No. 18 of 108
July 1, 2025
Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old naturalized citizen who came to the U.S. from Uganda as a young child, officially won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, a very big job, mostly on a platform of making New York City affordable, a very big job. The President says he is not a citizen, and he will arrest him if he stands in the way of ICE. Mostly young volunteers and community-based orgs fueled the Mamdani campaign. Mostly big donors and established interests fueled former Governor Cuomo on his comeback bid. Cuomo is thinking about running in the general election as an independent, but many of the big donors and established interests are moving toward Eric Adams, who is also Steve Bannon’s choice, primarily because of Adams’ support of ICE enforcement and accusations of anti-Semitism against Mamdani. The President also says Mamdani is a communist and a socialist for supporting such ideas as public-owned urban grocery stores. (A form of this exists nationwide, called commissaries, where military, military families, and veterans can shop, and businesses participate as suppliers and vendors.) Also today, the One Big Beautiful Bill passed the Senate with VP Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, mirroring VP Harris’ tie-breaking vote in 2022.
Leaders and rulers put forward big ideas, small ideas, recycled ideas, anti-ideas in bids to excite voters to support their leadership and rulership. The ideas are at war with each other as much as the candidates, the power blocks, the people. How are we to meet the most fraught and consequential issues of our times and places? We do not yet have a through line, or a grounding core. And thus, we will choose or not choose, celebrate or strongly oppose each big idea, small idea, recycled idea, anti-idea and the leaders and rulers who forward them, one by one by one.
