Are Democrats ready for a socialist New York?

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The news, in brief …

• Deportation tied to Vance “Babyface” meme sparks global outrage

  European lawmakers attacked the Trump administration after a Norweigan tourist claimed he was denied entry to the U.S. over a joke image of Vice President J.D. Vance on his phone. “We’re watching a major incursion on the freedom of expression, unthinkable in an electoral democracy,” Irish politician Ivana Bacik said from the parliament floor on Wednesday. Read more.

• Before foreign press, Trump trashes US intelligence report on Iran and claims “total obliteration”

  Trump doubled down on his defense of the Iran attacks while speaking before foreign reporters at a NATO summit. “I believe it was total obliteration,” he said. “It’s gone for years.” Read more.

• Trump wants CNN’s Natasha Bertrand fired after report on Iranian strikes

  Donald Trump and members of his administration have raged for days after CNN shared an internal Pentagon assessment of the U.S. bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear sites. On Wednesday, Trump said the network should fire reporter Natasha Bertrand over the exclusive. “She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out “like a dog,” he wrote. Read more. 

• Lake grilled by House Committee over Voice of America cuts

  Legislators critcized Kari Lake’s cuts to the United States Agency for Global Media on Wednesday. Read more.

Make me smarter …

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The city so nice, they ran for mayor twice

Democrats are having some second thoughts about the whole democracy thing, after New Yorkers overwhelmingly voted for democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in the city’s mayoral primary on Tuesday.

Current Mayor Eric Adams was already planning on running as an independent, but his embarrassing loss at the ballot box has former Gov. Andrew Cuomo considering his own third-party run.

“About 1 million people vote in the Democratic primary. So it’s not, necessarily, representative of the city at large,” Cuomo said of the contest, into which his affiliated PACs dumped more than $20 million. “In the general election, more people come out to vote. It’s a broader pool, if you will, of New Yorkers, more representative pool of New Yorkers.”

At the same time, Democratic megadonor Bill Ackman unveiled the entirely new concept of the occluded mayor. He promised a surprising candidate to take on the party he typically supports.

“I have a great idea on NYC,” he wrote. “I will share it as soon as I can.”

All of this agita from the Democratic Party establishment comes down to Mamdani’s redestributive campaign promises, which would lower costs of NYC services via a higher tax rate on the city’s wealthy, and a proposed rent freeze.

Given that the Mamdani’s campaign proved incredibly popular and energized the supposed base of the Democratic Party, it’s no wonder that the party’s movers and shakers are eager to bury him under a mountain of SuperPAC cash. If they rallied behind the plain-speaker whose policies offered substantive material benefits for the average voter, they wouldn’t very well be the Democrats. Just ask Tim Walz.

 What do you think? Will the celebration around Mamdani be short-lived? Is there a hedge-fund billionaire version of Tammany Hall, set up in the site of a former WeWork, ready to bring the hammer down on a democratic socialist’s campaign? Will Cuomo pull out the win in the general, or at least cause enough of a mess to tank Mamdani? Click the speech bubble to sound off in the comments.

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Before you go …

Supreme Court bends again to Trump’s will

Shadow docket ruling on "third country" deportations further erodes our democracy. Read more.