Trump’s WashingtonHow President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics.Good evening. Tonight, I’m looking at the Republican response to Zohran Mamdani’s upset in the Democratic primary for New York mayor. We’re also covering how voters have reacted to Trump’s strikes on Iran, and we take a look at Usha Vance’s new life. We’ll start with the news.
Is Zohran Mamdani really a gift to Trump and the G.O.P.?
The votes were still being tallied last night when Representative Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican, sought to blame a potential political rival for Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s all-but-official upset victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. “Make no mistake, it is BECAUSE OF Kathy Hochul and the NY Democrat Party’s inept weakness and sheer incompetence that this has happened,” Stefanik wrote on X, referring to Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York. Never mind that Hochul didn’t so much as endorse Mamdani. Stefanik, who is contemplating a run for governor next year after President Trump pulled her nomination to be his United Nations ambassador, saw an obvious target. So has much of her party. In the hours since Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, opened up a healthy lead over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the first round of the city’s ranked-choice voting, Republicans have gleefully seized on a fresh new boogeyman for 2025. They’ve denigrated Mamdani’s age, his criticism of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians, and his progressive politics. Some on the right have directly vilified his Muslim faith. “We’ve had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous,” the president wrote on his social media site a few hours into his flight from Amsterdam to Washington today, adding that Mamdani “looks TERRIBLE.” Representative Mike Lawler, a moderate Republican from the Hudson Valley, said New York Democrats would “pay the price for this insanity.” The National Republican Congressional Committee called Mamdani “proudly antisemitic” — a charge he has forcefully rejected — and demanded that moderate Democrats like Representatives Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen of New York say whether or not they support him. “Democrats are leaning heavily into the most radical and kooky candidates to define their party and positions for the future,” Chris LaCivita, the Republican who helped manage Trump’s 2024 campaign, told me today by text message. “Republicans’ best approach will be to just let the socialists, Marxists and communists wax poetic till their heart desire, just make sure the cameras are rolling.” Mamdani received a mixed reception from Democrats on Wednesday. Some in the party are unifying around him, but others, spooked by Mamdani’s past calls to defund the police or his views on Israel, are already distancing themselves from him. Gillen, a first-term congresswoman who represents part of Long Island, called him “too extreme” and said his “entire campaign has been built on unachievable promises and higher taxes, which is the last thing New York needs.” Suozzi, another Long Islander, noted that he had backed Cuomo, a onetime rival. “I had serious concerns about Assemblyman Mamdani before yesterday, and that is one of the reasons I endorsed his opponent,” Suozzi wrote on X on Wednesday afternoon. “Those concerns remain.” If you scratch below the surface, though, there are signs that some Republicans are a little spooked, too. They have, after all, just watched a charismatic New Yorker turn one of Trump’s signature issues — the cost of living — into an insurgent and spirited campaign, one in which Mamdani’s supporters seemed to enjoy themselves as much as the Trump fans who crowd into the president’s rallies do. “Most Republicans this morning were probably high-fiving and backslapping each other over last night’s result,” Bill Stepien, a veteran Republican operative who served as Trump’s campaign manager in 2020. “I’d urge Republicans to be a little more nervous about this guy.” “He dresses nicely, he presents well, and he looks like someone who could actually be mayor,” Stepien said. “Any time someone can make dangerous policies sound reasonable, Republicans should be concerned.” Mamdani, after all, managed to tailor his message into something so simple that everyone could remember it — “freeze the rent,” “free buses,” “a city you can afford” — in a strategy that invoked Trump’s gift for marketing and sloganeering. (He talked a little about the lessons he took from the Trump campaign in an interview today with my colleague Emma Fitzsimmons.) If his was a campaign with elements of Trump’s 2016 success, it was also enabled by Democrats’ boiling frustration with the old guard and the party’s penchant for deference. And if he wins the general election — during which he’ll be fighting for Democratic votes with at least Mayor Eric Adams — Mamdani will have a national bully pulpit heading into the midterms. “I think he has more value as a turnout mechanism for Democrats,” Stepien said, “than as a boogeyman for Republicans.” Got a tip? BY THE NUMBERS
A wary public isn’t convinced on Iran strikesMy colleague Ruth Igielnik, The Times’s polling editor, helps us dig into the numbers. Today, she looks at disapproval of President Trump’s decision to launch airstrikes against Iran. The decision to attack Iran is broadly unpopular: 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, and 58 percent believe the action will make Iran more of a threat to the United States, according to a CNN/SSRS poll conducted on Sunday and Monday. But Trump’s base has gotten onboard. CNN found that a vast majority of Republicans (82 percent) approved of the strike, and that 87 percent trusted Trump to make the right decisions regarding the use of force. Younger Republicans were slightly more skeptical than others in their party. According to a Washington Post poll, Republican support for the strikes has increased sharply, surging to 77 percent, up from 47 percent a week before the strikes. Nearly all of Democrats and a majority of independents are opposed to the strikes. Still, there is deep concern across both parties about the long-term consequences of the attack. Eight in 10 Americans — including 74 percent of Republicans — worry about the conflict growing, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. And 79 percent of Americans worry that Iran may go so far as to target American civilians.
ONE LAST THING Usha Vance’s new lifeIt wasn’t so long ago that Usha Vance was working as a litigator at a progressive law firm and raising her children in Ohio. Now, she’s the second lady in the Trump administration, a transformation that has left some of her old friends bewildered. Vance has revealed few details about her life. But my colleague Elisabeth Bumiller, a writer-at-large for The Times, has a fascinating look at her new role. Elisabeth writes that Vance is a model of a movement embraced by the White House and pushed by her husband that encourages women to have more children and celebrate the family as the centerpiece of American life. But people who know the couple say she is also someone whose counsel her husband, Vice President JD Vance, leans on in private. Ruth Igielnik and Chris Cameron contributed to this newsletter. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
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