Yves right here. This put up makes clear the open thuggishness amongst opponents of Muslim candidate for New York Metropolis mayor, Zohran Mamdani, whose second sin is being a democratic socialist and wanting authorities to do extra issues for decrease revenue individuals. Having run a small enterprise in New York, I do query the impression of a few of his concepts, like elevating the already nosebleed New York Metropolis Company Tax, however his insurance policies are a piece in progress and I anticipate they are going to be refined to extra clearly concentrate on the haves versus the haves-much-less if he does grow to be mayor. Discover particularly how DHS chief Kristi Noem makes clear her intent to say heretofore unprecedented powers to sandbag Mamdani.
I’m additionally amazed that Rudy Giuliani is allowed to go away his crypt.
By Jose Pagliery, NOTUS and Katie Honan. Initially printed at THE CITY on July 2, 2025. Produced as a part of a partnership between NOTUS and THE CITY
Zohran Mamdani speaks at a rally with unions that endorsed him, July 2, 2025. Credit score: Alex Krales/THE CITY
President Donald Trump’s Homeland Safety Advisory Council — a bunch that features Rudy Giuliani, cop-turned-actor Bo Dietl and the founding father of Bikers for Trump — held its first assembly on Wednesday to debate the highest threats going through the nation.
The dialog rapidly turned to New York Metropolis mayoral candidate Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani.
After listening to Giuliani ship a speech in opposition to asylum-seeking immigrants, Division of Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem chimed in.
“I need to ask you: Do you need to run for mayor of New York once more?” she requested, drawing cheers and applause from across the convention room.
“Bo and I’ve been speaking about placing collectively some type of technique. It’s doable if it’s one candidate. It’s a suicide mission in the event you’re three,” Giuliani stated.
The longtime GOP politician known as the Republican within the race, Curtis Sliwa, “our candidate.” He labeled Eric Adams — the present mayor operating for reelection as an impartial whose felony indictment was dropped by the Justice Division to free him as much as help Trump’s anti-immigration insurance policies — as “type of our candidate.” And he reserved the worst insult for former governor Andrew Cuomo, who misplaced to Mamdani within the Democratic main however might nonetheless mount an impartial marketing campaign.
“I’ve recognized him since he was 15 years previous. His mom would describe him as, ‘Nicely, Chris is the smarter boy,’” Giuliani joked, referring to the previous governor’s journalist brother.
However all that was a prelude to a parley over Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist who’s operating on a platform that champions the working class with hire caps for rent-stabilized models, police accountability and what he calls “Trump-proofing NYC.”
“This isn’t an exaggerated downside,” Giuliani instructed the 22-person council. “One way or the other we acquired the mix of an Islamic extremist and a communist.”
Mamdani is Muslim, however Giuliani’s comment is an try and label as a risk a Democratic politician who has repeatedly stated he doesn’t query Israel’s proper to exist as a nation however has known as Israel’s retaliatory assaults on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, a “genocide.”
The Homeland Safety Advisory Council isn’t sometimes so heavy on politics. It was created in 2003 within the wake of the Sept. 11 assaults and, as acknowledged within the Federal Register, is supposed to offer “nonpartisan and organizationally impartial strategic recommendation to the Secretary of Homeland Safety on vital issues associated to Homeland Safety.” Its present constitution, issued in March, says that it’ll spend about $800,000 a yr and dish out recommendation on “terrorist assaults, main disasters, or different emergencies” from “nationwide leaders” in academia, enterprise, and skilled first responders.
The assembly’s rancor aimed toward Mamdani continued when Noem known as on David Chesnoff, a outstanding Las Vegas legal professional who beforehand defended Corey Lewandowski — one more Trump adviser on the council — from accusations of making undesirable sexual advances on a Republican donor at a 2021 occasion.
“I need to do that as a result of I’m uninterested in the normalization of anti-American philosophy, for instance, in New York … it’s wonderful you possibly can have the Hezbollah flag being marched inside shouting distance of the place the towers fell,” he stated, referencing the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults.
“We have now anyone operating for mayor … that applauds the exact same philosophy and those that did that,” Chesnoff continued. “We have to ship a much bigger message to the American public of the hazard that poses.”
That remark appeared to catch Noem’s consideration. Noem, whose division oversees the more and more militarized deportation raids often led by masked individuals who cover their names and badges, stated she’s on the lookout for inventive methods to broaden her energy.
“The Division of Homeland Safety has authorities which have by no means been utilized earlier than … and I’m going to wish some good minds on the way to use these authorities,” she stated.
Her remark comes simply at some point after Trump, talking from a brand new mass immigration incarceration camp rapidly constructed within the South Florida swamp, threatened to jail Mamdani if he makes an attempt to cease Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the metropolis and disparaged him as a “communist.”
Following a rally the place he obtained the endorsement of among the metropolis’s high unions, Mamdani responded to Trump’s feedback and people from officers on the council Wednesday branding him a safety risk, calling the feedback a distraction “from what I combat for.”
“And in the end, what I worry,” he stated, “is that if that is what Donald Trump and his administration really feel comfy about saying concerning the Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York Metropolis, think about what they really feel comfy saying and doing about immigrants whose names they don’t even know.”
