Thursday, June 25, 2026
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Mamdani-Backed Candidates Sweep in NYC Democratic Primaries - The New York Times
Mamdani Emerges as Kingmaker, Pushing His Slate to a Primary Sweep
"Mayor Zohran Mamdani shook the Democratic establishment by helping drive three progressive candidates to victory.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his allies swept a series of congressional primaries in New York City on Tuesday in a remarkable show of strength for the insurgent left that sent shock waves through the Democratic Party.
Mr. Mamdani’s candidates toppled a pair of incumbents backed by the city’s political establishment, including major labor unions and the House Democratic leader. Another candidate backed by the mayor won an open House seat, and a handful of democratic socialist challengers he supported were winning down the ballot.
For months, Mr. Mamdani threw himself and his energized political organization into the three marquee congressional contests, campaigning late into the night in the race’s final days and calling the election a referendum on the direction of the party.
All the winning candidates share Mr. Mamdani’s progressive economic platform, and they each ran campaigns that focused intently on ending American support for Israel, a sign of how far public opinion has shifted on the issue, even in New York.
Late Tuesday night, the mayor stood beaming at a victory party in Brooklyn, where supporters chanted “Free, free Palestine” and “D.S.A.” After embracing many of the same advisers who led his own successful campaign last year, he declared “a new chapter in our party’s history.”
“A year ago, it was not the end of a political movement,” he said. “It was the beginning.”
Mr. Mamdani’s deep involvement amounted to an audacious gamble for a brand-new mayor trying to lead an already fractious city. He alienated key allies along the way, but the payoffs were far-reaching.
At home, the outcome will now cement him as the unquestioned political kingmaker of the nation’s cultural and financial capital and the Democratic Socialists of America as a formidable force.
The results also shook the foundations of the Democratic Party far beyond the five boroughs. When they are certified, Mr. Mamdani, 34, and his movement will be on track to double the number of socialists in Congress from two to four. The outcome will also force a Democratic Party, already searching for its identity, to reckon with its ascendant, unapologetic left.
“It’s seismic,” said Jon Paul Lupo, a Democratic consultant who was a top adviser to the city’s last progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio.
The races do not necessarily suggest Mr. Mamdani has expanded his appeal. Each of the contests in which he endorsed took place in areas where the mayor won comfortably in last year’s election and remains deeply popular.
But Tuesday’s results showed two things about his young mayoralty. Mr. Mamdani has a high tolerance for political risk-taking, well beyond that of any of his modern predecessors. And, at least for now, he has the ability to transfer his high-wattage political brand onto other candidates in a way that only a few politicians in any office have been able to.
Brad Lander, 56, a close ally whom Mr. Mamdani urged to run for Congress, ran up a staggering 30-point margin in the affluent 10th District in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. He defeated Representative Daniel Goldman, a wealthy Levi Strauss heir who had opposed the mayor in last year’s elections and had close ties to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby.
Claire Valdez, 36, a little-known state assemblywoman also recruited by Mr. Mamdani to run, ran up larger than expected margins for the open seat in the Seventh District in a gentrifying swath of Brooklyn and Queens so far left it has been nicknamed the “Commie Corridor.”
She defeated Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, who had far deeper roots in the district and the support of the popular congresswoman, Representative Nydia Velázquez, who is retiring; the left-leaning Working Families Party; and nearly every major labor union in the city.
And Mr. Mamdani’s allies even won in the predominantly Black and Dominican 13th District in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx. In perhaps the night’s most surprising victory, Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, another democratic socialist who entered the race as a political unknown, narrowly knocked off Representative Adriano Espaillat, the influential chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
“This is a wake-up call,” said Letitia James, the state’s progressive attorney general, who supported Mr. Mamdani’s mayoral campaign but ended up opposed to him on Tuesday.
“Obviously, there’s some hurt feelings tonight, particular in communities of color,” she said, adding, “What we have to do is sit down and work with the left-leaning part of the party and see if we can come to some sort of understanding going forward.”
Where previous mayors have taken a wide berth around intraparty primaries, Mr. Mamdani dove in. Before he even clinched his own mayoral win, he began recruiting candidates to run for seats he felt were ripe for leftist wins. He headlined fund-raisers, appeared in ads and dispatched his top political advisers to run two of the campaigns.
In the race’s final days, Mr. Mamdani exhausted himself shuttling between events with Ms. Valdez and Ms. Avila Chevalier, who were in the closest races. Wherever the mayor went, large crowds seemed to materialize.
Mr. Mamdani’s aggressive interventions were not without collateral damage. His positions on some of the races put him at odds with the Working Families Party, prominent Black and Latino Democrats, major labor unions and members of the City Council, all of whom had supported his campaign for mayor and are now involved in his governing agenda.
He infuriated Ms. Velázquez, Mr. Mamdani’s first supporter in Congress, who believed the mayor should have deferred to her wishes about a successor. She came to accuse the D.S.A. in particular of trying to erase the contributions she and other progressives had made to pushing the city leftward for decades.
Others, including Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, were even more upset when Mr. Mamdani decided in May to endorse Ms. Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist activist and Ph.D. student, and break with Mr. Espaillat.
Mr. Espaillat did not back Mr. Mamdani in last year’s primary, but afterward, he quickly endorsed him and brought along Latino support. Mr. Mamdani had privately assured Mr. Espaillat at the time that he would reciprocate if he ever needed it.
The mayor never explained his change of heart in detail, but his advisers said he watched Ms. Avila Chevalier’s momentum and believed he could make a difference in the race. Supporters of Mr. Espaillat were furious, and said they could no longer trust Mr. Mamdani’s word.
The outcome on Tuesday could pose particular problems for Mr. Jeffries, the New Yorker in line to become speaker if Democrats reclaim control of the House this year. Ms. Valdez and Ms. Avila Chevalier have not committed to supporting Mr. Jeffries’s leadership bid and could become persistent thorns in his side.
Democrats aligned with Mr. Jeffries, who fought hard to defeat Ms. Avila Chevalier, have privately raised concerns about her victory in particular. They fear that Republicans will weaponize a trove of her inflammatory old social media posts, including her saying that “all deportations are wrong” and using crude language about Kamala Harris, against more moderate Democrats running in swing districts that will decide the fate of the House this fall.
Mr. Jeffries repeatedly sidestepped the issue during an interview on NY1 Tuesday night as the results came in. Others were less reluctant to register concerns.
“Republicans will very quickly seek to elevate, as they always do, the most radical voices in the Democratic Party,” said Howard Wolfson, a former head of the House Democrats’ campaign arm and a top adviser to Michael R. Bloomberg. “And after tonight, they will have more radical Democrats to choose from.”
Mr. Mamdani and his allies saw it very differently.
Gustavo Gordillo, a D.S.A. co-chair in New York, said that his organization was already casting its attention to next year’s budget fight in Albany and beyond.
“We’re going to start thinking about 2028 and what comes next,” he said.
Sally Goldenberg and Emma Goldberg contributed reporting."
Trump Meeting With G.O.P. Senators Puts Rifts on Display as He Upends Housing Bill - The New York Times
Trump Meeting With G.O.P. Senators Puts Rifts on Display as He Upends Housing Bill
"Hours before visiting the Capitol, the president scrapped plans to sign a bipartisan housing bill, railing against “bad Republicans” for resisting his demands to ram through new voting restrictions.
President Trump is set on Wednesday to meet with Republican senators on Capitol Hill, after weeks of tumult and tension in the relationship between the president and prominent members of his own party in the Senate.
Mr. Trump was invited by Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, to address a weekly lunch gathering he runs that typically draws the more conservative faction of G.O.P. senators. It was a break from norms, since a president would typically be invited by the party’s elected leader to address the entire conference at its regular luncheon on Tuesdays, or a special gathering hosted by the leadership.
But Mr. Trump has been in a simmering feud with Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, over a range of political and policy issues. Most recently, the president has raged about Mr. Thune’s refusal to weaken the filibuster to pass legislation that would impose new voting restrictions, including substantially reducing the opportunity for voting by mail.
Mr. Thune has said repeatedly that the votes are not there to undermine the filibuster or to push through the voting legislation, known as the SAVE America Act, and test votes have shown that to be the case.
Still on Wednesday morning, just hours before he was to travel to the Capitol, the president angrily escalated his demands in a fresh reflection of his fraught relationship with his own party ahead of the midterm elections. He abruptly scrapped plans to sign a broadly bipartisan housing bill that the G.O.P. regards as critical to its uphill fight to keep control of Congress, saying it was nowhere near as important as the elections bill and deriding “bad Republicans” who do not support abandoning the filibuster to push it through.
The move robbed Republicans of an opportunity to project to voters that they are focused on addressing cost-of-living concerns, which political experts believe will be top of mind in November’s elections, and it appeared to take G.O.P. leaders off guard.
“House Republicans are going to be the party that governs and delivers” Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the No 3. House Republican, told reporters at a news conference Wednesday morning, seemingly unaware that Mr. Trump had just blasted out his refusal to sign the housing measure.
Mr. Thune was left nearly speechless by the president’s turnabout. “I guess I would say at this point I don’t have any observations about that,” he told reporters at the Capitol.
The president’s visit to the Senate also comes amid growing dissent within his party over his handling of the war with Iran. On Tuesday, the Senate adopted a resolution directing Mr. Trump to end the conflict or seek congressional authorization to continue it, a mostly symbolic but nevertheless remarkable reprimand of the president, made possible by G.O.P. defections.
Hours later, Mr. Trump denounced the four Republicans who joined Democrats in supporting the measure, calling them “losers” in a social media post and accusing them of giving “aid and comfort” to Iran. But an even broader group of Republican senators, including some of the president’s closest allies, have questioned the potential deal his administration is negotiating to end the war.
Mr. Scott, who lost badly to Mr. Thune in his bid for majority leader in 2024 after pitching himself as the Trump-aligned candidate, said he had been speaking to the president on the phone last Friday about a number of issues, including the voting bill, when he suggested that the president come to the meeting on Wednesday.
“I just bring people to lunch and create a conversation, and I think there’s a greater chance something good will happen,” said Mr. Scott, who said he hoped Republicans would also discuss a plan to avoid a government shutdown at the end of September. But, he added, Mr. Trump “continues to want to pass the SAVE America Act, and there’s other issues — cost of living, stuff like that.”
Speaking to reporters in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Mr. Trump confirmed that the election bill that he has called critical to guarding against Republican losses in November would be a central focus.
“Well, we’re just going to talk about SAVE America,” he told reporters in Reading, Pa., adding: “We have to pass it. So we’re going to have to talk about that, and many other things.”
Asked about Mr. Thune’s skepticism that the bill could pass, Mr. Trump gently pressured the majority leader to round up the necessary support.
“That’s what being a leader is about,” he said, adding, “John is a leader, and hopefully he can get the votes.”
The dispute over the legislation is resurfacing amid mounting bitterness between Mr. Trump and Senate Republicans, many of whom have been livid at the president’s decision to back successful primary challenges to two Republican senators he considered disloyal.
It has also exposed rifts among Senate Republicans themselves about the voting legislation, which does not have sufficient support from Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold required to move most bills through the Senate.
Mr. Thune has said that there is no practical path to move the measure. Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana and one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said on Monday that “it doesn’t have the votes, and so it’s time to talk about something else.”
But Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, suggested that his colleagues needed to fight harder for the legislation. In a social media post on Tuesday, he criticized Mr. Thune for suggesting that senators needed to tell Mr. Trump that the bill was dead.
“At tomorrow’s meeting between President Trump and Senate Republicans, do you want your senators to advocate (1) FOR, or (2) AGAINST trying to pass the SAVE America Act?” he wrote.
Mr. Thune later batted down the criticism with a swipe of his own, suggesting that Mr. Lee was trafficking in social-media-driven delusion rather than truth.
“I appreciate that it’s his prerogative to communicate how he wants to communicate, but at the end of the day, I have to deal with reality,” he told reporters. “And sometimes the alternative universe that is X doesn’t reflect the facts on the ground.”
Mr. Thune also suggested that it could be beneficial for Mr. Trump to hear from other senators about the legislation’s grim chances.
“Our conference is pretty well aware and conscious of where the votes are on these issues and so, yes, it is always helpful if others would speak up and it’s not just me,” Mr. Thune told reporters. “I’ve made that point many times, but it is always good to have it reinforced by others.”
Other Republican senators criticized Mr. Lee for inflating the prospects for the legislation and raising the president’s hopes when it has no chance to become law without changes to the filibuster that Mr. Thune has pledged to oppose.
“Mike’s a smart guy, so it must be some other motivation,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, who has been bickering with Mr. Lee about the bill on social media. “My guess is that this is mainly designed to eliminate the filibuster, to get us in a position where we have to eliminate the filibuster, to give the president what he wants. And that’s not going to happen.”
Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said the filibuster debate was preventing Republicans from making more constructive use of their time before the midterm elections, and should be abandoned.
“We are going down a path that is unproductive, and every minute we spend on it, we are not spending on something that could get my colleagues re-elected, which is the No. 1 priority for me between now and November,” Mr. Tillis said.
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight."
Live Updates: Trump Says He Won't Sign Housing Bill Until Lawmakers Pass Voter Identification Law - The New York Times
What We’re Covering Today
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Trump Administration Live Updates: President Cancels Plans to Sign Housing Bill
"Housing Bill: President Trump abruptly canceled his plans to sign a bipartisan housing bill on Wednesday, one that Republicans and Democrats had been eager to promote on the campaign trail as evidence they were working to bring down costs for voters. Mr. Trump said he would not sign it until lawmakers passed a law imposing new restrictions on voter identification and mail-in ballots, although it could become law without his signature. Read more ›
NATO Meeting: Mr. Trump is scheduled to meet with Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, at the White House. Mr. Trump has criticized the alliance for not supporting his war in Iran, and the U.S. military plans to reduce by a third the number of fighter jets it provides to NATO during an emergency.
Iran: Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with the leader of the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday at the start of a trip to the Middle East, as he seeks to reassure Persian Gulf allies about the preliminary deal the United States reached with Iran that could pave the way to a lasting peace agreement. Read more ›
President Trump abruptly canceled his plans on Wednesday to sign a bipartisan bill aimed at improving housing affordability, one that Democrats and Republicans alike had been eager to promote on the campaign trail as evidence they were working to try to bring down costs.
Mr. Trump said in a social media post that he would not sign the bill until Congress passed a law that would impose new restrictions on voter identification and mail-in voting, known as the Save America Act. But Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, has said that Republicans did not have the votes required.
June 24, 2026, 11:34 a.m. ET
In an appearance on CNBC, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sharply criticized the president for the last-minute decision to cancel the signing of the housing bill.
“This just doesn’t make any sense, other than whatever it is he wants to do is a complete indifference to the cost squeeze on American families and to genuine efforts to do something about it,” she said. “You know, he could be over here trying to claim a victory lap, and instead he’s saying no, no, he doesn’t want anything to do with it.”
June 24, 2026, 11:23 a.m. ET
Shamus Roller, the chief executive of the National Housing Law Project, was just waking up at his home in San Francisco when he heard that President Trump had canceled the signing ceremony for the bipartisan housing bill. “Lots of people were starting to celebrate yesterday,” he said. “But I think the way this went down really shows the president’s contempt for Congress and for the time that they put into this.”
June 24, 2026, 11:14 a.m. ET
House Democratic leaders on Wednesday described President Trump’s decision to cancel the signing ceremony for the bipartisan housing bill as erratic behavior unfit for a president.
“All of a sudden, Donald Trump decides he’s not coming to sign the bill,” Representative Ted Lieu, the House Democratic vice chair, said at a news conference. “Well, why is that? Did he wake up on the wrong side of the bed?”
June 24, 2026, 11:11 a.m. ET
Affordable housing leaders were apoplectic at the news that the housing bill signing would not go ahead on Wednesday. Some had received invitations to the bill signing late last night and were en route to the Capitol when they learned that the president had canceled the event.
June 24, 2026, 11:10 a.m. ET
Though President Trump has said he would not sign the housing bill, it can still become law without his signature. If Congress is in session, legislation can generally become law 10 days after a bill is enrolled and presented to the president.
When the NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, met with President Trump in January, the alliance seemed to be teetering. Mr. Trump had vowed to seize Greenland from Denmark and refused to rule out using force to do so.
This unprecedented threat, by one NATO ally against another, imperiled the alliance’s very existence.
June 24, 2026, 11:56 a.m. ET
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, suggested that Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City would have to repair some ties on Capitol Hill after backing challengers who defeated two Democratic incumbents in primary elections on Tuesday.
“Listen,” he said, “the mayor and I agreed to strongly disagree about some endorsements, and he’s got work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward.” Jeffries, however, said his own relationship with the mayor was “a very good one.”
June 24, 2026, 11:52 a.m. ET
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, a New Yorker and the House Democratic leader, said he did not believe that Republicans would be successful in trying to damage Democrats in the midterms by tying them to Mayor Zohran Mamdani since President Trump has embraced him as well.
“Donald Trump has a working relationship with the mayor of the city of New York, and he’s made that publicly and explicitly clear to America not once, but twice in the Oval Office,” Jeffries said on Capitol Hill.
June 24, 2026, 11:47 a.m. ET
Representative Pete Aguilar, a California Democrat who serves in House leadership, sidestepped questions about Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City and progressives’ successful primary challenges on Tuesday.
“The mayor doesn’t get a vote in the Democratic caucus, the members who are elected get those votes,” Aguilar said. “We’re working with the members that New York elects to serve in the Democratic caucus.”
June 24, 2026, 11:43 a.m. ET
David Steiner, the postmaster general, said at a hearing before the Senate on Wednesday that if a proposed mail ballot rule goes into effect, the Postal Service would refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that do not turn over sensitive voter data to the federal government. The proposed rule is consistent with President Trump’s executive orderrestricting mail ballots. That order faces multiple legal challenges.
June 24, 2026, 10:10 a.m. ET
Hours before he was set to come to the Capitol to sign a bipartisan housing bill that Republicans are celebrating as critical to addressing Americans’ affordability concerns, President Trump dismissed it as “of minor importance” relative to a voter identification bill he had been pressing the Senate to pass.
In a social media post, Trump said the housing bill, which passed both chambers overwhelmingly, “pales in comparison” to the elections legislation. “Get the bad Republicans to approve it or, better yet, Terminate the Filibuster and approve it, AND EVERYTHING ELSE REPUBLICANS HAVE EVER DREAMED OF,” he said.
President Trump may no longer be a New York voter, but he has not given up a lifelong interest in the state’s political affairs. So on Tuesday night, he was keeping close tabs on the primary results and seizing on the outcome to brand the democratic socialist victors as “communists.”
“America the Beautiful will NEVER be a Communist Country!!!” he wrote on social media just after 2:30 on Wednesday morning.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Persian Gulf leaders on Wednesday, seeking to reassure allies about a preliminary U.S.-Iran deal that has left some of their most pressing concerns unresolved.
As the diplomatic trip got underway, President Trump said on social media that Iran had assured Washington it was neither seeking nor collecting tolls from ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil and gas shipping route for most Gulf countries. The issue is expected to be high on the agenda during Mr. Rubio’s meetings with Gulf leaders this week."
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
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