Yet the real risk for New York City and other big cities doesn’t come from catastrophes. Economies stagnate when they’re layered with policies that slowly sap their productivity and orderliness—some red tape on business here, budget cuts to policing there. That’s what New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is risking with his latest tax proposal.

Mamdani announced the scheme to coincide with Tax Day. “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well today, we’re taxing the rich,” he said to the camera in one of his trademark short videos.

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The rent remains unfrozen. The buses are not free. And New Yorkers still do not have access to universal childcare—only 2,000 spots have been made available for a new daycare program for 2-year-olds.

That’s not to say his administration has been without accomplishments. In the weeks leading up to his 100th day, Mamdani has pointed to a series of incremental wins: a new 104-bed unit at Bellevue Hospital for inmates in city jails, a pilot program offering free childcare to 40 children of municipal workers, and an additional $1.5 billion in state aid secured from Albany.

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The mayor’s office on Monday released a report titled “New York City Preliminary Racial Equity Plan.” New York’s city council mandated racial equity reports in 2022 in response to the 2020 death of George Floyd and the spasmodic racial reckoning that followed. But the supposedly mandatory reports were ignored by the previous mayor Eric Adams, a black former police officer who was less devoted than his successor to a left-wing view of race relations.

Mamdani’s City Hall is compensating for that oversight, to say the least. The report identifies a history of race-related problems that must now be addressed in every city department, from garbage collection (“disparities in cleanliness and environmental safety”) to the “Office of Media and Entertainment,” in which, we are told, “systemic racism continues to shape both representation and opportunities.”

For benighted New Yorkers who take pride in the city’s history of allowing immigrants of all backgrounds to improve their lot, the mayor offers a correction. “New York’s history has been one of colonization, exploitation, and racial oppression,” the report says. “The land New York City stands on today once belonged to the Lenape people, who were forcibly displaced through settler colonialism. From the era of Dutch colonization to modern times, systemic racism has shaped the experiences of Black, Indigenous, Latine, Asian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, and other communities of color.” (Note the absence on that list of Jews who, prior to a 1948 Supreme Court decision, were targeted by deed restrictions that barred “Hebrews.”)

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That was the reaction of Linda Coleson, 23, to the hundreds of people who showed up to Fordham University on Wednesday evening for one of Zohran Mamdani’s Rental Rip-off hearings.

The Big Apple’s democratic socialist mayor campaigned as a leader who would fight for the little guy and take on the Goliaths of capitalism. The hearings, according to the city, promised to “offer New Yorkers a microphone to share poor conditions and unconscionable business practices.” This was Mamdani’s chance to shine.

When I arrived at Fordham’s brightly lit student center, the scene looked less like a struggle session and more like a science fair. A sign declaring the righteous struggle of “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords” adorned a projector screen above a stage. There were booths with tenant unions offering know-your-rights workshops and nonprofits providing free legal aid for renters. Coloring books, puzzles, and stuffed animals were set out for children (though I saw only one child at the event).

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The episode was, in many ways, a test for New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani. As a progressive Muslim leader whose own home was the site of this near disaster, his response was bound to draw scrutiny.

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But you would never know any of that from the mayor’s statement—or from much of the mainstream media’s coverage. If you were reading that, or listening to the words of the city’s top elected official, you would assume the bombs were placed by white supremacists.

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That was just one of more than 70 Instagram posts uncovered by The Free Press in which the First Lady of New York City cosigned extreme positions against Israel. A sampling of the posts say Israel is waging a “vile land grab,” and the protesters who took over a Columbia University building in April 2024 were “on the right side of progress.” Another post liked by Duwaji, who identifies as Syrian but was born in Houston, Texas, calls for the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—which Mamdani has said he would honor if the Israeli leader steps foot in New York City on his watch. One post she liked referred to then-President Joe Biden as “Butcher Biden,” and said, “Your legacy is genocide, Joe.”

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Here was my chance to be a part of history, a big-government success story, a sort of winter Works Progress Administration. The warmth of collectivism would keep me toasty in the freezing cold as I served the socialist mayor’s snow-shoveling corps. “All you need to bring is two forms of ID to ensure you get paid,” Mamdani said in a video posted to X on Monday. Easy, right? Not quite.

What started with 16 inches of snow and a dream quickly morphed into something I can describe only as a bizarre, heartwarming, and frustrating journey. The bureaucracy was, to use a technical term, a hot mess.

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That would be the effect of the 9.5 percent hike in the city’s property tax that Mamdani proposed this week, as it hits everyone from homeowners on Staten Island to tenants whose landlords would have to pass through the hikes or go bust. The deputy speaker of the city council, Nantasha Williams, a member of the council’s progressive caucus, fired the first shot of what could be a Big Apple tax revolt, branding it with the worst slur for a progressive: not “equitable.”

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“We’re looking to go in a different direction,” he said the staffer told him.

To Davis, a 28-year-old Brooklyn native, it was clear what that direction meant.

“Look, I’m a loud, proud Jewish person with a kippah on my head, a proud Zionist,” he said. “This administration maybe felt that was too much for them.”

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Depending on your perspective, that makes corporations either a tempting target or an unfortunate victim.

The hurdle for Mamdani’s agenda—from universal childcare to fare-free buses to city-owned grocery stores—is a lack of funds. Mamdani must rely on Democrats in Albany to come up with a substantial part of the money. While New York governor Kathy Hochul has resisted tax increases, the populist wave may have pushed her into an uneasy alliance. And just last week, Hochul promised $500 million in funding for the New York City mayor’s planned childcare program for 2-year-olds. Though she has opposed higher personal income taxes, Hochul hasn’t ruled out raising the state’s corporate income tax. That would have ripple effects throughout the state’s economy.

The reason corporate income taxes are hard to escape is that both the state and the city tax corporations on the basis of how many of their sales are generated locally. They don’t take into account how many people the corporations employ locally or how much property they have locally. If a corporation has half of its sales in New York City, half of its profit will be subject to state and city income taxes, end of story. (This system of corporate taxes is typical; 35 states tax corporations in this way.)

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President Donald Trump embraced the populist approach last week when he pledged to limit corporate investors from buying single-family homes. “People live in homes, not corporations,” he said on Truth Social, suggesting that buyers such as private-equity giant Blackstone have driven up prices and pushed the dream of homeownership out of reach for young families. Trump is preparing an executive order to implement the new restrictions and says he will ask Congress to codify them further.

Covering the left flank in the assault on landlords is New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. The 34-year-old democratic socialist pledged in his campaign to “freeze the rent” of certain buildings, which would depress investment and drive overall rents upward. Yet in his first week in office, Mamdani announced an even more destructive policy. He revived the previously shuttered Office to Protect Tenants, and committed to bring more buildings under permanent public ownership by pressuring landlords to sell distressed properties.

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These staffers, many of them Jewish, wanted to know if I had seen the posts about antisemitism that had mysteriously disappeared from the mayor’s office’s official X account, and if I knew that Mamdani had revoked hundreds of executive orders, including two key measures meant to protect Jewish New Yorkers.

Then there were the appointments. An X sleuth uncovered past social media posts from Cea Weaver, the head of the newly created Office to Protect Tenant Rights, in which she called private property a “weapon of white supremacy.” On a 2021 livestream for the Democratic Socialists of America, Weaver said that while society transitions from a system of individual to collective property rights, “families, especially white families,” would be impacted.

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When her phone began to buzz on Saturday with news that the U.S. had captured Maduro, she could hardly believe it.

“This is what all Venezuelans wished for,” said Sanchez, who lives in Port Washington, Long Island. “We were waiting 25 years for this.”

Despite her brush with socialism, Sanchez, 32, told me she wasn’t opposed to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who was sworn in just last week. “He’s young—I feel like he knows what the people need,” she said. Then she saw Mamdani’s post on X criticizing Trump’s capture of the Venezuelan dictator.

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One of the deleted posts on X announced the publication Wednesday of an 80-page report by the city’s Office to Combat Antisemitism. The post described the “first-ever municipal report on our efforts to combat antisemitism” as “bold” and a “blueprint for 2026.”

The second deleted post called the establishment of the office an effort “to make fighting hate a policy priority.” It noted that the report included a detailed account of the history of Jewish New Yorkers and the city’s “long-standing and important ties with Israel.”

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The year was 2017, and Paladino, a 63-year-old with no political experience, saw then-mayor Bill de Blasio touring her neighborhood here in Northeastern Queens. De Blasio had just returned from protesting President Donald Trump at that year’s G20 summit in Germany. He had decided to make the t…

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Davis, who has led the office since its creation just eight months ago, told me that he has received no communication from the incoming Mamdani administration about his status—or the future of the office itself. Still, he plans to report to City Hall on Friday, the first official workday after Mamdani’s inauguration.

“I currently have the job until I hear otherwise,” said Davis, 28 and a native of Brooklyn’s Kensington neighborhood. “I’m ready to serve.”

The uncertainty raises a broader question: What will happen to the Office to Combat Antisemitism under Mamdani, who co-founded his college’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and has refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state?

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It’s also perhaps the wealthiest district in the country, meaning the person who represents it in Congress is effectively destined to become a major power broker on Capitol Hill. If you’ve ever wondered why Democratic leaders so often hail from New York City or coastal California, it’s the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: Because that’s where the money is. All this wealth makes fundraising a lot easier. Plus, that cash can be spread around. Play it right, and you can ride this district to a position of serious power. Add the name Kennedy to the mix, and you’re talking about national celebrity.

We’ll get to that Kennedy in a little bit. Because for the first time in 34 years, the congressional seat is open, with longtime representative Jerry Nadler leaving at the end of his current term. This is the moment ambitious Manhattan Democrats—of which there are many—have long awaited. They’ve spent years glad-handing party bosses, community leaders, the old ward heelers who can deliver votes. They’re hacks, in other words, who have been climbing the greasy pole of New York Democratic politics their entire careers.

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“It was thrilling. I was like ‘Wow, I helped make this happen.’ ”

And in the back of her mind, a tickle of satisfaction crept in: A few hours from then, she knew her mom would wake up in London to find out that the man she called “dangerous” and an “antisemite” had just cinched control of America’s largest city.

“I was like, I won the argument,” said Isabel, an anti-Zionist raised in a mixed Catholic-Jewish household. “It’s fun to be right.”

To Isabel, election night was one of the most exciting of her young life. To her mother, it was a nightmare.

“I was horrified,” Sagra Maceira de Rosen, a 53-year-old investment consultant, told me. “I fear that kids I care for—my children—are brainwashed.”

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Alex Vitale, the author of a book titled The End of Policing, has called the police “violence workers.” He has said, “The institution of policing exists to facilitate racial inequality.” And he has even said, “We need to kill the cop in our head.”

This outspoken police abolitionist is the kind of professor whose ideas usually don’t travel far beyond the lecture hall. Not anymore.

Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College, is now advising New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on one of his newly created 17 transition committees, which includes groups dedicated to policing “immigrant justice” and “worker justice.”

The anti-cop professor is just the tip of the iceberg. In the past four weeks, Mamdani made hundreds of appointments as he fills out his administration and transition team ahead of his inauguration on New Year’s Day. A look into the activist backgrounds of many of these appointees will disappoint anyone who was hoping that the 34-year-old socialist—who previously declared that “capitalism is theft” and called the New York Police Department “racist”—might moderate his approach between winning the election and governing.

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