In the first 10 days of his tenure as mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat and member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), has, in the face of outrageous crimes by the Trump administration, curtailed his criticism of the fascist president and would-be dictator, slandered pro-Palestinian protesters and further strengthened the authority of the New York Police Department (NYPD). Far from opposing the political establishment, Mamdani is working to deepen his integration into the Democratic Party and the capitalist oligarchy it serves.
After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in her car in Minneapolis on January 7, Mamdani correctly used the term “murder” to describe the killing. He also added, “As ICE attacks our neighbors across America, it is an attack on us all.”
But what is most significant is what Mamdani did not say: that at the heart of the killing is a brutal and deadly campaign by the Trump administration to establish a dictatorship, one that targets not only immigrant workers, but the democratic rights of all, including native-born citizens.
Far from warning the population about the step toward a presidential dictatorship that Good’s murder signifies, Mamdani has remained conspicuously silent about its causes and origins, offering no substantive explanation or course of action to stop ICE or the Trump administration’s escalating repression.
Indeed, Mamdani’s brief statement on Good’s murder avoided any reference to Trump or the actions of the Trump administration.
On Friday, on MS Now’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki,” when Psaki, Biden’s former press secretary, asked him about the feasibility of his universal childcare campaign promise, Mamdani responded, “Because we are prioritizing it. We are proving that government can still work for good outcomes and doesn’t have to be all terror and chaos like the Trump administration produces.”
The claim that city government can still work for “good outcomes” while heavily armed federal police patrol major cities, assaulting and killing at will, is delusional. Its political source lies in the “partnership” that Mamdani made with Trump in the White House on November 21, where the two pledged to cooperate in addressing the “affordability crisis.”
The Trump administration issued its own provocative statement directed at Mamdani when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared at a press conference the day after the murder of Renee Nicole Good, held at the Customs and Border Protection offices at One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. Noem repeated lies about Good and her killing, declaring, “Your mayor just said in that statement that he is going to stand with illegal people who have broken our law before he’s going to put New York City citizens first.”
In an interview later in the day, Mamdani responded by saying that he had “instructed my NYPD to be very firm about its adherence to the sanctuary city policies,” which limit cooperation with ICE, but also allow ICE to act unimpeded in many cases.
Mamdani reiterated that his relationship with Trump is “honest and productive.”
The latest accommodation to Trump is of a piece with the phone call Mamdani made to Trump on January 3 after the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—a call whose full content has still not been released. According to Mamdani, he told Trump that he opposed the “pursuit of regime change” and the “violation of federal and international law,” but offered no concrete plan to oppose these crimes. He told the media, “I registered my opposition, I made it clear, and we left it at that.”
Speaking to Psaki on her January 9 show, Mamdani elaborated that he and Trump are “honest and direct” about their fundamental disagreements. In fact, Mamdani’s entire approach is aimed at concealing what millions already recognize: that Trump is a fascist determined to wage war on the entire world and cannot be reasoned with.
Mamdani also joined the ruling-class campaign against pro-Palestinian protesters after demonstrators chanted slogans in support of the Islamist organization Hamas at a rally on Thursday in Queens. Rather than defending their right to free speech, Mamdani initially declared that the chants were “wrong and have no place in our city.”
But Mamdani’s statement was too mild and too late for several Democratic politicians and Zionist commentators. They contrasted it unfavorably with the immediate denunciations issued by Governor Kathy Hochul, who responded to footage of the chants by declaring, “Hamas is a terrorist organization that calls for the genocide of Jews… this type of rhetoric is disgusting, it’s dangerous.” Similar statements came from Mamdani’s allies, including Attorney General Letitia James, former Comptroller Brad Lander and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
By Friday evening Mamdani obliged and told the media, “As I said earlier today, chants in support of a terrorist organization have no place in our city. We will continue to ensure New Yorkers’ safety by entering and exiting houses of worship as well as the constitutional right to protest.”
In his statements about the protest, Mamdani said nothing about the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The protest was held at a synagogue in Queens where a private company was marketing real estate properties in Israel that included Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, which is not a part of Israel under international law. While Mamdani has condemned the use of houses of worship for such purposes in the past, he was silent on this issue Friday.
Mamdani’s talk of a “constitutional right to protest” is belied by his first executive actions. On January 1, he rescinded former Mayor Adams’s directive limiting protests near “houses of worship,” issued after a 2025 demonstration at a Manhattan synagogue that was holding a seminar for an organization that promotes Zionist settlements on the West Bank. Yet Mamdani’s own second executive order reinstated similar restrictions, aimed at keeping pro-Palestinian protesters away from the very types of events he condemned last week.
Mamdani has taken a number of measures aimed at accommodating the police. In his first 10 days in office, the NYPD has been involved in two fatal shootings. In the first, at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital on Thursday night, a police officer shot and killed a man wielding a broken piece of toilet who had barricaded himself in a room with a patient and a security guard. The second occurred in Greenwich Village, where a police officer shot and killed a man driving a vehicle after he drew a fake gun.
While Mamdani promised thorough investigations in both cases, he did not question the NYPD’s version of the deaths and said: “Officers were placed in incredibly difficult and dangerous circumstances. The actions they took, they responded swiftly.”
Responding to criticisms that he had taken too long to make his statements, Mamdani said: “I wanted to make sure that everything that we shared with New Yorkers was the language that we wanted them to know about this.”
Mamdani’s Police Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, a friend of Trump and scion of the billionaire Tisch family, had no such concerns. In a statement she said, “Officers were engaged in two police-involved shootings, and there is every indication that their actions were nothing short of heroic.”
After issuing an executive order on January 1 that technically removed the police commissioner from reporting directly to the mayor, rumors circulated in the media that Tisch had been demoted. The Mamdani administration then launched a public relations campaign to reassure the ruling elite that this was not the case. Tisch told the media, “I report directly to the Mayor,” and the two held a joint news conference in which the police commissioner took center stage while Mamdani played a secondary role. For example, as Politico noted, “Tisch reiterated her support for a gang database used by the NYPD. The mayor, who has vowed to dismantle it, declined to weigh in.”
On Wednesday, Mamdani said he opposed one of Tisch’s policies—issuing criminal summonses rather than traffic tickets to bicyclists for infractions such as running red lights. However, he declined to simply order Tisch to stop, a power well within his authority, and told the media he is engaged in “conversations” with the police commissioner.
Meanwhile, on January 9, journalists reported on X that the NYPD was making arrests on Canal Street in Lower Manhattan of predominantly immigrant workers who sell watches, jewelry and handbags there. It was the site of a major ICE raid in October, with several West African immigrants seized. A second raid in November by ICE was thwarted by hundreds of protesters who prevented ICE vehicles from leaving a nearby garage.
Mandani issued a statement on X in which he told protesters to obey the law. These workers arrested on Friday by the NYPD are in danger of harassment by ICE and deportation if they appear in court to contest charges.