From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject Zohran Mamdani vs. Donald Trump
Date July 25, 2025 12:05 AM
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ZOHRAN MAMDANI VS. DONALD TRUMP  
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Aziz Huq
July 24, 2025
Jacobin
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_ It’s clear that Donald Trump will aim to make governance as
difficult as possible for Zohran Mamdani’s potential New York City
mayoralty. But Mamdani has a range of options available to counter the
president’s attacks. _

New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (left) and
President Donald Trump.,

 

Even before New York’s Young Republican Club started selling
[[link removed]] “Deport Mamdani”
T-shirts, it was clear the Trump administration would do everything
within, and beyond, its power to sabotage a progressive New York City
mayoral administration. That the leader of such an administration
would be the target of Islamophobic attacks would only make this
easier, as would the cheers
[[link removed]] from
the national Democratic establishment.

But while Democratic elites can meddle in the primary and general
elections, they will become bit players if Mamdani wins office. Then
the principal axis of conflict will run between a national
government captained
[[link removed]] largely
by reactionary billionaires, and the democratic choice of the most
[[link removed]] socioeconomically
and ethnically diverse city in the nation.

Thanks to Donald Trump’s propensity to telegraph his intentions and
his actions in office already, the contours and stakes of that
incipient conflict are already coming into focus. That conflict is not
one a Mamdani administration could easily win, but there are better
and worse ways for the potential democratic socialist mayor to play
his hand. Historical reflection and a careful tally of the
possibilities for action on both sides has lessons for navigating the
challenge — lessons that other left candidates at the state and
local level can use too.

Cautionary Histories

Progressive enclaves have long faced blockades, sieges, and subversion
by opponents operating at a higher geographic scale. Relentless
pressure usually ends either in the enclaves’ destruction or a
deeply warped form of politics. But tragedy is not an assured outcome.

Perhaps the classic examples of blockaded enclaves are
twentieth-century communist revolutions. After the Russian Revolution,
Western intervention on behalf of White Russians prolonged a
“catastrophic
[[link removed]]”
conflict. After the Cuban Revolution, the United States deployed
[[link removed]] “far-ranging”
economic and covert tools in a “long-term strategy of
destruction.” The cascade of CIA efforts to murder Fidel Castro may
have veered into the comical
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but their material, human, and political toll was no laughing matter.

Within a nation, perhaps the most famous instance of reactionary
massing against a progressive enclave was the ten-week-long 1871 Paris
Commune. As Bruno Leipold has shown
[[link removed]],
the commune “witnessed a flowering of democratic experimentation and
cultural and social liberation” in its brief span of ten weeks. Yet
these experiments in radically democratic government ended in
indiscriminate massacre
[[link removed]] at
the hands of Adolphe Thiers’s provisional national government,
the _Semaine sanglante_ (“Bloody Week”).

American history features nothing so dramatic, and Mamdani isn’t
aiming to carry out an old-school revolution in New York City. But the
progressive state and local governments of the late nineteenth century
faced a hostile national government. Their redistributive efforts were
stymied repeatedly by federal judges brocading a “liberty of
contract” out of ether.

This history suggests it’s easy for a left enclave to collapse under
external strain, or at least become distorted beyond recognition —
but that neither outcome is inevitable.

The Coming Siege of New York

Assume that Mamdani has been invested with office and moved into
Gracie Mansion: What kind of blockade will the federal government
enact? Trump’s acts and words suggest three entwined modes of attack
are likely. These have more parallels to the Cuban and Paris blockades
than the juridical fights of the progressive era.

First, there would come direct assaults on the person of Mamdani and
those close to him. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) has the dubious honor of
being among the first to suggest
[[link removed]] stripping Mamdani
of citizenship, a suggestion taken up by Trump megaphone Karoline
Leavitt. Subsequently Trump has suggested
[[link removed]] arresting
Mamdani for hindering immigration enforcement, which is a criminal
rather than a civil immigration charge.

These targeted threats should not be taken as mere rhetoric.
Denaturalization is allowed
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lies on their citizenship application. Trump officials have
already floated
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notion that Mamdani “lied” by not disclosing his support for
“terrorism.” The argument is absurd on the facts but no more
far-fetched than many accusations it has leveled over the past six
months. In February, the Justice Department issued a
policy memorandum
[[link removed]] defining
the “harboring” of undocumented people in sweeping terms,
effectively criminalizing much ordinary interaction with the
undocumented. Already one Wisconsin judge has been indicted
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its terms.

The point of an indictment or a denaturalization action may not be for
the government to win. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice
Department has already shown it’s happy to manipulate criminal
charges for partisan ends unrelated to criminal law. Its favorable
treatment of New York City mayor Eric Adams is the most glaring
example. Rather, its hope would be to tie up Mamdani in personally
costly litigation, making him incapable of effectively governing and
hence torpedoing his term in office.

Layered onto these personal assaults will be the use of the federal
government’s purse as an instrument of blackmail. Trump has
already threatened
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withhold funding if Mamdani “doesn’t behave himself.” In other
states, his administration has withheld money in exceptionally cruel
forms of blackmail. So when Maine allowed trans athletes to compete in
sports, secretary of agriculture Brooke Rollins cut off
[[link removed]] funding
for nutritional assistance in schools. Bend the knee, she effectively
said, or your children go hungry.

Finally, Trump has claimed
[[link removed]] “tremendous power at
the White House to run places when we have to.” In early June, Trump
signed a presidential proclamation
[[link removed]] mobilizing
two thousand National Guard troops to deploy in Los Angeles (the
deployment ended
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July). It was solely good luck that the ensuing deployment didn’t
degenerate into a larger, more deadly conflagration, taking the lives
of protesters and bystanders. The LA deployment was based on the
thinnest of legal rationales, although a pair of Trump-appointed
judges rejected a legal challenge by the state. Hence it’s
reasonable to foresee an East Coast repeat based upon some shabby
pretext, perhaps teed up by violent and cruel immigration raids.

The Trump administration would likely try to gin up a kind of
municipal-scale polycrisis that overwhelms citizens’ ability to
register and understand what’s happening and fosters an illusion of
uncontrollable chaos. In a classic reactionary pivot, it could then
point to the havoc
[[link removed]] it’s
enabled as evidence of the impossibility of progressive reform.

Dealing With a Five-Borough Polycrisis

Amunicipal politician’s instruments for dealing with this kind of
assault are limited. Neither the formal instruments of office nor the
informal levers of mass action completely negate the force of federal
weapons. One lesson of past progressive enclaves such the Paris
Commune, however, is that deflecting direct, spectacular
confrontations is wise. The ensuing tactical options compel hard
choices between building alliances through a claim to the moral high
ground and playing hardball against a lawless national government.

The prospect of individualized targeting of the mayor with criminal or
immigration law counsels against a highly concentrated, personalized
form of decision-making. There’s a need for redundancy at the apex.
The mayor might start with a team of trusted deputy mayors with
experience in navigating policy and a general scheme for reform
plotted out.

As Peter Dreier has already observed
[[link removed]],
many pieces of his proposed “sewer socialism” are already in view.
Dreier also predicts that Mamdani would appoint experienced and
aligned allies — he names comptroller Brad Lander as one — as
deputy mayors. The appointment of people who have experience working
the levers of municipal power who are aligned with Mamdani’s policy
ambitions would be a kind of insurance against the punitive exercise
of federal law to hassle and disable Mamdani. In effect, such
appointments would mitigate the disruption caused by the federal
targeting of the mayor personally.

Persecutory government actions targeting individuals offer the chance
to seize the moral high ground, building a measure of hegemony across
the political left. One doesn’t need the Paris Commune’s martyrs
to achieve this effect. Even California governor Gavin Newsom looked
sympathetic when threatened [[link removed]] with arrest.
Trump’s attacks on Mamdani have already induced New York Governor
Kathy Hochul to draw
[[link removed]] closer
to Mamdani.

As to the use of federal funds as a coercive tool, the city is as
vulnerable as Mamdani personally.  According to the
city’s comptroller
[[link removed],)%2C%20also%20through%20FY%202028.],
8.3 percent of the city’s budget ($9.6 billion) flows from the
federal government. Last year, the state as a whole was a net
recipient
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federal money, after having been a net donor for many years.

Yet funding cutoffs have been one of the few Trump strategies that
have been successfully
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in court. (Maine, for example, sued and got the funding restored). It
seems likely that New York’s federal bench will be responsive —
especially now that Trump has plainly stated that cutoffs would be
motivated by illegal partisan ends. The crudely lawless Supreme Court,
however, is another matter.

Moreover, New York City might engage in some self-help in response.
When Gov. Newsom threatened
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withhold Californians’ tax payments earlier this year in response to
Trump’s actions, it was unclear how he would do this. By contrast,
the financial hubs through which tax dollars flow are all in New York,
as is the pivotal regional Reserve Bank. Just as the United States has
used its control over key economic nodes to advance its ends, could
the city leverage its privileged geographic position? Could it order
banks to transfer illegally withheld dollars back to its coffers? What
regulatory powers could it use to hinder the federal government’s
other projects, imposing a friction to Trump’s unlawful threats?

The city might also use its regulatory power against the Trump
organization in a tit-for-tat response for the president’s
personalization of politics. Imagine, for example, a rigorous
application of building and sanitation codes to all New York City
structures owned in the president’s circle. This wouldn’t shake
loose $9.6 billion, but it could rattle the president and his allies.
The state’s attorney general already mooted seizing some of
Trump’s properties as civil penalties — a threat that might be
re-upped in response to the personalized, partisan use of prosecution
powers.

Such tactics, however, would undermine Mamdani’s claim to moral high
ground and so perhaps undermine attempts to win over centrists,
especially in state government, who would otherwise be open to
alliances. Whether this trade-off is warranted is hard to say in
advance. A savvy administration might be able to deploy hardball
tactics without losing the propaganda battle. But it needs to think
through how to do so in advance.

Finally, given the second Trump administration’s actions thus far,
we have to consider the possibility of military occupation. Such an
action would be calibrated to elicit a mass response from the public
— which, as in LA, can be framed through selective or misleading
snapshots to discredit and defame the city and its supporters.

 

Given that mass action is unlikely to prevail ultimately against
phalanxes of heavily armed troops, the key question is how to maximize
the costs of military occupation on the federal side. Such action
would likely impose steep costs on the financial and commercial elites
making NYC their home, who are the anchor tenants in the current
Republican coalition. How, then, could the municipality make federal
military power a double-edged sword for Trump, perhaps triggering a
market panic of the kind that provoked the retreat from his beloved
tariffs?

While he responds to each of the federal government’s dictates, a
new mayor would do well to look for other tools for placing pressure
on the president and his allies, as well as the federal government. He
could declare that federal officials need written permission to enter
any and all city properties, including courthouses, or else be subject
to criminal trespass penalties. Or the city could follow the example
of the New York attorney general by using its general regulatory
powers to force Trump businesses, including his new crypto-based
dealings, to a halt.

Would any of this work? A sufficiently cruel and lawless federal
government is unlikely to be fully dissuaded. But a carefully
calibrated response by a Mayor Mamdani can minimize the costs of
federal bullying, staving off its efforts to wound the vulnerable as
blackmail, and making a measure of progressive self-rule possible.
History teaches that while all this is difficult, it’s not
impossible.

_[AZIZ HUQ is a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law
School.]_

_Jacobin‘s summer issue, “Speculation,” is out now. Follow this
link to get a discounted subscription to our beautiful print
quarterly. [[link removed]]_

* Zohran Mamdani
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* New York City
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* New York City mayoral election
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* 2025 Elections
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* Donald Trump
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* Trump Administration
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* Trump 2.0
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* federal government
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* municipal government
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* New York City Council
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* New York State
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* Gov. Kathy Hochul
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* sewer socialism
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* federal funding
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* funding cutoff
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* taxing authority
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* taxes
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