DSA leader brags he helped pen Zohran Mamdani's radical trans rights platform — which includes tax-subsidized surgeries
Members of the DSA touted their apparently close ties with the campaign of the leading mayoral candidate and his staff while speaking at the 'Socialism 2025' conference in Chicago early last month, video from the event shows.
'The Zohran campaign was always eager to work with us. We're like that,' NYC DSA steering committee member Daniel Goulden bragged during a conference panel discussion, gesturing with two crossed fingers to demonstrate their closeness.
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'We wrote the platform with him. The team was so happy to work with us on this, and now he's going to be mayor,' Goulden laughed, according to the footage.
He then trumpeted a plan for the city to pay for trans surgeries for all — and not just in the Big Apple.
DSA steering committee member Daniel Goulden boasted that the radical group helped NYC mayor frontrunner Zohran Mamdani write his LGBTQ platform.
Democratic Socialists of America
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'Zohran is literally attempting to do what conservatives say we want to do, which is provide gender affirming care to anyone who wants it for free,' he said, vowing: 'We're gonna fly people in and pay for their hotel rooms.'
He added: 'We collaborated with the Zohran Mamdani campaign on his trans rights platform, and what we explicitly wanted to do was to use the power of New York City to provide free gender affirming care … not just to people in New York City but across the country.'
Goulden then appeared to downplay the cost of the scheme.
'New York City could provide trans healthcare for every trans person in the country who can't afford it, and it would be a blip on our radar,' he claimed.
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The socialist mayoral frontrunner's own platform, available on his website, includes verbatim many of the far-left trans agenda items Goulding mentioned during the conference panel discussion.
For instance, the Mamdani campaign is pledging to declare New York City a 'sanctuary city for LGBTQIA+ people and their families,' if he's elected, and wants to spend $65 million in taxpayer funds for transgender treatment — including for minors.
Mamdani has promised to turn NYC into an 'LGBTQIA+ Sanctuary City' if elected mayor.
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Stuart Smith, an investigative analyst with the Manhattan Institute, who initially posted clips from DSA's 'Socialism 2025' YouTube videos on X, pointed out that the $65 million in taxpayer funds that Mamdani wants to earmark to cover trans surgery for anyone who wants it 'won't last too long' given the cost of such procedures.
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The campaign platform also wags its finger at hospital systems that have stopped providing trans surgeries to minors, singling out NYU Langone and accusing it of 'sell[ing] out young trans New Yorkers to the Trump administration' and violating state law.
It even went so far as to threaten hospitals who don't agree with their positions, ominously warning it 'will hold private entities abetting Trump's attacks to account' if they refuse to fall in line.
'The Mamdani administration will coordinate with the NYS Attorney General and District Attorneys to investigate and hold public hearings on hospitals that deny trans youth their rightful healthcare and hold them accountable to the law,' the document reads.
In New York, voters appear split on trans issues. Last November, Proposal 1, which modified the state constitution to include sexual orientation and gender expression under its equal rights amendment, passed 62.5% to 37.5%, far from a landslide victory.
When it comes to President Trump's executive order mandating there were only two genders in the US, male and female, Empire State voters supported it by a margin of 47% to 40%, according to a Siena College poll from February.
As for trans athletes competing in girls' sports, a different Siena poll from last April showed that 66% of New York voters said they support high school athletes only being allowed to compete against other members of the gender they were assigned at birth.
Goulding, during the DSA conference, went so far as to claim he was close pals with top Mamdani campaign officials.
'DSA has regular meetings with him, let alone his team. His policy director is my friend. I've been working with his campaign manager for well over a year.'
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Asked about the DSA rep's claims, a Mamdani spokesperson denied that Goulden was affiliated with the campaign, saying he doesn't work for them. But the rep didn't respond to a follow-up question about whether DSA played a part in writing the campaign's LGBTQ platform.
The campaign, proclaiming it was borrowing from laws in lefty havens like San Francisco and Olympia, Washington, has also pledged to spend $87 million on services and perks for LGBTQ New Yorkers, generally, broken down as follows:
$30 million for housing programs
$20 million for mental health services
$10 million for organizations serving transgender New Yorkers
$10 million for administrative and coordination costs
$5 million for workforce investments
$5 million for new education funding
$4.7 million for new healthcare funding
$2 million for public defense and other legal system investments
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'As Mayor, Zohran will unapologetically protect trans New Yorkers and fight back against Trump's discriminatory federal overreaches and funding cuts determined to roll back LGBTQ+ rights,' the campaign spokesperson said in a Monday statement.
DSA did not respond to The Post's request for comment.
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