New york

New York City politics has rarely offered voters a clean choice. This year, with Eric Adams out of the mayor’s race, the city faces one of its grimmest dilemmas yet: Andrew Cuomo or Zohran Mamdani.Let’s be clear – this is not an endorsement of Cuomo. The former governor has baggage that most voters can recite from memory. But politics isn’t about picking saints; it’s about survival. And when survival is on the line, sometimes the only responsible thing to do is choose the lesser of two evils.Cuomo may be corrupt, arrogant and heavy-handed. But at least he governs from a place of pragmatism.

When Zohran Mamdani took the pulpit at Brooklyn’s Bethany Baptist Church last Sunday, he had a golden opportunity. He could have spoken to the hopes of black New Yorkers, their resilience, their aspirations for safer neighborhoods, better schools and paths to prosperity. Instead, the first thing he brought up was police shootings. There is nothing wrong with addressing police shootings. They are tragedies that wound communities deeply. But it is telling that when Democrats step into black churches, their reflex is to start with pain. They do not speak to us as whole citizens with complex desires. They reduce us to our wounds, assuming that the surest way to earn our votes is to rehearse our traumas.This is what I call “pain politics,” and frankly, I am tired of it.

There were lots of shocked people when state terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione – the man accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson – were dismissed on Tuesday. I wasn’t one of them. As the partner of a homicide victim and an advocate for victims for more than 20 years, I’ve seen firsthand how New York’s penal code is a disaster. It doesn’t just fail victims; it rewards predators. It protects the violent. It gives them loopholes and light slaps on the wrist. And then we all act surprised when killers like Mangione benefit. Here’s a reality check that most people don’t know: punching someone in the face is not considered assault in New York. It’s classified as “harassment” – not even aggravated harassment.

In July’s Spectator, I covered the peculiar case of individuals supporting Luigi Mangione, now in custody for the public murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. A month later, Lara Brown wrote about the similarly curious trend of people falling in love with online chatbots. Neither of us, I think, ever imagined that there could be a situation in which both of these stories would combine. Yet it looks like nothing about our dystopian world can surprise me anymore, because I have discovered it is indeed possible. A woman has fallen in love with a Luigi Mangione chatbot.

There are precious few people who should watch the video released yesterday of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska slowly dying as she cowered in bewilderment and abject fear on a train carriage in Charlotte, NC, after being slashed three times in the neck by a violent repeat offender. Certainly not rubberneckers on the internet whose depraved interest will only intrude on her family’s private grief. And absolutely not her family, for them it is the worst nightmare they could imagine come alive. A jury will have to. Two other groups who should: Democrats and the media.  They created this nightmare so they should be forced to see the uncomfortable truth and direct result of what they have done.

When Representative Jerry Nadler announced his retirement this week, Democrats in New York instantly began preparing for a political drama worthy of its stage. Nadler’s district – the 12th, which covers the Upper West and Upper East Sides, Midtown, Times Square and the United Nations – is the geographic heart of Manhattan. It’s also one of the safest Democratic seats in the country. Whoever wins the primary will not only control a powerful perch in Congress, but also inherit a stage in the very center of America’s media capital.That’s the problem. In New York’s 12th, politics isn’t about solving problems. It’s about performance.For decades, Nadler played the part of Manhattan’s liberal lion.

The President taking such decisive action to save lives this past week is bittersweet beyond words. For years, we begged and pleaded for help to stop the insanity that has spilled blood across our streets. We went to the media. We testified before Congress. We sat across from lawmakers, poured out our stories and prayed someone would care enough to act. But time and time again, our cries fell on deaf ears. Now, finally, something is being done. For those who have never stood in our shoes, it’s hard to explain what it feels like to bury someone you loved unnecessarily – to hold a folded flag or a photo instead of a spouse, child, sibling, or parent. We as victims went through the worst nightmare imaginable.

President Trump has once again identified a critical national need: this time, it is the desperate plea for backup from overwhelmed local police, particularly in large metropolitan areas.  Under the Home Rule Act, the President possesses clear statutory authority to exercise at least temporary law enforcement authority over the nation’s capital city by federalizing the Washington D.C. police force and deploying 800 National Guard troops. The city’s own crime statistics depict a municipality raging out of control. Homicide rates have doubled in the last ten years. Washington, D.C. is one of the fifty most dangerous cities in the world and the fourth most dangerous city in the nation.

The New York Appellate Division’s decision to overturn the half-billion-dollar civil fraud penalty against Donald Trump should not be seen as a partisan victory. It is a constitutional one. The court ruled that the judgment – originally $354 million before interest ballooned it past $500 million – violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines. This was an overdue reminder that even a former president is entitled to the same constitutional protections as every American. This judgment threatened to become less about enforcing the law, and more about making an example out of a political enemy. The Constitution does not permit prosecutors to weaponize financial penalties into tools of annihilation.

American politics is often reactionary. Barack Obama rode the dip of the 2007-2008 financial crash, but after eight years of neoliberal slog Middle America chose Donald Trump to extract the globalist cancer from their venerated land. The Democrats staged a counterattack in the 2018 midterms, thrusting names like Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into the spotlight. A reaction to a reaction to a reaction. And right on time, now that Trump has returned to office, a new breed of even more radical young Democrats is on the ascent. Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is committed to radical socialism and will likely be enthroned as America’s most powerful local executive in November thanks to a tide of support from the young, wealthy and highly educated.

On Monday night, New York City golden boy Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, tweeted, after the terrifying gun attack on Park Avenue, “I’m heartbroken to learn of the horrific shooting in midtown and I am holding the victims, their families, and the [New York Police Department] officer in critical condition in my thoughts. Grateful for all of our first responders on the ground.” He also sent special condolences to the families of Didarul Islam, the Bangladeshi immigrant and NYPD officer who died in the attack. But there’s a reason Mamdani was holding NYC in his thoughts and not giving a press conference on the ground: He’s at his family’s luxury compound in Uganda, where he’s summering after getting married there a couple of weeks ago.

Voters often pay a premium for socialism. It’s the modern-day equivalent of free-range eggs or an electric car. Zohran Mamdani, a self-described “democratic socialist,” embodies that premium. In New York’s Democratic mayoral primary election, he got blown out of the water with lower-income voters – but won overwhelmingly with young, white, college-educated idealists desperate for the revolution. He would be the furthest left mayor New York City has ever seen if elected in November. While his policy prescriptions – city-run grocery stores, higher taxes on the wealthy and a diminished police presence – are radical proposals, it is his deep devotion to socialism that truly defies convention. There is no question that Mamdani loathes the West.