6/18/25: Israel Tanks Fire On Aid Site, NYC Mayoral Candidate Arrested By ICE, Cuomo Panics As Zohran Surges
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in Gaza have only heightened since then. We put up this first element here, this Reuters article. This headline is absolutely extraordinary. Israeli tanks kill 59 people in Gaza crowd trying to get food aid, medics say. This is similar to the reports of the very first aid massacre, which defenders of Israel insisted

For many days afterwards, that it had not happened. In all of those days since then, another massacre of people seeking aid has carried out. There's some... You can go to the Dropsite News Twitter feed if you want to see it. We're not going to play it here because it's absolutely horrific. There's some footage of the carnage after the tanks fired on this area of Khan Yunus. This was...

This was another scene where people knew that there was going to be an aid truck going through and attempted to get aid from that truck. And then they opened fire on them, killing well over 59, actually, at this point. They went to Nasser Hospital as well as others. Nasser just is on the brink of total collapse at this point. We have some less...

graphic footage that we can show. This is C1. You can kind of hear the shooting in the distance. You can see the scenes of utter chaos. And you can see the lights in the distance there, which represent the GHF kind of quote-unquote aid distribution center. And just to remind people, before Israel took over aid distribution and had left it to the World Food Program and World Central Kitchen and others,

You simply did not see scenes like this because these are aid organizations that have been doing this for a very long time. And so they don't know how to do this. Speaking of Nassar Hospital, we could put up C2. This is...

And we can just roll this. This is an audio report that Dropsite got about the state of affairs at perhaps the largest hospital that is remaining somewhat functional in Gaza. Dr. Yousef reports that there is not just a huge number of patients coming in from the various massacres like the one today. Nasser Hospital is still in a red area.

And importantly, Nasser Hospital has no supplies, no consumables. All items are lacking for the provision of emergency medical care. He also told me that until now, since the 7th of October, in Gaza, the Ministry of Health have recorded the use of 150,000 units of blood that have been used, which means approximately 250 units of blood daily.

Now, blood is lacking because of the starvation of the population. They cannot no longer ask people to donate blood because of nutritional anemia and the fact that many have already donated units.

They are unable to receive more cases now because they cannot provide life-saving first aid or damage control or life-saving surgery. There is practically no food available. They're trying to cook some bread in Nasser Hospital.

but they are also in addition to being out of food material there there is no cooking gas and they are actually using staff to collect firewood in order to make some food available for the staff and the patients this is the reality in uh nasser hospital and so for many months uh

Drop Sight and other reporters have been in contact with the hospital staff at Nassar and other places getting regular updates. It's never been, I think, as dire as it is now overall. Last night, let's put up C4, there was another attack in Kan Yunis. That is an assemblage of tents.

that you're watching burning there. So the footage that's shot around the world over the last months and a year ago, we're constantly seeing people burning alive. God only knows what the up-close footage looks like there. This comes as effectively nobody's paying attention for the last week or so because of the other war between Israel and Iran.

And when you see the numbers of casualties coming out of that and compare it to what's continuing to happen every single day in Gaza, it's kind of extraordinary. Ryan...

What have you heard from sources? Dropsite is regularly in contact with people in Gaza and in West Bank. What is their spirit like? What have you heard? Well, West Bank, interestingly, I'm glad you mentioned that,

The UN put out a report yesterday that the West Bank is now basically on total lockdown for Palestinians. So the Israeli settlers who live in the West Bank can move freely from their settlements to jobs just like a few miles away in 48 Israel. But the West Bank just, you know, if you're in an area, you can't leave it, basically. If you're in a town, you can't leave the town. The checkpoints have become almost impassable, which means...

You can't visit family, you can't get your job, you can't visit friends, you can't do anything. Imagine COVID lockdown times thousands and with guns everywhere. The despair is pretty extreme in Gaza. The hunger. Hunger is one of those things that we can all identify with.

Because we get hungry. Everybody gets hungry. We have the ability when we get hungry to go feed ourselves. Sometimes we complain about the food we'll get. But if we're thirsty, we can drink. If we're hungry, we can eat. Sometimes we have to wait an hour. And it's like, oh, how awful was that? Right. Like today, I forgot to bring a granola bar. So I'm going to suffer for like 30 minutes. You do love those granola bars. I do love granola bars.

It's that feeling just multiplied to infinity with no sense of when you're going to be able to feed yourself. And you know that at every, almost every single aid distribution scene, people will be killed. People will be shot at. And people will be fighting over flour and the other provisions. That's the other thing you're seeing now, like people fighting each other. Yet, and so you know that if you go,

you may get killed and wounded. And if you get wounded, you're probably going to die because of the lack of any medical care. Yet you go because of the hunger. And not just your hunger. Like, we can handle that. It's your family's hunger. There was a man who was killed last week. His last words were, please somebody take care of my children. I left them hungry. And I think any parent around the world can...

can identify with that feeling like of like because that's that's what you care about even in his dying moment like the the thing that he was thinking about is his his children and how they're hungry so the yeah it's i don't think i think it's impossible to describe the depth of despair um at this moment and and i don't see how i don't see how it ends right no i mean if if

Yeah, as everything is escalating in Iran, everyone's attention is increasing elsewhere already. And that looks poised to get even more significant. That redirection of attention looks poised to get even more significant in the days ahead, which has to be incredibly bleak. A very bleak future feels like, I'm sure. And the worse it gets, the more...

severe the international consequences will be for world opinion of Israel when Western press gets in there and says, oh, the stuff that

Dropsite was reporting in these TikToks and Instagram videos that we were seeing, that was only scratching the surface of what Western reporters are going to be able to find when they get in there. And because of this chauvinism around believing Western reporters over Palestinian reporters who are on the ground, that will have a greater effect once people can get in there. People have to get in there at some point. But if you keep a simmering conflict going, you can fend off that day.

And then Yahoo is a very one day at a time type of person, just kicking whatever political pain there is just to the next week. And so that's why I say I don't know when. I don't know what's going to force that to come to an end. Right. Awful. Thank you for your reporting on that. Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be.

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I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

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So up next, the comptroller of New York City, Brad Lander, was arrested yesterday by ICE agents at a federal courthouse, and he's joining us next.

New York City mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested yesterday in New York by ICE authorities. He's joining us today to talk about his time in detention, what brought him to that and what brought him to that situation. Comptroller of New York City, Brad Lander, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. All right. So we're going to roll a little clip that has gone around the world from from yesterday. But first, can you

Going to set up the scene. Like, where were you? Why were you there? Who was who was Ice trying to detain?

This is 26 Federal Plaza. It's a federal building where immigration hearings take place. That was the third week that I'd been there to observe cases in immigration court. And ICE has started what's called dismissing people's cases and then making them subject to expedited removal. And then masked ICE agents have been grabbing them in the elevator lobby.

So we've been observing and then just trying to escort people out of the building. Five times previously, I was able to just walk with families out of the building. They did not get grabbed. But this is an individual, Ed Gardo, who I was trying to escort out of the building when this scene breaks out in the elevator lobby. Well, let's roll the scene so people have the context. Let's play that here. Keep going. Push.

Do you have a judicial warrant? Can I see the judicial warrant? Can I see the warrant? I will let go when you show me the judicial warrant. Where is it? Where is the warrant? You're obstructing. You're obstructing. I would like to see the warrant. I would like to see the warrant. Take him back. Take him back. Take him back. Take him back. Take him back. Take him back. Take him back. Take him back.

Okay.

OK, so first question, Homeland Security responded and said they found an old post of yours from 2024 where you said no one is above the law. Homeland Security responds, no one is above the law. And if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences. They said you were arrested for, quote, assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer. So, Brad, could you respond to that from DHS yesterday?

I mean, everyone can see the clip that you just played. I don't lay a hand on an ICE officer. I don't assault anyone. I'm attempting to escort someone and asking the agents to show a judicial warrant. And that's what plays out in the video.

And what's happening here is that the Trump administration is trying to escalate conflict, strike fear into immigrants, deport millions of people, and undermine elected officials who are just trying to defend due process and the rule of law. That's what is happening before our eyes.

And so who were who did you have your hands on there? Like everybody's kind of locked together as you're being kind of pushed down the hall. Like so the individual that I was trying to escort, I only know his first name. His name's Gardo. I had literally met him seconds before his case had been dismissed. So he knew and I knew that he was now stripped of status and subject to expedited removal.

And others are walking with us as well. We had done this, as I say, five times before. And just before that, I had been able to walk with a family out of the building unimpeded. That's what I was hoping would happen here.

And so their argument, I guess you somehow are getting in the way of their ability to affect this arrest. Did they ever present the arrest warrant or anything else that they were official? They have not brought charges. I'm told that my case is under review, but have not brought charges so far.

But look, you know, this is what look what happened to Alex Padilla and Ras Baraka, a staff member of Congressman Jerry Nadler's. Pam Bondi has been very clear they're trying to liberate Democratic cities from their own elected officials. And we have to find a way to stand up for the Constitution and due process and the rule of law. I want to do it peacefully, nonviolently, just as a witness. But I'm going to do it. Where did they take you and for how long?

I was in detention in another room in that same building for about three and a half hours. And then Governor Hochul came down and they released me.

Okay. So, and this is a question from the right, but there were, according to the New York Times, a net, there was a net migration of 8 million people during the Biden administration. We know, you know, whether we agree with the administration or not when they say, you know, it's all criminals or many, many, it's full of criminals and all of that.

We know that obviously there's some level of that population that is criminal and that normal American citizens would oppose being in the country. So what should immigration enforcement look like, especially in a city like New York that has genuinely dealt with some measure of crime from people who are undocumented, overseeing visas or waiting for asylum claims to go through the very labyrinthine court system? What should that look like, Brad?

So the individuals yesterday are people not accused of any crime outside of the immigration system. And in fact, more than that, they're doing everything right. They crossed at the border, they checked in with Border Patrol, and they got a hearing date and showed up for their hearing. And if we make it that you're going to be arrested for showing up at your hearing, no one's going to, you know, like, we're going to wreck the rule of law of

Of course, the NYPD investigates crimes when they're committed, and that's just a totally separate process. So individuals who commit crimes, of course, the NYPD should investigate where people, you know, it should arrest people who have committed crimes in New York City, regardless of their immigration status. And if they are immigrants and if they're convicted,

convicted of a serious or violent crime. Our sanctuary city laws then allow for cooperation, but none of that is happening here. These are not people accused of anything. What they've done is shown up in immigration court to have a hearing that they were given a date for, and all we want for them is due process, the chance to have their asylum claim heard,

to get legal representation and not to be kind of manhandled and disappeared. If I face charges, I'll have a lawyer. I know my rights will be protected. We have no idea where Edgardo is. He doesn't have a lawyer. We don't know what his rights are. Trump is trying to strike fear and undermine the rule of law. And it's an important time for people to step up and say so. In that video, you say, you know, ICE agents don't have the authority to kind of arrest American citizens.

So are you going to what is your understanding since then? Have you talked to lawyers like are and are you going to kind of respond to the way that you were treated in your detention? Like if it's the case that ICE doesn't have the authority to do what they did, is there a lawsuit here? Is there some type of action that you that you're planning on taking?

I mean, right now I'm waiting to see what happens. As I say, you know, there were no charges brought, but my case is under review. So I will wait and see what happens there. But let's be clear. I'm going to be back at 26 Federal Plaza trying to, in a peaceful and nonviolent way, witness what's happening. And I hope other people will as well.

You know, 100,000 New Yorkers were out on the street over the weekend saying, you know, we don't want kings in this country. I was there with an organization called Immigrant Arc. I'd love for people to sign up with them and also join and bear witness. We can together insist on the rule of law and protecting New Yorkers. 40% of New Yorkers are immigrants, including a million children. And, you know, that's where I'm going to stay focused.

So the last question for me is if you could flesh out because one of the craziest things over the last couple of months has been arguing about what like the definition of due process and what it looks like, what it should look like for citizens versus non-citizens. I think most people agree that non-citizens do and should have are due.

literally due process. So for hypothetically a person like Edgardo, who's not so hypothetical in this case, but generally, what would due process look like for him? What do you think due process should look like for him? And how does that contrast with what you saw yesterday? Yeah, I mean, he should get a real hearing on his asylum application to determine whether he's got a credible fear of

or, you know, repression if he's returned to his country. That's what you do under international law and under U.S. law. And this expedited removal, they've never done it before in New York City or in the interior of the country. And to me, what they're doing is stripping people of the

basic right to get that credible fear hearing and make their asylum case. And if they don't have credible fear, fine, then deportation is what happens. But that is not what happened here. On the mayoral election, we've covered the race on the program here. And our audience, I think, was totally mystified at the last debate where every candidate went around saying like,

that they would go to Israel as like there's basically their first act as after getting elected mayor except for Zoran Mamdani and then who was then pressed like why wouldn't you go to Israel there's also something like a hundred thousand Pakistani Americans who live in New York City and you know many of them are supporters of Imran Khan who's been detained since since 2022 and it occurred to me like nobody said well I'm going to go to Pakistan because

Because there are 100,000 Pakistanis here and this is a very important issue to them. I'm going to go to Pakistan. I'm going to visit Imran Khan in prison because this is a violation of international human rights and democracy and this is something we're going to stand up for. Can you help our audience understand why this one country and why does every New York City mayoral candidate have to say that they're going to go there?

Well, for what it's worth, I said my first trip would be to Canada. Also wise. My second would be to Mexico. It's like those are our trading partners. Okay, that makes sense. And I am a proud Jewish New Yorker. I am the highest ranking Jewish elected official in New York City government. And I have been to Israel multiple times and I'll go again.

I believe in the vision of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, but I think that requires an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. And Israelis and Palestinians have to figure out how to live in mutual self-determination and peace. That is not the job of the New York City mayor. You know, the New York City mayor can, though, try hard to set a tone that enables very diverse people forward.

from all around the world to live together in peace without hatred, without antisemitism, without Islamophobia. So that's the kind of mayor I will be, somebody who shows up like I did for Edgardo yesterday, does it peacefully and nonviolently, stands up for the rule of law, and then tries to bring people together, Jews and Muslims and Christians. And it's an incredible city. It's got a mayor who has sold us out to Donald Trump. It's got a candidate in Andrew Cuomo.

Cuomo, who, though asked many times, couldn't remember the last time he had ever been to a mosque, lied about many things on that debate stage. So we need honesty at City Hall. We need somebody who can bring people together and deliver the safer and more affordable and better run city New Yorkers deserve. And I got six more days to be out there making my case. Did you face any blowback for that answer, for saying you'd go to Mexico and Canada as your

I mean, on this issue, you face blowback, you know, and kind of, you know, but to me, you stand up, you say what you believe, you know, you be who you are. This city has been an incredible place for Jewish New Yorkers and for immigrants and folks from all around the world. And.

And the mayor's job is to bring people together, make the city run better so it can stay that way. And last question for viewers who don't know, Zorhan Mamdani has kind of endorsed you for mayor. You have endorsed Zorhan Mamdani because of the ranked choice voting process. If one of you wins, do you expect that Cuomo will carry on and run in the general election? And do you think he would have a shot in that case?

Andrew Cuomo has said he's going to run as an independent regardless of whether he wins the Democratic primary. Eric Adams has two separate ballot lines, one absurdly named end anti-Semitism, even though yesterday he was so busy meeting with the anti-Semite sneako that he couldn't bother to say anything about Edgardo or about me. It is a strange time.

I sure hope Andrew Cuomo loses the Democratic primary. I was proud to cross endorse with Zoran Mamdani. And I'm focused hard, of course, you know, winning this race and making sure Andrew Cuomo gets nowhere near City Hall. All right. Well, I think I'll be up in New York on Tuesday for the election. We're going to do a live stream that night. I'll look for you out on the polls. But sounds great. Comptroller, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be.

These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships.

I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. No.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets.

Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long.

You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

What's the difference between achieving and overachieving?

You've done something really amazing, but how can I be more than amazing? How can I push more? How can I do more? You always felt like you didn't fit in. I had to come to terms with the fact that I don't think I'm ever going to fit in, and why would I...

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

New York City mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani and AOC rallied yesterday in New York. Let's roll some of this. To everyone who pulls me aside to whisper with the best intentions, you have already won. I am sorry, but the days of moral victories are over. And as my father told me years ago, when the right wins power, the left writes a great book. Those days are over too, because this

is a campaign that is going to win on June 24th. For so long, we have had political leadership, including in the Democratic Party, that has just wanted to play it safe, that has just wanted to be neutral, where so many people are motivated by their own individual political careers. And I cannot tell you

How shocked I have been to see so many of the individuals who called on Andrew Cuomo to resign in disgrace after so many details of harassment against women and for those same people who called on him to resign to stand behind him and endorse him for mayor of New York City. They still decided

to throw all of their weight behind Andrew Cuomo. And I want to be clear about the message that that sends. When they do that, free Palestine as well. All right, joining us now to discuss the rallies, independent reporter who was at it. He runs the Substack, the Metropolitan Review. He's also a columnist at New York Magazine, Ross Barkan. Thank you so much for joining us.

They make me excited to be on. So I don't know if I've ever heard a New York City mayoral audience with that kind of volume. Typically, you're looking at a couple dozen or maybe a couple hundred people coming out to a New York City mayoral rally. I guess you've never been to one of those Bloomberg rallies. That's true. The famous Bloomberg rally for the Bloomberg rallies. So, Ross, how big was this and what was the energy like?

Like big. So it's still terminal five, which is a sizable music venue in Manhattan. At least 3000 people were there. And it's the, it's the sort of event that probably if the venue had more capacity, they could have more. So incredibly high energy, very crowded, much more like a presidential campaign event than something for mayor. There have been rallies for mayor before that brought people in, but I would say of this scale, um,

Certainly, I've never attended. I've covered mayoral races since 2013. I have not attended a rally like this one. He also had a fairly big one about a month ago, a little bit more, about 1,000 people. This was larger. This was with AOC. So undoubtedly, the crowds are there for him. As we know, that's not everything. It doesn't mean you'll win.

But the energy for this campaign is like nothing that I have seen in New York City in recent years, at least. And Ross, you wrote a piece on your sub stack just called Life with Zoran that published recently, and folks should go read it at rossalliottbarkin.com and on your sub stack. But could you tell us, I'm curious,

I'm curious particularly about what you observed in terms of just name recognition and how engaged people are in this particular election. You know, you just—you mentioned it's not like what you've seen in the past. I'm curious, as you spent time with Zoran Mamdani, like, are people—

really plugging into the race? Are people connecting the dots and saying, OK, that guy is the guy who's running for mayor and this is what he believes in? What did you just notice as he was out campaigning?

Well, in general, the engagement has gone up a lot in the last few weeks. It was a pretty sleepy mayoral race for many months. Cuomo had a very large lead. Cuomo was barely campaigning. The other candidates were struggling to gain traction. Zeron's polling really started to surge or I'd say move in a real way in March. Yeah.

But really, in the last few weeks, his name recognition has increased by a lot. And he is now very well known in New York City.

perhaps on the scale of Cuomo now. I mean, Cuomo enjoys universal name recognition. Having been governor, having resigned, everyone knows there's no one who doesn't have an idea of who Andrew Cuomo is. But Zoran is getting there, or he's there already. It's remarkable. And especially if you go break it down generationally, I'd say almost any voter now under 50 years old who's not an Orthodox Jew

is coming out hard for Zoran. Older voters much more skeptical. So there's a real generational divide happening right now. And it's going to be very interesting to see how that plays out because New York City, in one hand, is a place where older voters traditionally in Democratic primaries dominate. They are more reliable. They show up. There also is just a growing cohort of younger voters in the city, college-educated voters,

people who are engaging more with local politics than they used to. So that would be very fascinating as we're now in the homestretch under a week. There's definitely a lot of energy and interest in this race, which I would say less so a few weeks back. It feels like if Cuomo is going to eke out this victory, it's going to be because

attack ads on Zorhan land and reverse the momentum that we've seen since March. If you look at his kind of climb in the polls and you look at the trajectory and you look at the date, the time of the election, like he's headed to eclipse Cuomo unless something changes. Are the attacks landing? And does Cuomo have the ability to get those attacks in front of voters and

who would then absorb them and decide that actually after all they will rank cuomo i would say that i'm a little less optimistic on the zoron trajectory than you i don't know if he's on track to win even without the onslaught negative advertising just because no independent polls actually showed him ahead today maris pole came out the race has shrunk dramatically um

since May. So Marist in May showed Cuomo up 24 points on Zoran after RCV. Of course, this primary's RCV can vote up to five candidates. People get eliminated and you end up with a winner when they hit 50%. So Zoran has gone from down 24 to down 10 in Marist. Most polls show similar movement. He's moving towards Cuomo, no doubt. It's

I do think, so what the negative ads do, they're everywhere, the ubiquitous. So I, myself, other people, my mom have gotten many anti-Zeron mailers. There's been mail coming in, TV, it's a constant. There's a Cuomo super PAC that's probably going to have more than $20 million when this race is over that has been blanketing the airwaves nonstop now. Used to be pro-Cuomo ads, and now it's pivoted.

in the last few weeks is purely anti-Zoran. So you've got that. The New York Times came out very strongly against Zoran. They issued a non-endorsement in the race, but made some very cutting remarks about him and his experience. That will be turned into an ad. So there's no doubt this negative campaign is something that Zoran will have to overcome. It's going to be a big challenge for him.

These candidates are so different. It's also hard to say what if because literally you've never seen a mayoral race, at least in our lifetimes, where the top two candidates just are so diametrically opposed ideologically and have such different life experiences. Someone who's been in government for decades.

who's been governor of the state, the most powerful person in New York State versus a 33-year-old state assemblyman. One's an avowed socialist. One is from very much the center of the Democratic Party, even somewhat conservative, depending on how he feels. One is very scandal-scarred. One has no scandals. So, so different, right? And that's what makes this race really interesting. The undecided voter here...

cannot be undecided for too long. Maybe they won't choose either candidate or rank someone else, but you've got stark choices in a way you don't typically see in almost any election, I would say, even beyond New York City. And it's sort of the perfect race for both of you guys, having written actual books about the left, and it tests a lot of what you guys have covered. And so I'm curious, Ross, as...

Zoran has been pitching this, I think, strain of democratic socialism in a very kitchen table type of way and in a way that doesn't often get a lot of play in mainstream democratic politics. And Cuomo then, on the other hand, is like the perfect foil for all the reasons you just listed. So how do you think—

going forward, let's just say beyond actually this election. And obviously this will change if Zoran Mamdani wins. I mean, it gets even more powerful. But how has he tested out that pitch

for that version of sort of democratic socialism as a foil to establishment democratic politics saying like, this actually can work, you can get average voters on board with Bernieism, what people think of as that strain. What's that been like?

Well, he's definitely taken the sewer socialist tact. Once upon a time, there were socialist mayors of big cities like Milwaukee, and they were really focused on local issues and kind of making government run better and providing goods and services and sort of building a social safety net. So look at the planks of his campaign. It's freeze the rent on rent-stabilized apartments. It's making buses faster and free, universal child care,

you know, he wants five city run grocery stores, which are actually not all that ambitious. I always get very amused when people are like, this is communism. Like, well, you know, the city can't run five supermarkets and we have a, we have a lot more problems. The New York city runs a million kid, uh, department of education and a massive police force. So his, his actual campaign is not the kind of like green new deal, um,

massive upheaval that candidates for federal office will pitch, right? There's no Medicare for all pitch here. You can't do it.

So that's very interesting. And it's been successful. I mean, I think Zoran, at the very minimum, offers a blueprint for leftist campaigns going forward, which is you focus on economics, you focus on bread and butter. Zoran is very smart. He's very savvy. So he knows this. There's also the elements of Palestine politics, of Israel-Palestine. Zoran is Muslim and he is

Yusuf certainly identifies an anti-Zionist. He's still pro-BDS. So his views on foreign policy have become a big part of this race too, though I will say he himself is not really running on that. You don't go to his website and find I support BDS.

It comes up and he's honest about what he believes in, but he's really pushed it into this economic lane. And I think this race is really important for the left because it's the biggest left-wing campaign since Bernie Sanders. New York City is a huge city. There are going to be a million Democrats voting in this primary, probably at least.

So you're talking about this is a statewide race. This is like a governor's race in most states. So he is running the sort of race you've not seen from any leftist candidate since Bernie running for president. And it's on a scale far greater than AOC, not to take anything away from her, but she won in one congressional district in Queens in the Bronx.

You're talking – I don't even know how many voters voted in that primary, maybe 40,000. So he's just operating on a huge – I mean the money being spent, the amount of volunteers, the whole machine of it is just so much bigger. So win or lose –

That is really interesting. There has not been any campaign like this in any city, really, especially since Zoran started from zero. That's important. It's not so much like a Brandon Johnson thing in Chicago, who is very close to the teachers union. You really had a lot of institutions kind of bringing him up. And that was also an interesting race. Zoran, you know, state assemblyman for four years, right?

polling at 0%. He built this from scratch and with the help of DSA, but he really bootstrapped it and it became this massive thing very quickly. To get a sense of what polls say voters are concerned about when it comes to Zoran, you can probably look at the attack ads because the super PACs that have 20 million bucks to spend

They don't just guess at what ads are going to resonate with voters. They they test these, you know, very deeply. And then they go with the ones that they think are going to work best. I might my own gut if I without testing it is the New York Times one about lack of experience and those other digs. That's going to hurt him. That's going to that's going to that's huge. Like they're going to that's going to crush because you can say the New York Times says this about this guy.

And for people who are following casually be like, oh, well, New York Times, you know, that's pretty credible newspaper. And if they say that I can't rank him. What else are the negative ads hitting him on for a sense of what the left left's vulnerabilities are?

He's been getting hit on defund the police. Zoran did support defunding the police, not running on that in this campaign. Notably, has talked about hiring additional social workers to handle some mental health situations, but has not called for any NYPD budget cuts at all. But he's on the record supporting defund, so he's been getting hit very hard on that.

raising taxes, which I actually don't think will be all that effective because he wants to raise the corporate tax rate to something that the state actually needs to do. The city itself can't do that. It needs state approval. But I also, I don't think that's really unpopular. So I'm a bit skeptical that that almost seems like, you know, the Cuomo, the very wealthy Cuomo super back backers are telling you got to do something on the taxes. I think defund certainly that that still can hurt the

You know, I think Cuomo's message is effective in that he's not experienced. So you can say to the average voter, listen—

Do you want to hand the city over to a 33-year-old state legislator? You take away all the ideology. You can call him radical since he's also – he's a socialist. He's Muslim. So it's all the things you accuse Obama of. He literally is these things. He's proud of it. So certainly you can move in that direction. You're seeing kind of dog whistling that way.

But I would say the primary attacks are kind of what the New York Times said, versions of that. This guy...

He's flimsy. He's weak. He has no experience. He's not serious. He's a playboy. It's that kind of framing. And Cuomo is the serious old man who's going to come in, straighten everything out. He's the tough guy. For a lot of liberals, too, are thinking about how to stand up to Trump. They think Cuomo, well, he's a bully. Maybe he's thuggish, but we need a bully and someone thuggish who's also from Queens to combat Donald Trump. So,

That has been the framing. I think the most effective attacks are probably on his experience because you can't spin around that. He's young. He's very young. There's not been a mayor this young in New York City in literally over 100 years. So that's just the fact. It's going to come down to what do voters think. Also, how many voters leave Cuomo off their ballots? How many leave Zoran off their ballots?

Each side has had a very concerted push to do this. Cuomo has leaned very hard of late into the Orthodox Jewish community, which actually doesn't like him all that much anymore, though he's extremely pro-Israel. Because of COVID, he imposed these lockdowns on Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in 2020. There's a lot of bitterness over that. So of late, I've been seeing a lot of videos from rabbis basically telling Jews

telling their communities, you know, I know you dislike Cuomo. I know you'd rather vote for Eric Adams. Eric Adams is not in this primary. You can vote for him later. We've got to stop Zoran. Zoran is an existential threat. So there's a lot of that rhetoric, too. As a Muslim who's critical of Israel, there's been a lot of talk of how he can be terrible for the Jews. He can hurt the Jews. And that's also become an attack line in the final week.

All right, Ross, last question. Give us your prediction. Oh, gosh. I don't love predictions. I think Cuomo's the favorite. I think he has the slight edge of...

I think there won't be a lot of clarity on election night necessarily because you'll have the art, you'll have the, we'll see an election night is the first place vote. So if Cuomo was up seven points, let's say you're then going to have to run the RCD calculation, which the way the board of elections does it, it can take some time, at least a week.

So if you remember four years ago, Eric Adams, I think, finished in first place with around 30 percent. Catherine Garcia, who is the runner up, was around 20, 21. After RCV, she lost by less than 10,000 votes. It was literally almost 50, 50. So my prediction is it's going to be very close.

And also watch the general election. General election is typically very sleepy in New York City. Not so here. Eric Adams, the once-indicted beleaguered mayor, is running as independent, probably cannot win. Andrew Cuomo has an independent party ballot line. He can run in the general election. Zoran could take the Working Families Party line. He could run the general election. There's also a Republican candidate as well who will get probably just under 30%.

So my prediction is you could have a very topsy-turvy general, depending on what happens. And this race is going to get close. And election night will be fascinating. One way or the other, if someone's up, if someone's down, I expect the margins to not be very big. And I expect us to have to wait to see how the RCV votes shake out. And then from there,

decisions will get made, right? If Zoran wins by, I'm making up a number, 20,000 votes after RCV, Andrew Cuomo's going to say, well, I'm going to run in the general and beat him. If Zoran loses by 10,000 to 20,000 votes, 50,000 votes, there will be pressure on him to

to run again because then the general election will be Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, Curtis Sliwa, progressives in the city will be like, these are all bad options. So a lot will happen. No hard predictions, but just look out for all of that.

If Zoran loses, would he have a ballot line anywhere? Yeah, the word, yes. He has a WFP. They can give him the ballot line. They can choose to give it to him. So he will have that option. Cuomo created his own ballot line. Eric Adams created his own ballot line. The women's party or something, right?

Yeah, it is stupid. They make stupid names. I think Adams like stop anti-Semitism or something. Support women. Yeah. Yes. Help all women. So, yeah, so they all have that option. So the general election is potentially very interesting. Now, if one candidate wins by a lot, gets the Democratic nomination, game over. But if it's close enough, each side will feel pressure to continue onward.

that's his last question last question here briefly because we had brad brad lander on the show earlier today and you know he had that big arrest yesterday he's endorsed his or hand does that how does that play in

I think it's good for Zoran. He needs Brad Lander votes. Brad Lander right now is in the third place. It's kind of a distant third, but he's got a base. He is a technocratic progressive. So there are people who like Brad Lander who want him to be mayor, but they aren't sure about Zoran because of his inexperience. So for Brad Lander to endorse him, I do think brings along some voters who will now put Zoran on their ballots.

Does it help Brad Lander? I think to an extent, yes, there's going to be a Zoran surge and there's going to be people putting Brad Lander on the balance. So he'll go deeper into the RCV rounds. So I think it's mutually beneficial. I don't know if it helps Brad Lander get over the hump. I mean, one challenge for Zoran in this race is the other candidates haven't performed that well. Cuomo has really been

far ahead of all of them and Zaron has ran to catch up, but third, fourth, fifth place, they're way, way behind Zaron might be in better position right now. If someone like a Brad lander or Scott stringer, Adrian Adams had really moved into a better pole position, but, but they really have not. So it's become a two horse race and that's where you get the polarization, the extremely negative attacks.

And the possibility of either Zoran pushing past Cuomo or Cuomo kind of beating him back at the last minute. Fascinating stuff. Ross Barkin, The Metropolitan Review, columns from New York Magazine. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. All right, Emily, what about your prediction? I don't have a prediction. What do I care about New York City?

The Republicans, if they had a decent candidate, could actually win this time. I mean, you know, they've won a bunch. Yeah, I guess it did. Right. Quote, decent candidate. I guess decent candidate palatable or Republican palatable to New Yorkers. They're nominating like a kind of a crank.

Oh, Curtis Lewa. Yeah, they didn't really take it seriously. He's an interesting guy, though. I wonder if he would come on the show. I bet he would. I've never met an uninteresting crank. That's fair enough. I bet we can get him on the show, though. Let's do it. Curtis, come on. Isn't he the old school Guardian Angels? Yes. Yes. Interesting. I think you two would hit it off. We would. This could have been the Republicans' year, though.

I don't know. Maybe. Isn't Eric Adams a Republican now? Actually, shouldn't they give Adams the nomination? Well, as we were talking. He could maybe win as a Republican slash independent. Maybe. And now he owes a debt to Republicans. So who knows what you could get out of Republican Eric Adams if you are Donald Trump or the GOP. But actually, when we were talking to Ross, it occurred to me that in a general election, 30 percent roughly going to Sliwa, as Ross predicted. I wonder if Zoran could start pulling from that vote.

Could be interesting. Could be. Get the MAGA people over to Universal Child Care and all that. I don't know. Might be interesting to watch. All right. Well, stick around for our AMA for premium subscribers. If you're not one of them, become one. You can even do it monthly now. That's right. So breakingpoints.com. Go there. Get the show early.

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