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Chapter 1: What are the major initiatives announced by Mayor Mamdani in his first 100 days?
Here's a probably incomplete list of things that Zoran Mamdani either did or announced just last week. He said he was gonna open the first in a series of city-owned grocery stores. One of those stores will be at La Marqueta in El Barrio. On tax day, in a video that, according to his top press person, got 40 million views in 20 hours, he said he's gonna tax the rich.
When I ran for mayor, I said I was gonna tax the rich. He redoubled the city's efforts to get rid of the rats. Everyone that knows me, they know one thing, I hate rats. And correlation or causation, but the Trump administration said they'd release $60 million in funding for New York City's subways. He's a communist.
On the occasion of the completion of his first hundred days in office, we at Today Explained are going to take a look at Mayor Mamdani and talk about what he's accomplished because it seems like a lot. And we're going to ask if the Democratic Party is taking note because it seems like they should. Support for Today Explained comes from CNN. Cool. Cable News Network, what's up?
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I'd like to welcome the 112th mayor of New York City, Mayor Zoran Mamdani.
Bridget Bergen, senior politics reporter at WNYC. On Monday night, you hung out with the mayor of New York City, Zoran Mamdani, at a live event at the Green Space. How's he feeling about his first 100 days in office?
I think he's feeling pretty good, Sean.
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Chapter 2: How is Mayor Mamdani planning to address the affordability crisis in NYC?
We wanted to hear from a Democratic Party insider on how Zoran Mamdani is being perceived and maybe even shaking stuff up. Ben Rhodes is one such insider. It's interesting because there are kind of two cleavages in the Democratic Party. One is between left and center, but the other is more about kind of almost body language. You know, do you understand what is happening?
Do you understand the scale of the danger that Trump poses? Do you understand the scale of the disgust that people feel for the Democratic Party and politics in general? Do you understand the need for generational change? Right. So these are things that aren't left center.
And I think that Mandani has excited just about everybody that is either on the progressive end of the spectrum in the party or who's just eager for newer, younger faces who understand what's going on, who do politics in a different way, who don't feel like repurposing of the old talking points for the umpteenth time. Right.
And so there's a bunch of people that see him as an opportunity, someone to follow, someone to emulate. How does he package this affordability agenda? How is he mainstreaming progressive ideas? How is he representative of a kind of politics that can motivate younger people because it looks fun and inclusive and participatory?
Then I think there's Democrats that are terrified of Zoran Mamdani because of all those things. Let's just take Chuck Schumer, who's like the stand in for, I think, a lot of the Democratic establishment that people are frustrated with, who didn't even endorse Mamdani, even though he's from New York.
Today is election day in New York City. Did you vote for Mamdani or Cuomo? Look, I voted and I look forward to working with the next mayor to help New York City.
Obviously, he's ambivalent about Mamdani's politics on Israel-Palestine. He's reluctant to let go of the reins to a new generation in the same way that we saw kind of a Joe Biden be reluctant in his time in office. He's kind of internalized these ideas
He fights over the years between the left wing of the party and the center and is kind of worried about, I don't know, the ascendancy of the Democratic Socialists and losing control of an agenda that is usually dictated from Washington, not the other way around. And so I think he's been, I don't want to say polarizing because the Schumers of the world can't really...
speak out against Mamdani anymore because he's so popular at this point. But I do think that there are people that are ambivalent and then there are people that are excited. And the number of excited people is the growing quotient. Looking at him next to a figure like Schumer.
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