When Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral Democratic primary, a friend whose political judgment I respect told me that this is the greatest gift to the Republicans imaginable. As New York Times columnist Brett Stephens observed of Mamdani’s youthful and enthusiastic supporters, “They’re making Donald Trump’s case about the radical direction of too much of the Democratic Party better than he ever could.”
Mamdani, an avowed socialist and a Muslim immigrant from Uganda of Indian heritage, captured the imagination of new voters, who bought into his theme of making the city affordable.
The notion of a political gift is that the Republicans will tar the Democrats with the far-left progressive views of Mamdani: free bus rides, food at lower prices, frozen rents — all items the cash-strapped city can ill afford to deliver.
And then there is the charge of antisemitism. Running in the city with the largest Jewish community in the world, Mamdani has — even after winning the primary — refused to repudiate the anti-Zionist shibboleth “globalize the intifada.” Intifada is Arabic for “shaking off” and is a term associated with the murder of innocent Jews in Israel and around the world. We will have to wait for the general election in November to see if Mamdani has committed political suicide by refusing to condemn the global intifada.
Meanwhile, after the Senate narrowly passed President Trump’s “big beautiful” tax bill and sent it back to the House for ratification, another friend told me this was making Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) case about the reactionary direction of too much of the GOP “better than he ever could.”
Can it be that the two political programs are truly “gifts” to the rival party?
The Mamdani and Trump political programs are similar to the extent that that both seek to make the city and nation great again, but neither can actually afford its own bold initiatives. Mamdani’s program provides an ambitious populist agenda for which New York City cannot pay, and the MAGA bill provides an ambitious reactionary agenda for which the nation can’t pay. The programs are dissimilar to the extent that Mamdani hopes to finance his program on the backs of the rich, and Trump hopes to finance his program on the backs of the poor.
Republicans have always been advocates of fiscal discipline, of a balanced budget with an eye on preventing a debt crisis. What has happened to them? The new legislation will increase the national debt over time by close to four trillion dollars, among the most expensive bill in years — passed in Congress not on its merits, but because Republican fiscal hawks lacked the courage to stand up to their president. Although several House Republicans who claimed they were pressured into voting for the bill said they would oppose the Senate-passed measure, that version barely passed the House, 218 to 214.
The law will extend tax cuts from Trump’s first term that were set to expire, while adding new tax breaks and spending hundreds of billions on immigration enforcement and the military. The nearly $170 billion in the bill to fund the Trump administration’s border and immigration crackdown would be one of the largest sums ever spent on homeland security, and an additional $160 billion would flow to the Department of Defense, partially for Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” continental missile defense system.
The bill’s major benefits are disproportionally for the rich, paid for in large measure by slashing social safety net programs for the poor, such as food stamps and Medicaid payments. Nearly 12 million Americans are projected to lose health care coverage under the law. The cuts in Medicaid will also affect hospitals around the country, whose revenues depend heavily on the program.
Mamdani is hardly a gift to the Republicans. A savvy Democratic candidate can easily “shake off” Mamdani’s extreme ideas and move his party to the center-left, where it can be marketable around the country. Mamdani may also decide to dial back some of his whacko ideas before Election Day.
I am not so sure that the same is true for the Republican gift to the Democrats. The “big beautiful” legislation may be the worst bill in history. Never has such a large redistribution of wealth been directed upward. It comes at a time of near-record inequalities of income and wealth. Come midterms, Republicans will be stuck with their bill poking holes in the social safety net to fuel aggressive anti-immigration policies.
The new legislation adds gasoline to the fire of Trump’s 143 executive orders in the first 100 days — far more than any other president over the same period — including hardline immigration restrictions , a rollback of key environmental protections, expanded tariffs on foreign goods and a crackdown on law firms and universities. The orders have drawn sharp criticism from civil rights and pro-democracy groups, environmental advocates and even some business leaders.
Trump’s immigration crackdown has become a travesty. Only 8 percent of those detained by ICE had been previously convicted of violent crimes.
Trump relishes visiting vengeance on his political enemies. He has said he wants Mamdani, who became an American citizen in 2018, denaturalized and deported.
Trump “just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported,” Mamdani forcefully replied. "Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city."
It needn’t be a choice between Mamdani and Trump. Both have idiotic ideas. Ophelia in “Hamlet” observed that “rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.” Voters may indeed see their platforms as a plague on both their houses.
James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast Conversations with Jim Zirin.
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