If you look closely at the photograph above, you might be able to spot Anne and me in the balcony at the Beacon Theater, upper right.

It was a warm June night, and Ramy Youssef—an Egyptian American comedian—had just finished his stand-up set when someone in then audience shouted, “Mamdani!” The New York City mayoral primary was still weeks away, before Zohran Mamdani—a foreign-born American citizen, Muslim, and Democratic Socialist—would shock the country by defeating former New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

Ramy smiled and then he walked out: the future mayor.

He was followed by Mahmoud Khalil. A Columbia University graduate student and a leader in the movement opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Khalil had just been released from detention and the threat of deportation. He was among the first Palestinian activists seized and punished for their speech.

The audience erupted.

It was a remarkable moment. A wonderful night.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court reversed the lower court ruling that had ordered Khalil’s release, handing the Trump administration a victory in its effort to deport Khalil. In a 2–1 decision, a panel of the Philadelphia-based Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Khalil’s lawsuit challenging his detention.

In response, Mamdani condemned the ruling, calling Khalil’s arrest “more than just a chilling act of political repression—it is an attack on all of our constitutional rights,” and insisting that “Mahmoud is free—and must remain free.”

Ironically, in a separate case, U.S. District Judge William Young issued a blistering critique of the administration’s approach to free speech, warning that it reflected a “fearful” effort to “exclude from participation everyone who doesn’t agree with them.”

Young—appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan—made the remarks during a Boston hearing on remedies for the administration’s detention of pro-Palestinian students last year. He had ruled in September that senior officials had engaged in an illegal campaign to arrest and deport noncitizen students based solely on their political activism.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Young said, were engaged in an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to deprive individuals of their rights. “The secretary of state,” he noted, “the senior Cabinet officer in our history, is involved in this.”

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The murder of Renee Nicole Good is horrifying, tragic and part of continuing pattern.

State and city charges must be brought against the perpetrator.

Street protests must continue.

ICE must be denied funding and abolished.

I would expect nothing from the federal authorities.

Trump and Kristi Noem have already pronounced the victim as being the guilty party in spite of all video evidence and the testimony of those on the scene to the contrary.

Although exact records are hard to come by, as of January 2026, federal agents have been involved in 14 shooting incidents since January 2025. The shootings have resulted in at least four deaths and five injuries.

Three people have been shot while acting as observers documenting ICE raids.

Five people were shot during traffic stops.

In addition to Nicole Good there was the incident in September 2025 outside Chicago which led to the death of Silverio Villegas González during a traffic stop.

These numbers do not include those who have died in custody.

According to The Guardian, 35 people have died in ICE custody.

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House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries took until the eleventh hour to endorse Zohran Mamdani for mayor. Yet when it came to protecting an incumbent centrist, Jeffries showed no such hesitation, immediately backing Congressman Dan Goldman in his re-election bid when Goldman announced yesterday.

Governor Kathy Hochul followed right behind, lending her support on day one.

Whether these endorsements will matter is doubtful. This is a congressional district that has already delivered a decisive verdict on establishment politics. Last November, Zohran Mamdani defeated Andrew Cuomo here by nearly 80 percent. In the June primary, Mamdani and Brad Lander together overwhelmingly carried the district again rejecting Cuomo-style centrism.

Goldman’s original win in 2022 was not a mandate. Progressives split their votes among too many candidates, allowing Goldman to slip through. That dynamic no longer exists. This time, Brad Lander is the sole challenger, backed by the mayor, the Working Families Party, and a unified progressive base.

Goldman, meanwhile, brings baggage that weighs heavily in my district. His unwavering support for Israel amid its genocidal war in Gaza, and his continued acceptance of money from AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby, place him far outside the moral and political consensus of many of my neighbors. Since 2022, Goldman has taken more than $150,000 from AIPAC alone. Jeffries has taken over $1.5 million.

The endorsements from Jeffries and Hochul may help Goldman raise money. They may reassure donors and party insiders. But they do little to persuade voters who have repeatedly shown a willingness to defy Democratic leadership and reject machine-backed candidates.

This race will not be decided by institutional approval or elite deep pocket supporters. It will be decided by turnout and ideology. And in a district that has already rejected Cuomo twice and embraced progressive candidates by overwhelming margins, the party establishment is backing a candidate who looks like a loser.

Jeffries and Hochul can anoint their favorite. The voters have already shown they are not inclined to follow.

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They tried to tell us Trump was an isolationist now. That America would be pulling back. That the age of endless intervention was over.

Not if you’re looking south.

Or to the far east.

With the invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, it felt like the final confirmation of what this policy really is. Economic pressure first. Diplomatic bullying next. And when that doesn’t work, war.

That’s not isolationism. It’s the Monroe Doctrine with a Pentagon budget.

What Trump himself is calling the “Donroe Doctrine”.

It’s been updated for the age of China and delivered with the same old threats. This is our hemisphere, and we decide who gets a say.

It’s Teddy Roosevelt in a blue suit and red tie.

Listen to Marco Rubio. In January he was warning about a “China threat” in Latin America, talking as if Beijing has its hands on the Panama Canal and suggesting that the United States has the right to take it back by force if it wants to.

Mexico is being leaned on to cut back trade with China. Argentina is being told to drop its currency swap with Beijing or forget about IMF support. Chile’s cooperation with China on a scientific space observatory is suddenly a “security risk.” Panama is pushed out of the Belt and Road Initiative. Peru is warned that Chinese investment makes it a problem Washington might have to “manage.” Cuba is warned by Rubio that they might be next.

Every independent decision is treated like disobedience.

Trump isn’t an isolationist. He just doesn’t want anyone else operating near what he considers America’s turf. China can’t build ports. Can’t finance infrastructure. Can’t cooperate on science. Not because Latin American countries don’t want it, but because Washington says no.

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Yesterday was a good day for people who love big cities, politics, and the kind of speeches that touch the soul.

The inauguration of Mayor Zohran Mamdani at New York City Hall had all of that, and something rarer, too: memory.

The ceremony was full of small, knowing gestures.
The announcer’s voice was the one every New Yorker recognizes from the subway: “Beware of the closing doors, please.”
The official swearing-in took place in the old, now-closed subway station beneath City Hall.
And the mayor arrived not in a motorcade, but in a yellow taxi, driven by Richard Chow.

Four years earlier, just steps from where the inauguration was held, Mamdani stood with taxi drivers and announced he was going on hunger strike.

At the time, he was a state assemblyman from Astoria. He said he hoped that by joining the strike would force politicians to confront the crushing debt facing New York City’s cab drivers.

“I will be on strike for as long as it takes,” Mamdani said then. “All of my meetings. All of my calls. All of my office duties—I’ll take them from this protest site.”

Richard Chow was there too.

He was one of dozens of yellow cab drivers keeping vigil outside City Hall, trying to get Mayor Bill de Blasio to pay attention. Chow was driving 12-hour shifts every day to service the debt he had taken on in 2006 to buy a taxi medallion, the license required to drive a yellow cab.

But Chow was not only fighting for himself.

He was fighting for his brother, Yu Mein “Kenny” Chow, one of nine taxi drivers who died by suicide in 2018 as medallion debt spiraled out of control.

The Chow brothers came to New York from Myanmar in 1987. Richard began driving yellow cabs in 2005 and won his medallion at a city auction the following year for $410,000. Three years later, Kenny bought his for $700,000. By 2014, medallions were selling for more than $1 million.

To the Chow brothers, and to thousands like them, medallions were not just licenses. They were promises. Proof that if you worked hard enough, sacrificed enough, you could buy a piece of stability.

The drivers who bought them were overwhelmingly working-class immigrants, about 95 percent foreign-born. They could not have known that the golden tickets they were sold were inflated by a speculative bubble rivaling the housing crisis of 2007.

By the fall of 2021, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, representing 25,000 drivers, had been protesting outside City Hall around the clock. Drivers and supporters rotated in shifts, demanding a relief plan that would cut medallion debt to something survivable.

Despite living with diabetes and high blood pressure, Chow joined the hunger strike.

“I’m not just fighting for myself,” he said. “This is for the thousands of medallion owners and their families. I don’t want to see another death like my brother’s.”

With Mamdani’s help, the Taxi Workers Alliance eventually won meaningful relief from the city.

So yesterday, when Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York, it felt more than symbolic that he arrived the same way millions of New Yorkers do every day.

In the back seat of a yellow cab.

And it felt right that the driver was Richard Chow.

Not as a prop.

But as a reminder of who this mayor is.

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