Editors at the New York Post assess recent rhetoric from the city’s leading mayoral candidate.
Zohran Mamdani promises to be President Donald Trump’s “worst nightmare” if he becomes mayor, but the actual victims of any such faceoff will be the people of New York City.
For starters, no mere mayor, even of America’s greatest city, has the juice to pick a fight with the federal government and hope to come out on top.
In fact, it’s a joke to think a Mayor Mamdani could even step in the ring.
Look: The city depends heavily on federal cash to help the people Mamdani claims to care the most about, namely the poor.
Three out of five New York City residents are on Medicaid or related health plans, and the feds pay for most of that coverage, tens of billions of dollars a year.
The city Housing Authority and the MTA — both constantly on the brink of physically falling apart — depend on billions more, both for operating costs and capital spending.
Billions flow to the city for education, foster care, aid for needy families, school lunch, “community development,” fire and rescue services and other programs that make the city “affordable” for its less-fortunate residents.
The Gateway Tunnel Project to build new cross-Hudson train tunnels is underway, with the feds kicking in half the funding.
Trump quashed this project in his first term, calling it a “local” matter, and could easily mess with it again — especially since New York and New Jersey’s “plans” to cover their parts of the bill could collapse under the most elementary examination.
Federal regulators and administrators can gum up local developments for decades.
Slow-walked approvals or investigations into environmental impacts, civil rights disparities or labor relations can sideline entire mayoral agendas for years.
Even money already allocated by law to New York has strings attached.
Trump’s agencies can perform audits, demand extra accountability, subpoena officials and make things generally miserable for a locality on the receiving end.
