a political dynasty, defied conventional wisdom, and is expected to win the American left its biggest electoral victory since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's primary coup in 2018. In the process, his campaign presented a new vision of the party: one that has energized voters with its authenticity and moral vision even as major donors and the party establishment have balked. The leaders of the Democratic establishment have long believed that the party's left flank was its greatest liability. Mamdani has proven that it can be an asset. Any responsible commentator will tell you that Mamdani's success in the New York mayoral primary will be difficult for other progressive candidates to replicate. The city's public campaign-funds matching program allowed the candidate to spend his time in highly visible public engagement with the people of New York – rather than on fundraising efforts among the rich. The ranked-choice voting system – still relatively new – incentivized him and the crowded other field of candidates to form a united front against Cuomo, and allowed Mamdani to capture the crucial endorsement of his fellow candidate Brad Lander, the beloved New York City comptroller. Mamdani, too, seems to have the kind of personal talent that is rare in any politician: a relaxed and personable demeanor, an uncommon gift for oratory, and a rhetoric of morality and dignity that appears not just plausibly authentic but genuinely inspiring, and is already drawing comparisons to liberal political giants like AOC and the young Barack Obama. Crucially, too, Mamdani is uncommonly disciplined: he avoided attacking the progressive liberals, like Lander and state senator Zellnor Myrie, who were slightly to his right, preferring to unite with them and recruit them into his movement, a gesture of pragmatic generosity that kept the field from turning into a circular firing squad. And he has a gravitas that most of us could not rise to, enduring cynical and often racist smears from Cuomo supporters, who called him antisemitic for his support of human rights for Palestinians with a calm dignity that emphasized his loyalty to all New Yorkers, Jewish or otherwise. All of this – his incentives, his talents – contributed to his victory. None will be easy to recreate in another race. And yet Mamdani's victory is a signal of a subterranean shift happening in the base of the Democratic party – the younger, more motivated, more active voters who the party leadership relies on but does not quite trust. The Democratic party's leaders – like Nancy Pelosi of California, but prominently including Mamdani's fellow New Yorkers Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries – have largely rolled over in the second Trump administration, failing to use either their procedural power or their public platforms to create leverage against the Maga agenda or advance an alternative vision for the country. Their passivity and risk aversion has stood in contrast to the mounting energy of their voters, whose anger at Trump's authoritarian ambitions, racist immigration policies and broader rollback of rights has sparked a growing protest movement. Energized liberal voters find that the Democratic politicians they elected to represent them are passive and complacent, even in the face of what they themselves correctly described, in 2024, as the ascent of a fascist movement. The party's rhetoric is not being matched by its actions, and its actions are not matching its voters' passions. Indeed, the party appears most energetic when it is crushing the ambitions of its charismatic younger members, as when it denied powerful committee positions to AOC and Texas's Jasmine Crockett. Establishment Democrats seem, if anything, as if they want to disappear, to be absolved of their responsibility to advance a political agenda of their own. This might be why they have fled, repeatedly, rightward, away from their own professed principles. This might be why they lined up, during the mayoral primary, behind Cuomo, the disgraced former governor whom many of them had called on to resign just four years ago his candidacy was a promise that their own structures of power and patronage would remain intact, that nothing much would change. Mamdani represented a threat to their own vision of a do-nothing political party. For that, they tried to crush him. You can only antagonize your own base for so long before they begin to notice. In a new poll conducted just days before Mamdani's upset victory, fully 62% of Democratic voters said that their party needs new leadership. Mamdani – youthful, energetic, and actually interested in governance – offers both a rebuke to the Democratic establishment and a vision of the party's renewal. It may be coming whether the Democratic National Committee likes it or not. Fed up with their useless, antagonist leadership and unwilling to give up on the prospect of progressive change, many members of the Democrats' hated base are certain to follow Mamdani's example, taking risks to challenge unpopular or ineffectual incumbents and entrenched local party machines. Since Bill Clinton's victory in 1992, the Democrats have been trying to reinvent themselves as a more conservative party, assuming that their future lay rightward. They were looking in the wrong direction. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
The Independent
6 hours ago
- Politics
- The Independent
NYC Mayor Eric Adams rips into Mamdani's ‘socialist' agenda, says he ‘doesn't have the authority' to tax the rich
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has ripped into Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani 's so-called 'socialist' agenda, saying he 'doesn't have the authority' to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers. In a political upset Tuesday night, Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, beat former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary. Mamdani will be on the ballot against Adams, who dropped out of the primary to run as an independent after his corruption charges were dropped by the Trump administration. Cuomo is also staying in the race on the 'Fight & Deliver' ballot line, CNN reported, citing unnamed sources. Mamdani, who started as a little-known Queens assemblyman, is campaigning on affordability for average New Yorkers. He has promised to freeze rent for stabilized units and make buses free. In an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett Thursday evening, Mamdani said freezing the rent doesn't cost the city any money, but making buses free would cost around $700 million. He defended his proposed social programs, saying they would be paid for in part by increasing the income taxes on the top one percent of New Yorkers by two percent. Adams criticized Mamdani's platform while on The Lead with Jake Tapper Friday evening, telling the CNN host, 'I'm competing against him because this is not a socialist city.' It's unclear what Adams meant by a 'socialist city.' The key characteristic of socialism is that the government controls the means of production rather than private citizens. The New York Times described democratic socialism in a recent article as 'an ideology rooted in its opposition to capitalism and wanting to shift power to workers from corporations.' Adams said Mamdani ' doesn't have the authority to raise income tax on the top one percent of New Yorkers. Assemblymens have that authority, and that's who he is. He couldn't do it in the [New York State] Assembly. How you gonna deliver it as the mayor of the city?' The mayor also said Mamdani had the authority to make buses free in the Assembly, and that he gave Mamdani a pilot project for it, which he 'failed' to carry out. Adams argued with Tapper when the host said Mamdani has the authority to freeze the rent. 'There's an independent rent guideline boards that independently make their decisions, so he does not have the authority to do that,' the mayor insisted. Mamdani did say during his interview with Burnett that freezing the rent is 'something that's determined by the rent guidelines board, composed of nine members.' But that 'the mayor picks each of those members.' Since Adams took office in 2022, the board has raised the rent each year, The City reported. While Mamdani may wish to replace members of the board if he's elected, it may not be that easy, as board members are appointed to terms as long as four years.
Fox News
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Fox News
WNBA champ Natasha Cloud shares support for socialist New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani
New York Liberty player Natasha Cloud has made her support for radical socialist Zohran Mamdani in the city's mayoral race very clear in recent days. Cloud, who has been one of the WNBA's more outspoken players in discussing politics in recent years, celebrated Mamdani's victory in the Democratic primary on Wednesday in a series of social media posts. Cloud sent an X post that featured one of Mamdani's regularly-used quotes, "We can be free, & we can be fed," tagging the candidate. Earlier that night, Cloud re-shared Mamdani's celebratory post. On June 18, Cloud re-shared a video from Mamdani addressing his reaction to being called an anti-Semite, and that same day Cloud wrote her own post expressing her support for the self-proclaimed democratic socialist. "If I wasn't a resident of PA, [Mamdani] is who would receive my vote," Cloud wrote. In an interview with the sports blogging site "ClutchPoints," Cloud said that Mamdani's victory in the primary restored her "hope in humanity." "He gets the worst PR because he's a Muslim, he's a socialist, and he's a democrat. But he believes that it is the government's right to take care and make sure that all its constituents live a dignified life, regardless of who you are, what your religious affiliation or background is. I think that's beautiful," Cloud said. "I think overall, it's the right choice. But why it's so empowering for me is it restored my hope in humanity a little bit. Even within the confines of what's happening right now in our government and in our country, the people will speak up. The people will show up. And there's a lot of humanity left in this world for us to care about one another." Cloud has emerged as one of the most polarizing figures in the WNBA for comments about President Donald Trump. She seemingly reacted to the U.S. military's strikes on key Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday night, writing on X, "A sad sad day," and "Grounds for impeachment." She later wrote, "I pi---d all the tumplicans off again It's okay to admit y'all were wrong. [And] also I feel as if it's only right y'all enlist for the frontlines first. Not other peoples sons and daughters." In February, Cloud responded to President Donald Trump's decision to eliminate several government DEI programs. "The systems of power are working as they always were intended to work," Cloud told The Associated Press. "And it's time to break down a system that has only been about White men." Cloud added that she believes the country is putting "money over people." "I understand the business aspect and I understand the human aspect," Cloud said. "Too often this country has put the human aspect aside, and put profit and money over people." Cloud doubled down on her remarks in a social media post days later. "Thing is I'm not soft, & words don't hurt me lol are we 5? it still remains people over profit," she wrote on X. "If yall truly about being unbiased… Google search any overseas media coverage of what's happening in America. "Then come back to me and tell me the whole world crazy." Cloud has also garnered controversy for comments and interactions with WNBA phenom Caitlin Clark. During an interview on the "Pivot Podcast" with Ryan Clark, Cloud weighed in on the debate that rocked the WNBA last year when several illegal hits against Clark prompted outrage from many of her fans. Cloud, who said she lost a tooth from a hit earlier in her career, insisted the outrage on behalf of Clark was rooted in "racism." "It's just a part of the game. There was no targeting, there was no nothing. That narrative that got spun into, 'Oh, the vets hate the rookies. The rookies hate the vets. The vets are going after certain players,' it's all bulls---. If I'm just going to be frank, it's all bulls---. What it is is racism," Cloud said. Then, in a game between Cloud's Liberty and Clark's Indiana Fever on May 24, Cloud was defending Clark and leaned into the superstar enough to knock the ball out of Clark's hands on the final possession. No foul was called, and Cloud's Liberty held onto a two-point win. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
